Time travel

[TaiDaishar]

Many physicists believe that time travel is possible, problem none has made time travel yet is because it'll require 3 times the power that is produced on Earth.

So lets say time travel IS possible and very real, what will happen?

After seeing movies such as "Back to the future" (I believe this was the English name...) etc' I've always been puzzled about it.

There's the option that if you time traveled then you 1 second BEFORE will time travel as well and you 1.1 seconds before you, making quite a nasty problem that everyone will time travel to the exact same time, making it that an infinite number of YOU will time travel at seemingly the same time making the entire world collapse because of the unexpected mass or other some such astronomical problems.

Or maybe because you time traveled you changed the entire history just by you being there, making it unnecessary for you to time travel again (or impossible)

I know it's all highly theoretical and most probably not even possible beyond theory but it always boggles my mind at what the hell happens.

So, fire away!

[Sir_Die_alot]

I think a question that doesn't come up much is what happens when the moment is past? Everything is traveling in time all be it slowly so is each moment frozen in time when a moment is past or just left barren as things move through it (Read/seen Tommyknockers anyone?:P )? If we were to travel back in time would anything even exsist there after having moved on?

[Taem]

That was the same hypothesis I had on the last time-travel thread a few months ago, but I was quickly shot down :P . I don't remember exactly what "they" said, but I do remember the general feeling of disagreement en masse towards my theory, which was exactly the same as yours. Just a friendly heads-up :D .

[--Pete]

Hi,

This topic was discussed not too long ago. Look at
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index.p...&hl=time+travel

If you do come up with something that could be added to the discussion, apparently there are a number of lurkers interested. But I doubt that many want to redo what's recently been done.

--Pete

[dahak_i]

It was a while ago that I read Tommyknockers, and I don't recall the time travel aspect of the book. It might be joining in my mind with Dreamcatcher, however, as they were very similar books.

A movie that I'd seen before and recently re-watched had what I considered a *very* interesting/cool look on time travel: 12 Monkies.

Starring Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis, the basic plot is that Bruce Willis goes back in time to find out the cause of a massive plague that destroys most of the earth's poplulation. The survivors are forced underground, and send people back to find out information about the plague. Since the past can't be changed, their only goal is to find out as much as they can about the plague, so that scientists in the "present" can find a cure.

The movie itself is filled with eye-candy, in terms of time travel, and after watching it I find myself feeling that the scientists in the movie didn't fully understand the application of their own theories. It left me feeling... interesting.


In light of the previous discussion on Time Travel, I'm thinking we could tailor this thread to those theories discussed in fiction, be it as a book or a movie. I haven't read through all of the other thread, though, so just ignore me if such topics were covered there.

[Occhidiangela]

Going back in time, you would do one of two things:

1. re experience space time again

2. show up in a "void."

If, as suggested, the energy cost can somehow be paid cost effectively.

Now, as to fictional time travel, L Sprague DeCamp wrote a nifty little piece calle "Lest Darkness Fall" that covers a fellow who knows double entry bookkeeping dropping in on the late Roman Empire, and attempting to stop the descent into chaos. I enjoyed the book.

By contrast, Michael Chricton's recent book, Timeline I think it was, covered some voodoo quantum theory and a return to 13th century France by modern persons who were studying the period.

It was a fast read on the airplane trip I was on, but I confess to having been a little disappointed by the time the story was done:

Had I just read a book or a screen play? :D

[Raziel]

I don't believe in time travel per se as much as I do believe in travelling to parallel universes who are differentiated by some unknown time interval.

For example, you're not _really_ travelling 100 years into the past - you're actually travelling to a parallel universe where everything is absolutely identical except that the clock is slow by 100 years.

That way you can do whatever you want, including meeting yourself, killing yourself, etc and it will have no effect on the "real" you. When you return to your original "timeline", you will not perceieve any changes, but if instead you "returned" to a different original "timeline" in which 100 years previously someone had killed your ancestor the you in _that_ timeline would not exist and nobody would know who you were or have any record of you.

It's kinda funky, but avoids the grandfather paradox.

[TaMeOlta]

Hi,

This topic was discussed not too long ago.  Look at
http://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/index.p...&hl=time+travel

If you do come up with something that could be added to the discussion, apparently there are a number of lurkers interested.  But I doubt that many want to redo what's recently been done.

--Pete

I experience time travel disorder everytime I drive to work .... suddenly I'm at work and miss out on the 40 minute trip here ...... :blink: .... or is this a different time travel symptom ? :P

[--Pete]

Hi,

Had I just read a book or a screen play?

IMHO, all of Michael Chricton's books after Andromeda are screen plays. I think he long since figured out the bread/butter asymmetry :)

Not that some of them aren't good reads, but usually the movie is better.

--Pete

[--Pete]

Hi,

"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute—and it’s longer than any hour. That’s relativity." Einstein

Obviously your enjoying your drive to work entirely too much :)

--Pete

[Mr_PeaCH]

John Titor - Time Traveller

[Rhydderch Hael]

I read the back cover blurb of a long-forgetten paperback title that I was browsing by. It concerned a love triangle that ends with the hero being placed in cryrogenic stasis, thus allowing his wife and best friend to get him out of their lives without actually murdering him.

The kicker is, the man is awakened in a future where humanity has advanced to the point where time travel is possible. So, he goes back— with a vengeance.

[pakman]

Theorectically, time travel is possible by way of sub-space phenomena called worm holes. At least I'm pretty sure that's what they are called. However, time travel back to before the "machine" was made would cause a discontinuity in the space-time. There was a special on Discovery Channel a long while back about this and the math explains why one would only be able to go forward and not back at the exact moment the machine was created and worked.

[Occhidiangela]

Nice to "see you." Thanks for the link, worth a grin. JTedior, John Titor . . . not too much of a giveaway, eh? :)

[Mr_PeaCH]

Hail Occhidiangela!

A grin indeed. I got a lot of amusement from that site and the others that spawned it; I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more run actually.

Curious tho... JTedior? Not sure what you're going at with that to be honest.

[Rinnhart]

I'm a fan of the "multiple worlds" theory (the one used in Timeline), not because it's by any means the most likely to be reality, but because it's so clean cut. It allows the possibility of time travel without all the nasty results like "ending the universe".

[kandrathe]

My 2 cents. First to rehash a little. Time is an artificial construct which we use to describe the phenomena of observed motion. We live in a multi dimensional continuum of quantum soup. We are merely a chunky part of that soup, a semi-solid which loosely holds itself together within a gaseous cloud. We like to think of ourselves as a particle that can be described mathematically by XYZ spacial dimensions and a constant linear time dimension. But that may just be our experiential bias. From Einstein's special relativity we know that this soups time space is radically altered by velocity, and mass. I feel the secret is held in a deep understanding of gravity.

We experience time travel already. If one were to have two perfectly syncronized clocks and put one in a space ship and fly it very fast, at nearly the speed of light for awhile then return it to earth the times would be different. We can already explain that kind of time displacement with special relativity. But, further work by Einstein and other physicists showed there to be some inadequacy to his theory.

Einstein was set on the idea that the answer was elegant and I have to agree. There will be no divide by zero error in time travel equations, hence no paradoxs. I think the idea of parallel universes is just another "construct" of our imagination which allows us to figure out a way it could work. So, thinking back to continuum, it is doubtful there is anything like discrete parallel universes.

[Occhidiangela]

JTeditor@__.com, the email address in on the title page. Sorry about the typo. JT is the editor, and the subject. Or that's my guess. :)

[swirly]

This whole thread had kind of a weird timing about it in that I had just watched Donnie Darko. So now with this post speaking of worm holes and such I just thought I would ask how many people have seen Donnie Darko and what they thought of it. This is a bit off topic, but at least it is a movie about time travel somewhat. : )

[WarLocke]

Saying Donnie Darko was a time-travel movie is a bit iffy. Then again, the whole movie is open to so much interpretation. It seemed to me that he got shunted off into oh, let's say a "pocket dimension" for the duration of his erm.. experience.

But yeah, Donnie Darko is definitely an underappreciated film. B)