Time travel: Scientific Evidence & Theories

In summary, the conversation discusses various theories and opinions on the possibility of time travel. Some believe that going faster than light could allow us to view events in the past, but not live in them. Others argue that the existence of paradoxes makes time travel impossible. The concept of parallel universes is also brought up, with some believing in the existence of multiple dimensions and others finding it illogical. The conversation also touches on the idea of time being relative and how changing our mental processes could affect our perception of time. Ultimately, the conversation leaves the topic open-ended, with no clear consensus on the possibility of time travel.
  • #1
Slickchange1313
14
0
any evidence in time travel guys? id like to hear your theorys, weather scientic ones on wether it exist or how it doesn't exist, and can never exist. I personally believe you can never go backwards or forwards into time and live in it. I think if we went faster than light, the light would bend so wed be able to view events in the past to a certain extent as if it were happening now, but not live in te past/future. first of all, the scientific evidence such as the theory of reletivity, and the logical aspects of it. If you went back in time and found were grandfather (now, without him u wouldn't be alive) and killed him whicle he was a baby, you would not exist, but you never existed back then anyway cause your father doesn't exist them, and never existed to go back in time and do that. so that pretty much proves it wrong. So that proves, that you can't go back or forward in time. Some people would talk about the dimensions on earth, and if u did go back to a year ago or so, then it would be a different dimension, so you could kill yourself on that dimension, because its not you, but it is you. kinda like "The One" And if that were true, then every dimension is on the sub atomic level, and nano seconds, and what "you" did tomorrow, u HAVE to do today theoretically, and since everything is happenig right now, the day u were born would be happening right now in another parrelel, that would mean that their never was a beginning of time, cause even a trillion years ago yer life was going on then, as it is now, and tat would mean that you don't exist, when u think about it, Because everything that exists today never had a beginning, and only God can theoretically always exist. weather yer God is the soup of evolution, something we don't no about, or what, some form of God had to always exist, cause something cannot come from nothing, something has to be eternal, and have intelligence to make intelligence. But anyways, what are yer guys's oppinions on this topic?
and about my previous starting's on faster than the speed of light, how else is it possible if nothing that goes slower than the speed of light can go faster, if not for gravity? what else could possibly do it? certainly not even the biggest engine in the world since it starts at 0 and works its way up, and would have to go straught from 0-186K MPS and never go any slower. :tongue2:
 
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  • #2
Yeah but you can't speed something with intrinsic mass to the speed of light. If you could somehow temporarily change the type of particle you're moving (fermions, bosons), which I don't even know if is possible or not, you might be able to. Seriously though that's just a logic theory I haven't studied enough to grasp such an advanced concept.

Honestly I don't think time travel is possible just beause there are paradoxi (paradoxes) with every theory. If a paradox must exist then, in my mind, the theory is invalid.
 
  • #3
Slickchange1313 said:
And if that were true, then every dimension is on the sub atomic level, and nano seconds, and what "you" did tomorrow, u HAVE to do today theoretically, and since everything is happenig right now, the day u were born would be happening right now in another parrelel, that would mean that their never was a beginning of time, cause even a trillion years ago yer life was going on then, as it is now, and tat would mean that you don't exist, when u think about it, Because everything that exists today never had a beginning, and only God can theoretically always exist.

You lost me here, i can't follow your logic. you say that today is today what will be tommorow in another universe? and you also assume that there are infinite amounts of parallel universes, what if there are only 2 universes. and for the exist part, "I Think therefore I am" Descartes
Now to answer your question technically, not to be smart, but we all travel through time everyday, just by living, because you are moving through space-time. Also if you want to slow down time, you don't have to travel faster or close to the speed of light, all you have to do is speed up your mental process, like overclocking a CPU. Cause when you think about it, we are all living in the past, it takes a few nanoseconds for all the information from the outside world to reach your brain, then for your brain to analyse it, and then for your body to react. If you can speed up your brain, you could, concievably make time around you seem to slow down.
 
  • #4
LOL I really find what you are saying quite similar to what I was thinking about for a while. What was before the earliest event, even though physics says that it doesn't matter (its in the elsewhere), I WANNA KNOW lol! Otherwise the existence of anthing is just plain impossible. I know it can be explained via the reasoning that we DO in fact exist. :P
 
  • #5
Frosty_Taw- well, no I never said that. I believe that we are the only universe in time, just one dimension, us. I was explaining if their were other dimensions, it wouldn't be logical because the civil war would be happening right now in another universe, and there would be no beginning for all of this, since it would always exist, and not make logical sense.
"and you also assume that there are infinite amounts of parallel universes, what if there are only 2 universes."
 
  • #6
Well, in an extended Young's wave experiment one can prove that there are other universes, how understand it is that, since in quantum theory, as in Schrodinger's cat, says all things happen at the same time (the cat is dead and alive in the box at the same time), the near infinite number of alternate universes make up for this. There are universes in which the Allies lost WWII, ones where slavery still exists and one's where beer was never invented. This is called the "Many Worlds Theory" and was created by a man from Princeton.

Ubern0va, I think you mean change the masses of particle(s), to say a photon, with no rest mass, that's why it can travel at light speed.

faster than the speed of light, how else is it possible if nothing that goes slower than the speed of light can go faster, if not for gravity? what else could possibly do it?
I'm not quite understanding your question/statement, do ou mean if nothing can go as fast of the speed of light, then how does light go that fast? Did you mean to ask if gravity goes at lights speed? In case your question was that, no. According to Newton, if the Sun were to suddenly disappear, it would take, a certain number of hours until the Earth were to feel the effects of no gravity from the sun. Physicists call it a gravity wave, imagine a wave on the rubber sheet of spacetime.
 
  • #7
" I'm not quite understanding your question/statement, do ou mean if nothing can go as fast of the speed of light, then how does light go that fast? Did you mean to ask if gravity goes at lights speed? In case your question was that, no. According to Newton, if the Sun were to suddenly disappear, it would take, a certain number of hours until the Earth were to feel the effects of no gravity from the sun. Physicists call it a gravity wave, imagine a wave on the rubber sheet of spacetime."
yes, I am well aware of that, thank you. And I disagree with your multi-dimensions world. and espeically the fact of what has happened in the universes, how would u no?? "There are universes in which the Allies lost WWII" and how would you no that? I asked for yer oppinion, so if u said "I think.." than it would be ok, but u declared it as fact, and u honestly do not no if there is a universe who lost WWII, if there even are more universes out there. But, not to chew you out, I assume you meant to say u believe that, not as in a fact, I do that sometimes to, so its ok.
 
  • #8
No, well I never said it was my theory or anything, I just stated a well accepted theory. And I am merely using this WWII example as an example, to show, that all possibilities possible are currently happening right now, according to the theory of course.

Its ok, I'd rather you chew at me than a vicious dog with rabies, or a flesh-eating dieses :biggrin:
 
  • #9
The many worlds "theory" is really more a model for quantum mechanics than anything else. It is consistent with the mathematics of qm but there are many other models that make more sense. General relativity seems to predict that there could be universes inside black holes and that this in fact could be how universes form, including our own. When it comes to time travel, it's anybody's guess at this point. It is possible to travel forward in time. You're doing it right now. If you travel at near light speed you will travel to the future more rapidly than the rest of us. As for traveling into the past there are several possible mechanisms but most of them appear unlikely. Wormholes can allegedly be used to travel through time if one end were displaced in time due to SR affects. However it has been shown that if the two wormhole openings were close enough together to create a time paradox they would most likely collapse. Time paradox's are impossible in any case. If you changed the past there would be no reason to travel into the past and so you wouldn't. So it is impossible to change the past. Visiting the past without changing it may be possible. It's also possible that if you changed the past the universe would rewrite itself in some way so that a time paradox did not exist, but that seems to assume the universe is somehow intelligent. Also, if it were possible we would see tourists from the future as Stephen Hawking has said. In all likelyhood time travel into the past is impossible.
 
  • #10
I agree with you, CJames, I think time travel to the past is impossible to! well done, nicely stated :-)
 
  • #11
I'm 16 years old and in high school. I'm trying to understand limits so far to get a better grasp of calculus and physics in general. I am however very interested in time travel, here is what I got so far:

1) Let's say you created a time machine in 2004. If you went to the past before it was created; you couldn't go back to the future could you? Or if you could, what would happen? What would happen if you went into the past and shot your grandfather then went into the future? You could say its impossible. You could say you would be in a parallel universe where your grandfather didn't exist. There are an infinite amount of parallel universes. No one knows for sure but most people think it IS impossible to current physics.
2) According to Stephen Hawking and other physicist, if we could figure out string theory (particles much smaller than an atom that vibate at different frequences), that would be a big step towards uncovering time travel.
3) Time travel is pratical in theory; just not pratical in current physics.
4) Most think that we couldn't travel to the past but only to the future. Refer to number 1. If we could figure out string theory, PERHAPS we could travel to the past as well. We simply currently DO NOT KNOW ENOUGH about physics to fully understand the universe (and probably we never will) or time travel.
5) As fast as technology has evolved this last centry, it probably won't be long until we do figure this stuff out.
 
  • #12
CJames said:
The many worlds "theory" is really more a model for quantum mechanics than anything else. It is consistent with the mathematics of qm but there are many other models that make more sense. General relativity seems to predict that there could be universes inside black holes and that this in fact could be how universes form, including our own. When it comes to time travel, it's anybody's guess at this point. It is possible to travel forward in time. You're doing it right now. If you travel at near light speed you will travel to the future more rapidly than the rest of us. As for traveling into the past there are several possible mechanisms but most of them appear unlikely. Wormholes can allegedly be used to travel through time if one end were displaced in time due to SR affects. However it has been shown that if the two wormhole openings were close enough together to create a time paradox they would most likely collapse. Time paradox's are impossible in any case. If you changed the past there would be no reason to travel into the past and so you wouldn't. So it is impossible to change the past. Visiting the past without changing it may be possible. It's also possible that if you changed the past the universe would rewrite itself in some way so that a time paradox did not exist, but that seems to assume the universe is somehow intelligent. Also, if it were possible we would see tourists from the future as Stephen Hawking has said. In all likelyhood time travel into the past is impossible.

A writer to Stephen Hawking I read in his book (or was it someone else) stated a brillaint idea that somehow we humans could set up mirrors between two black holes reflecting each other and canceled something out. (I don't remember the details..)
 
  • #13
You all need to review the new site quidelines about over speculative posts.
 

What is time travel?

Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time, either into the future or the past. This has been a popular topic in science fiction, but there is ongoing research and theories in the scientific community about its possibility.

Is time travel possible?

Currently, time travel is not possible with our current understanding of physics. However, there are some theories and concepts in physics, such as wormholes and time dilation, that suggest time travel may be possible in the future.

What is the scientific evidence for time travel?

There is currently no scientific evidence to support the existence of time travel. Scientists have not been able to reproduce or observe any instances of time travel. However, there are ongoing experiments and research being conducted to explore the possibility of time travel.

What are some scientific theories about time travel?

Some of the main theories about time travel include the concept of wormholes, which are theoretical passages through space-time that could potentially allow for time travel. The theory of special relativity also suggests that time can move at different rates for different observers, which could potentially lead to time travel.

What are the potential consequences of time travel?

The potential consequences of time travel are still largely unknown and highly debated. Some theories suggest that even the slightest change in the past could drastically alter the present and future, while others propose the concept of parallel universes where changes in the past would not affect the current timeline. Additionally, the possibility of creating paradoxes, or situations that contradict themselves, is often discussed when considering the consequences of time travel.

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