taog

Everything we do and everything we are, even the way we think, is all physical. Our mental thoughts are electric impulses in our brain. Matter and energy are involved in the way we think, so, you could, relate that to relativity, and say that no, our consciousness cannot travel through time. Our brain is quite complex, however. That's a whole other topic that I don't really know much about, and would end up leading into some type of artificial intelligence topic, which in my mind is impossible to achieve, without using some type of biological matter.

Either way, it all relates to relativity, which is the basis of my whole argument.




Like I said earlier, traveling backwards in time would seem more plausible, given the physics of how light works, and how relativity works.

Every object is moving 'forward' in time. In other words, every object in the universe is moving along the same directional path that time is. I say that in general cases, since things like black holes may have different results.

We can move at the fastest rate of time by standing still compared to the expansion of the universe. That is impossible to do, unless you are at the very centre of the universe, or if you are accelerating towards the centre of the universe at the rate of expansion.

Now, think about the way time dilation works, which says that your time slows down as you move faster. If you reach the speed of light, you reach the rate of time being 0. Your time isn't moving at all, compared to everything around you. You do not age at all. What happens when you exceed the speed of light? Chances are that you would start going backwards in time.

How do you make it so you go forward in time?

The only two ways I can think of are, 1, you go slower than speed 0, or two, you move towards the big bang, or the centre of the universe, at a rate greater than the expansion rate of the universe.

Case number 2 seems less plausible, since time is moving in one direction, and can not be changed, because everything else around you would be expanding anyway. Case one seems to be the only plausible way that you could possibly move forward in time.

Therefore, it would seem to be impossible to move either forward or backward in time, but more plausible to move backward in time.

The fact that you said that time is moving forward, and thus it would seem more plausible to move forward further, since it's already moving forward, is a very good assumption, since time can be easily manipulated in it’s forward direction, but can not be exceeded very easily. Time can be manipulated to slow down for yourself, so therefore it would seem more plausible to be able to go into the past, in regards to moving through time.

However, either way is impossible, given todays physics, because no object with a mass can exceed the speed of light, proven with relativity, and no object can have a negative speed.

FngKestrel

Visualizations of a concept is one of the ways humans understand an object. Sure there are incorrect models, but we find the ones that fit our current empirical data until we get new data or have new ideas about ways to visualize them.

There's no way that we currently know how to go back in time, that is part of the debate. Because we only have equipment that lets us detect travel in a forward direction (timewise), that's the only info we have that's applicable.

To bring up a point though, I remember a philosophy class I took a few years back where the concept of time was brought up. When pressed for definitions and synonyms of time, I threw out 'change' because the only way we can actually detect the passage of time is through change. Now to give a nod to Pfhorte and abandon the timeline model and the conceptions it brings with it, could we not say that going back in time would be synonymous with resetting all elements in the world (or whatever space you wish to work in) back to a state so as to negate any change that had happened between then and the present?

Taking out all concepts of blackholes and timewarps, this seems essentially what we're trying to get at, an unaltered state at a point prior to our current state. In that case, does time travel still seem feasible?

Offtopic Q: Why is this thread in paranoia? Seems like it should belong in philosophy.

taog

That's a good way to look at time. You explained my whole argument about how time is just a differences in events, rather than the way people view it these days. Difference = change, in a way, which is what you said.

However, black holes and worm holes are totally different situations. Since there is something called space-time, which is the difference in events, and since it kind of acts like a blanket spread out through our universe, and is altered by gravity, proven in relativity and physically by looking at a star close to the sun during a solar eclipse, it is 'possible' to travel through time using other means, other than looking at the speed of light.

To me, this case is very far fetched, but I'll explain the idea behind it.

You have two very large objects close to eachother, they are likely orbiting eachother. Lets say these two objects are two supermassive black holes. Since space-time is warped around objects with gravity (like a bowling ball on a matress), it's possible that you can have these two 'warped' space-times meet, and create a whole new space-time. If someone were to pass through that space-time, it would bring them to a new place in space, and a new place in time.

I believe that you can only go backwards in time and that the universe has a universally constant rate in which time moves, and you can not exceed that rate. That rate, in my mind, was defined at the beginning of the big bang, and has been slowing down ever since.

EDIT:

I don't believe that you can go backwards in time. I meant to say that I believe that it's more possible to go backwards in time, rather than going forward in time. Physically, it seems more plausible. Though, I believe that either situation is impossible.

Either way, like i said before, it would seem more feasible to go into the past, rather than the future, given everything I have already said.

d*d

It makes sense, the math works and all that but it's not as intuitive as plain old 3d - I beleive we don't have the capacity to truly comprehend 4d, all we do is take a leap of faith and use analogies

taog

Who can't comprehend 4d?

4d is simple. It's time!!

Time is a dimension. It's a difference in events. Length, height or width are all all differences in space between physical objects. Time is also a difference in space between physically events.

d*d

I can explain it, the math works but it's a theoretical model, what I'm talking about is experiencing it objectivley, you can move around in 3d as much as you want you get an instictive, tactile feel to it i.e we can manipulate it. The fourth we move forward in, not even aware of it's existence.

taog

We are aware of it's existence. If the 4th dimension didn't exist, we wouildn't be able to move.

d*d

prove that can you?

taog

The scientific definition of time is that it is the period occupied by a body in passing from one given point in space to another.


It's more complicated than that though. The result of no time is hard to understand, just like 1d is hard for us to understand, which is just the result of the lack of our other 3 dimensions. It's actually really hard for me to understand what a world would be like without a fourth dimension. Just like it is hard to understand what a world would be like in 2d, or, like i said, 1d. Would the three dimensions even exist without time? Since time is the difference in events, it's hard to get your head around thinking about a world without it, which would be a 3d world.

I say that you wouldn't be able to move. By that i meant, if time were to cease to exist right now, nothing would be moving. You wouldn't think or act or anything. Why? Because time is the difference between events.

If time didn't exist all together, the big bang wouldn't have happened. Time wouldn't have started at all. We wouldn't exist. Time had to have started for things to start moving, because time is the difference between events.

I am going to give you the oxford dictionary of physics definition of 'time', then I will give you the definition of 'space-time', from the same book.



time A dimension (cough) that enables two otherwise identical events that occure at the same point in space to be distinguished. The interval between two such events forms the basis of time measurement.



There is a lot more to that definition, but that is all that is needed, since the rest is mostly a history lesson on Einstein, and a few other guys.



space-time A geometry that includes the three dimensions, and a fourth dimension of time. In Newtonian physics, space and time are considered as seperate entities and whether or not events are simultaneous is a matter that is regarded as obvious to any competent observer. In Einstein's concept of the physical universe, based on a system of geometry devised by H. Minkowski, space and time are regarded as entwined, so that two observers in relative motion could disagree regarding the simultaniety of distant events. In Minkowski's geometry, and event is identified by a world point in a four-dimensional continuum.



You have to think about time dilation for this to make sense. The faster you go, the slower time goes, for you. So, if you have an observer at rest, one moving slightly, and one moving a lot faster, and the two that are moving take measurements of eachothers time, and of the persons at rest, they will all get different results. Thus, time is defined by the difference in events. If time didn't exist, these events wouldn't take place.

Now, the reason why time is considered to be a dimension is partly because it's directly related to the space around it (space-time). Since the above is true, space affects time, and vice-versa, and therefore, time is mixed in with the dimensions of classic 'space' as the norm knows it to be, which is the three classic dimensions. However, time is also a spacious dimension that allows us to have differences in events in space-time.


Like i said, if time didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to move, if we were to exist. Some believe that you would be everywhere at once, which i think is silly, because space-time isn't only about being in a spot, it's about moving to the next spot, too. If time didn't exist, you woudln't be able to move to that next spot, and that space time wouldn't even exist.

So, explain to me how we could live in just a 3 dimensional world. That's what I want you to prove to me. Give me some thoughts on how we only live in a 3d world. We just have length, width and height. How can things exist with those three dimensions?

taog

Isn't anyone up for the challange?

Come on 3d fans!!! Explain how we live in only a three dimensional world!!

It's a hard topic that I wouldn't want to take up explaining.

d*d

I feel were at cross purposes here, my point (and I'm still standing by it) is not that time does not exist, as you have proven above. But only that it is not intuitive it is an abstract notion my original point is that dealing with anything more than 3d becomes difficult for us to comprehend since we only have a tangible relationship with 3.
As I said previously:
"It makes sense, the maths works and all that but it's not as intuitive as plain old 3d - I beleive we don't have the capacity to truly comprehend 4d."

that is we can describe time only through the other dimensions, we don't relate with it like we do the others. I can use my senses to feel height depth width I don't sense time passing, I can measure it but it is an abstract.
hope this clears up where I was going with this

taog

I'll clear some things up then.

You say that you can touch things with three dimensions and they are tangable. However, without time, they wouldn't be.

Yes, I agree that time is precieved as being different than the first three dimensions, but i do not agree that it's hard for us to accept or understand it as a dimension.

It's more difficult to picture time in our heads, because it's hard to draw it, and we seem to think in 2d, like I had already hinted at in another post, either in here or the other time travel thread.

Anyway, I agree that a lot of aspects about time are very hard to imagine. Time is quite tricky at times, especially when dealing with the speed of light, and time dilation.

However, I think what we are arguing here is the definition of the word dimension.

As I searched through to find some definitions of dimension, I noticed that we are actually both correct. The word dimension has many meanings, as most words do. A dimension is known as something that takes up space, and how we describe how that space is taken up by that object. The description of that would be length, width and height.

However, I also read a lot about how dimension is defined as something that takes up an amount of space-time, and how we describe that. Now, in that situation you would have to use time as a dimension.

Dimension is also defined in physics as "A physical property, such as mass, length, time, or a combination thereof, regarded as a fundamental measure or as one of a set of fundamental measures of a physical quantity".

Therefore, it's all relative to the way you define dimension.

I like to think of time as simply another dimension that is needed for everything to exist. It's easy for me to grasp that fact, because of the way i define dimension.

Anyway, hope that clears everything up.

KCMadcow

First off, I want to say that that Titor stuff is odd...I wish I had the imagination to come up with some of that stuff.

I'm not going to discuss the physics aspect of time travel, as I am about as qualified as some of the other people (like the post ridiculing the theory of relativity- it sounded like it was the first time they had heard of it)

Finally, it was a few years back, but I heard an interview on the radio with an elderly gentleman who talked about his adventures in time travel. I admit, that the interview took place on a comedy driven morning talk show (they called up people who were serious, but made fun of them where they couldn't hear it) in Kansas City, but it was interesting nonetheless. Apparently, time travel was first achieved in the early 1940's. It took us 3 tries to win WWII, we had time travel training camps on the dark side of the moon and around the great lakes region, but circa 1 AD. For the record, I didn't believe it, but as a sci-fi fan, it was interesting to listen to and let my imagination run wild with the "what ifs". Has anyone else heard stories like this, and if so, could you point me in a direction to find more of the stories?