Time travel?

[Kuya]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20360859/

A new concept for a time machine could possibly enable distant future generations to travel into the past, research now suggests.

Unlike past ideas for time machines, this new concept does not require exotic, theoretical forms of matter. Still, this new idea requires technology far more advanced than anything existing today, and major questions remain as to whether any time machine would ever prove stable enough to enable actual travel back in time.

Time machine researchers often investigate gravity, which essentially arises when matter bends space and time. Time travel research is based on bending space-time so far that time lines actually turn back on themselves to form a loop, technically known as a "closed timelike curve."

Now, i din't know gravity bends time and space, and i still don't get what it means, anybody care to elaborate? And speaking of which, if time travel where possible, wouldn't we have been visited by people from the future already? But then he said this:

Ori emphasized one significant limitation of this time machine — "it can't be used to travel to a time before the time machine was constructed." His findings are detailed in the Aug. 3 issue of the journal Physical Review D.

I still don't quite get it though.

[Siniroth]

Now, i din't know gravity bends time and space, and i still don't get what it means, anybody care to elaborate?

Probably a more complex version of the way wormholes work.

wormholes bend space so much that two points touch (like bending a long strip of paper, an ant would normally need to walk the whole distance to get to other side of paper, if it's bent to the point of touching, only needs to go a few steps.

*shrug* i dunno

Ori emphasized one significant limitation of this time machine — "it can't be used to travel to a time before the time machine was constructed." His findings are detailed in the Aug. 3 issue of the journal Physical Review D.

This would make sense, otherwise a paradox the technology probably couldn't handle would occur, as it wouldn't be able to have a bending influence in a time where it didn't exist

[quannum]

General relativity & Gravity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rocNtnD-yI

explains the space/time bending bit

[Falconblade]

Time travel is a mindfuck.
I had more to say, but I can't word it right. Maybe I'll post later.

[BRP]

A number of obstacles remain, however. The gravitational fields required to make such a closed timelike curve would have to be very strong, "on the order of what you might find close to a black hole," Ori told LiveScience. "We don't have any way of creating such strong gravitational fields today, and we certainly have no way of manipulating any such gravitational fields."

This kind of kills it. I mean, "can't do it" is a reason we don't have a Star Wars galaxy already.

[Siniroth]

Well that's the reason they can't create wormholes, they'd need to create a gravitational force that bended space-time together, and they'd need to limit the effects the gravitational force had on space-time it wasn't meant to directly effect, so that everything around it didn't get fucked. We'd also need something that could keep things intact throughout the trip, Stargate actually has a pretty good way of doing it, even if it seems a little impossible, which it probably is...

The Stargate functions by demolecularizing a person's body, and storing it's data in the control crystal, the information is then sent along a wormhole connecting this Stargate to another one. The other Stargate then reconstructs our bodies, and we show up several million lightyears away

>_> more or less exact words, I like the show

[Not Kuno]

Havn't had a good science thread in a while please don't let this one die.

[Talus]

1) Could they travel back in time to make more sequels to "Time Cop" starring the glorious Jean Claude Van Damme? You have to admit he makes a quality piece of crap.

2) If you traveled back in time to give your younger self advice, would you do it if it meant being caught in an infinite Groundhog Day loop? (ignore the paradox issue)

[Siniroth]

explain this loop plox? I'm unfamiliar

PS: If you mean that, I go back in time to give myself the advice, then I no longer need the advice, so I dont go back in time, so I no longer have the advice, and so on and so forth, Yes, I'd just tell myself to go back in time at the proper point and give myself the advice

[Keno]

Even if we ever do succeed at making a time travel device, it will be banned instantly. No one will allow you to go into the past and risk fucking things up and ending the world as we know it and no one will allow you to go into the future and see things that will affect how you're supposed to live. Governments/etc. everywhere would ban it instantly. Fun thing to talk about though.

[Xavier]

I'd just go back in time and unban it.

[MisterBob]

Not like banning things stops people anyways.

[Tricen]

It's impossible to travel back in time, but you can forward in a way.

[ertyu]

1) Could they travel back in time to make more sequels to "Time Cop" starring the glorious Jean Claude Van Damme? You have to admit he makes a quality piece of crap.

2) If you traveled back in time to give your younger self advice, would you do it if it meant being caught in an infinite Groundhog Day loop? (ignore the paradox issue)

Even if you were able to go back in time and give yourself advice it would not change the outcome of your future. It's hard to explain but a lot of scientists who do this shit theorize that disrupting the past to change the future is impossible.

[Venture]

Ori emphasized one significant limitation of this time machine — "it can't be used to travel to a time before the time machine was constructed." His findings are detailed in the Aug. 3 issue of the journal Physical Review D.

That's a big pill to swallow. If this one statement is true, then that means that non-physical actions such as idea and intent don't apply up and down whatever intermesh connects time. If the physical action of constructing a time travel machine is the only action that allows for time travel from the construction point and forward, then does that mean that all our actions leave an impression on time, and that the stream of time from one end to the next is instantaneous for a time travel machine to be able to go back and forth, checking for times when it has been created to go to?

What if the time machine stops working from a certain point? Just because it existed, does it mean that the potential for it to be fixed and used again allow for another time machine hundreds of years down the road to come into existence, to go back to before the first time machine was broken, and prevent whatever caused the first to cease functioning? It rather lends some weight, if true, that all time is but an instant, and how fast or slow it occurs is based on our ability to perceive it.

...This is why you don't fuck with time travel in storylines...

[Nuketwig]

It's impossible to travel back in time, but you can forward in a way.

http://www.acegamez.co.uk/blog/uploa...ii3-701986.jpg

[Tricen]

Cryogenics is seemingly impossible because when you freeze yourself, the vacules in your cell tissue freeze, causing them to burst and destroy the cell.

[Venture]

1) Could they travel back in time to make more sequels to "Time Cop" starring the glorious Jean Claude Van Damme? You have to admit he makes a quality piece of crap.

2) If you traveled back in time to give your younger self advice, would you do it if it meant being caught in an infinite Groundhog Day loop? (ignore the paradox issue)

Even if you were able to go back in time and give yourself advice it would not change the outcome of your future. It's hard to explain but a lot of scientists who do this shit theorize that disrupting the past to change the future is impossible.

I've heard of these theories, too. I forget what it's called, but it's like you can't change what's already been done. If you do change something in your past, it just creates a new parallal of that time and keeps going independant of the one you came from, based on the things you did. It makes my head hurt to think about it, but best thing I could think of for it, is that time is based on how you perceive it.

[Tricen]

Donnie Darko!

[Siniroth]

Aye, that would be the multiverse theory... all possible decisions are played out in alternate universes

ie:

Yes or no.

Makes two universes, one from yes, one from no.

If possibilities are yes, or no, if yes, red or blue

then yes: red, yes: blue, no

and so on and so forth.

Travelling back in time would just give you more possible decisions, causing more universes to be made