A Problem with TimeTravel

<i>Originally posted by kao</i>
<br />Time travel is not just implausible, but is logically impossible in physics because it puts the effect before its cause. [See metaresearch.org/cosmology/PhysicsHasItsPrinciples.asp ] So why beat a dead horse? -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">So why beat a dead horse? <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">Cause it's fun, Tom! Don't be such a killjoy.

I do agree that physical time travel is logically selfcontradictory, but to answer Kao: You'd have to program your time machine in space-time coordinates relative to some inertial frame of reference, such as the local supercluster of galaxies; and you'd have to be able to accurately predict (or postdict) the location and velocity of Earth upon your arrival. It would be much safer to arrive in orbit above Earth, rather than on the surface; that way, if Earth isn't precisely where you expect it to be, or if somebody builds a wall in the middle of your target zone while you're away, you'll still be safe. If your round trip involves thousands of years, you'd better plan to return to an Earth-crossing solar orbit; then recalibrate, jump to Earth orbit and from there jump to a soft landing on Earth.

Back to physical reality: It is conceptually possible to cross the galaxy and return to Earth within the lifetime of the traveler---without violating general relativity. On your return, Earth would be 100,000 to 200,000 years older, so don't expect a warm welcome. Notwithstanding Einstein's twins paradox (which he intended as a joke), the time dilation only works one way.

Decades ago, I wrote a numerical program in Basic to solve the relativistic rocket problem; it's on a 5 1/4" floppy, so I can't retrieve it now. That program let me specify the mass of my vehicle and cargo, a number of laser-drive engines and a maximum limit on my accelleration. The hypothetical engines convert mater & antimatter to laser energy with 100% efficiency; they produce a thrust equal to about 100 times the engine's weight on Earth. (You want to be careful where you aim your exhaust, as it might cut the Earth in half.) According to that program, the Moon wouldn't be here when you get back, because you had to convert half of it to antimatter and take all of it with you for fuel; it also helped to shield you from dust particles along the way. You'd have to take even more fuel with you if you didn't have a portable light-weight mater to antimatter converter to make fuel for the return trip at the turn-around point. Another fuel-saver in the program is the ability to chuck your excess engines into the converter as you near your destination. Try presenting that project to Congress for funding!

Most of the problems of time travel have to do with the assumption that we must take our physical body with us. Since the spiritual realm is not constrained by the laws of physics, it makes better sense to hypothesize about the spirit leaving its present body and finding itself in control of another body at a different time and place.

Whether it is possible for a spirit to retain its knowlege of one time and place while relocating to another is open to religious and philosophical debate. I'll spare you from my nasty opinion of organized religious institutions.

I personally believe that each of us IS ("I am that I AM.") everyone else in different journies thru the same infinitely recursive and fractal universe. If I could make a jump from my present self to another self, I probably would carry no knowlege of my present existence with me. For all I know, such jumps may be happening all the time. All possible pasts, presents and futures exist independent of time and place; it is only our spiritual choice not to perceive everything at once.

I totally agree. So in order for one to access a celestial body one has to 'sync up' with the surrounding celestial bodies. Forgive my laymens terms.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by kao</i>
<br />I totally agree. So in order for one to access a celestial body one has to 'sync up' with the surrounding celestial bodies.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">You had better hope the time traveler "syncs up" with extremely good precision. Any small error and he will materialize far off the ground and fall, or below the surface and blend with rock. But that's just the start of troubles. Even appearing on the surface, the time traveler has no way to displace the air at the spot where he materializes, so he will materialize around that air and merge with it. (This is a miniature version of the problem with materializing below ground.) All one's bones and tissues will be air-bloated, and one's lungs will have double the normal air, which is enough to explode them. Then the paradoxes begin.

I love time travel movies because of the variety of clever ways they try to deal with the paradoxes. But I never let my love of sci-fi concepts blur the boundary between imagining the future and imagining the impossible. -|Tom|-

With all due respect Kao I will differ with you. I have spent over 20 years researching the subject of Time and the engineering of it. Time travel as you may call it. I call it warp technology. In my research I find many have made the same mistake I feel you are making. Time travel has no direction with placement or paths of planets and orbits. It has to do with moments and surface of mass. Where one would end up in a jump has nothing to do with the path but only the moment of the mass surface at that moment. Each mement is locked to its placment in Time.
There is not enough room to go into this here but you or others may contact me if anybody wishes to hear more of what I have found. You may wish to read one of my papers to understand where I am coming from.

Journal Of Theoretic's: 2004

Quantum Gravity, Time As Derived from Pi

www.journaloftheoretics.com/Links/Papers/FinalP.pdf

www.journaloftheoretics.com/Articles/6-3/York.pdf

GS Journal: 2003

Discovery of Solution to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

. www.wbabin.net/york/york.htm



<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by kao</i>
<br />OK. Let's just put aside all skepticism for a minute, and assume that time travel is possible. With that said I have to bring up a major problem regarding a sucessful trip in a time machine.. The problem; landing on the earth in the new time frame. The earth travels around the galaxy at about half a million miles per hour! That's 8333mi/min or about 138 miles per second. So even if you only traveled in your time machine for one second of earth time, by the time you reach the future the earth will have moved 138 miles! Will the time machine keep it's momentum following the earth during time travel? Or will the time machine end up in the new time frame while remaining in the same place? - which will now be 138 miles away from the earth's new position. The problem worsens. What about the speed of the galaxy? What about the fact that everything is moving in spirals? That's already to much math for me. Any thoughts?
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The only option if man is going to reach the Stars in a lifetime is to master both Space and Time. Warp Technology today!

We don't know where we are in time. Even in a universe with an apparent beginning to act as a standard, we can't be sure that that the universe hasn't already played out to a much longer degree than we presently percieve ... because ... suppose that the inhabitants of a universe made the hypothetical supercomputer that "we live in".

Hence, if we live in a Matrix-type universe, one could pop in and out of thin air or in and out of the sequence of events against our experienced rules of physics and logic. The masters of the program in which we exist could do as they pleased (and do with us as they pleased).

The 64 dollar question then is ... "Are the masters of the matrix also imbedded in someone else's programmed universe?". The logic goes round and round. Our only reasonable option is then to accept the apparently objective universe as just what it appears to be ... unstructured by any "intelligent design", i.e. no gods intervene.

Time travel is possible ... if and only if ... the universe is non-objective (as religions claim it to be). Then conceivably we could get control of the program by some means and bend it to our liking. You could go back in time and kill your grandfather and see what the consequences would be ... to that program. Most assurably, something would happen.

Coincidently, I was just watching "Futurama" a few hours ago and Bender got left behind in 1947 but they dug him up (just his head) in ~3017 with the aid of a metal detector when Fry & Company got back to that era via their spaceship through a timehole made by the confluence of a nova and their microwave oven in which Fry had irresponsibly placed a metal popcorn popper. It doesn't have to make sense ... it's non-objective ... and it turned out that Fry was his own grandfather!! Very racy.