Bigthink - Idea Comments Feed

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 19:39:18 +0100

The 'lack' of future visitors is not proof of the non-existence of time travel:

* The 'closed loop' theory of time travel holds that the traveller can only go back to the year the machine was invented.

* Future visitors may not be visible to us
ie. the 'parallel universe' theory

* Some people (i.e. John Titor) have claimed to be from the future. Others may have reasons for not disclosing their origin.

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 06:34:46 +0100

I'm traveling forward in time right now...

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 02:13:01 +0100

"blinkofaneye" is most likely correct. Relativity places severe limitations on the possibilities of time travel (backwards). Personally, as an engineering physics major, I do not think that time travel is possible. But if it is, it would most likely require an ability to warp the geometry of spacetime in a way that allows objects within that area to visit their own past.

So traveling back to the past would only be possible once a method for doing so was achieved, and even then no one would be able to travel back to a time before that.

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 22:25:51 +0100

Stem cell research? Only an idiot would ban stem cell research. Wait, what year is this?

Time travel, if ever invented, would be a very dangerous production, indeed. Maybe if, multiple overlapping versions of reality, existed, like in the TV show 'Sliders', you would only be able to travel to the past of an alternate parallel world, so as to not destroy your original world. But it is all speculation, right now, so just mental exercises at this point.

Hold on a minute, I have a call coming in from President Gore.......

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:44:04 +0100

the final say on the topic of time travel is that time only moves forward and there is no way to make it stop (without destroying reality) or go backwards. However, many scientist's belive it is possible to travel into the future by means of traveling through space, becasue people don't age the same in space as earth, in order to only age about 1 year (biologicaly) to every about 100 years the earth ages. thus you could age ten years in the time the earth aged a thousand years. dont ask me if this is true im simply conveying the idea. All i dont know for sure is that it is impossible to travel to the past, ask any well respected scientist in the field because there happens to be an agreement among them.

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:29:33 +0100

I think that time travel will absolutely be possible in the future... however, our limitations will be huge. It's possible that we haven't interacted with time travelers from the future because they do not have the resources available to them yet for such an advanced trip. The energy needed to travel through time would be tremendous... and the further through time, the larger the amount of energy they would need. That being said, it stand to reason that we haven't reached the point in time yet where they will have the energy enough to go back to. (i.e. they can only go back 5 years, and the invention is still 20 years away).
Also, another idea is that the boundaries we have here on Earth (gravity, mass, etc.) are holding us back and we won't be able to travel through time until we have the ability to perform the task from space. Space will give us not only the lack of obstacles we have on earth, but also the room to expand our testing. Can you imagine opening up a rift in time that can't be closed on earth? Or opening up a rift that is thought to be time, but is actually dimensional and causes drastic events to occur? The further away from earth the better.

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 22:00:23 +0100

So no visits to ancient Babylonia or ancient Egypt? That is going to be bad for time travel tourism.
Interesting points one and all. Thanks for your input on this matter.

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:48:22 +0100

I think time is nothing more than a human perception.

We see it as linear; having a past and a future and the present traveling neatly along, which is where we are. We are in "the present". However realistically, we are also in the past. And many of us are also in the future. I can prove it:
Look at the clock. In one minute's time the you that you are now will be in the past. The future you will become the present you and then almost instantly the past you.

So really, it is not that we are constantly in the present, It's that our consciousness, or our PERCEPTION, is in the present. Our bodies are constantly traveling forward in time, just not our conscious thought.

I don't think that we, in the evolutionary state that we are in now, can ever move our consciousness back in time, or our bodies. We have not evolved to understand the dimension of time. We have evolved to survive and procreate and we did that through rational thought.
I think that in order to understand time, and therefor travel through it, we have to become something that is no longer ourselves.

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 06:11:49 +0100

Who says the future "us" hasn't made time travel and then it was banned by the same people trying to ban stem cell research?

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:17:21 +0100

AS blinkofaneye says above you may not be able to travel to a time before the first time machine or else have no way back to your proper time. As such it is feasable that the transfer of a person trough time has simply been asociated with disentigration. Also there is the possibility that there is never a chance of time travel as the movement may require too much energy and such would become unstable as it moved, making it impossible for any sort of structure to pass through time and stay in the same arrangement that it began its journey in. Thus before the possibility of time travel ever becomes availible it would be necisary for us to divise some way to process the particals on both ends of the time "jump" so that that person or object still maintained its mind and body. Also any "jumps" would require the "jumper" to go alone without things such as clothes weapons or currency. Thus the idea of time travel is ridiculus in this day and age as stated in this thougt because technology that has been released to te public is too infearior, however there may very well be government agencys that have these technologies but have not made the knowledge of them known to the public.

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 05:01:45 +0100

I have posted an idea on this, but the answer given by blinkofaneye could also be considered.

Comment on: Will mankind ever figure out a way to travel back in time?

Bigthink — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:42:03 +0100

Perhaps you can't travel further in history than the date a time machine is first operational and that's still in the future.