Do you think a time machine will ever, realistically be built?

Dr. Feelgood

Creed Bratton wrote: »

Stephen Hawings Universe is on the Discovery Channel in 5 minutes and its about time travel today if you want to find out if it is possible.

I found this very interesting. Especially the part about those particles in the particle accelerator in Switzerland that travelled forward in time.

ScumLord

Anything's possible. I don't see what the point would be, all you can get in the past is slightly newer old crap.

WIZE

Off Topic but if the world spun backwards would time reverse like in Superman or would life be the same as time in space goes forward or is there no time in space

Podge_irl

muppetkiller wrote: »

Wasn't there something said about the time travel Paradox that you can only travel back as far as the first day that the time machine was built (or something like that)..

Yes.

There are conjectures about the possibility of making a time machine via a wormhole and moving one end of the wormhole near a star or other such gravitational object, which would eventually allow you to travel back and forth in time, but of course you could only do so from after when the wormhole was put at the star. It's all somewhat academic though as travelling through a wormhole would kill you.

Podge_irl

SoulTrader wrote: »

Now, I'm no theoretical physicist (gasp!) but I was of the opinion that time travel was possible in theory, but that the amounts of energy required to send a small payload through time was so vast that it would equal the entire energy output of earth for 2000 years to achieve it? Therefore, although possible in theory, it just couldn't work in practice - it's failure to work in practice being limited by logistics and not necessarily by scientific impossibility.

Nope, it's not really a logistical problem, there are many, many physical problems with the idea.

ScumLord

Most Haunted wrote: »

Off Topic but if the world spun backwards would time reverse like in Superman

I imagine it would cause some sort of massive magnetic problems when our core has it's natural rhythm stopped and reversed. This may cause solar winds to strip the surface of life. Way to go superman, what happens when children go out trying to copy you?

rgt320q

After watching that 'Primer' film I... I just don't know any more

AAAAAAAHHH

Most Haunted wrote: »

Off Topic but if the world spun backwards would time reverse like in Superman or would life be the same as time in space goes forward or is there no time in space

Are you serious?

WIZE

AAAAAAAHHH wrote: »

Are you serious?

I dont know anymore

Joey the lips

Every photograph is a time machine... It takes us back to special places and events in life. So we love to remember and some we love to forget but a photo brings us there is an instant.

Some photographs are so vivid you can remember the feeling of the sun on your face or the cool feeling as you jumped into the water. Some photographs remind you of that beautiful women or man that you thought you were going to spend your life with until you seen the photograph of them snogging your best mate.

Yes...Photographs are timemachines and remind us of our mistakes and shape out future.

Pauleta

Stephen Hawking said its possible to slow time if you are traveling at 99.99% the speed of light (100% is impossible) And if you are in just a say a rocket ship traveling at that speed, 1 year on the ship would be 1000 years on earth or something to that number.

OutlawPete

Just get a flux capacitor.

Wibbs

Pittens wrote: »

He didnt say Ireland. I can tell you as someone born in 75 that there were far more advances in the 80s - say 1980 to 1992 - than since.

Since then we have been marking time. My parents moved house on Jan 7th 1980, and I left in late 1992. In that time we went from black and white TV's to having color TVs, CD, DVDs, ( via VHS), home Computers, microwaves, walkmen. and even old school modible phones. Also the 80's had the internet. Wasnt invented in the 90's. Usenet did what boards did back then. First laptop 1992.

So everything else has been evolutionary.

As Bill Maher said about the BP disaster - we whould in 2010 not only be able to solve these things, we should be having mining disaters on the moon.

2010 is a sore disappointment to those of us who were born in a more technologically advancing times. Music changed more radically too.

Agreed. Radically new tech is thin on the ground. A lot of our current tech we use everyday goes way back.

Back on-topic: Hawkins mentioned he put out an invitation to time travellers to come to a recent party, but none came. He will be famous in the future, so where are they?

Well you can explain this and the causality paradox issue if you have a multiverse. In that scenario in another universe you have time travel and they did show up to his party. This gets rid of the problem of shooting your own grandfather in the past too. When you shoot him, in his universe you cease to exist, but in your relative universe you dont. Problem of causality solved.

punchdrunk

look,every day we are ****ing up this planet in the now,why should we "time travel" to make a balls of another era too

Columbia

I read somewhere, might have even been on boards, that if a time machine has been invented in the future, we may not have the right technologies or capacities to receive them in the present. Sort of like how one telephone is no use to anyone, you need a second telephone to pick it up. Someone was suggesting that the LHC could provide the right conditions for a time machine to be received in the present.

I don't buy into it at all, and it seems that the LHC is thrown up as a potential answer to every physical question there is at the moment, but I thought it was interesting.

El Siglo

Well if you could bend space time you could theoretically go in the future, something like a wormhole, but you'd need enough mass to bend space-time. It's tricky. Another one would be a Kerr black hole, which would be like a black hole that doesn't end up as a singularity and has angular momentum. These are theoretical though.

CreepingDeath

rossie1977 wrote: »

lets say for second time-travel were possible
1.why would people come back here and now, why not during some interesting period such as dawn of civilisation, or the height of the roman empire, to see if the story of jesus were true , or the 23rd century (time travel might not be invented till say the year 50,000)

To collect samples of animals and plants just before they go extinct.

Maybe to collect DNA from "wild" humans before genetic engineering leaves us genetically stagnant with pure/mutation free DNA.

Maybe it'll be an expensive sight-seeing tour, like Jurasik Park.

MadPatrick

We may already have time travelers. But currently we're supposing they are from distant galaxies.
It's much more likely that these are humans from the future. We will evolve to have massive heads to hold all the information, and skinny weak bodies when we have robots to do all our heavy lifting.

hal9000

Sure time travel in the future no prob just put more go faster stripes and speed holes on rockets.

Back in time though Not a chance because of the I killed yor'ma paradox

Pittens

Back in time though Not a chance because of the I killed yor'ma paradox

Hawkings mentions that paradox in the piece linked to. Although he had a wormhole which looked back in time 5 minutes and a scientist killing himself.

Nate--IRL--

watch12 wrote: »

i actually figured this sh#t out before, cant quite recall the details though... it was something along the lines of time being consistent with the outward expansion of the universe, time being a matter of space and distance and all that, however i recall theorising that when the universe begins to retract that time will go backwards...... then the universe will expand again and time will return to a forward motion..... ad infinitum......hmmmm

Expansion of the Universe is accelerating, it will never contract. If a time machine can be invented then by definition it already has been :P

Nate

AAAAAAAHHH

Pauleta wrote: »

Stephen Hawking said its possible to slow time if you are traveling at 99.99% the speed of light (100% is impossible) And if you are in just a say a rocket ship traveling at that speed, 1 year on the ship would be 1000 years on earth or something to that number.

It's possible to slow time by walking down the road at a leisurely 4 miles an hour, but you probably won't notice it.

Standard Toaster

I don't think so. Us humans will destory ourselves well before one is built, which I doubt is possible anyway.

Wormholes me arse btw

hal9000

AAAAAAAHHH wrote: »

It's possible to slow time by walking down the road at a leisurely 4 miles an hour, but you probably won't notice it.

Yah you really would need to be doing at least a power walk before you start noticing the effect

CreepingDeath

AAAAAAAHHH wrote: »

It's possible to slow time by walking down the road at a leisurely 4 miles an hour, but you probably won't notice it.

Probably ?

They flew two Boeing 747's around the world in opposite directions, with atomic clocks on board each and they only registered small fractions of a second time difference.

The problem with getting to the speed of light is that your mass increases with extreme speed. So it's like putting your foot down on the accelerator on the motorway, but your car gets heavier for each 1kph increase in speed until your car weighs the same as a juggernaut but you still have a tiny engine.

Agricola

CreepingDeath wrote: »

Probably ?

They flew two Boeing 747's around the world in opposite directions, with atomic clocks on board each and they only registered small fractions of a second time difference.

The problem with getting to the speed of light is that your mass increases with extreme speed. So it's like putting your foot down on the accelerator on the motorway, but your car gets heavier for each 1kph increase in speed until your car weighs the same as a juggernaut but you still have a tiny engine.

Yes but this is where teleportation technology will come in. Particles have already been successfully teleported from one side of a lab to another. Once every particle in a human being can be mapped, and the quantum state each particle is in is accounted for, it may be possible to deconstruct ourselves down to an atomic level in order to recontruct ourselves at another location. The natural progression of this is to accelerate these mapped particles to close to the speed of light. Its then possible to time travel, into the future at least.
This could be all bollox but it sounds great!

Tar.Aldarion

For forward travel, yeah, going faster and faster will make minute differences that will aggregate with the faster you go, no idea about backwards time travel.

Pacing Mule

If time travel exists in the future we will never know about it in this timeline.

Think about this - fundamentally you can't change what has already happened. Going back in time and "changing" history simply can't happen.

Anyone going back in time immediately causes changes to be made where they land to what would have happened. No matter what they do, no matter how miniscule the event they will effect the course of subsequent events. The only logical solution to this is that the moment someone goes back in time then a seperate timeline is created so that both courses of history exist.

We're in the original timeline and will not know time travel exists until such time as it is actually invented. When / if it is invented nothing will change about our lives today but changes will be made in a new alternative timeline.

Pacing Mule

the_syco wrote: »

The day after it's built, some religious whackjob will go back in time, and kill the inventor.

But they will only kill the inventor in a new timeline as per my post above.

Dravokivich

StormWarrior wrote: »

Do you think a time machine will ever, realistically be built?

brb