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Time Travel
Topic Started: Mar 14 2009, 05:43 PM (1,632 Views)
Giant Blue Anteater
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While I love the idea of traveling back 362 million years ago to observe an Ichthyostega and traveling 180 million years into the future to see how Earth has changed, I'm unfortunately rather skeptical of the possiblity of time travel. Personally, I think it is impossible. Even if it was, I still wouldn't try it, as even doing something as little as lifting an Ichthyostega to examine it like how Steve Irwin picks up a crocodile could drastically change history.
Edited by Giant Blue Anteater, Mar 15 2009, 12:01 AM.
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SIngemeister
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Of course time travel is possible. Just go to Glasgow and you're 200 years behind the rest of thw world.
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Carlos
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Go to Portugal and you'll likely see an Europe you thought no longer existed :P

Seriously, I think it is pratically impossible; in theory, the hypothetical methods are very difficult to create. Thus, its for all purposes a goal mankind will never reach, which is sad, because it would have many uses regarding paleobiology
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lamna
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Bloody Impossible? Why do you think the world was not conquered by the soviets in 1963 as it should have been?

I mean, yeah it is impossible.
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Ànraich
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Time travel is impossible. It's physically impossible to travel forward in time, as the time line branches into other time lines from any one point. And you can't go back in time because the mere act of you being in a period in the past will change it, thereby meaning you never make the time machine, thereby meaning you never go back in time. And from there you get stuck in a loop, as you never went back in time and therefore made the time machine, went back, changed it, never made it, didn't go back, didn't change it, made the machine, etc. Then you just stop existing.

Besides time isn't a thing. It's just a human idea, a way of breaking infinity into something we can comprehend and use.
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Well, technically flying from London to New York is a sort of going back in time, and vice versa
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Rodge the Linkbot
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Yes, it's possible, sadly only in one direction (Forward). So, yes you could go 180 million years into the future, but you can't come back home. After all, technically that's what Astronauts are constantly doing when they go to space, they go a slight second into the future as a side-effect.

However I will never, EVER say it's truly impossible. Just as far as we know. Think about it, it wasn't all that long ago we thought we couldn't survive going over sixty-or-so miles an hour. Not so long ago we thought there was an intelligent civilization on Mars. So, yeah, I accept the possibility, no matter how much of an improbability it is.
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Yorick
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Time travel is impossible you say?

One word: Wormholes.
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Rodge the Linkbot
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Well, yeah, if the virtual particles don't completely destroy the wormhole first. Maybe two wormholes or a pair of warp tunnels, but still, it's beyond what we can muster for a pretty long time.
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Ànraich
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Rodge the Linkbot
Mar 15 2009, 09:37 AM
Yes, it's possible, sadly only in one direction (Forward). So, yes you could go 180 million years into the future, but you can't come back home. After all, technically that's what Astronauts are constantly doing when they go to space, they go a slight second into the future as a side-effect.

However I will never, EVER say it's truly impossible. Just as far as we know. Think about it, it wasn't all that long ago we thought we couldn't survive going over sixty-or-so miles an hour. Not so long ago we thought there was an intelligent civilization on Mars. So, yeah, I accept the possibility, no matter how much of an improbability it is.
Going over sixty miles an hour and traveling through time are two very different things. Time travel is considerably more complex.
We should all aspire to die surrounded by our dearest friends. Just like Julius Caesar.

"The Lord Universe said: 'The same fate I have given to all things from stones to stars, that one day they shall become naught but memories aloft upon the winds of time. From dust all was born, and to dust all shall return.' He then looked upon His greatest creation, life, and pitied them, for unlike stars and stones they would soon learn of this fate and despair in the futility of their own existence. And so the Lord Universe decided to give life two gifts to save them from this despair. The first of these gifts was the soul, that life might more readily accept their fate, and the second was fear, that they might in time learn to avoid it altogether." - Excerpt from a Chanagwan creation myth, Legends and Folklore of the Planet Ghar, collected and published by Yieju Bai'an, explorer from the Celestial Commonwealth of Qonming

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Actually, it porbably is possible, we just need to work out how to stick to fingers at the laws of physics and teel them to jog on.
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Viridian
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Whether or not time travel is possible depends on several factors. However, whether or not you believe it is possible tends to depend on which of two camps you sit in. Those who believe Einstein's Relativity is correct and that Quantum Physics will be found to conform with it, and those that believe the opposite.

Personally I believe that the universe is fundamantaly deterministic and therefore time travel is probably possible on some level. However, if anyone were to achieve time travel into the past, they would find that their actions would have no effect whatsoever on the result of the timeline. Any changes they tried to cause would simply fail to make any difference.

For instance, if someone tried to create a grandfather paradox by killing their infant grandparent, they would find that they were simply not able to cause this to happen. Their actions would already have occured in their own past and failed to prevent their own birth as is made obvious by the fact that they have been born and have traveled into the past in order to attempt this.
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Yorick
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For instance, if someone tried to create a grandfather paradox by killing their infant grandparent, they would find that they were simply not able to cause this to happen. Their actions would already have occurred in their own past and failed to prevent their own birth as is made obvious by the fact that they have been born and have traveled into the past in order to attempt this.


Not necessarily. Scientists have considered this paradox therefore we now have Stephen Hawking's multiverse theory where you can manage to kill your grandfather and then when you return, you're in an alternate universe where you don't exist.

Dude. Didn't you ever see Back to the Future II?
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Genesis
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I agree with Viridian. I believe H.G. Wells theory that time is a fourth dimesion as real and solid as the three we normally recognize, and there is no real distinction between the four, except that, if he was right, it would require a device that could mimic, or manipulate, the effects of the human mind to transcend it.
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The only known way to travel in time AT ALL in known physics is to use a wormhole.


However, using a wormhole, you could only go to places where it already existed. This said, you could travel to the future and the past, but not to the 60s or anything.

On paradoxes: they are more than likely real. Since I believe in the multiverse theory, you would come through the wormhole to find that no one knew who you were. You would, however, still physically and mentally exist, you would just have to explain what you had done, and likely face charges for messing with the damn timeline, which is a big no-no. :( :( :( !!!
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