Debate Are we able to travel back in time?

Hello all... it's time for my contribution to the debates forum. It took me a while but I'm here and ready to start a debatable topic.

Switching your hats to maths and physics... 'Is is viable for us to travel back in time or indeed travel to the future'... bearing in mind the consequences and whether it is a wise decision to do?

Comon, get that brain moving... bring in those thoughts

 

YES IT IS POSSIBLE. . . . .or so i belive. Einstiein had a theory about it. . . . . . .

 

Yeah... Einstein's theory called 'Relativity' suggests that time slows down around you given that you are travelling near the speed of light. If you were to change the course of time i.e. travel back in time (or forward in time) you must be travelling faster than the speed of light. But we have no technology to even get near that at this time. So how do you support your argument?

 

Actually, Einstein's theory disproves time travel. It says that one cannot travel faster than light, and time only slows down as you approach that speed.

Given every proof that has been presented, I would say that it would be impossible to travel with respect to time. There's the Grandfather's Paradox, the relativity problems, the fact that to create a wormhole (the only way to travel in time), one must create negative entropy, which is impossible due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, etc.

Remember, I'm currently in college to become an Astrophysics major. If you have proof otherwise, I'll look into it, but this is what I believe.

 

Ok, since you have mentioned the grandfather's paradox... Given that we 'do manage' to travel back in time do you think that 'something' of some sort will prevent you killing your grandfather? Because the future in that world is already set, if you change it to a certain extent you are not suppose to exist in the first place... thus the paradox theory, but let's say you tried to fire the gun at your grandfather in that time era. Do you think it will go off stray or a miracle of some sort will happen to prevent you changing the history and indeed also the future?

 

ahhh well at the rate that technology is progressing i am sure there will be away in the future.

 

Weeeeeeeellllll....

The thing is, if you were to kill your Grandfather (or and direct relative, for that matter), you would stop existing, thus could not have made the shot, thus do exist, thus have taken the shot, and so on. It's not a matter of a miracle stopping the bullet, it's a matter of not being able to go back in time to take the shot in the first place. The paradox is there to say that we cannot 'manage' to go back in time at all.

And technology has little to do with any science until the science has been understood. As we yet do not understand at all how it would be possible, the technology cannot be developed for it.

 

Technology is at this stage quite irrelevent. Take the black hole for an example. We know nothing escapes a black hole... not even light. But what goes on exactly inside it is still a mystery. Until then, all the physics on it are mere theories that are yet to be proven.

 

A couple minor notes: if we did go ftl, c or even close to c, time wouldnt so much as slow down as our perception of time would be altered. Say we went at a near c velocity in a circle around the Earth. To anyone who looked in our ship, we'd seem to be going incredibly slow, whilst we would observe history in naught but brief flashes. In that way, we'd technically be time travelling.

Also, we have managed to make something move faster than light. Read here. True, its not exactly the U.S.S. Enterprise, but we have to start somewhere!



IMPORTANT EDIT: Regarding Grandfather paradoxes, maybe the time continuum is a self-managing "entity" of sorts? For what I'm referring to, look at the Terminator series. If the evil cyborg in each particular film managed to accomplish its mission, there would be no need for it to be sent back, and hence it wouldn't be. But, as its there, and it had to come from somewhere, maybe "fate" fiddles with things so it ends up losing. Same goes for the episode of Futurama, "Roswell that ends well", where Fry kills his own Grandpa. This is rectified by him... well... he becomes his own, literal grandpa.

 

I was wondering, if you did go back in time and kill your grandpa, wouldn't you die right when he dies? Also, this is what I believe, if you did kill him, couldn't you be born by someone else? I believe that once you die, your reborn as a baby and forgotten everything from before. So basically, if you did die from killing your grandpa, couldn't you be born by someone else and have a new life when you went back to the present?

 

Or for all we know you become an anomaly that just appeared out of what would now be an alternate timeline.

 

Thank you, Neph, for clearing up what I had said before. No sarcasm intended here.

As far as Tachyons go, they are really a hypothetical particle. No one has observed them, and the only reason they exist theoretically is to recify some errors in relativity that have only currently arisen. Theoretically, Gravitons exist, too, but no one has observed them, and every physicist wants to, as they complete the Grand Unified Theory. Some believe that they travel faster than light, but again, there is no proof.

And I hardly consider Futurama, although a good show, a viable source of correct scientific information. And, though I've never seen the Terminator series, did any of the robots actually kill their targets? Honestly, I don't know. I've not seen them.

 

Neither were meant to be actual scientific sources, they were rather examples of how the time-space continuum could be "self-patching".


As for targets killed, the T-X in T3 did kill a number of secondary targets (some of Conners future Leiutenants).

 

I stand corrected. The whole "self-patching" idea has been put forth several times. Because we have not traveled in time, we cannot test it just yet.

BTW, I love that episode of Futurama. The whole microwave thing... hilarious.

 

I heard someone in Japan accelerated the speed of light by some 300 times... and even published a book about it. But I'm not too sure, I'm still trying to find facts about that.

 

As much as I'd like to live in a Sci-Fi world, I don't think it's possible... just due to certain events in the world... unless, of course, there's some super-secret agency, like in Time Cop that actually polices time to prevent things like that from happening. Otherwise you'd think there'd be intervention in such things like Wolrd Wars and the like....

 

I'm not sure about that, but there have been several successful attempts to stop light. I'll add a link to the site when I find it. It's really cool.

And there is scientific proof of light slowing down throughout the millenia. So there may yet be hope.

EDIT: Here's the link. Scientific American

 

time is one thing i think the human race should keep the paws off. lol its not like havent come up with great things in our own time, don't go and do stuff to things you have no understanding of. you have no way to know where the heck you are .time is one thing humans really don't seem to understand, besides the time of day on our clocks.......




[berry]edited so i can understand what the hell you're saying *^-^*[/berry]


^^^Wow berry what would i do without you?^^^

 

*dusks off a rather interesting topic*

I now know that it is possible to travel faster than light. This, however, does not mean that doing so will allow time travel.

Apparently, all matter waves travel faster than light, it's just their group velocities that cannot. This leads into some really deep relativity problems and other such stuff, like quantum mechanics and the M Theory. It gets real confusing.

But yes, faster than light travel is being done as we speak.

 

Well, this is a very interesting topic, but i have no answer, or own oppion on it, heres my sides of the story

1. If we could travel through time, wouldnt we of gone to our present time and shared our knowledge with one another, and wouldnt there be any wars, no death, nothing, wouldnt the world be happy

2.Maybe we do get time travel, but wouldnt want to go back in time to disturb any history of the past or anything, or any wars.

Both my storys are based around the same thing, but differant reason why they will or wont, so in my oppion, i have no idea