• A Physicist Is Building a Time Machine to Reconnect With His Dead Father
    112 replies, posted
Imagine if in the multiverse, there's a version with superheroes...
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;47406144]Why not? As far as we know [I]so far[/I], general relativity allows backwards time travel within the same universe. Even if there are multiple universes, they'd still have to allow that. Ignoring the fact that it's entirely possible (and widely believed) that we will discover something new which rules out the kind of time travel that pops up in relativity.[/QUOTE] Wait, physics allow time travel backwards?
[QUOTE=DeEz;47407843]Wait, physics allow time travel backwards?[/QUOTE] It would be more accurate to say it doesn't expressly forbid it yet. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve[/url]
He should do what Walter Bishop did from Fringe, build a machine that can teleport anyone for anywhere and anytime to him.
[QUOTE=Deng;47406555]How do you even travel into the past? It's already happened, so where is it exactly?[/QUOTE] Just behind you in spacetime.
Maybe if you went back in time, the timeline would sort of just corkscrew in a way that the second timeline continues linearly from the first
This is incredibly old news.
This reminded me of [URL="http://www.johntitor.com/"]John Titor[/URL] thing. Interesting to read, some fun ideas about time travel.
Why doesn't he just have sex with his mom, freeze her, go really fast for like 50 years, and his son will be his new dad.
Even if it doesn't work out, hopefully we learn something new about science from this.
since the universe is expanding wouldnt backwards time travel still put you where you currently are in space which the earth wouldnt be at
[QUOTE=RobbL;47405935]I'm sure this dude was featured in a documentary I saw many years ago[/QUOTE] yes I saw that documentary on discovery many many years ago too [video=youtube;oRWwI61so5Q]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRWwI61so5Q[/video]
[QUOTE=James xX;47405783]What if his dad had the heart attack because he went back in time, and the dad was so shocked that it killed him. I mean, isn't the universe supposed to correct paradoxes like this somehow? Edit: From what I understand on wikipedia, I'm speaking about the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_paradox"]predestination paradox[/URL].[/QUOTE] Or if we accept the multiverse, the universe corrects paradoxes by creating a separate timeline, so even if he does it we wouldn't see any effects on our timeline.
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;47407896]It would be more accurate to say it doesn't expressly forbid it yet. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed_timelike_curve[/url][/QUOTE] Doesn't it violate the law of conservation of energy/mass though? I mean, if you go back in time you've duplicated yourself and added more energy to the universe.
But wouldn't warning his dad about the heart attack cause him to not want to create a time machine to save his father? It would create a paradox
[QUOTE=Zeke129;47408415]Doesn't it violate the law of conservation of energy/mass though? I mean, if you go back in time you've duplicated yourself and added more energy to the universe.[/QUOTE] There is a lot of controversy over whether energy is globally conserved in general relativity. Also, not really. Nothing is doubled. If the particle or whatever goes back in time, it had already gone back in time. The second one must have been there when it went through that point in time before.
[QUOTE=Deathtrooper2;47406212]Technically, this really goes against the Grandfather paradox, basically if you go back and stop the man's heart attack, you would destroy your reason to go back anyways.[/QUOTE] While technically correct, his "being" might not suddenly mutate. I'll try to explain what I mean: Keep in mind that this implies a single timeline, the multiple timeline or divergent timeline theory kinda makes this whole theory moot. If you were to go back, and actually commit the classic thought experiment of killing your own grandfather, or in some fashion stop yourself from being born, you wouldn't physically just blip out of existence, rather your image from the perception of everyone else will be gone. Your physical being exists in that time-frame, in say, the year 1902. Seeing as how you are physically in that spot in time, and given the height of my science knowledge is that of tenth grade - matter can't literally just go poof (please correct me if I'm wrong) - you would still be physically present in that spot in time, unless you actually kill yourself while you're there. You go back, do the act, and return to the departure date, everything that you knew of yourself from the perception of the world towards you would no longer be accurate. Things like where you lived, the people you knew, anyone you ever made contact with would no longer be valid, because although you are still physically in existence, your "image" is not, because you were never born relative to anyone else. The person you knew as your mother is no longer your mother, the house you lived at is now housing complete strangers, there is no record of you ever being born, etc.
[QUOTE=ubersoldier;47408501]While technically correct, his "being" might not suddenly mutate. I'll try to explain what I mean: Keep in mind that this implies a single timeline, the multiple timeline or divergent timeline theory kinda makes this whole theory moot. If you were to go back, and actually commit the classic thought experiment of killing your own grandfather, or in some fashion stop yourself from being born, you wouldn't physically just blip out of existence, rather your image from the perception of everyone else will be gone. Your physical being exists in that time-frame, in say, the year 1902. Seeing as how you are physically in that spot in time, and given the height of my science knowledge is that of tenth grade - matter can't literally just go poof (please correct me if I'm wrong) - you would still be physically present in that spot in time, unless you actually kill yourself while you're there. You go back, do the act, and return to the departure date, everything that you knew of yourself from the perception of the world towards you would no longer be accurate. Things like where you lived, the people you knew, anyone you ever made contact with would no longer be valid, because although you are still physically in existence, your "image" is not, because you were never born relative to anyone else. The person you knew as your mother is no longer your mother, the house you lived at is now housing complete strangers, there is no record of you ever being born, etc.[/QUOTE] here's a better explanation: nobody fucking knows anything at all how anything about time travel would even conceivably work all the explanations and paradoxes in this thread are brain teasers and sci-fi - [I]nobody has any goddamn clue.[/I] it probably wouldn't work anyways. the idea of the universe "self-correcting" paradoxes is genuinely 100% science fiction, there's zero evidence and zero research into that sort of stuff. mostly because we can't go back in time and test it.
This thread is giving me a headache
[QUOTE=JohnnyMo1;47408498]There is a lot of controversy over whether energy is globally conserved in general relativity. Also, not really. Nothing is doubled. If the particle or whatever goes back in time, it had already gone back in time. The second one must have been there when it went through that point in time before.[/QUOTE] What if I point a microwave emitter through a time portal back in time 10 seconds to when I had set up a rectenna, and then powered the emitter with the rectenna after an initial jumpstart from an external source Or, even just background radiation that already exists continually looping through the portal and building up to infinity
[QUOTE=Zeke129;47408568]What if I point a microwave emitter through a time portal back in time 10 seconds to when I had set up a rectenna, and then powered the emitter with the rectenna after an initial jumpstart from an external source Or, even just background radiation that already exists continually looping through the portal and building up to infinity[/QUOTE] Well for one thing, you're going to lose energy from the present to send to the past, and in 10 seconds that universe will be the same one you were in 10 seconds ago, losing energy at the same rate as it was gaining it. It's not even easy to [I]define[/I] energy in general relativity, let alone reason about it on poorly-understood closed timelike curves which come from very nontrivial geometries. And like I said, energy is not globally conserved in general relativity anyway.
It would be sad if he completed his machine, sent a message and nothing happens. But what really happened was he a sent a message to an alternate timeline that saved his father and now his alternate self gets to grow up with a dad, while thinking he failed in his timeline. I've been watching too much star trek.
[QUOTE=Saturn V;47405733]watch him actually do it[/QUOTE] watch him actually do it and end up 2864 astronomical units away due to the movement of the sun about the galactic center
[QUOTE=Nebukadnezzer;47408832]watch him actually do it and end up 2864 astronomical units away due to the movement of the sun about the galactic center[/QUOTE] I always thought about this when watching back to the future. Like Marty would just pop into space, suffocate, and die
this guy's been working on this shit for years. i've always secretly hoped that i'd run into him while on campus.
Time travel has always confused me, mostly because if you don't go back to the exact date that Earth was in the same place, (which would be very hard to find, considering daylight savings, leap years, etc) you would just be transported into space...
What if he goes back in time, and discovers that everybody on earth now and in the past have been time travelers out to either destroy or save the planet, thus causing every war and conflict in history?
[QUOTE=LoneWolf_Recon;47405792]The shear effort he's put in over his life is deserving of respect, I honestly hope he does it.[/QUOTE] Even if he does not accomplish it in his lifetime, his work may help accomplish it later if its actually possible to travel back in time.
[QUOTE=Nukefuzz;47409554]Time travel has always confused me, mostly because if you don't go back to the exact date that Earth was in the same place, (which would be very hard to find, considering daylight savings, leap years, etc) you would just be transported into space...[/QUOTE] Indeed. To achieve such a feat you'd probably require a wormhole, whether it can connect two points in time or have to exist at the moment you travel back to, connecting that point in space-time to the location you were/will be. And that's just assuming that it would even be possible to run time in reverse. Hell, if time were akin to temperature, as in the flow of time is based on energy, one could never reach an absolute standstill, only a crawl that is almost indistinguishable. That said if time could be "chilled" in a localized space, that would be pretty handy for a multitude of scientific fields, including cookery. (chilling time would make things last longer in a time-chilled space, whereas heating it could allow slow-cookery to take less time while still resulting in delicious slow-cooked meats) [QUOTE=James xX;47405783]What if his dad had the heart attack because he went back in time, and the dad was so shocked that it killed him. I mean, isn't the universe supposed to correct paradoxes like this somehow? Edit: From what I understand on wikipedia, I'm speaking about the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_paradox"]predestination paradox[/URL].[/QUOTE] That could indeed be the case, although there would be alternative outcomes. Best case scenario, his actions cause him to return to an alternate universe and we never see him again save for the steam inside the time displacer. Worst case scenario his actions tear time a new arsehole and we all get eaten repeatedly by flying time demons until Shaun Dingwall gets run over by a car. (trust me on this *wink*)
[QUOTE=Damian0358;47405903]I never really liked the kind of time travel everyone talks about. There are just so many things that could go wrong. I'd prefer a type of time travel that allows one to see the past, but not interact with it. I want to go back and see important historical events unfold right before my eyes, but I don't want to accidentally do something that changes history. Heck, maybe that's why we don't see any time travelers.[/QUOTE] Unfortunately, that sort of time travel is the least likely to happen. [QUOTE=Elfy;47406531]I say we make it an international law that if time travel in any form is ever created, they must first come to our time at a predetermined location at a predetermined time. That way we will know at that time and date, if it's possible. Mind blown.[/QUOTE] They could just travel to whenever the law is installed and prevent it from ever existing.
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