Time Travel

[Steve Funk]

Does anyone in the group consider time travel to be something other than bunk? Actually, I think Wikipedia suggests a slight theoretical possibility. I am not into physics enough to understand the process. A conspiracist friend of mine talks about time travel, chemtrails and morgellons almost in the same sentence.

 

[JeffreyNotGeoffrey]

I consider it bunk, and if it was real it would be incredibly dangerous. With relativity time slows as you approach the speed of light. I guess in theory if you go faster than the speed of light, then time might go backwards. But you would need to go faster than the speed of light, which as of now is considered impossible.

 

[Jazzy]

It may be possible for sub-atomic particles to individually circumvent causation. But we're made of atoms.

See the problem? Breaking us down into sub-atomic particles is a pretty one-way destruction of information. No info? No reconstruction. Beam me down, Scotty.

 

[Ben Klumaster]

There are other forms of time travel that have been suggested, but they generally require something pretty ridiculous to make them work - I'm a big fan of the Tipler Cylinder, where the only limitation is that it has to be infinitely long, but the idea of constructing a stable wormhole and subjecting one end to relativistic time dilation is a sci-fi classic and only has a few restrictions (such as proving you can build a stable wormhole, and building a spacecraft fast enough to rack up enough time dilation). Either way, they tend not so be something you can build in your garden shed, even if you have the kind of garden shed that DARPA money buys.

 

[JeffreyNotGeoffrey]

For now at least I don't think it is possible. Talk to me again after you've unfrozen me from cryogenic stasis for a 100 years and then the technology may have advanced.

 

[Soulfly]

I am sitting in my chair, I am not moving but the Earth is moving around the Sun and the Sun around the center of the galaxy and so on, so in a sense I am always moving.

Since time goes slower or faster depending on speed, if someone was floating in intergalactic space and not moving at all, not orbiting anything. If you were not moving at all what would happen to time?

Edit to add - Does the expansion of space prevent me from being completely stationary?

 

[Ben Klumaster]

And as if by magic, I'm totally out of my depth.

 

[hemi]

Does the expansion of space prevent me from being completely stationary?

In relation to what?

 

[Soulfly]

In relation to what?

If galaxies are flying away from each other because of the expansion of space then if I'm floating away from any gravitational forces and everything is flying away from me, am I moving along with it or is my mass too small?

 

[cosmic]

If anyone's interested enough to kill an hour on the subject, I found this lecture quite enjoyable. Sean Carroll deconstructs common sci-fi time travel plot devices and vets the notions we have about paradoxes, then explores less outrageous theoretical possibilities.