Cool stuff...
 

I think I’ve mentioned this before, however, there’s a mathematician whose name escapes me who calculated a formula for time which, when plotted against human history perfectly matches its peaks and valleys with highs and lows in society such as valleys during the world wars, peaks in times of great peace and prosperity, etc. The “thing” about his formula is that the plot ends in 2012 (ps: his work predates all the hysteria about the Mayan calendar, which also, of course, ends in 2012.

Many people postulate that 2012 is the end of the world. Being the freak geek and conspiracy theorist that I am, I actually have an alternate view. It’s long been my belief that this is not when the world ends, but is when time travel becomes reality on a meaningful scale… at which time the concepts of linear time and a “calendar” both become somewhat more complex… how do you plot time once you can move about in it at random? How do you create a calendar when you don’t yet know which tomorrow you will be present in?

So, now there’s this… http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/...es/?test=faces

How cool is that?

Yeah, very cool stuff. In fact, I read a very good book that touches on this very topic. If you like to read books I might suggest Dean Koontz's From the Corner of His Eye. It is an excellent book and deals very heavily with quantum physics and puts it into an excellent story.

Could you be talking about Time-Wave-Zero?????

http://www.december212012.com/articl...-Wave-Zero.htm

It looks very similar, but no... because the thing I remember most distinctly about it was the plots matching on both peaks and valleys... this one seems to match on valleys only and I don't recall anything about "novelty"

This guy would have been back in the late 50s and was a mathematician by trade... college professor as I recall. I wish I could think of his name, but it was mid 70s while I was in the service that I was reading about him and haven't really given it a lot of thought since then.

Thing is, if time travel was possible, it would already have been done; we'd already have seen the evidence of it.

I can enjoy the theory and such behind the concept, but it's far removed from anything feasible in reality.


Chew on this: if you time travel, you need to go both forth and back in time. Now, how can you go to something that does not exist yet? If you travel back in time, the future would not exist, and you would have no time to return to, and the time "machine" you used would never exist.

So, if it was feasible at all, we'd have a heap of time travelers stuck in time (limbo).

Actually, physics already says time travel is possible and several physicists are very actively working on it. You might want to do some reading on the subject.

It's also a fact that we *have* already seen proof of time travel, it's born out in Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity wherein it is proven that time is relative to velocity and the higher the velocity, the more time is distorted. It's the reason why GPS satellites require continuous updates to their clocks. Likewise, it's the reason why every astronaut who has orbited the earth has already traveled in time, as well.

EDIT: Go back and read the article in the link I posted in the first message in this thread...

"Wolf says that time -- at least in quantum mechanics -- doesn't move straight like an arrow. It zig-zags, and he thinks it may be possible to build a machine that lets you bend time. "

Depends on how you look at it; time as we see it is a human device. The universe around us doesn't adhere to those rules.

Put in a different way: once one state of energy is used, it will be transferred to another state of energy, but you can't turn that flow backwards by "going back in time".


Just imagine; you sit there in your time traveling ship and as you progress "backwards" in time, all the components that make up the ship revert to their previous states, metal to ore, tissue to single cells, etc..


A problem with the whole relativistic theory is that light has no mass; it's not affected in the same way matter is.


But just my two cents; I've read numerous theories - and that's exactly what it is - theory.
That GPS satellites have to be adjusted relies on a human vantage point. The universe as a whole couldn't care less what the timers says ;)

Edit: at the same time

Again a human analogy is used to explain quantum behavior; here is where it all falls apart for me. It just doesn't make sense to me to try to strip it down like that. Just because we can or cannot observe something from our human vantage point, doesn't mean it can or can't happen :)

Everything in science is theory — that's the nature of the game.

In GR, time is a fourth dimension. So to say the future doesn't exist yet is a misapprehension. The future exists - it's just we normally don't have access to points on the time axis that are farther away from "zero" than our current position.

Then there's Niven's Third Law: "in any Universe of discourse in which time travel is possible, it will not happen." :-)

See, when I was a young teen that's the kind of stuff we use to talk about while laying in the grass in the backyard, and looking up at the stars... after smoking some really good... stuff.

Excellent book! I don't remember ever shedding a tear while reading a Koontz book, until I read that one.

I'm surprised by how many people poopoo the idea of time travel... physics already states clearly it is possible... that, in turn, implies the only barrier is applied science and engineering. Which, admittedly, is a non-trivial barrier. However, one way or the other, unless we wipe ourselves out before it becomes reality, time travel *will* happen.

Than what?

So will someone hurry up and get this figured out so we can see whats in store for Nui v10.0 ??? :D

Monday night, 9pm on the Science Channel -- "Sci-Trek: Breaking Time"

~roflmao~

:D

This makes my inner geek all warm and fuzzy
 

I hope you didn't think my comment was a "poopoo". I merely backed up the idea that the thought of time travel has been around for quite some time (poking fun at how old I am), and that people from all walks of life have thought about it (the old hippy in me).

Nope... not at all.

And three cheers for old hippies! I are one!

Time travel was considered at -least- a hundred years ago or so...

However, I watched something interesting the other night. Steven Hawking, discussing time travel. He described three possible ways to do it. But he also describes a sort of feedback loop that would prevent any travel into the past.

Now, his mentioned "most likely to happen" scenario was a spaceship, able to approach "near light speed" speeds, which would distort time for those onboard the ship, ship flies at near light speed for 100-200 years of our speed, yet for the passengers only a measly 5-10 years would happen.

He also explains -why- the time slow down happens, we -know- it does, we've observed it.

Why? The max speed limit of the universe: speed of light. So, imagine a train at 1mph less than light speed, someone on the train starts running towards the front of it, at 5mph, did they just break the speed limit? Nope. time is slowed to a point that the person doesnt seem to even move, to an observer on earth...

Another result of the time dilation? Travel to stars becomes MUCH MORE likely in the lifespan of humans. At least the lifespan of the humans doing the travelling. IF we can devise engines powerful enough...

Well... if you delve into the realm of quantum mechanics and string theory, you start arriving at solutions to some of the problems Einstein was trying to sort out... his "theory of everything" -- Membrane theory, which derives from quantum mechanics in general and string theory in particular, describes a multi-verse. This occurs in the 11th dimension if memory serves me correctly (or was it the 10th?) and it is, actually, this extra dimension that solves the paradox of the multitude of different string theories by demonstrating that each of these theories is just a different manifestation of the membrane theory.

What you end up with, effectively, is a foam where each bubble is an alternate universe some of which even have different laws of physics. Anyway, making a long story short, there's an infinite number of alternate universes in this dimension.

One of the quirks of quantum theory is that things like electrons exist as waves until you observe them and their location is undefined until they are observed. In fact, it is now proven that electrons exist in more than one place at the same time. The multi-verse is used to explain how that is possible. The Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment being an example of that.

Anyway, the problem with going back in time is the paradox of what happens if you go back in time and kill your Grandfather. Then it becomes impossible for you to have been born and therefore impossible to have gone back in time and so on and so on. However, in membrane theory, the problem is solved by the fact that every decision point is just a fork in the 11th dimension that lands the observer in the one "bubble" that fits the criteria.

It all tends to make the head hurt, but it's very cool stuff all the same.

Another great way to look at this problem is to picture a ball that represents a light photon bouncing up and down between the floor and the ceiling of a box. It's moving up and down at the speed of light in a straight line

Code:

---

___
 .
 .
 .
 .
 .
___

---

Now... make the box start moving at a very high rate of speed, nearly the speed of light. To a person standing in the box, the ball is still bouncing straight up and down. However, for an outside observer, the box is moving, so the ball is also moving horizontally...

Code:

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___________________________________________________
.      .      .      .      .      .
 .    . .    . .    . .    . .    . .
  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .
  . .    . .    . .    . .    . .    .
    .      .      .      .      .      .
___________________________________________________

---

The speed of light is constant, so the time between when the ball hits the top and the bottom doesn't change. However, the length of the line between the top and the bottom is different for the inside and outside observers.

If the time between hitting the top and the bottom is the same, and the speed of light does not change, but the length of the line over which the ball had to travel did change, then the only thing that could have changed for the inside and outside observer is the time it took to cover the distance. Time has to have moved faster for the outside observer than the inside observer.

Again... all stuff that makes your head hurt ~lol~

Time Travel already exists.

A fake sort of time travel by none the less . It makes it possible to fly out and arrive at your destination the day before you left.

It's the international date line :) :banana:

And boy. Is it making planning flights to LA confusing :)