If time travel exists

by sabastious 50 Replies latest jw friends

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  HintOfLime

  See the problem?

  It is like having only a finite number of building blocks on a table.

  To build new things you have to wreck some of the old things.

  Marty! You're not thinking 4th dimensionally!

  - Lime
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  Nickolas

  Is it my imagination or is there a correlation between belief in things supernatural and belief in things that defy the known laws of physics and accepted scientific theory / evidence? The number of people in here who believe in UFOs, extraterrestrial visitations, superluminal travel and time travel to the past seems a bit higher than the norm.
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  Robdar

  Some of you posters are bona fide smartasses. Gawd, I love you people!
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  OnTheWayOut

  Why wouldn't past travel be possible? The multiverse theory would indicate that if you have altered the past and when you return to the present it is normal for everyone but you.

  What "multiverse theory" is that? Sounds like pure science fiction, not any kind of mathematical theory. I am not educated enough to really attempt to explain it, but the math geniuses that do explain it have figured out that we cannot have an unstable past that can be changed. They don't rule out past time travel mathematically at first, but have figured that if it ever did or ever would happen, the individual journeys are already part of our past. They would be rigid and have already affected our present. There would be no paradox. Nobody could have gone back and shot their father before he caused their own existence, or anything else that would cause dramatic changes to the known "future" of that time-travellor.

  Since it would be a rigid part of our known past, and we couldn't even prevent ourselves from travelling back if we knew we did, that removes our ability to control our own path in the future. Since that actually cannot be done, neither can past time travel be done.

  If the multiverse theory would take you into a completely different universe, then it is not part of this one and nothing here would change (except you would be missing until/if you ever came back from the different universe).
• 

  tec

  Is it my imagination or is there a correlation between belief in things supernatural and belief in things that defy the known laws of physics and accepted scientific theory / evidence? The number of people in here who believe in UFOs, extraterrestrial visitations, superluminal travel and time travel to the past seems a bit higher than the norm.

  No, Nick, hon. You're looking at it wrong.

  Perhaps there is more of a correlation between non-belief in anything supernatural, and people who are unable or unwilling to believe in anything beyond accepted scientific theory/evidence.

  Tammy
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  tec

  If we could travel back in time, it is part of our existing history and nothing changes. In other words, if someone was able to go back in time and decided to save Abe Lincoln from John Wilkes Booth, then their journey is already part of history and they failed to stop the shooting. If anyone ever interacted with themself in the past, they would know it happened and know they have to travel back in time. They could not prevent it. Since that doesn't seem logical, travel to the past is impossible.

  If time travel (to the past) were possible, then I like this theory the best, and I also think it most likely. There is order to it. Anything else would be chaotic and perhaps destructive.

  I like the multi-verse theory best for sci-fi writing though. Its what I'm going to use... unless I come up with something new by the time I write that kind of book.

  Tammy
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  RubaDub

  There have been examples of time travel on TV.

  I recall seeing episodes of Sherman and Peabody in which they went into a machine and explored the past.

  Rub a Dub
• 

  PSacramento

  RE: energy:

  Yes, energy can be created from nowhere for a short amount of time cause of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The particle that are created are called "virtual particles" and are always created in pair because of conservation laws (charge, ...). Energy conservation can be violated for short times and this happens all the time. In the same way we can describe interactions in quantum electro dynamics. The hawking effect is based on this energy creation and destruction.
  
  Watch in google, or wikipedia for:
  Heisenberg's uncertainty prinziple
  Energy-time uncertainty
  virtual particles

  You guys need to watch the Time Machine with Guy Pierce ;)
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  tec

  Kate & Leopold is an example of what OTWO was talking about... except of course it was possible in the movie.
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  OnTheWayOut

  If you ever watched the trilogy, BACK TO THE FUTURE, they actually did a pretty good job with interaction with one's past. You have to allow paradox for entertainment. If paradox could happen, the movies were fairly accurate. There may have been some minor flaws, like a picture from the future changing in the past slowly as events changed but that was necessary to show they were affecting the future. There's no point in entertainment showing people going back just to view the past. It would be great in reality, but to sell a book or a movie, you have to be able to change things.

  I suppose that is true for us too. There's not much point in speculating about "viewing" our own past, but plenty of point in discussing changing it.