Archive: 57 posts

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Ok so time travel has always been super interesting to me. (real time travel, not Einstiens proven timetravel theories... see E=Mc? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E=mc%C2%B2)) I tried to build my first time machine when I was seven. (using a broken wrist watch and a gocart) After watching every available movie, and reading every book I could find about timetravel, I've been able to come to one conclusion.. though it may sound pretty simple, the only conclusion I've drawn is that time travel is either A) Possible or B) Impossible... makes you think "duh" huh? well what this is based on is the fact that we either live in Universe A. or universe B. In universe A, every choice that has ever been made, every action, every decision, every possible event, happened, in one form of the universe or another. So for instance, If I have the choice to take path 1, or path 2, I essentially take both, if in my verion of reality I walk down path one, there absolutly has to be another form of reality in which I chose path 2. and this works for every single choice or occurance that has, or will ever be made.. So there would be an infinate number of possible realities... In universe B conversly, Every choice and event that ever happened, was based in determinism, and therefor could not have happened any other way. In this reality, there would be only one version of reality. So if I went down path 1, then I went down that path because I had to, and could not have gone down path 2. I drew this conclusion base upon somthing called the Paradox Conundrum. Basically a paradox CANNOT excist.. No matter what the universe will not support the overwhelming weight of a paradox.. So in universe B, time travel would have to be impossable. Say for instance you went back in time and killed your grandfather. This opens up a paradox, because without a grandfather, you would never be born, and if you were never born you couldnt kill your grandfather, so you would be born... and this repeats itself... and would effectivally negate all reality. In universe A, time travel would have to be possable. Because if you went and killed your grandfather in this universe, you wouldn't negate all excistance, you would simply emerge into a version of reality in which you were never born, yet you would still excist, because you came from a reality in which you were born. So thats basically it. All (that I feel like writing) about time travel...

2009-02-16 18:49:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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If time travel was possible theres a high chance you'd die on arrival.

2009-02-16 19:00:00 Author: Rabid-Coot Posts: 6728

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Possibly, espeacially if you were particularly old, or weak, (the main character in the man who folded himself died this way) but assuming the air will bend around you, the shock upon arival should be about the same as a static shock, only felt all over your body.

2009-02-16 19:03:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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Not that. If you travel back in time 1 week the planet won't be where you are.

2009-02-16 19:06:00 Author: Rabid-Coot Posts: 6728

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Not that. If you travel back in time 1 week the planet won't be where you are. well yes of coarse but for the purpose of this, since were traveling in the 4th diminsion, were going to assume that 3rd diminsional travel will be a given... if you can move through time, moving through space aswell shouldnt be a problem.

2009-02-16 19:10:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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You can technically time travel (Cryogenic) but you cannot go back in time. I also find this stuff interesting :O

2009-02-16 19:12:00 Author: Boomy Posts: 3701

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well yes of coarse but for the purpose of this, since were traveling in the 4th diminsion, were going to assume that 3rd diminsional travel will be a given... if you can move through time, moving through space aswell shouldnt be a problem. Its the pecision of the movement through space that will cause the trouble, when you're poppng onto an object thats orbiting the sun at about 30 km/s you don't want to mess it up.

2009-02-16 19:21:00 Author: Rabid-Coot Posts: 6728

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Going back in time to change something in your own timeline is fundamentally impossible because it causes a paradox. In fact, changing much of anything in the past which would affect your going to the past in the first place causes a paradox. Say you want to go back in time to change some historical event... if you change it, the event will never have happened, hence you'll never have gone back in time to change the event in the first place. What might be fun to consider is going to the future through "time dilation". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dialation#Time_dilation_and_space_flight That would be a one-way ticket though.

2009-02-16 19:23:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536

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I guess cryogenisis would technically be a form of time travel, since your mind would essentially go from point in time A, to point C, without going through B.. even though your body would be present through the entire process. This may be the key to time travel, seperating the mind from the body.. if you had a mind, without any attached matter, you would have full abilities of perception, without any attached mass. without mass, there would be no limits to the speed you could attain. you could basically go any where/when you wanted. hmm interesting combined Philosophical/phisical theory.. I dont know. yes Gilgamesh that what the whole point of the thread is, If there is one posible reality then you couldnt timetravel for that very purpose.. but if you could travel to a different existance, in wich the changes you made happened, then you would bypass this problem.. you would have come from an existance that had the issue you wanted to fix, but emerge in/ create a different reality in wich the issue never excisted.

2009-02-16 19:24:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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Well, obviously time was invented before humans had a full understanding of the universe e.g. the earth was flat and the universe was tilting around the earth. Time was invented to show the happening of 'day' and 'night', all of which are just to show when a certain point of the earth is facing or not facing the sun. Well all that is just the obvious stuff. The origional concept of time travel was probably invented by humans as something that would be good if existed, but doesn't seem to have any realistically possible solutions. If you could imagine the earth and all other planets orbiting the sun as just objects moving through space (not from the perspective of a day/ night cycle) then it would make more sense for there not to be any time at all. If this is the way the universe works, it is the most possible explaination in my oppinion, then a 'paradox' would be completely impossible to occur because if there was no time then everything would just continue flowing and there would be no changes or ways to reverse it. I can understand why you would think it almost impossible for time to not exist aswell but I just think that it has all been invented. I am also scepticle of a 'time dimension' because of my other theory.

2009-02-16 19:44:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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well the perseption of time could be an entire invention of man, but people have a birth, and a death, and death cant occure before birth, so even though it may be an invention of man, doesnt mean its not a phyisical reality... Math is also an invention of man, but all the laws of physics (which are a basic principal of the universe) are expressable as mathmatical formula, so maybe rather than inventing numbers, we discovered them.. same could apply to time.

2009-02-16 19:55:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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Well, the concepts of "past" and "future" are fundamentally human inventions. They're simply a way for us to order events in relation to the present. I don't think the "past" actually exists as an entity in the universe, only what we have recorded in media or in our memory which exists in the present. The concept of "future" as an entity is also a bit of an odd notion. If we accept that there is only one future, which we will inevitably reach, then that means every event has been preset and we are only living a record of predestined events. However, if we accept that our choices are not preset, that we have free will, then that means there can't be a single "future", but an infinite amount of them. In this case, knowing about the future is rather pointless. Food for thought. Have any of you seen the miniseries "The Triangle" on Sci-Fi?

2009-02-16 20:09:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536

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I can understand the idea of maths and physics being there already. The happening of this (something+something=an effect/ value) will have already have existed in the universe for an infinite amount of time before humans existed. The only input from humans was a definition of the process. Things will always have been moving in the unierse for an unknown reason, humans will have invented time to try and explain this. I think that time is just an explaination of the process of the constant movement and changes in the universe.

2009-02-16 20:13:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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The concept of "future" as an entity is also a bit of an odd notion. If we accept that there is only one future, which we will inevitably reach, then that means every event has been preset and we are only living a record of predestined events. However, if we accept that our choices are not preset, that we have free will, then that means there can't be a single "future", but an infinite amount of them. In this case, knowing about the future is rather pointless. Food for thought. Have any of you seen the miniseries "The Triangle" on Sci-Fi? nah I havent seen it, I may check it out... Free will is another concept that raises alot of questions to me, Its hard to determine wether or not people actually have free will or if its just another concept invented by humanity, if you think about it, every action you take, every part of that action, from the synapses in your brain, to the completion of the action, are all governed by the laws of physics.. there really doesnt seem to be an obvious point in which human choice comes into play. it may seem like you walk somewhere because you want/need too, but every part of every action taken seems to act as if it were predetermined.

2009-02-16 20:20:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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nah I havent seen it, I may check it out... Free will is another concept that raises alot of questions to me, Its hard to determine wether or not people actually have free will or if its just another concept invented by humanity, if you think about it, every action you take, every part of that action, from the synapses in your brain, to the completion of the action, are all governed by the laws of physics.. there really doesnt seem to be an obvious point in which human choice comes into play. it may seem like you walk somewhere because you want/need too, but every part of every action taken seems to act as if it were predetermined. That is also true. There isn't really a good way to check if you have free will or not. There is one way that might prove it though. If you didn't have free will then something would have to be controlling you, right? I personally do not believe in any form of a 'god'. I am not saying it's a bad thing to have a belief in a 'god', but sureley if there was something conroling you, then it wouldn't control you to question your free will, would it?

2009-02-16 20:29:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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Well, though it's a bit off topic, the concept of "Free will" is impossible to determine. One has to assume that "Free will" means that, given an exact situation, you would be able to choose to do one action or another through your will alone. However, since you're never presented with the same situation twice, it's impossible to determine if you make a conscious choice or if the sum of your experiences and biological predispositions already determine the choice you will make.

2009-02-16 20:37:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536

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read my last post, it almost comes close to an explaination of free will.

2009-02-16 20:38:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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well with physics and the breakdown of physical laws at the quantum level, it seems we either act as determinalistic gears, or complete randomness. hmm maybe free will/ time/ timetravel/ god/ souls/ thoughts/ ghosts... maybe its all in the same boat. we cannot see it, we can only speculate about its existance. We can never really know about intangible things. as for time not existing though, perhaps it doesnt exist in the conventional sense, but one of the ideas set forth in Einstein's Relitivity theory is that on object in motion, as it approaches the speed of light will experience time at a slower rate than an observer who is in a more static position. So if I left the earth in a super fast space ship, whized around the universe in what felt like 5 years to me, could be billions of years passed on earth. so how could time be relitive to the observer if time doesnt really exist>?

2009-02-16 20:58:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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That actually simply proves time as a concept relative to the point of observation. I linked to an article on Time Dilation earlier. To the people and measuring instruments not on the moving craft, the craft exists for, say, the 5 years it is moving. But to the people and instruments in the moving craft, the craft only exists for 4 years. Time flowed more slowly for people inside the craft than outside, but this could simply mean that every atom and electron that composed the craft, instruments and people moved slower because they lost part of their speed by moving faster in a single direction. If every atom in the universe started to slow down or speed up at the same time, I think we would not really notice a significant difference in how we perceive time, because our perception and measuring instruments would speed up or slow down at the same time!

2009-02-16 21:09:00 Author: Gilgamesh Posts: 2536

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well with physics and the breakdown of physical laws at the quantum level, it seems we either act as determinalistic gears, or complete randomness. hmm maybe free will/ time/ timetravel/ god/ souls/ thoughts/ ghosts... maybe its all in the same boat. we cannot see it, we can only speculate about its existance. We can never really know about intangible things. as for time not existing though, perhaps it doesnt exist in the conventional sense, but one of the ideas set forth in Einstein's Relitivity theory is that on object in motion, as it approaches the speed of light will experience time at a slower rate than an observer who is in a more static position. So if I left the earth in a super fast space ship, whized around the universe in what felt like 5 years to me, could be billions of years passed on earth. so how could time be relitive to the observer if time doesnt really exist>? If this theory was right, then there would be almost no way to check if it worked. No object with a mass can go at the speed of light. The only reason that light can go that fast is because it has no mass and it would be a real difficulty attempting to achieve almost speed of light in a space ship. In the LHC last year it would take 4 years to get the particles to move at almost the speed of light (if I remember correctly) and that was just a few particles.

2009-02-16 21:16:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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but there have been experiments done where extremely fast moving vehicles are equipped with clocks the start out syncronized with land based clocks, and sure enough after the test the clock onboard had lost fractions of a second compared to the control clocks. and yes, it is impossable for anything with mass to go the speed of light, just as its impossable for light to travel at any other speed. Spacetime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime) Special relativity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity)

2009-02-16 21:26:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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but there have been experiments done where extremely fast moving vehicles are equipped with clocks the start out syncronized with land based clocks, and sure enough after the test the clock onboard had lost fractions of a second compared to the control clocks. Yes, it is quite interesting that travelling objects go through time slower than a stationary area around them. and yes, it is impossable for anything with mass to go the speed of light, just as its impossable for light to travel at any other speed. By the way, I'm not sure but I think I can remember hearing somewhere that reflected light or light in water travels slower than a light that comes straight from a source. I know this wouldn't effect the possibility of an object going at the speed of light, that would still be impossible. (not sure about that there, can't remember where I heard it)

2009-02-16 21:38:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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Im not sure about this either, I believe refracted/ reflected light would have a different wavelength or amplitude, but not sure if it would effect the speed or not, Ill try to find out.

2009-02-16 21:41:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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Ok, I think that refraction might slow down parts of the light slightly, not so sure about reflection. But I think refraction bends the light and forces it to slow down.

2009-02-16 22:06:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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yea your right... In passing through materials, the observed speed of light differs from c. When light enters materials its energy is absorbed. In the case of transparent materials (dielectrics) this energy is quickly re-radiated. However, this absorption and re-radiation introduces a delay. As light propagates through dielectric material it undergoes continuous absorption and re-radiation. Therefore when the speed of light in a medium is said to be less than c, this should be read as the speed of energy propagation at the macroscopic level. At the microscopic level electromagnetic waves always travel at c. Two factors influence this slowing; stronger absorption leading to shorter path length between each re-radiation cycle and longer delays. The slowing is therefore the product of these two factors. The ratio of c to the phase velocity of light in the material is called the refractive index. It is usually given the symbol n. In the case of light, it equals , where εr is the material's relative permittivity, and μr is its relative permeability. The speed of light in air is only slightly less than c (the refractive index of air is only slightly larger than one [1]). Denser media, such as water and glass, can slow light much more, to fractions such as 3⁄4 and 2⁄3 of c. Through diamond, light is much slower?only about 124,000 km/s, less than 1⁄2of c.[27] This reduction in speed is also responsible for bending of light at an interface between two materials with different indices, a phenomenon known as refraction. Since the speed of light in a material depends on the refractive index, and the refractive index may depend on the frequency of the light, light at different frequencies can travel at different speeds through the same material. This effect is called dispersion.

2009-02-16 22:09:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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So if travelling just below the speed of light would mean that the time would appear to go by/ actually move quicker than the non-moving area it is in then, even if a different amount of time had passed, both the objects would be in the same time area at the finish. This would change the idea of time as being another dimension as the object stayed in the 3rd dimension, right? Also there isn't really a way to go back in time found yet.

2009-02-16 22:28:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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I think of the demension problem in a diferent way.. A black hole is essentially a 4th demensional object since it is a distortion in spacetime. if you take for example a 2d object in a 2d univers.. so for example this creature is a square drawn on a peice of paper.. it can move around on the paper and has knowlege of length and width but no concept of height. any object percieved by this creature would look like this ___________ because it couldnt possibly view a shape from above to see what shape it is.. so it just sees length and width.. sudenly a 3d apple creature lands on the paper. now to the original creature the 3d creature would look somthing like this ___ ___ _____ because he would only be able to see the parts of the apple in contact with the paper. the apple could move all around and would seem to have super powers to the creatures of the flat universe. being able to dissappear and reappear at will, and pretty much do anything it wanted. so the apple kicks the crap out of the square creature, and sure enough the square creature flies up off the paper and sees his world from a new angle before falling back down into his normal universe.. It takes contact with a 3 dimensional object to make the 2d creature into a 3d creature, but once hes back in his own univers he will be a 2d creature once more, and he'll have alot of great stories that his other square and circle buddies would never believe... so take the whole story and add one dimension, so we are 3d objects and 4d objects would be unconcievable to us, until we came in contact with one, at which time we could essentially choose where (and when) we would come back into contact with our own universe.

2009-02-16 22:41:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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That is a well detailed explaination and could definitly be a good explaination for where matter goes in a black hole aswell. Although I'm not sure you would ever come back from a black hole as of the amount of pressure it exerts while pulling in objects would probably rip you in half. But really, I hadn't thought of it like that at all.

2009-02-16 22:58:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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I have always had kind of a strange idea that probably would never work... but say we built a giant concrete platform in brazil that asked the people of the future to build a time machine and send us one to a specific date and time... if one shows up, then cool... although one not showing up wouldnt nescessarily mean that time travel would be impossable, because it could be that time travel can only work forward, or you cant go back to before the time machine was created.. or some other random timetravel rule... I just think it would be a cool lazy way to get my hands on a time machine... concretes expensive though.

2009-02-16 23:10:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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By the way, I'm not sure but I think I can remember hearing somewhere that reflected light or light in water travels slower than a light that comes straight from a source You're right the speed of light depends on the medium you're shining it through, the slowest it's been recorded is about 38mph, through a block of sodium cooled to within a few degrees of absolute zero. However when most people talk about the speed of light they're talking about the speed of light in a vacuum. And while it's impossible to move faster than that, it just might be possible to stay still and move the universe around your ship instead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive).

2009-02-16 23:23:00 Author: Winston-Smith Posts: 81

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However when most people talk about the speed of light they're talking about the speed of light in a vacuum. And while it's impossible to move faster than that, it just might be possible to stay still and move the universe around your ship instead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive). Awesome gotta love Futurama Physics.

2009-02-16 23:26:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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Awesome gotta love Futurama Physics. Indeed. It's surprising how many sci-fi shows take their concepts (albeit, sometimes quite loosely) from actual scientific theories.

2009-02-16 23:30:00 Author: Winston-Smith Posts: 81

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I have always had kind of a strange idea that probably would never work... but say we built a giant concrete platform in brazil that asked the people of the future to build a time machine and send us one to a specific date and time... if one shows up, then cool... although one not showing up wouldnt nescessarily mean that time travel would be impossable, because it could be that time travel can only work forward, or you cant go back to before the time machine was created.. or some other random timetravel rule... I just think it would be a cool lazy way to get my hands on a time machine... concretes expensive though. That is also an interesting concept, probably wouldn't work though. I don't think that humans will ever know enough to time travel. As you said in the 2D to 3D story with the square and the apple, the square couldn't see in 3D untill the apple came. If you are thinking 3D to 4D then something would have to cause the 3D object to go away, and come back. A black hole is probably not the best comparison as humans hardly know anything of it but if you went through it, you probably wouldn't even come back. So I just think humans will never find out much about this as there isn't enough technology to find out about it.

2009-02-16 23:32:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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So I just think humans will never find out much about this as there isn't enough technology to find out about it. What the fudge are you talking about? 60 years ago there wasn't the technology for us to even be having this discussion. Obviously, technology isn't as advanced yet for meaningful deep space exploration, but to say it never will be is just silly.

2009-02-16 23:41:00 Author: Winston-Smith Posts: 81

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What the fudge are you talking about? 60 years ago there wasn't the technology for us to even be having this discussion. Obviously, technology isn't as advanced yet for meaningful deep space exploration, but to say it never will be is just silly. I have to agree here.. although it may be farfetched, and it very possibly may never happen, there was once a time when people said a flying ship was impossable. I do agree with SASGUNR in that somthing outside of the human race may have to spark such a revelation. but Im a firm believer that nothing is impossable, or atleast that nothing can be proven to be imposable. like edison said, "I didnt fail 700 times, I didnt fail once... I simply discovered 700 ways NOT to make the lightbulb."

2009-02-16 23:47:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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What the fudge are you talking about? 60 years ago there wasn't the technology for us to even be having this discussion. Obviously, technology isn't as advanced yet for meaningful deep space exploration, but to say it never will be is just silly. Yes lol, I know I didn't really word my scentence correctly there. What I really meant was we will probably never be able to research things like black holes (in a very long time, if not then never). It would be a very difficult thing to research into to create something that could find out more about black holes e.g. what they do to the matter they take in, like where it goes (another dimension/ universe). Aswell as being difficult to make something that could actually find the purpose of black holes and things like that, it would be difficult to find a way to do that in the first place. Considering that black holes take in things with a lot of pressure.

2009-02-17 00:00:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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what they do to the matter they take in, like where it goes (another dimension/ universe) It doesn't go anywhere (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/fall_in.html), all the matter gets pulled into the singularity and gets turned into Spaghetti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification).

2009-02-17 00:11:00 Author: Winston-Smith Posts: 81

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This is true, and considering radio and light waves cannot even escape a Blackholes massive gravity, We wouldnt be able to even send an exploritory probe into one... general theory is that any object unfortunate enough to make its way into a black hole will be slowly crushed and stretched at a exponential rate until it is the size of a quantum singularity.. a single point with a mass billions of time that of our sun... also heard somwhere that a tablespoon of the material in a neutron star weighs as much as mt everist. But yea from what we understand right now, black hole = Very unpleasent death.

2009-02-17 00:11:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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It doesn't go anywhere (http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/BlackHoles/fall_in.html), all the matter gets pulled into the singularity and gets turned into Spaghetti (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghettification). Well I knew something about this before but isn't the Spaghettification only done to objects that are around the black hole before they are dragged in? I knew in my post that before entering a black hole you will almost certinly be spaghettified into a thousand pieces and then sucked into the black hole. Correct me if I'm wrong there isn't anything that can go through a black hole without turning invisible to human eyes, by this I mean it could turn into strange unseeable dimension like Madafaku's story of the square and the apple.

2009-02-17 00:24:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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well any object that crosses the event horizon (point of no return) in a black hole will be subjected to increased gravity.. as the object gets closer the parts of the object that are closer to the center of the blackhole will feel more gravity than the parts of the object away from it.. so it stretches.. this increases exponintially to the point where it is as long and thin as it could possibly be.. and at the center it is compacted into a ball that is smaller than an electron...

2009-02-17 00:41:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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i believe that time travel is not possible because if we went back in time to change 1 small thing, it could change the whole world either in a good way or bad way, and bad things are definitely more bound to happen if everybody had a chance to go back in time

2009-02-18 22:13:00 Author: Noremac469 Posts: 143

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i believe that time travel is not possible because if we went back in time to change 1 small thing, it could change the whole world either in a good way or bad way, and bad things are definitely more bound to happen if everybody had a chance to go back in time Yes, but there have been some ways of maybe going forward in time (very slightly) mentioned in the previous posts. One thing was that an object travelling at a very high speed can cause time to flow quicker for that object alone while the area around the object will still be going at normal speed.

2009-02-18 22:22:00 Author: S-A-S--G-U-N-R Posts: 1606

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true but if the universe had an infinate number of possible realities, in which anything that could happen would happen somwhere or another, these changes would be paradox free, and thus with a means to do so, would be possible... the problem is discovering the nature of the universe, and finding a means to time travel.

2009-02-18 22:23:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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The argument that often comes up is if time travel were possible then we would be visited by ourselves from the future. When I look down the road of human evolution I see our brain size increasing still further and our limbs becoming more atrophied. Ourselves in the future then might look oddly like the common description of grey aliens. UFOs usually appear on radar but we never detect them entering from local space as you would expect. They appear out of nowhere, do their thing, then exit by accelerating at colossal speeds and disappear. I'm not going to pretend to know much about physics but I know that time is relative depending on your speed, perhaps the huge burst of acceleration that most UFOs seem to do on leaving is part of the mechanism for time travel. That all these sightings of grey aliens and UFOs are ourselves from the future seems more likely to me that the alternative explanation that they're actual aliens.

2009-03-14 19:12:00 Author: Ayneh Posts: 2454

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The argument that often comes up is if time travel were possible then we would be visited by ourselves from the future. When I look down the road of human evolution I see our brain size increasing still further and our limbs becoming more atrophied. Ourselves in the future then might look oddly like the common description of grey aliens. UFOs usually appear on radar but we never detect them entering from local space as you would expect. They appear out of nowhere, do their thing, then exit by accelerating at colossal speeds and disappear. I'm not going to pretend to know much about physics but I know that time is relative depending on your speed, perhaps the huge burst of acceleration that most UFOs seem to do on leaving is part of the mechanism for time travel. That all these sightings of grey aliens and UFOs are ourselves from the future seems more likely to me that the alternative explanation that they're actual aliens. Hm... Interesting theory o_0. I've been fascinated by time travel for a while now... I wrote a story for it :O (https://lbpcentral.lbp-hub.com/index.php?t=p=68994), so yeah... Aliens being future us would be weird o_0.

2009-03-14 19:19:00 Author: RockSauron Posts: 10882

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About the "future us looking like grey aliens"-thing.. It will take a loooooooong time. And since other theories about the future are those of a sun getting destroyed.. meaning we will never look like aliens at all! Yay go us! But yeah, if the sun wouldn't explode then it might be possible..Evolution is a cool thing One of my goals in life is to read Darwin's "On the origin of species"

2009-03-14 19:49:00 Author: ThommyTheThird Posts: 440

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O well what this is based on is the fact that we either live in Universe A. or universe B. In universe A, every choice that has ever been made, every action, every decision, every possible event, happened, in one form of the universe or another. So for instance, If I have the choice to take path 1, or path 2, I essentially take both, if in my verion of reality I walk down path one, there absolutly has to be another form of reality in which I chose path 2. and this works for every single choice or occurance that has, or will ever be made.. So there would be an infinate number of possible realities... In universe B conversly, Every choice and event that ever happened, was based in determinism, and therefor could not have happened any other way. In this reality, there would be only one version of reality. So if I went down path 1, then I went down that path because I had to, and could not have gone down path 2. Well, there is a contradiction in your assumptions. You assume that the universe is causally determined and at the same time that free choice is possible. This is a contradiction, because both are mutually exclusive by defenition. Of course, you say that your choice is not situated in one determined universe, but instead is a choice between several determined universes or 'paths'. But this is a false move to introduce the possibility of choice; it is simply duplicating reality (i.e; causally determined reality) in order to wedge something (i.e. free choice) inbetween. From a logical point of view, the question is simple: either the universe is causally determined and free choice does not exist (which probably is true, but not at all that bothersome as some think) or free choice does exist and the universe is not causally determined. Again, both are by definition mutually exclusive. This does licence a conclusion about time travel: whether or not it exists, it is not what we would want it to be. We would want it to be an instrument of change, but in the causal universe, even all time travel excursions are pre-determined. So instead of changing anything, we would (without us knowing it of course) merely be shifting our perspective. We wouldn't change the causal flow of events at all, we would merely be looking at it from another perspective. also: a paradox is not something that cannot be or exist, it's a contradiction you're thinking of. The difference is that a paradox seems illogical while being logical, and is used as a term to denote that certain type of problems we face (like Zeno's paradox). A contradiction is simply a logical fallacy which has no logic to it at all. It can denote a statement (like 'the universe is causally determined and at the same time not causally determined because of free choice&apos, but it can also denote a state of affairs (like me being physically in two places at the same time), something 'that couldn't exist' like you said.

2009-03-14 20:11:00 Author: Wonko the Sane Posts: 109

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Colonel Phillip Corso. The more you read the more intrigued you will be and you will need to know more! Whatever you read that he did or said...look at his credentials. They're real.

2009-03-15 01:04:00 Author: BasketSnake Posts: 2391

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About the "future us looking like grey aliens"-thing.. It will take a loooooooong time. And since other theories about the future are those of a sun getting destroyed.. meaning we will never look like aliens at all! Yay go us! But yeah, if the sun wouldn't explode then it might be possible..Evolution is a cool thing One of my goals in life is to read Darwin's "On the origin of species" actually I think the little gray men theory may have some credibility. Sure human evolution takes a long time, and yes the sun will explode sometime soon, (our sun is a yellow dwarf, average life span of aprox. 10 billion years, our sun is aprox. 5 billion years old, so being EXTREMELY conservative it should have at least 2 billion years left, the earth is estimated to support life for another 1.4 billion years before the suns rays completely destroy the atmosphere.) these numbers, while very small when dealing with astronomy, are very large from an evolutionary standpoint. The first humans appeared only about 200,000 years ago, and "intelligent" (or the birth of civilization, or what ever you want to call it) about 10,000 years ago. The earliest "Human like" ancestor of ours is the Australopithecus, which lived about 3-4 million years ago. This means we went from this... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/A.afarensis.jpg/294px-A.afarensis.jpg to this... http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Da_Vinci_Vitruve_Luc_Viatour.jpg/300px-Da_Vinci_Vitruve_Luc_Viatour.jpg in aprox. 3,800,000 years. so almost 4 million years we went from tall monkeys to human. it's not too big of a stretch to assume that we could go from human to this... http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h112/sullirob/alien-33.jpg If we were given an extra billion years or so. Also even if we couldn't achieve that evolution in that time, whose to say were still going to be earthbound in a few million years or so? this would give other ideas slightly more credibility as well. Ever heard the old story about the alien "experiments" involving impregnating human women with extra terrestrial babies? well I always heard that it is more possible for a human to breed with a carrot, than with an alien, because at least the human and the carrot evolved on the same planet. we have somewhat similar DNA, where as an alien creature would have COMPLETELY different DNA. so what if the Aliens were (or used to be) human. That would make it possible I guess. I don't know but I like the Idea.

2009-03-15 10:48:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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This is all starting to sound like the set-up to an alaborat sci-fi story. Aliens arrive at earth, turns out they're humans who migrated and returned to earth while time-traveling. Anyway, I thought I'd post this neat, but dumbed-down explanation of time-travel via faster than the speed of light: As you are sitting in your chair, you are travelling through time. You are moving at the rate of one second of time per one second of time (I know it sounds weird). This is also seen as the speed of light - you are travelling at the speed of light through time. When you get up and walk away, you travel at, say, 10km/h. This speed is taken away from the speed you travel through time. So when you travel at 100km less than the speed of light, you travel through time at 100km/h. This means that when you hit the speed of light, you aren't travelling at all through time. 0km/h - your sitting in the chair. If you travel just 1km/h faster, you'd end up at -1km/h through time, and start going backwards. This is time travel.

2009-03-15 10:54:00 Author: dawesbr Posts: 3280

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This is all starting to sound like the set-up to an alaborat sci-fi story. Aliens arrive at earth, turns out they're humans who migrated and returned to earth while time-traveling. Anyway, I thought I'd post this neat, but dumbed-down explanation of time-travel via faster than the speed of light: As you are sitting in your chair, you are travelling through time. You are moving at the rate of one second of time per one second of time (I know it sounds weird). This is also seen as the speed of light - you are travelling at the speed of light through time. When you get up and walk away, you travel at, say, 10km/h. This speed is taken away from the speed you travel through time. So when you travel at 100km less than the speed of light, you travel through time at 100km/h. This means that when you hit the speed of light, you aren't travelling at all through time. 0km/h - your sitting in the chair. If you travel just 1km/h faster, you'd end up at -1km/h through time, and start going backwards. This is time travel. lol you also weigh more and get shorter.. so if you could get it going fast enough you could get a 20ft car to fit in a 10 foot garage. the weight thing is the main reason you cant go as fast as light.. like its going to take more fuel to get going a little faster, well then you weigh more so it takes even more fuel to get going faster. more fuel would add even more weight.. so like the faster you go the more you weigh, the more you weigh the more fuel you need, on and on for ever.. idk im going to bed.

2009-03-15 11:28:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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Haha yeah, mine was the simplest. How about this though: A man carrying a 10 foot pole lengthways (5-foot either side) runs at a barn door 3 feet wide (small barn) at the speed of light. For him, he shrinks, and can just squeeze through the door, but for an observer, his pole hits the door. Same idea for a pig in a slaughter house. If the blades aim at him at the speed of light (or something like this) they pass him, but to an observer, he gets turned into mince.

2009-03-15 11:32:00 Author: dawesbr Posts: 3280

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another mind freak is to imagine a space ship going almost the speed of light.. they shoot a laser out of the front. to the observer the laser is just barely in front of the ship, but to the people inside the ship the laser flies off into space like any laser would..

2009-03-15 21:26:00 Author: Madafaku Posts: 738

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One of two twins travels away from earth at SOL, returns at SOL, and he sees twin as really old but himself as young, other twin sees him as old and himself as young, which is a contradiction.

2009-03-15 21:29:00 Author: dawesbr Posts: 3280

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Hmmm, I don't think this was mentioned, but the idea of Time Travel in its most literal sense has been achieved and is possible. BUT, this is only possible going forward from one point to another. (imagine a ray on a graph, a point and infinitely many points forward are only possible in the positive side of the graph) You can go forward at this current time. You need to be going as close to light speed as possible. For a real life example, look at Cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev, who has spent the most time of any human being in space, is 1/50th of a second younger and in the future (weird correlation, I know, but that's how it is), than a normal person his age is, or if he hadn't gone into space. The faster you travel, the slower time actually appears to move. About the "future us looking like grey aliens"-thing.. It will take a loooooooong time. And since other theories about the future are those of a sun getting destroyed.. meaning we will never look like aliens at all! Yay go us! I think you're underestimating the time and speed at which evolution occurs. It may take a while, yes, but it won't be in several millions of years. 200,000 years ago, first humanoids (at least how we know them as) appeared. 10,000 years ago civilizations started, and 2,000 years ago we see the end of the first great empire. In the 3,000 years since Rome, Egypt, and Mesopotamia, we as humans have actually begun to lose the ability of our toes and they keep getting smaller and smaller due to wearing shoes and other environmental factors. In fact, the next things to 'go' in terms of evolution will more than likely be our pinky fingers and pinky toes. Hell, in less than 50 years our bodies and stomachs have evolved to be able to process the amount of crap we eat daily. If someone from the past were to arrive, they wouldn't be able to cope well with our foods. In a couple hundred years, we as human beings are more or less going to 'morph' into a single race of tan(ish) skinned, browish haired, browned eyed people, as more dominant genes are spread faster and recessive genes are either lost or completely suppressed... For example, and not trying to be racist. Note this isn't entirely scientific and goes from my knowledge of biology and evolution: You take a white man(or woman) and a black woman(or man) and they have a child. There would be about a 25% chance it is black, 25% that it's white, 50% chance it is a mix. That child has a child with another mixed race child and the odds of it being either all white or all black drop to 12.5% for each, and about 75% mixed. Keep going you get 6.25% to 87.5%, 3.125% to 93.75% etc. Not entirely scientific and assumes many things, but eventually these races we see, that we are prejudiced to will be basically eliminated save for the rare outlier (like albinos) and we become a mix of Caucasian, Black, Asian, Polynesian, Native American et. al.

2009-03-15 23:20:00 Author: LightGrenades Posts: 218

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One of two twins travels away from earth at SOL, returns at SOL, and he sees twin as really old but himself as young, other twin sees him as old and himself as young, which is a contradiction. That's not a contradiction... but a paradox (the paradox of time travel; that you can see the effects before their causes have occured). It's not a contradiction because the young and the old twin aren't really the same entity. They are 'the same' from a rather loose psychological perspective (they both call themselves the same person), but not from a physical view (their bodies both consist out of totally different cells their minds out of more or less different ideas, their characters out of more or less different different features), and that's what counts from the perspective of causes and effects. Strictly speaking, if I go time-traveling, I can never meet my exact self since that one is out traveling. All the other wonko's are not the same as the time-traveling wonko in the respect that they didn't even or did already form the intention to go out tripping at the time (err?) the tripping wonko acts on that intention.

2009-03-16 01:00:00 Author: Wonko the Sane Posts: 109

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I think the heads-tails parallel universe thing you were talking about isn't really restricted by law of "it deosn't work here so it has to work there!" It's more about sudden decisions, not long-term ones. (imo anyway, seeing nothing is correct in this convo ) And Coot has a fair point :

2009-03-21 02:19:00 Author: Pinchanzee Posts: 805

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