No, time travel is not possible. Everyone should know this. The simple reason that time travel is not possible is that time doesn’t flow. It is not a continuum. The past and future are not two separate locations the way Paris and New York are separate locations, and therefore cannot be travelled between. The perception that we have as humans that time passes is merely a trick of our nervous systems. The simple fact of the matter is that time doesn’t pass… we pass. So it is not possible to travel thru time.
MCDonald, your 100% correct. Good response for your first post. Welcome on board!
What do you mean by “time does not pass, we pass?” Time stands still? We wake up in the same day every day? So, if I stand still, then time stops relative to me???
Also, when you say time is a continuum, isn’t space a continuum? Can’t I travel through space?
I fail to follow your logic.
(There was already a thread on this subject.)
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy - Hawkeye 4077th
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that.
The perception that we have as humans that time passes is based on our observation that events occur in a linear and non simultaneous way. In fact, we don’t even have to observe these events to percieve some concept of time. For instance, if I walk outside to pick up the paper and notice that there are a number of leaves on top of the paper, I can surmise that the leaves fell or blew onto the paper after it was delivered. Some time lapse must have occured between the event of the paper hitting the ground and the leaves landing on the paper. No nervous system trick here - time does pass.
Not to mention the question: “What do we pass in?” – the answer, of course, being, “Time.”
There was a faith healer named Neil,
Who said, “Although pain is not real,
When I sit on a pin
And it punctures my skin,
I dislike what I fancy I feel.”
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
My knowledge in areas such as this is limited, but I thought there was no dispute that there is a space-time continuum.
Mirriam-Webster’s defines space-time as a system of one temporal and three spatial coordinates by which any physical object or event can be located - also called space-time continuum.
I’m sure this definition came from the experts in the field. As I see it, this does NOT seem to rule out time travel. And if it did, why would people like Hawkings even bother with the subject if what is proposed by Smcdonald were true?
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy - Hawkeye 4077th
Thank you all for your consideration. I don’t mean to posit these ideas as concrete facts. Rather, I only wanted to express the nature of time as I see it, in hope to gateher other points of view to further review my hypotheses. Again, thank you all.
Unfortunately folks, time travel, as much fun as it is to imagine, is simply impossible in our current universe. It is prohibited by the laws of thermo dynamics, the most important of which lays out cause and effect, in that order.
Stephen Hawking wrote about it because he thought it was interesting, and because he knew he could get in published and that people would read it. (He was right on all counts.)
In our expanding universe, time’s arrows point in the direction of expansion, and cause ALWAYS precedes and precipitates effect. For time travel to be possible, even theoretically, a way must be found to reverse all that and allow effect to precede cause.
Hawking wrote in “A Brief History of Time” that when the universe stops expanding and starts contracting a few hundred billion years from now, it seems possible, theoretically, that time’s arrows will point the other way and cause and effect might be reversed, or at least reversible, and a way to travel in time might not be very farfetched. Until then, we have to content ourselves with the SF time travel stories, the best of which, in my humble opinion, are Jack Finney’s “Time and Again”, and its sequel, “Now and Again”. (fuggeddabout that silly movie version of Time and Again with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymore. Bet you didnt know that Jack Finney had a small role in that flick)
How can we be sure that what we are experiencing right now is not happening because we have travelled already into the future & this is it?
As we go through the days, quite often there is proof that something we did today has already been done before, which would indicate we have travelled into the future. As my art teacher would say, ‘there is nothing new, it’s all been done before.’
Good discussion, but is there a column you’re discussing here?
Otherwise, should I move it to Great Debates?
Jill
Yeah, there’s topic or thread or whatever, it’s in the archive, I’m figuring out to add a link to it, so you don’t have to move it.
“I was being honest, @$$hole, I would expect YOU to know the difference.”
~~John Bender in The Breakfast Club.
Talk to me, baby! mcdsanti@hotmail.com
It’s no good declaring by simple fiat that time travel is not possible. According to General Relativity, it is possible. We’ve been through this all before.
Questions about the second law of thermodynamics and issues of causality are certainly raised by this, but you can’t just hold your breath, stamp your feet and say, “No!”
John W. Kennedy
“Compact is becoming contract; man only earns and pays.”
– Charles Williams
The column is Is time travel possible? (02-Jun-1989)
I’m telling you, time travel (based on what we know today, at least) is not possible. There is no breath holding and footstamping involved. By examining the base theory of relativity, time travel does appear to be possible. But this theory has yet to be proven, other than mathematically. Further, the fact that the possiblity of time travel seems to increase as one raches the speed of light not only disregards biology, but it serves to support the idea that time travel is not possible by these means. That is to say that one has to accept some given truths before it can be seen from my point of view.
One: Time does not flow. We percieve it to do so but it does not. This is made evident by the idea that time changes the faster one goes. If this is so, it clearly indicates that time is not fluid in nature, but more elastic, and cannot be traveled through. (Bower S., “Metaphysics: In Reference to Quanta and Physical Dynamics”, 1991)
Two: Reaching the speed of light may not be possible for biological creatures. Light is made of particles called photons, and is not comprised of waves. Given this, it seems logical that it can travel so fast since it is not hindered by the same physics that apply to larger things. Agreed, other things are not comprised of particles, like radio waves, and still travel at the speed of light, but this is energy, not matter.
A basic tenet of the Relativity theory is that matter and energy approach the same state the closer they get to the speed of light. Can a living being survie this? The world may never know.
Given these things, it is clear to me that time travel is not possible by modern means. I must acede that time travel may be possible in the future. What we know as humans seems to change so rapidly, why just 150 years ago everyone knew that flight was not possible. But it is. Things like this give me pause… But time travel? That just seems a little too far fetched. Flight and other things that have been touted as impossible deal directly with the physical world. Standard physics apply and therefore we cannot be sure of what is possible since there is an envelope to push. Time travel is different in that it deals with things that have never been done and theories that are academic. Like I said, the world may never know.
“I was being honest, @$$hole, I would expect YOU to know the difference.”
~~John Bender in The Breakfast Club.
Talk to me, baby! mcdsanti@hotmail.com
SMAK D,
Most ‘serious’ time travel ‘experts’ agree with you. FTL travel is not the way to get from here to back then. There are some pretty wild theories, but some of them are based on ‘real’ physics. Real, in the sense that they don’t violate any of the rules in the known universe… not necessarily real, in the sense that they are achievable… but that’s a different story.
Personally, my gut tells me that there is some basic flaw in our understanding of time and the properties of the universe and that time travel, in reverse, is impossible… Unfortunately, my gut has been wrong before, so I tend to avoid the ‘I-word’ as much as possible…
You may be right, but some of the reasons you give are flawed:
SMAK D
Two: Reaching the speed of light may not be possible for biological creatures. Light is made of particles called photons, and is not comprised of waves. Given this, it seems logical that it can travel so fast since it is not hindered by the same physics that apply to larger things. Agreed, other things are not comprised of particles, like radio waves, and still travel at the speed of light, but this is energy, not matter.
Electromagnetic energy can be conceived of validly as both particle and wave. This is fundamental. The reason it can go faster than anything else is that it has no rest mass, and thus does not need to worry about the same rules that apply to mass: mass increases asymptotically as speed approaches c, space seems to shrink in the direction of travel, and time dilates, such that at c an object would theoretically exist only in 2 dimensions, have infinite mass, and time would effectively stop. Thus the prohibition against a massive object ( an object having mass, that is) travailing at c: it would effectively cease to exist in our universe. As for radio waves, they are part of the electromagnetic spectrum as visible light but at a shorter wavelength. The same rules apply as to visible light.
A basic tenet of the Relativity theory is that matter and energy approach the same state the closer they get to the speed of light. Can a living being survie this? The world may never know.
Not really, except in the sense stated above: energy also has mass and at the speed of light a mass’ energy would be infinite. This is part and parcel with mass moving at c being impossible in our universe. But this is only relative to an observer, to a person moving at this speed all would seem normal.
Time travel by moving at the speed of light has never been considered possible, except in the sense that as an object approaches the speed of light it experiences time dilation. It would seem to a person that has been put in a ship and sent off at .99 c for a few hours and then sent back home that years have passed while they were away.
I could say more but don’t have the time
sorry, didn’t deliniate you quotes to well
You may be right, but some of the reasons you give are flawed:
SMAK D
Two: Reaching the speed of light may not be possible for biological creatures. Light is made of particles called photons, and is not comprised of waves. Given this, it seems logical that it can travel so fast since it is not hindered by the same physics that apply to larger things. Agreed, other things are not comprised of particles, like radio waves, and still travel at the speed of light, but this is energy, not matter.
Electromagnetic energy can be conceived of validly as both particle and wave. This is fundamental. The reason it can go faster than anything else is that it has no rest mass, and thus does not need to worry about the same rules that apply to mass: mass increases asymptotically as speed approaches c, space seems to shrink in the direction of travel, and time dilates, such that at c an object would theoretically exist only in 2 dimensions, have infinite mass, and time would effectively stop. Thus the prohibition against a massive object ( an object having mass, that is) travailing at c: it would effectively cease to exist in our universe. As for radio waves, they are part of the electromagnetic spectrum as visible light but at a shorter wavelength. The same rules apply as to visible light.
SMAK D A basic tenet of the Relativity theory is that matter and energy approach the same state the closer they get to the speed of light. Can a living being survie this? The world may never know.
Not really, except in the sense stated above: energy also has mass and at the speed of light a mass’ energy would be infinite. This is part and parcel with mass moving at c being impossible in our universe. But this is only relative to an observer, to a person moving at this speed all would seem normal.
Time travel by moving at the speed of light has never been considered possible, except in the sense that as an object approaches the speed of light it experiences time dilation. It would seem to a person that has been put in a ship and sent off at .99 c for a few hours and then sent back home that years have passed while they were away.
I could say more but don’t have the time
woodja,
You wrote:
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I don’t agree that time travel isn’t possible based on ‘laws’ of science. Laws of science also said that man was not meant to fly like the birds, but look at the Wright Brothers. And if you look back on the Middle Ages, so many things today would have been deemed ‘impossible’ to them. So just because we can’t see the mechanism for bringing it about doesn’t mean we can say that it is not possible at all. Science is not a definite thing. It’s ever changing and new theories and hypotheses are being formed every day. So I think my personal motto fits very well here “Nothing is impossible, merely untried”
And do you humans really fly like birds?
It took a change in the idea to have humans flying, i.e. now we use airplanes that use fluid physics to fly, we don’t go around flapping our legs and arms.
The impossibility was a technological issue, not a scientific one.
In the case of topics like time travel, it comes to be more a scientifical problem. It is not a matter of “how do we achieve the speed of light”… we just can’t, it doesn’t mind how you want to achieve it, or if the technology will be up to it. The problem is that to accelerate to the speed of light, you need an infinite amount of energy. Similar, the time travel is being discussed not as a technological problem, but as if there is a contradiction with nature’s law to do so.