Time machine possible or impossilble

In summary: So in summary, according to this professor, time machines or timetravel is possible, but only if you have a galaxy's worth of energy. John Titor has traveled to our time and is a nut, Stephen Hawking said that people from the future would be likely to be all around us, and time travel is a long way ahead.
  • #1
Qyamat
17
0
Hi everyone,
Does anyone of you believe that time machines or timetravel is possible because if it were possible we would already be familiar to one. Because someone would have traveled back in our time whom we could have seen. This has only one explanation that the man who would made the timemachine did not travel back in our time.
 
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  • #2
IF the person were to announce to the world that he had come from the future, yes.

But he might have very good reasons for not doing that! How do you know that people have NOT come back from the future?
 
  • #3
Ya maybe the Ufo which r sighted sometimes are timemachines of somesort.
 
  • #4
Qyamat said:
Hi everyone,
Does anyone of you believe that time machines or timetravel is possible because if it were possible we would already be familiar to one.

A professor here claims that, according to current theory, you would need something like a galaxy's worth of energy to go back a second...but it is possible.

As for the guy you're referring to, he's a nut.
 
  • #5
John Titor has traveled to our time. Look him up, must be possible hehe.
 
  • #6
interesting thing, what about the pattent of a time mechine? lol somebody could go back in time and steal the pattent lol, just a monyy-pythonish style thing that happened to play out in me head.

Adam
 
  • #7
i think it was Stephen Hawking who said that if that was possible then people from the future would be likely to be all around us, which might actually be.

accoding to einstein, it'd be impossible as time has only one dimensuion and one direction.

however i beleive, and i THINK that quantum theories say that chance can mean that this never happens in our timeline, while in others it does...
 
  • #8
Not only is it possible to build one, one has been built, used, but now it is retired. They called it the mir space station. Some russian spent a month I think it was on the station and went back in time a 50th of a second.
 
  • #9
are you sure you don't mean that time was slower in his frame of reference by 1/50th of a second due to relativity? i highly doubt that he went back in time...
 
  • #10
He didn't go back in time, his time was slowed due to relativity.

And the question of whether 'time-travelers' are all around us is effectively the same question as:

"Have things happened that we don't know about, and have no way of finding out about?" ...and that question pretty much is unanswerable
 
  • #11
I see it in this way:

When you travel in time, you get at such a speed that you can't be seen by anybody. You can see everything, but you can't affect the world in any way. You can't touch things or talk to people. Even if you stop the machine (for me a time traveling machine could only be done if it can achieve faster speed than light) you will come back to your time. So your like watching tv, but traveling in time and backwards.
 
  • #12
thepaqster said:
are you sure you don't mean that time was slower in his frame of reference by 1/50th of a second due to relativity? i highly doubt that he went back in time...

exactly what i was going to say, wasnt to sure though, also, as time is sperate from space, i doubt that speed could make you travel in time, ultimatly, from what i know, time travel is a long way ahead
 
  • #13
hexhunter said:
i think it was Stephen Hawking who said that if that was possible then people from the future would be likely to be all around us, which might actually be.

accoding to einstein, it'd be impossible as time has only one dimensuion and one direction.
Actually, Einstein's theory of general relativity (which explains gravity in terms of matter/energy causing spacetime to curve) does allow backwards time travel in certain unusual spacetimes, like a rotating universe or a universe containing a "wormhole". For example, see this article by physicist Paul Davies:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0004226A-F77D-1D4A-90FB809EC5880000

However, most physicists would probably guess that when general relativity is combined with quantum physics to produce a theory of quantum gravity, the possibility of backwards time travel will be eliminated. Here's an article on how string theory (a candidate for a theory of quantum gravity) might eliminate the possibility of time travel:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group..._frm/thread/770fe3895b4bc0cc/fc5fefa6578822ee (for some background on the 'holographic principle' discussed in this article, see here)
 
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  • #14
I remember seeing something about it being only possible to travel back in time as long as the time machien exists in the time frame you travel back into. Like... if you live in 2005 and a time machine is built, you can't go back to 2004 but if you wait till 2025, you will be able to go back in time but only until 2005. Dont remember the explanation though...
 
  • #15
<<<GUILLE>>> said:
I see it in this way:

When you travel in time, you get at such a speed that you can't be seen by anybody. You can see everything, but you can't affect the world in any way. You can't touch things or talk to people. Even if you stop the machine (for me a time traveling machine could only be done if it can achieve faster speed than light) you will come back to your time. So your like watching tv, but traveling in time and backwards.
Actually, the only thing you would see is the very thing you LAST saw. The abilty or answer to travel backwards currently eludes me. However, for forward travel to feasible the vehicle and everything in it would have to effectively stop moving. All matter, electrons, atoms and photon emmisions must suspend in order to induce a sort of temporal stasis that will "pause" the vehicle (un-noticeable to occupant) in the normal sense of "time" and cause it to shift in and out of the fourth dimension (which is NOT time) as the particles must remain in motion by any means necessary as they do along the XYZ axes in the 1,2, and 3rd dimensions. I'm currently studying the dynamics of reverse travel although I highly doubt it's feasible. I need to further study black holes, theorized wormholes, and string theory to draw any conclusion. If a wormhole is actually a gateway to the past it would have to take you (presuming the trip to be survivable) to the presice point in the 4 dimensions that it was created. That could be billions of years earlier and trillions of AU away from your current position. Still want to make that trip? If you did you would most likely be scattered across the universe as you exited the wormhole as it was created; surely not surviving. Sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes. I rushed this but it should be accurate.
 
  • #16
Pengwuino said:
I remember seeing something about it being only possible to travel back in time as long as the time machien exists in the time frame you travel back into. Like... if you live in 2005 and a time machine is built, you can't go back to 2004 but if you wait till 2025, you will be able to go back in time but only until 2005. Dont remember the explanation though...
That would be true if it were possible to travel through time using a wormhole. According to special relativity, if you one of two twins makes a journey at near light speed away from Earth and then returns, the twin who made this journey will be younger than his twin brother when he returns. But if each twin is carrying one mouth of a wormhole, when they look through it they will see the other twin aging at the same rate as themselves. So if both twins were 20 years old when the traveling twin departs, and when the traveling twin returns he is 25 while the earth-twin is 70, then if the traveling twin looks through his end of the wormhole he will see the earth-twin as he was at age 25, 45 years in the past...so by hopping back throught this mouth he can actually journey 45 years in the past. But this method won't allow him to go back to a time before the two twins traveled apart and a time difference was introduced between their wormhole mouths. This is discussed a bit more in the article by Paul Davies I posted above.
 
  • #17
time is just something exist in our head. It doesn't really exist so you can't really manipulate it.
 
  • #18
i believe that everything in nature is determined
and we live according to natural laws of our complex Universe.
travelling forward and backwards in time needs few equations to be set up
by then, we will surely be able to do such a thing which now it's hard to imagine!
 
  • #19
It is highly impossible that time machine would be ever created that is because :

1) Time itself may not exist.

2) There is no natural occurance of time travell phenomenon of an object or atleast information.
 
  • #20
SelmerSaxMan said:
Not only is it possible to build one, one has been built, used, but now it is retired. They called it the mir space station. Some russian spent a month I think it was on the station and went back in time a 50th of a second.

Really,

??Then how come I haven't yet seen a picture of this cosmonaut with a handshake with his own self from past ?

That was not time travel, it was slowing down of all the atoms of an object called MIR.

The real measure of time travel will be when we get a copy of an object from another time simultaneously. I hope U don't ever forget that before making such a statement again, unless U r from a previous time I guess.
 
  • #21
i don't know why you are neglecting the idea of a time-travel machine;
i think the arguments you gave are not enough.
I believe that nothing is impossible if we invest our intelligence properly and working hard to achieve our goals.
 
  • #22
I have a few theories about this, it involves a device I call the 'flux capacitor' and traveling at 88 mph in a Delorean.
 
  • #23
can u give us the link? Mr jcsd :)
 
  • #25
A_I_ said:
i don't know why you are neglecting the idea of a time-travel machine;
i think the arguments you gave are not enough.
I believe that nothing is impossible if we invest our intelligence properly and working hard to achieve our goals.

Offcourse U can build a TM. But first to begin U should know how it would work. So, here is one of the possible personally for U Mr. Optimistic.

For that first U create a infinite times fast computer for the TM. Keep it at the farthest edge of the universe. Now scan all the particles of the universe and their respective paths. Reverse all the paths and calculate where and when eachone had impacted on each other. Just retrace all of them as per your specific time requirement and then place all the particles of the universe in that position.

Do that and that would be your TM.

P.S. TM is not Temporal Mechanics. So much for the positive attitude.
 
  • #26
I think traveling back in time is impossible on dynamic grounds: The universe is a big non-linear dynamo in its chaotic regime. Think of the Lorenz attractor: trajectories NEVER cross. If the universe is like this, then going back in time would amount to "crossing" trajectories. But the universe does not seem to have this property. Rather it is fractal, non-linear, dense (no smallest small or largest large), and chaotic (think of the orbit of the earth: it's not a clean ellipse but rather a torus). Everything in the universe seems that way: nothing clean, always messy, chaotic, dense and non-linear: just like the Lorenz strange attractor.

So I'm no Einstein but sometimes I imagine ridding on a trajectory in the Lorenz attractor and wondering what I'd see? I think I'd see my world expanding all around me wouldn't I?
 
  • #27
thanks Mr jcsd for the link
as for Mr Robosapien, thanks for calling me mr optimistic while i am not at all
but in thoe matters i really am.
first of all i would like to say i am just a beginner in this field (astronomy, metaphysics.. ) but i believe somehow: "there are too many ways to arrive to you aim, it just needs too many ways of thinking and reasonning"
while about your way, i would like to listen to a specialist to see wether it can be made or not. I'm not talking about how long it will take; I'm talking about its "possibility"

Science is our future :)
 
  • #28
iof the time machine only travels in time and not space, then it is likely you will appear with either far out to space or deep under the crust of the earth, if, however it does exist in the time you are traveling to chances are it will take you to the machine in that time and not just spawn you according to the bigger picture...
 
  • #29
well i think if we will be able to build a time machine; it will be for moving us in space and time; because whenever you move in time u r moving in space (space is not constant)
 
  • #30
This thread has been moved due to its high number of speculative posts, which are not welcome on this site. Please refrain from posting personal theories on this site.

- Warren
 

1. Is time travel possible?

At this point in time, time travel is not considered possible according to our current understanding of physics. However, some theories and experiments suggest that it may be possible in the future.

2. Can a time machine be built?

As of now, there is no known technology or scientific evidence that supports the construction of a time machine. It is still a topic of research and speculation in the scientific community.

3. How would time travel affect the past and future?

The concept of time travel raises many questions about its potential effects on the past and future. Some theories suggest that changing the past could create alternate timelines, while others propose that the past is fixed and cannot be changed.

4. Are there any real-life examples of time travel?

While there are no confirmed cases of time travel, there are some phenomena that have been observed and studied, such as time dilation in space travel and time loops in quantum mechanics. However, these do not allow for traveling to specific points in time.

5. What are the ethical implications of time travel?

If time travel were to become possible, it would raise numerous ethical concerns. For example, changing the past could have unintended consequences and raise questions about free will. It would also raise questions about who has access to time travel and how it would be regulated.

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