Time: Linear, non-linear or both? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

archer2371 · 08-25-2004, 02:40 PM

[DISCLAIMER]The following are just some musings of mine that wrote one early morning around 2:30. There are some statements about God and the Trinity, this is what I believe, I do believe in Christ, so let's get that out of the way right now, please don't criticize me on that point. Now, I'm not a scientist, and I don't claim to be, I have a very basic education in the ways of the Universe, so don't take what I say too literally. I guess what I'm asking you is to have a "willing suspension of belief" and to just follow along. If you want to factually correct my science that's fine, but again, please don't reply with "Don't you know that there is no God and that you're a mere sheep among masses that have been lied to for thousands of years?" This is just a kind of "What if?" and "How would that work?" piece by me with some stuff in there from my beliefs, and it probably won't win any points on organization, it jumps around quite a bit.[/DISCLAIMER]

Quote:

Time must be both linear and non-linear. It has linear propreties, only because we as humans can only comprehend linear documentation. However, because there is a God (I believe), then time is also inherently non-linear because He exists everywhere at every time. For God to exist time must be non-linear, with our linear barriers that we place on it. To achieve the concept of time travel, we must accept time as non-linear. The Universe itself is the perfect example, nothing is linear, all patterns are cyclical in one form or another. Not even our souls are linear (again, I believe), we have existed before in the presence of God but not in human form. Even after we have left the major barrier of time, our bodies, we will continue to exist. While interesting, the concept of alternative universes is rather flawed (If I'm right), simply because time would have to be linear for this to occur, and it's not. However, it is entirely possible that kinks exist in time to give the perception of an alternate reality, but everything results in the same way. Now back to time travel. Since time is non-linear, it may be possible to "bend" it so that the point you currently exist in is close enough to a previous or future point, so that a "jump" can occur. To do this would require a great amount of energy, fusion would have to be involved to create such an effect. An explosion would not be necessary, but rather a reaction. A contained black hole, for the sole purpose of the use of the event horizon would be required. It is the only occurence that bends time in the natural universe. If the power of a black hole could be tapped and analyzed, then I believe that time travel would be possible. However, if two points in time were brought too close together, the result could be catastrophic. In fact, over-usage of time travel could break down the space-time continuum as we know it. However if the periods could be analyzed and made sure that the continuum could repair itself, then time travel would be one of the greatest discoveries ever. To create a contained black hole, a contained nova must occur first, and even then the problem of maintaining a large mass in a small space would be worthy of a Nobel Prize in and of itself. Perhaps if we knew exactly what happened inside of a black hole, then we could harness it. If a black hole were just a gateway to another point (both in space and time), it would explain the communication loss after a recording isntrument entered it. This path of pursuit for time travel would require a creation of a quick nova, with a black hole that collapses in on itself (again, Nobel Prize worthy feats). Even if a black hole only transported an object to another point in space, without the time displacement, it would still be a great breakthrough in space travel. However, there are just too many unknowns that exist at this point to pursue a true scientific endeavor. If the polarity of a black hole could be found, then a choice of polarities could determine the point where one ends up.

I know, I've arrived at a rather unappealing conclusion there, but that's really the only conclusion I could come up with, maybe if Stephen Hawking were writing this he could come up with a solution, but I'm just little ol' me. This is probably filled with so many flaws, I should probably be sent back to my eighth grade science course, but eh, it was just something that I wrote off the top of my head really, which is why I put it in Philosophy rather than in Knowledge.

ARTelevision · 08-25-2004, 04:48 PM

It's not clear that the nature of time is knowable beyond the coordinate system of measuring marks placed between events.

TheKak · 08-25-2004, 06:23 PM

I was under the impression that "time" was just a placement of matter at a particular point, and we assign these points numbers in order to keep track of where they were in relation to each other.

MageB420666 · 08-25-2004, 06:54 PM

As you said, you don't want any criticizing of your religion, so I will try to avoid that, but your religous views and how they fit with your conception of time do interlock.

First off, if time is not linear, then why do we not live before we are born or some other such impossiblity.

Now about time travel, you have to have a reason to invent time travel, otherwise you wouldn't do it. You can't do it if your reason is something you want to change. If you did you would go back and change that event, remove your reason for inventing time travel, and therefore you would not create time travel and would not be able to travel back and change to occurence, leaving the event unchanged, and you in a continuous unending time loop.

If your reason is just to observe then you have screwed everyone over because you cannot observe and not effect, so you would continue to observe until the changes accumulated to such that you no longer invented time travel, usually by causing yourself and many others not to exist, which means you never invented time travel in the first place never went back and screwed everyone over, and are therefore able to invent time travel again and go back and observe again, leaving not just you but everyone in an unending time loop, way to go.

Now by your view of god and association with time your saying that according to god's point of view, he will know everything that happens everywhere and everywhen. This means that he already knows who will go to heaven and who will go to hell and there is nothing anyone can do to change that since everything they do God will already have known and that will already have factored in, meaning that free will goes out the window since you are no longer in control of your own destiny. God already knows where you will end up and there is nothing you can do about it, only he could change that, except that he already knows what he would do, what it did, and according to his view, he already did it and has yet to do it and is doing it right now.

Now if time was non linear then our universe would make no sense, you could live before you were born and such, the equivalent of time travel and you then meet my first to arguments.

And you could never break down the space time continuum, any changes you made would automatically be corrected and you would then doom yourself or the universe to a time loop.(See my first to arguments)

Some people try to avoid my argument about God and time by saying that time is linear and God exists outside of time, but if you think that through you come to the same conclusions. And if God existed within a linear time then he could not know everything, he would then run into the same problems.

I'm not trying to bust your religious view point or anything, as far as I know your right and God is all-powerful and can therefore tell reason to wipe his almighty ass. When it comes to time travel, all you will run into is infinity-loops and effect preceding cause, therefore removing the need to have a cause at all. When it comes to religion, since there is no absolute proof, everyone could be right, including the theory of the Universe being sneezed out by the Great Green Arklseizure, with everyone needing to fear the coming of the Great White Handkercheif.(To understand this idea, read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Author: Douglas Adams).

If you read all of this pat yourself on the back, you just wasted an irreplaceable piece of your life reading someones opinion on idea that will never have any real meaning, ever, good job.

CoachAlan · 08-25-2004, 07:46 PM

First, a quote (paraphrased) from Sealab 2021:
Quinn: It appears we were just thrown back in time 15 minutes.
Stormy: How did that happen?
Quinn: When Sealab exploded, it must have fractured subspace.
Stormy: Yeah! Take that, subspace!

Anyway, my understanding of time is that it is a dimension not unlike the three spatial dimensions. It is affected by gravity/acceleration the same way the other dimensions are affected.

Einstein would have called your paragraph above a "thought experiment." You may want to refer to it in that way in the future. It lends credibility. In keeping with the thought experiment motif, imagine that we readily moved both forward and backward in time, just as we do the other dimensions. Would are perception be any different? Our consciousness would also be moving backward. As would the causality in the world around us. Going forward, 1+3=4. Going backward, 4-3=1. In our mind, the effect is the exact same: One earliest, then three, then four last.

It wobbles a feeble mind like mine.

ARTelevision · 08-26-2004, 01:56 PM

A "dimension" is a frame of reference used to measure things. It's not clear that the term refers to anything else.

Zdragva · 08-29-2004, 06:37 PM

1st of all what the the topic creator is writing about is probaby the leading edge of hard core science atm, not time but time travel, dimensionality and how it relates to the rest of the Universe. I can tell you what the facts are but for a deeper understanding please go to http://mist.npl.washington.edu/AV/#6. this site rules btw, dont tell everyone

. Yeah time isnt linear in the sense it goes forward only and time travel, actually going into the past or future, is BANNED by nature in our universe. Time is a dimension, like the 3 space ones but its more than a frame of reference. time and space seem to be the fabric of everything placed upon absolutely nothing and upon which everything can exist. Like a fabric too time isnt linear but rather all times currently exist somewhere (Past present and future are directions we know of btw in the time dimension) objects can move through time, like space and no direction of time is favoured by our universe. When dealing with something as unfimiliar as a spatial plane called time lets forget our preconceptions and ridiculouse hollywood ideas. If a plane crashes it stays crashed in this universe thats a fact, but more than time has to be considered their so be careful. If you have 2 objects, lets say 2 green balls, and they collide to give a big red ball, now elsewhere a big red ball explodes and gives 2 green balls, science says that these experiments (as long as they are reversible) cannot be distinguished one from the other, basiclly what this means after heaps of mumbo jumbo is that at a basic level,1 reaction viewed forwards in time and another reaction back in time that look identical ARE identical. Also like space, time can be curved, especially near black holes

. Albert Einsteins theory of special relativity has been tested, 2 atomic clocks set to run exactly the same were build. one was placed in a university somewhere and the other was whisked away on a round the world trip, very fast. when the two clocks were tested one was found to be out by a few millionths of a second or something, this was an astonishing difference for atomic clock (they say) and proved time curved as ur speed increased. now although time isnt linear, runs weird for others and can even be stated to run backwords in some conditions, WE CANNOT TRAVEL THROUGH IT. The whole universe, time included is likea huge mesh constantly moving and changing, expanding cooling, with supernova and matter antimatter annihilations etc. its crazy stuff

theory predicts that in the event of a time loop like above the whole universe would 'rearrange itself' but time isnt like a loop, more a net (as i see it) so u wouldnt get stuck forever in some horrific universe catastrophe but simply spacetime would work the 'knot' out of itself somehow (u might die, time traveler i dunno

)

Zdragva · 08-29-2004, 06:40 PM

err i said we can travel through it then i said we cant, what i mean is if ur body is supposed to be heading off into the future then thats where the cosmos has planned it to be and if u time travel u wreck plans, but if atomic particles move backwords thru time then thats ok because they are needed by the universe to keep the mesh of everything stable

Dbass · 09-07-2004, 09:17 PM

I feel that time travel, into the past anyway, is impossible because of the dual linear/non-linear nature of time. If one were to travel back in time to assassinate Hitler, for instance, the very act of the assassination would render his impetus null. More plainly, if you could assassinate hitler, you wouldn't need to because you would have already done it. Therefore, it would be impossible to travel back in time, you would simply cease to exist. Also, I feel that time is really a more man-made system than anything, in that there is no other way to define time than by its passage. Who is to say that anything operates within the human boundaries of time? Without man, it would still operate, and perhaps the universe is in a constant state of forward and reverse jumps, and we go on simply unaware of it. Perhaps the universe operates on the principle of 2 millenia forward, one millenia back (also a human analogy, oh well). Short answer, our ignorance prevents this knowledge from being obtained as of now.

Kalnaur · 09-08-2004, 02:11 AM

As far as what time is really, isn't it just something man came up with to measure the sequence of things as they happen?

I think time is non-linear. However, that does not mean I can't enjoy time travel sci-fi.

The ability to have a willing suspension of disbelief is always a good thing.

Zdragva · 09-11-2004, 10:33 PM

Dbass u cant simply 'cease to exist' :P thats an even more fundamental law of physics than causality. what happens is that ur actions affect the universe, past present and future, so the universe adapts to deal with ur actions, if u went into the past and killed ur mother u know what the universe would do? BAN TIME TRAVEL

LeviticusMky · 09-19-2004, 01:55 AM

Lets think about the nature of time...

how can something be linear AND non-linear? Especially time. Is it linear when it wants to be? what are the rules? How does it know?

It seems like we as human beings are trying to apply a narrow view of the universe to time as well. Time only exists for us because we can recall past events. Note: we can recall past events... they aren't actually in the past, only in our memory...

What if we apply murphy's law here? Instead of all this non-linear paradoxical time travel stuff, we come up with the conclusion that time is nothing but a human creation.

Time doesn't actually exist, is what I'm saying, the universe exists in the present, it doesn't have any regard to the past, on the most basic level, Atoms don't organize themselves the way that they do because they always have, they do it because of a precise set of physical rules that they are constantly adhering to.

Time is only in existance because we can map things out with our brains. If you think about it, the light from planet earth at the time of the dinosaurs is still out there in the universe, 60 million light-years away.

One last thing, just because we can map things like history and the progression of an energy wave doesn't mean time exists... It is only a physical representation of human memory.

I'll shut up, I'm talking myself in circles, I don't even know where I am anymore.

ARTelevision · 09-19-2004, 02:16 AM

LeviticusMky, very well put.
Thanks for the illuminating and very logical statements.
They are all the more elegant because they are correct.

adysav · 09-19-2004, 05:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ARTelevision

LeviticusMky, very well put.
Thanks for the illuminating and very logical statements.
They are all the more elegant because they are correct.

I assume you are blessed with some otherwise unknown intimate knowledge of the workings of the universe, in order to decide whether he is correct or not...

bacon_masta · 09-19-2004, 12:20 PM

Under the assumption of the existance of the Christian god (existing always in the past, present, and future, simultaneously) time HAS to be non-linear. Without this idea, though, time is merely how mankind compartmentalizes the passing of events into segments small enough to be manageable to the human brain. No human being can actually comprehend the true enormity of time in the way that we percieve it, time is, as a previous poster said (don't feel like finding it to quote :-p) merely the existance of matter in a given place at a given instance.

Paradise Lost · 09-19-2004, 12:53 PM

My theory has always been that for light itself, it takes exactly no time for it to move from
there to here. But relativity makes it seem like it does, depending on distance.
But really no time has passed for it, if that's what we base time on, and no time ever
passes for light, how can there be a thing such as 'time?'

A valid statement, whether it's sound or not is an entirely different matter.

09-27-2004, 01:34 PM

Please, what does anyone mean by linear, or non-linear time?

Jynx · 09-29-2004, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zen_tom

Please, what does anyone mean by linear, or non-linear time?

i'll try to answer this, and if i'm wrong i'm SURE i'll be corrected....

this discussion revolves around the nature of "time". if one is to say that time is "linear", it means that there is such a thing as a past, present, and future, and that "time" is moving constantly from the past to the future - envision a railroad car on a track, and you've got a pretty good analogy of linear time.

non-linear time refers to the concept that there is no such thing as "time passing" - "time" doesn't move, we simply move through it in much the same way we move through three-dimensional space. however, due to our nature, we are only able to move in one direction through it. the idea behind non-linear time is that there would in theory be a way to move around time in the same manner as we move around a room - we could pick a spot and just....go to it. in addition, we could (in theory) move to a different point in time that would have occurred if different choices were made - this again raises interesting philosophical discussions about the fundamental nature of the universe. this is considered non-linear because we aren't constrained by the concept of causality - we could explore the unlimited maze of the infinite number of choices that have ever (and will ever) be made.

again, this is all speculation - feel free to correct as necessary.

one final note - i fail to see why god was brought into the discussion, seeing as how there is plenty enough material concerning the "true" nature of space-time without bringing the existance of another being into it. after all, talking about "god moving through time" is simply piling speculation on speculation, isn't it?

CSflim · 09-29-2004, 03:41 PM

EDIT: Actually on second thoughts, never mind.

tecoyah · 09-29-2004, 04:50 PM

Would there be time, for a human on an asteroid, in the depths of space. Given that this human has no preconception of days, months, years, minutes, seconds,etc....

Having no sun to "discover" this time phenomenon through, would the concept ever occur to this person?

It is likely to me, that time is simply a percieved expression of the effects of energy, in all its forms, ie:velocity, mass,momentum etc....and is thus irrelevant to the universe as a whole.

archer2371 · 10-02-2004, 09:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jynx

one final note - i fail to see why god was brought into the discussion, seeing as how there is plenty enough material concerning the "true" nature of space-time without bringing the existance of another being into it. after all, talking about "god moving through time" is simply piling speculation on speculation, isn't it?

That was my original interjection, mainly based on my beliefs, and yes, it is speculation on my part. I've probably just watched too many episodes of Deep Space Nine to be honest.

xepherys · 10-03-2004, 09:57 AM

ART- None of those terms are "clear" if you don't take into fact the point taht any word is just an assignment of an idea into language. Frankly, it's not "clear" what you're saying outside of your own mind, in so much as my interpretation may be different. Being excessively particular about such things gives a lean towards a nihilist attitude.

As for space being linear in regards to alternate universes, those universes could exist in dimensions we are not familiar with (outside the 4 known, observable dimensions). Aside from that fact, alternate timelines are often envisioned as infinite forks in the road, which at least gives two dimensions to time rather than one (making it non-linear).

Black holes and worm holes are not the same thing. A black hole more than likely does NOT have a protrusive point somewhere else in spacetime. A worm hole, theoretically, does. You could not likely use a black hole for travel, as the density at the singularity more or less squelches the existance of composed matter. A good reference on this type of thing is "The Illustrated A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. It's a great read, even for the non-science-minded.

The fact that we do not "live before we are born" and other such oddities has nothing to do with time, but merely or observation of time as limited by human perception. Our lives just happen to have a linear path. Therefore our perceived timeline corresponds with our psychological timeline. That doesn't mean that this is a requirement of universal laws. On a side-note, this can be explained to some degree by chaos theory and the increase of entropy in the universe.

As for not being able to observe without changing the past, I'd have to disagree. People observe you every day without changing the course of what you do. The "butterfly effect", if you believe in such a thing, does still have some limitations. While someone standing in a spot, leaning on a wall and watching might alter time, it very well may not (chances are actually against it). The observation of someone (which happens constantly) does not play a large role in the outcome of our lives. The key is to ONLY observe and NOT interact. I don't believe they are mutually inclusive.

tecoyah - good point. Once again, the perception of time is limited to exactly that... how we perceive things. There's an experiment that was done which is usually glorified by the story of the twins, where one twin lives on Earth and the other is put on a space craft that travels at the speed of light. After 20 years, the space craft returns and the brother on Earth has aged 20 years, while the brother on the space craft has aged less. The proof of this was using two EXTREMELY precise timepieces on a clock tower. Over the course of time, the clock lowest to the ground had moved more quickly through time. The effect is theorized to occur due to gravity's interaction with space-time.

As for looking at it through religious eyes, since it's all theory anyway, feel free. I have a spiritual set of beliefs, though persoonally I think spirituality and "higher powers" are a result of the universe, not the creators of it. There's no better proof one way than the other. Chaos from order, order from chaos, chicken and the egg...

Amarth · 10-03-2004, 01:36 PM

Wouldn't a force so powerful that it could actually bend the space time continuum be more than powerful enough to crush any matter that should attempt to pass through it?

thefictionweliv · 10-08-2004, 08:14 AM

My view of time is the infinite worlds theory that in every that anything could have happen does, therefore if you go back in time you will be on a different circle in time where you always went back in time, in that world line everything would be the same up until the point in time where you went back to, however both world lines would exist and what you do in the world line you are in would have no effect on the world line you left from. Just as there are world lines where nothing happened at all, instances of expanses where no matter ever was no big bang, simply absence. So there is no one point of start or stop, anything that can will has happened will happen begin, end, in any shape or form.

aRs3N1c42 · 10-08-2004, 10:38 AM

I think that time is the 4th dimension of a continuum. Like space, time does not actually move, as a train moves along its track. The objects or people who occupy it move through it. This would lend to the possibility of folding time and punching a hole through it to arrive at a different when. Scientists have postulated about the existence of worm holes which are holes through the fabric of space that connect two points in space but actually involve significantly less "time" to traverse.

Now I'm gonna bring God into the picture. Suppose God exists outside of the space-time continuum but can intervene at any point in space-time that he chooses. From the view of the occupants of space-time, God is working in history creating causes and effects. From God's perspective He is the only cause since He created the universe and space-time. He is continually influencing space and time to have the ultimate end product (at the end of time?). Consider the possibility that God created the entirety of space and time in what is to Him an instant. He created the beginning and the end of the entire universe at the same "time" (which is confusing since there is no time for God). He created Me in the same thought in which He created Alexander the Great or the great Pharaohs of Egypt. He created my personality, my temperament and having done that, knew the choices I would make and need to make in order for His ultimate plan to be fulfilled. Does that mean God loves me any less? Does that mean I do not have free will? If God created the universe in its 4 dimensions with a certain structure that we will call the laws of physics, sociology, psychology, etc. and these attributes do not change without influence from the outside (aka supernatural events).

I'll admit that it does kind of rock the concept of free will a bit. This has been a sore spot in theology for eons; free will or predestination. I guess what I'm speculating is a both and neither.

So, in conclusion...

Is time linear? Since time is a dimension of the universe just like length, width and depth are, and one normally moves throughout these three dimensions in a linear fashion, it would seem to follow that one also moves through time in a linear fashion. That does not necessitate that one could not exit the fabric of space and time and re-enter at some other point in space and time. If the entire universe, in all 4 dimensions, is being molded (or has been molded, or even will have been molded) by an entity that exists outside of the governing laws of the universe, would He permit a person to leave space-time and re-enter if there was the possibility that causality would crap all over itself? I imagine that such a God would also have thought through the rules and ramifications governing such an occurrence and would have taken (will have taken) steps to prevent the implosion of causality as we know it.

Okay. I need to go soak my brain now, perhaps in some beer or distilled spirits. That's a lot of thought for one day.

thefictionweliv · 10-09-2004, 02:06 AM

God could have also simply created us with free will and already knew the outcome. Then the argument would come as to why he would create us with free will even though so much strife would come to pass.

An analogy I heard once. "If you had children you would do everything you can to protect them from harm, yet what if they wanted to ride a skateboard? Would you let them?"

aRs3N1c42 · 10-12-2004, 07:59 AM

C.S. Lewis called this life "a vale of soul making." With this in mind consider that the ultimate purpose of the universe is to be a place where immature souls can be shaped and molded by circumstances to maturity where they are able to spend eternity outside of space and time with their creator. In this view, pain and suffering would lead to maturity. To extend the analogy, if you don't fall off the skateboard a time or two, you'll never really learn how to ride.

Zubon · 10-12-2004, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xepherys

As for not being able to observe without changing the past, I'd have to disagree. People observe you every day without changing the course of what you do. The "butterfly effect", if you believe in such a thing, does still have some limitations. While someone standing in a spot, leaning on a wall and watching might alter time, it very well may not (chances are actually against it). The observation of someone (which happens constantly) does not play a large role in the outcome of our lives. The key is to ONLY observe and NOT interact. I don't believe they are mutually inclusive.

The difficulty may only be practical, but I have trouble imaging a meaningful instance of time travel that does not cause a significant impact on the time traveled to. Let me set aside time travel linearly forward, since we do that on a daily basis given a linear interpretation of time, and instead consider a simple jump backwards along a simple linear time stream

Moving backwards in time seems to necessarily involve interaction at the earlier point due to your simple existence there. You absorb and reflect light, you displace air molecules, etc. As I said, this may only be a practical difficulty to sending back an invisible, intangible observer, but I cannot imagine what such an observer could observe; if you are invisible, you cannot see anything, unless we have a new way for vision to work without absorbing light. I would also expect you to breathe, thus altering the composition of air between times, but hopefully we can use a self-contained breathing system to avoid, say, introducing modern TB into the 1800s and wiping out a few cities. Also, similar difficulties about picking up dirt, lint, etc. between times.

Perhaps none of those are going to be significant enough to cause any change, but if you cannot go back without causing the sort of time loops that MageB420666 refers to, it seems to me that either time travel (backwards along a linear stream) is impossible or time is not linear. Otherwise, we would already have created some loop and retroactively wiped out all of existence, or some such.

Semi-digression: how can we test if a time loop would unravel all of existence without risking unraveling all of existence? Kind of a big risk if time turns out to be linear in that way.

Or maybe I'm just off on my own here.

GMontag · 10-13-2004, 04:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aRs3N1c42

Now I'm gonna bring God into the picture. Suppose God exists outside of the space-time continuum but can intervene at any point in space-time that he chooses.

You've gotten to a contradiction already. Choosing requires the passage of time. Choosing means that there was a situation, then you made a decision, and then there was a change in that situation. Trying to talk about things existing "outside of time" will nearly always lead very quickly to this type of nonsense. Its because, whether you are aware of it or not, you always implicitly assume there is a passage of time when you think. Its just the way we are wired.

GMontag · 10-13-2004, 04:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zubon

The difficulty may only be practical, but I have trouble imaging a meaningful instance of time travel that does not cause a significant impact on the time traveled to. Let me set aside time travel linearly forward, since we do that on a daily basis given a linear interpretation of time, and instead consider a simple jump backwards along a simple linear time stream

Moving backwards in time seems to necessarily involve interaction at the earlier point due to your simple existence there. You absorb and reflect light, you displace air molecules, etc. As I said, this may only be a practical difficulty to sending back an invisible, intangible observer, but I cannot imagine what such an observer could observe; if you are invisible, you cannot see anything, unless we have a new way for vision to work without absorbing light. I would also expect you to breathe, thus altering the composition of air between times, but hopefully we can use a self-contained breathing system to avoid, say, introducing modern TB into the 1800s and wiping out a few cities. Also, similar difficulties about picking up dirt, lint, etc. between times.

Perhaps none of those are going to be significant enough to cause any change, but if you cannot go back without causing the sort of time loops that MageB420666 refers to, it seems to me that either time travel (backwards along a linear stream) is impossible or time is not linear. Otherwise, we would already have created some loop and retroactively wiped out all of existence, or some such.

Semi-digression: how can we test if a time loop would unravel all of existence without risking unraveling all of existence? Kind of a big risk if time turns out to be linear in that way.

Or maybe I'm just off on my own here.

I think your problem here is that you are assuming that time travel being possible implies that the past can be changed. It is not so. The past cannot be changed because it has already happened. If you travel back in time, then whatever you do in the past has already happened. Of course, this idea has the problem that it is essentially denying free will, but free will has its own problems, and IMHO is a faulty concept anyway.

adfaffasfd · 10-13-2004, 06:00 PM

Time travel is NOT possible.

I've said it before and I'll say it again

If it were possible (as we think of it anyway), then we would have been visited by travelers from the future; or, if the creator of this thread is right and the merging of two times is catastrophic, then we would already have experienced this catastrophe, no?

JustDisGuy · 10-13-2004, 06:11 PM

Time is an illusion... lunchtime - doubly so.

-Zaphod Beeblebrox (aka Douglas Adams)

GMontag · 10-13-2004, 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adfaffasfd

Time travel is NOT possible.

I've said it before and I'll say it again

If it were possible (as we think of it anyway), then we would have been visited by travelers from the future; or, if the creator of this thread is right and the merging of two times is catastrophic, then we would already have experienced this catastrophe, no?

There are several possibilites that could account for the seeming lack of visitors from the future.

1. Time travel is possible but not practical (i.e. takes the total energy output of several Sol-type stars to do).

2. Time travel is possible, but no one ever came to our time for whatever reason.

3. Time travel to our time has occured, but we didn't notice it for whatever reason.

The first reason is the most probable, IMHO, but the latter two are quite intruiguing as well. They both lend themselves to "Time Patrol" like scenarios such as the ones that Poul Anderson has explored in his similarly titled series of short stories.

08-25-2004, 04:48 PM	#2 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	It's not clear that the nature of time is knowable beyond the coordinate system of measuring marks placed between events. __________________ create evolution

08-25-2004, 06:23 PM	#3 (permalink)
TheKak Insane Location: Virginia	I was under the impression that "time" was just a placement of matter at a particular point, and we assign these points numbers in order to keep track of where they were in relation to each other. __________________ Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic and so am I.

08-25-2004, 06:54 PM	#4 (permalink)
MageB420666 <Insert wise statement here> Location: Hell if I know	As you said, you don't want any criticizing of your religion, so I will try to avoid that, but your religous views and how they fit with your conception of time do interlock. First off, if time is not linear, then why do we not live before we are born or some other such impossiblity. Now about time travel, you have to have a reason to invent time travel, otherwise you wouldn't do it. You can't do it if your reason is something you want to change. If you did you would go back and change that event, remove your reason for inventing time travel, and therefore you would not create time travel and would not be able to travel back and change to occurence, leaving the event unchanged, and you in a continuous unending time loop. If your reason is just to observe then you have screwed everyone over because you cannot observe and not effect, so you would continue to observe until the changes accumulated to such that you no longer invented time travel, usually by causing yourself and many others not to exist, which means you never invented time travel in the first place never went back and screwed everyone over, and are therefore able to invent time travel again and go back and observe again, leaving not just you but everyone in an unending time loop, way to go. Now by your view of god and association with time your saying that according to god's point of view, he will know everything that happens everywhere and everywhen. This means that he already knows who will go to heaven and who will go to hell and there is nothing anyone can do to change that since everything they do God will already have known and that will already have factored in, meaning that free will goes out the window since you are no longer in control of your own destiny. God already knows where you will end up and there is nothing you can do about it, only he could change that, except that he already knows what he would do, what it did, and according to his view, he already did it and has yet to do it and is doing it right now. Now if time was non linear then our universe would make no sense, you could live before you were born and such, the equivalent of time travel and you then meet my first to arguments. And you could never break down the space time continuum, any changes you made would automatically be corrected and you would then doom yourself or the universe to a time loop.(See my first to arguments) Some people try to avoid my argument about God and time by saying that time is linear and God exists outside of time, but if you think that through you come to the same conclusions. And if God existed within a linear time then he could not know everything, he would then run into the same problems. I'm not trying to bust your religious view point or anything, as far as I know your right and God is all-powerful and can therefore tell reason to wipe his almighty ass. When it comes to time travel, all you will run into is infinity-loops and effect preceding cause, therefore removing the need to have a cause at all. When it comes to religion, since there is no absolute proof, everyone could be right, including the theory of the Universe being sneezed out by the Great Green Arklseizure, with everyone needing to fear the coming of the Great White Handkercheif.(To understand this idea, read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Author: Douglas Adams). If you read all of this pat yourself on the back, you just wasted an irreplaceable piece of your life reading someones opinion on idea that will never have any real meaning, ever, good job. __________________ Apathy: The best outlook this side of I don't give a damn.

08-25-2004, 07:46 PM	#5 (permalink)
CoachAlan Psycho Location: Las Vegas	First, a quote (paraphrased) from Sealab 2021: Quinn: It appears we were just thrown back in time 15 minutes. Stormy: How did that happen? Quinn: When Sealab exploded, it must have fractured subspace. Stormy: Yeah! Take that, subspace! Anyway, my understanding of time is that it is a dimension not unlike the three spatial dimensions. It is affected by gravity/acceleration the same way the other dimensions are affected. Einstein would have called your paragraph above a "thought experiment." You may want to refer to it in that way in the future. It lends credibility. In keeping with the thought experiment motif, imagine that we readily moved both forward and backward in time, just as we do the other dimensions. Would are perception be any different? Our consciousness would also be moving backward. As would the causality in the world around us. Going forward, 1+3=4. Going backward, 4-3=1. In our mind, the effect is the exact same: One earliest, then three, then four last. It wobbles a feeble mind like mine. __________________ "If I cannot smoke cigars in heaven, I shall not go!" - Mark Twain

08-26-2004, 01:56 PM	#6 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	A "dimension" is a frame of reference used to measure things. It's not clear that the term refers to anything else. __________________ create evolution

08-29-2004, 06:37 PM	#7 (permalink)
Zdragva Upright Location: Highlands of Scotland	1st of all what the the topic creator is writing about is probaby the leading edge of hard core science atm, not time but time travel, dimensionality and how it relates to the rest of the Universe. I can tell you what the facts are but for a deeper understanding please go to http://mist.npl.washington.edu/AV/#6. this site rules btw, dont tell everyone . Yeah time isnt linear in the sense it goes forward only and time travel, actually going into the past or future, is BANNED by nature in our universe. Time is a dimension, like the 3 space ones but its more than a frame of reference. time and space seem to be the fabric of everything placed upon absolutely nothing and upon which everything can exist. Like a fabric too time isnt linear but rather all times currently exist somewhere (Past present and future are directions we know of btw in the time dimension) objects can move through time, like space and no direction of time is favoured by our universe. When dealing with something as unfimiliar as a spatial plane called time lets forget our preconceptions and ridiculouse hollywood ideas. If a plane crashes it stays crashed in this universe thats a fact, but more than time has to be considered their so be careful. If you have 2 objects, lets say 2 green balls, and they collide to give a big red ball, now elsewhere a big red ball explodes and gives 2 green balls, science says that these experiments (as long as they are reversible) cannot be distinguished one from the other, basiclly what this means after heaps of mumbo jumbo is that at a basic level,1 reaction viewed forwards in time and another reaction back in time that look identical ARE identical. Also like space, time can be curved, especially near black holes . Albert Einsteins theory of special relativity has been tested, 2 atomic clocks set to run exactly the same were build. one was placed in a university somewhere and the other was whisked away on a round the world trip, very fast. when the two clocks were tested one was found to be out by a few millionths of a second or something, this was an astonishing difference for atomic clock (they say) and proved time curved as ur speed increased. now although time isnt linear, runs weird for others and can even be stated to run backwords in some conditions, WE CANNOT TRAVEL THROUGH IT. The whole universe, time included is likea huge mesh constantly moving and changing, expanding cooling, with supernova and matter antimatter annihilations etc. its crazy stuff theory predicts that in the event of a time loop like above the whole universe would 'rearrange itself' but time isnt like a loop, more a net (as i see it) so u wouldnt get stuck forever in some horrific universe catastrophe but simply spacetime would work the 'knot' out of itself somehow (u might die, time traveler i dunno )

08-29-2004, 06:40 PM	#8 (permalink)
Zdragva Upright Location: Highlands of Scotland	err i said we can travel through it then i said we cant, what i mean is if ur body is supposed to be heading off into the future then thats where the cosmos has planned it to be and if u time travel u wreck plans, but if atomic particles move backwords thru time then thats ok because they are needed by the universe to keep the mesh of everything stable

09-07-2004, 09:17 PM	#9 (permalink)
Dbass Crazy	I feel that time travel, into the past anyway, is impossible because of the dual linear/non-linear nature of time. If one were to travel back in time to assassinate Hitler, for instance, the very act of the assassination would render his impetus null. More plainly, if you could assassinate hitler, you wouldn't need to because you would have already done it. Therefore, it would be impossible to travel back in time, you would simply cease to exist. Also, I feel that time is really a more man-made system than anything, in that there is no other way to define time than by its passage. Who is to say that anything operates within the human boundaries of time? Without man, it would still operate, and perhaps the universe is in a constant state of forward and reverse jumps, and we go on simply unaware of it. Perhaps the universe operates on the principle of 2 millenia forward, one millenia back (also a human analogy, oh well). Short answer, our ignorance prevents this knowledge from being obtained as of now.

09-08-2004, 02:11 AM	#10 (permalink)
Kalnaur Psycho Location: Portland, Oregon	As far as what time is really, isn't it just something man came up with to measure the sequence of things as they happen? I think time is non-linear. However, that does not mean I can't enjoy time travel sci-fi. The ability to have a willing suspension of disbelief is always a good thing. __________________ PC: Can you help me out here HK? HK-47: I'm 98% percent sure this miniature organic meatbag wants you to help find his fellow miniature organic meatbags. PC: And the other 2 percent? HK-47: The other 2 percent is that he is just looking for trouble and needs to be blasted, but that might be wishful thinking on my part.

09-11-2004, 10:33 PM	#11 (permalink)
Zdragva Upright Location: Highlands of Scotland	Dbass u cant simply 'cease to exist' :P thats an even more fundamental law of physics than causality. what happens is that ur actions affect the universe, past present and future, so the universe adapts to deal with ur actions, if u went into the past and killed ur mother u know what the universe would do? BAN TIME TRAVEL

09-19-2004, 01:55 AM	#12 (permalink)
LeviticusMky Crazy Location: Minnesota	Lets think about the nature of time... how can something be linear AND non-linear? Especially time. Is it linear when it wants to be? what are the rules? How does it know? It seems like we as human beings are trying to apply a narrow view of the universe to time as well. Time only exists for us because we can recall past events. Note: we can recall past events... they aren't actually in the past, only in our memory... What if we apply murphy's law here? Instead of all this non-linear paradoxical time travel stuff, we come up with the conclusion that time is nothing but a human creation. Time doesn't actually exist, is what I'm saying, the universe exists in the present, it doesn't have any regard to the past, on the most basic level, Atoms don't organize themselves the way that they do because they always have, they do it because of a precise set of physical rules that they are constantly adhering to. Time is only in existance because we can map things out with our brains. If you think about it, the light from planet earth at the time of the dinosaurs is still out there in the universe, 60 million light-years away. One last thing, just because we can map things like history and the progression of an energy wave doesn't mean time exists... It is only a physical representation of human memory. I'll shut up, I'm talking myself in circles, I don't even know where I am anymore.

09-19-2004, 02:16 AM	#13 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	LeviticusMky, very well put. Thanks for the illuminating and very logical statements. They are all the more elegant because they are correct. __________________ create evolution

09-19-2004, 12:20 PM	#15 (permalink)
bacon_masta Psycho Location: i live in the state of denial	Under the assumption of the existance of the Christian god (existing always in the past, present, and future, simultaneously) time HAS to be non-linear. Without this idea, though, time is merely how mankind compartmentalizes the passing of events into segments small enough to be manageable to the human brain. No human being can actually comprehend the true enormity of time in the way that we percieve it, time is, as a previous poster said (don't feel like finding it to quote :-p) merely the existance of matter in a given place at a given instance.

09-19-2004, 12:53 PM	#16 (permalink)
Paradise Lost "Afternoon everybody." "NORM!" Location: Poland, Ohio // Clarion University of PA.	My theory has always been that for light itself, it takes exactly no time for it to move from there to here. But relativity makes it seem like it does, depending on distance. But really no time has passed for it, if that's what we base time on, and no time ever passes for light, how can there be a thing such as 'time?' A valid statement, whether it's sound or not is an entirely different matter. __________________ "Marino could do it."

09-27-2004, 01:34 PM	#17 (permalink)
zen_tom Guest	Please, what does anyone mean by linear, or non-linear time?

09-29-2004, 03:41 PM	#19 (permalink)
CSflim Sky Piercer Location: Ireland	EDIT: Actually on second thoughts, never mind. __________________ Last edited by CSflim; 09-29-2004 at 03:44 PM..

09-29-2004, 04:50 PM	#20 (permalink)
tecoyah Illusionary	Would there be time, for a human on an asteroid, in the depths of space. Given that this human has no preconception of days, months, years, minutes, seconds,etc.... Having no sun to "discover" this time phenomenon through, would the concept ever occur to this person? It is likely to me, that time is simply a percieved expression of the effects of energy, in all its forms, ie:velocity, mass,momentum etc....and is thus irrelevant to the universe as a whole. __________________ Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

10-03-2004, 09:57 AM	#22 (permalink)
xepherys <3 TFP Location: 17TLH2445607250	ART- None of those terms are "clear" if you don't take into fact the point taht any word is just an assignment of an idea into language. Frankly, it's not "clear" what you're saying outside of your own mind, in so much as my interpretation may be different. Being excessively particular about such things gives a lean towards a nihilist attitude. As for space being linear in regards to alternate universes, those universes could exist in dimensions we are not familiar with (outside the 4 known, observable dimensions). Aside from that fact, alternate timelines are often envisioned as infinite forks in the road, which at least gives two dimensions to time rather than one (making it non-linear). Black holes and worm holes are not the same thing. A black hole more than likely does NOT have a protrusive point somewhere else in spacetime. A worm hole, theoretically, does. You could not likely use a black hole for travel, as the density at the singularity more or less squelches the existance of composed matter. A good reference on this type of thing is "The Illustrated A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. It's a great read, even for the non-science-minded. The fact that we do not "live before we are born" and other such oddities has nothing to do with time, but merely or observation of time as limited by human perception. Our lives just happen to have a linear path. Therefore our perceived timeline corresponds with our psychological timeline. That doesn't mean that this is a requirement of universal laws. On a side-note, this can be explained to some degree by chaos theory and the increase of entropy in the universe. As for not being able to observe without changing the past, I'd have to disagree. People observe you every day without changing the course of what you do. The "butterfly effect", if you believe in such a thing, does still have some limitations. While someone standing in a spot, leaning on a wall and watching might alter time, it very well may not (chances are actually against it). The observation of someone (which happens constantly) does not play a large role in the outcome of our lives. The key is to ONLY observe and NOT interact. I don't believe they are mutually inclusive. tecoyah - good point. Once again, the perception of time is limited to exactly that... how we perceive things. There's an experiment that was done which is usually glorified by the story of the twins, where one twin lives on Earth and the other is put on a space craft that travels at the speed of light. After 20 years, the space craft returns and the brother on Earth has aged 20 years, while the brother on the space craft has aged less. The proof of this was using two EXTREMELY precise timepieces on a clock tower. Over the course of time, the clock lowest to the ground had moved more quickly through time. The effect is theorized to occur due to gravity's interaction with space-time. As for looking at it through religious eyes, since it's all theory anyway, feel free. I have a spiritual set of beliefs, though persoonally I think spirituality and "higher powers" are a result of the universe, not the creators of it. There's no better proof one way than the other. Chaos from order, order from chaos, chicken and the egg...

10-03-2004, 01:36 PM	#23 (permalink)
Amarth Loser Location: About 50,000 feet in the air... oh shit.	Wouldn't a force so powerful that it could actually bend the space time continuum be more than powerful enough to crush any matter that should attempt to pass through it?

10-08-2004, 08:14 AM	#24 (permalink)
thefictionweliv Insane	My view of time is the infinite worlds theory that in every that anything could have happen does, therefore if you go back in time you will be on a different circle in time where you always went back in time, in that world line everything would be the same up until the point in time where you went back to, however both world lines would exist and what you do in the world line you are in would have no effect on the world line you left from. Just as there are world lines where nothing happened at all, instances of expanses where no matter ever was no big bang, simply absence. So there is no one point of start or stop, anything that can will has happened will happen begin, end, in any shape or form.

10-08-2004, 10:38 AM	#25 (permalink)
aRs3N1c42 Upright Location: Somewhere over the rainbow	I think that time is the 4th dimension of a continuum. Like space, time does not actually move, as a train moves along its track. The objects or people who occupy it move through it. This would lend to the possibility of folding time and punching a hole through it to arrive at a different when. Scientists have postulated about the existence of worm holes which are holes through the fabric of space that connect two points in space but actually involve significantly less "time" to traverse. Now I'm gonna bring God into the picture. Suppose God exists outside of the space-time continuum but can intervene at any point in space-time that he chooses. From the view of the occupants of space-time, God is working in history creating causes and effects. From God's perspective He is the only cause since He created the universe and space-time. He is continually influencing space and time to have the ultimate end product (at the end of time?). Consider the possibility that God created the entirety of space and time in what is to Him an instant. He created the beginning and the end of the entire universe at the same "time" (which is confusing since there is no time for God). He created Me in the same thought in which He created Alexander the Great or the great Pharaohs of Egypt. He created my personality, my temperament and having done that, knew the choices I would make and need to make in order for His ultimate plan to be fulfilled. Does that mean God loves me any less? Does that mean I do not have free will? If God created the universe in its 4 dimensions with a certain structure that we will call the laws of physics, sociology, psychology, etc. and these attributes do not change without influence from the outside (aka supernatural events). I'll admit that it does kind of rock the concept of free will a bit. This has been a sore spot in theology for eons; free will or predestination. I guess what I'm speculating is a both and neither. So, in conclusion... Is time linear? Since time is a dimension of the universe just like length, width and depth are, and one normally moves throughout these three dimensions in a linear fashion, it would seem to follow that one also moves through time in a linear fashion. That does not necessitate that one could not exit the fabric of space and time and re-enter at some other point in space and time. If the entire universe, in all 4 dimensions, is being molded (or has been molded, or even will have been molded) by an entity that exists outside of the governing laws of the universe, would He permit a person to leave space-time and re-enter if there was the possibility that causality would crap all over itself? I imagine that such a God would also have thought through the rules and ramifications governing such an occurrence and would have taken (will have taken) steps to prevent the implosion of causality as we know it. Okay. I need to go soak my brain now, perhaps in some beer or distilled spirits. That's a lot of thought for one day.

10-09-2004, 02:06 AM	#26 (permalink)
thefictionweliv Insane	God could have also simply created us with free will and already knew the outcome. Then the argument would come as to why he would create us with free will even though so much strife would come to pass. An analogy I heard once. "If you had children you would do everything you can to protect them from harm, yet what if they wanted to ride a skateboard? Would you let them?"

10-12-2004, 07:59 AM	#27 (permalink)
aRs3N1c42 Upright Location: Somewhere over the rainbow	C.S. Lewis called this life "a vale of soul making." With this in mind consider that the ultimate purpose of the universe is to be a place where immature souls can be shaped and molded by circumstances to maturity where they are able to spend eternity outside of space and time with their creator. In this view, pain and suffering would lead to maturity. To extend the analogy, if you don't fall off the skateboard a time or two, you'll never really learn how to ride.

10-13-2004, 06:00 PM	#31 (permalink)
adfaffasfd Upright	Time travel is NOT possible. I've said it before and I'll say it again If it were possible (as we think of it anyway), then we would have been visited by travelers from the future; or, if the creator of this thread is right and the merging of two times is catastrophic, then we would already have experienced this catastrophe, no?

10-13-2004, 06:11 PM	#32 (permalink)
JustDisGuy Insane Location: Saskatchewan	Time is an illusion... lunchtime - doubly so. -Zaphod Beeblebrox (aka Douglas Adams) __________________ "Act as if the future of the universe depends on what you do, while laughing at yourself for thinking that your actions make any difference."