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Dr. Who Time War


petra1989
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Taking a quantum mechanical standpoint' date=' it's quite possible that time travel is doable... but pinpointing WHAT past would be the hard part.[/quote']

 

I love time travel discussions. One thing that occurs to me is that if time travel is possible, and if one can travel to the "future", then all time events (past and future) must, at some level, already exist. If that were to be true, then it would seem impossible to be able to actually change either the past or the future.

 

I heard a theory not too long ago (think it was related to string theory) on a really good PBS documentary that said we are locked into this universe, and that while there are an infinite amount of other universes, we can never physically access them. So the theory was that it would likely mean that our timeline is our only possible timeline in this universe, and time travel is possible but changing the time line is impossible.

 

The only case where it would be at all possible to visit your own past wouldn't be changing it at all' date=' because if you look hard enough, whatever you did was already done by someone matching your own description. The sad thing is that you can never be sure if that was the actual you, or another you; identical in all respects to you except for the one point that it isn't you. You couldn't know if you changed your own past, or the past of a timeline that was identical to yours, but not yours.[/quote']

 

So, if time travel is possible, then does that mean that time travellers already exist in some future event and are here now because they can?

 

Okay, my brain hurts. :)

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I heard a theory not too long ago (think it was related to string theory) on a really good PBS documentary that said we are locked into this universe' date=' and that while there are an infinite amount of other universes, we can never physically access them. So the theory was that it would likely mean that our timeline is our only possible timeline in [b']this[/b] universe, and time travel is possible but changing the time line is impossible.

 

The thing is, from the quantum view, we'd be able to travel to other universes before we could be able to travel in time in our own universe... because the process would be the same, and travelling to other universes would require less criteria to be met.

 

When thinking about time travellers... either this universe hasn't been found by interuniversal travellers from other timelines, nobody in our timeline has ever figured out how to isolate our own universe except (maybe) to return to the same place they left (i.e. only travel to when and where they left in the first place), or one of the above two has happened, but they were careful to not be seen or show up in historical records as having been here.

 

Yeah, some of this is pretty mind-bending... but it's paradox free, and I consider paradoxes to be the hallmark of faulty time theories :D

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Time Travel will never be possiable because time is one directional ...always flowing forward . What may actually be scientifically possiable however is to be able to travel at speeds that will propel us into the future where time has passed us by at a faster rate which would seem like forward moving time travel anyways

 

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Time Travel will never be possiable because time is one directional ...always flowing forward . What may actually be scientifically possiable however is to be able to travel at speeds that will propel us into the future where time has passed us by at a faster rate which would seem like forward moving time travel anyways

 

Hi Coolcat - one directional time is our experience, or rather what we are limited to. But let's assume that right now you are in a spot in space that is 100 light years away from Earth. You look back at Earth through a massive telescope and are able to make out detail. What you would actually see are images from 1905, correct? That would seem to point to evidence that time is non-linear since both the image you are viewing and you exist in the same space time, yet the image is 100 years old as well, isn't it?

 

:thinking:

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I heard a theory not too long ago (think it was related to string theory) on a really good PBS documentary that said we are locked into this universe' date=' and that while there are an infinite amount of other universes, we can never physically access them. So the theory was that it would likely mean that our timeline is our only possible timeline in [b']this[/b] universe, and time travel is possible but changing the time line is impossible.

 

The thing is, from the quantum view, we'd be able to travel to other universes before we could be able to travel in time in our own universe... because the process would be the same, and travelling to other universes would require less criteria to be met.

 

I'm no physicist, but I love to watch some of the programs where these guys are pushing these theories, which to me are just absolutely mind-bending. I guess that's why I like Doctor Who!

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Time Travel will never be possiable because time is one directional ...always flowing forward . What may actually be scientifically possiable however is to be able to travel at speeds that will propel us into the future where time has passed us by at a faster rate which would seem like forward moving time travel anyways

 

Yeah, I know...

 

t = 1/(sqrt(1-v^2/c^2))

 

... what I was talking about has nothing to do with hitting or breaking the speed of light, or going backwards in time in any direct way (i.e. by breaking the speed of light, which is impossible)

 

Edit: That's the formula for calculating time dilation given a particular velocity... (i.e. if v and c are in meters per second, it tells you how many seconds go by for 1 second of time at a standstill. v = speed of the object, c = speed of light (about 2.998x10^8 meters per second)

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What was it Hawking's editor told him: You cut your readers by 1/2 for every equation you use. So' date=' in "A Brief History of Time" he only used E=MC^2, thereby only halving the readers of the book. ;)[/quote']

 

Ah, yes, but did he get the top or the bottom half?

 

And wouldn't that be painful for the readers, too?

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I really like the previous discussions on Time Travel. Should we start a new thread to discuss this?

 

Here's my theory;

The time line that we know now is like the trunk of a very large tree, which is devoid (at first) of branches. The present is at the very top of the tree.

The very first instance that time travel is achived (and I think that it would be travel in to the past), wherever on the trunk a time traveller visits, a branch forms and voila! a new stream of time that branches out from the main one.

Why do we get branches? Well, I think that once the past is disrupted (by the appearance of a time traveller) that it is no longer the main trunk's past, but an alternate past.

 

There are lots of holes in this theory but it is a little different from others that I've looked in to.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Time is a human measure, it thosnt exist, it just is.

 

Time does not run, smel, or passthrow. To understand a little better imagine a boat fully stoped in the middle of the ocean, the ocean being the universe (every know thing) and the boat the time. It just is

 

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Time is a human measure, it thosnt exist, it just is.

 

Time does not run, smel, or passthrow. To understand a little better imagine a boat fully stoped in the middle of the ocean, the ocean being the universe (every know thing) and the boat the time. It just is

 

Time is the way that humans notice the effects of entropy. If you go alonmg with thw whole concept that the act of measuring something causes a change in state, it would seem to follow that by measuring time, we alter it.

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Time is merely the movement of objects through space.

 

If you could go back in time, you COULD change it, however in doing so you merely inhabit and continue into a different Timeline (according to Doctor Who). The original proceeds undisturbed.

 

Current quantum physics suggests that if you went back and changed time you would cause a new Alternate Universe to form and become locked into it. The original universe would continue undisturbed.

 

We can all travel faster into the future of course, we just need to accelerate up towards the speed of light to do that!

 

:p

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