• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Time machine being built!

Fluffywolf

Nips away your dignity
Joined
Mar 31, 2009
Messages
9,581
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
9
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRWwI61so5Q"]First time machine[/YOUTUBE]

The idea is by firing a particle through a cone shaped network of lasers, so that the particle speeds up (from the observers point of view) and goes faster than the speed of light from the observers point of view, dissappearing from sight. It is theorised that the particle will travel back in time to an earlier moment of when the time machine was active. And it is thinkable that codes could be send back through time by means of an array of dechiparable particles.

There is a flaw however with the theory in my opinion. I think it's unlikely that it is possible to send particles back in time this way, and ever more likely that time slows down to zero from the observers point of view, effectively locking the particle inside the loop. And the more particles they will send, the more particles will build up appearing stuck in the vortex.

However from the particles point of view, the particle will go through the spiral at the speed of light and leaves/dissappates at the end as if no time distortion happened. That time distortion, in my opinion, will probably cause for some really cool looking light effects, but it probably won't break zero time.

Still it's an interesting experiment, because it will be the first time we would be able to test as the observer in Einstein's theory at speeds of light for the first time in history.

Do you think the idea has actual merit, or do you think it's a fairytale dream, like I think it is? :D
 

Green Crack

New member
Joined
Jun 15, 2010
Messages
16
MBTI Type
ENTP
I was under the impression the energy needed to warp space-time like that was many many times that of what we produce globally.
 

Fluffywolf

Nips away your dignity
Joined
Mar 31, 2009
Messages
9,581
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
9
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
I was under the impression the energy needed to warp space-time like that was many many times that of what we produce globally.

Not if we just bend light particles only. That's the interesting beauty of the experiment.
 

Green Crack

New member
Joined
Jun 15, 2010
Messages
16
MBTI Type
ENTP
If it did work, that could change a lot. Assuming our future selves where nice enough to send us back some info that could help us skip some years of technological development.
 

kendoiwan

I am Sofa King!!!
Joined
Dec 24, 2008
Messages
1,334
MBTI Type
IsTP
I'm under the impression time travel is only possible ahead not backward.
 

Aleksei

Yeah, I can fly.
Joined
Mar 10, 2010
Messages
3,626
MBTI Type
ENTJ
Enneagram
7w6
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I wonder how long it'll be till we have this:

tardis1.jpg


I can't wait :drool:
 

Daedalus

New member
Joined
May 16, 2010
Messages
185
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
5
This is really interesting.


Btw, wormholes exist all around us..but in microscopic scale..the trick would be to make one big enough for us to go through. Wormholes can not only connect different parts of this universe, but other parallel (and not parallel) universes as well. So by using a wormhole we will not only have the ability to go to a different place in our universe faster than light, but also to other universes and times.
 

Phoenix_400

New member
Joined
Sep 1, 2009
Messages
297
MBTI Type
INxP
Enneagram
5w6
I wonder how long it'll be till we have this:

tardis1.jpg


I can't wait :drool:

Shhh...None of you are supposed to know about that yet.

ALRIGHT EVERYONE! OUT OF MY SECRET LABORATORY!!!
I can't believe this got leaked to the public. :doh: It would appear I have a minion cruisin' for a beheading. When I find out who it was....:angry:

:D
 

Reflection

New member
Joined
Jun 13, 2010
Messages
344
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5
I wonder how long it'll be till we have this:

tardis1.jpg


I can't wait :drool:

Aleksei... If by chance you get the only working TARDIS in the world, you would take me with you, wouldn't you? I'd be a right good companion too. :yes:
 

Phoenix_400

New member
Joined
Sep 1, 2009
Messages
297
MBTI Type
INxP
Enneagram
5w6
Sure thing. :)

Y'all keep your hands off my TARDIS or I'll make sure you were never born. :newwink:

This is upsetting. I need to cool down.

:Gets in his Delorean and goes for a relaxing Sunday drive...through ancient Greece: :D
 

Litvyak

No Cigar
Joined
Oct 5, 2008
Messages
1,822
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Btw, wormholes exist all around us..but in microscopic scale..the trick would be to make one big enough for us to go through.

I've read it's impossible because of the radiation feedback.
Wouldn't bet on it though, the whole theory of time travel is beyond my comprehension.
 

Reflection

New member
Joined
Jun 13, 2010
Messages
344
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5
Isn't there a theory about time travel that says that even if we built a time machine capable of transporting humans, we could only travel as far back as the moment of production of the first time machine? Which would in and of itself bring about a paradox. Unless you account for multiple timelines theory.

Y'all keep your hands off my TARDIS or I'll make sure you were never born. :newwink:

This is upsetting. I need to cool down.

:Gets in his Delorean and goes for a relaxing Sunday drive...through ancient Greece: :D

*backs away slowly*

Aleksei... keep the TARDIS nearby, I fear we'll need it to escape.
 

Polaris

AKA Nunki
Joined
Apr 7, 2009
Messages
2,529
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
451
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
In scientific theory, the future is understood as a time-space stacked on top of our own like a sheet of paper, and accorded the same level of presence as the present in its more immediate sense. A genuine experience of the future, however, gives us what might be described as an imaginary point toward which motion is oriented, or in more direct terms, simple possibility (which includes goals, predictions, omens, certainties, and beliefs). The definitive trait of a possibility is that it's an answer to a question, where that question springs from the present, the present being that which we question or doubt in spite of its adequacy (or truth).* The future, by being a form of presence, is also in question; even the expectation that my front yard hasn't vanished falls to doubt in the sense that I'm only expecting it and waiting for it to prove itself, or perhaps just assuming it (which is a form of self-doubt).

In what sense can an expectation determine the present? If I expect the sun to rise tomorrow, the sun isn't presently in the sky; I have not determined anything except my own thoughts. And when the sun does rise, there is certainly no equivalence between my earlier expectation and the sense of relief, indifference, or self-assuredness I get when the sun actually does rise. I may remember my thoughts in great detail, certainly, but those thoughts are not, and can't be, the world before me; in a manner of speaking, my thoughts are inside that world, along with my silent appreciation of the truth that they reach out to and embrace, a truth that is something new in the world in spite of being anticipated.

If my prophecies, whether about the sun or about sending back information through a time machine, were actually to "determine" the course of the future in advance (and I hesitate to even say that, because it's incoherent), it would be as though a spell had come over things and they no longer had any alternative but to obey me; I myself would fall under the spell, too, for I would have no choice but to follow the law set down by my earlier self. In short, I would become a kind of god, and not only that, but both the present and the past would vanish, neither of them having a place in which the future is already actualized as the sum total of existence, and everything would become a static image of the future that I foresaw. It would be very much like a dream, with that same sense of timelessness about it that can only exist by attaching itself, like a symbiote, to the waking flow of time.

So as usual, we see scientists proposing things that make very little sense and which certainly won't work out as they expect. If they get anything out of this at all, they'll receive information from "alternate universes" based on the path our history would have taken had we not received that information.

* This is the basic difference between "subject" and "object": an object is a raw truth in the face of which we remain silent while a subject is a dialogue about that truth that renders it insufficient, which is to say, in doubt; the two, if properly understood, are not separate acts but superimposed over one another like a pair of blended colors; as this juxtaposition can only be known by thinking about it--that is, by embedding it within the structure thought-about-the-coincidence-of-thought-and-truth, the unity of subject and object presents itself as a unity which at the very same instant must be lost (which is to say cut through with disunity) by a further act of subjectivity on which it depends; thought is a negation of truth, and this negation is at once negated by a further negation in order to assert itself as something rather than nothing (a negative is nothingness, and a negated nothing is a positive). This something nevertheless retains its power of negation, the nothing being not eliminated but filled in like a mold, with the result of "true doubt," a "subject-object," or, as it's most commonly known, an ego.

** Those words I just spoke were purely true when I was speaking them, but I can only know I was truly speaking them by looking back at them (I could also look ahead and plan to speak such words in the future); this is the meaning of the structure thought-about-the-coincidence-of-thought-and-truth; the unity of doubt and truth (or presence) is always embedded within the context of a past or a future--this unity is part and parcel to the structure of a past or a future--and in either case, the structure of the present so embedded is turned inside out, so to speak, so that our doubts about the present take on a positive quality, whereas at first they were negations of the present without any positivity about them. This fact can only be known on reflection, which negates negations, making them positive; it is never true in the actual present, and in fact there is no actual present except the one implicit in such a reflective consciousness on the present; even that implicit present, when it was or will be present in an actual sense, was or will be a reflective consciousness on another implicit present rather than a pure presence without any foundation in reflective consciousness; hence, it isn't the past and the future that are illusions, as some have said, but more correctly the temporal present, for, just like a mirage, it vanishes at the moment we step to it.
 
Last edited:

Cheshire Grin

New member
Joined
Jun 10, 2010
Messages
54
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
5
Btw, wormholes exist all around us..but in microscopic scale..the trick would be to make one big enough for us to go through. Wormholes can not only connect different parts of this universe, but other parallel (and not parallel) universes as well.
Reading this made me think about that knife in Pullman's trilogy that could be used to search for weaknesses in the air to open up windows to other worlds. Oh, how those books defined my childhood.

The time machine reminded me of this:
scienceblog_time_travel.jpg
 

Chris_in_Orbit

New member
Joined
Jul 7, 2008
Messages
504
MBTI Type
ESTJ
^^^ love it :)




So my question is, would there ever be a time after the time machine is built?

If what he's saying is true, then the moment he turns on the time machine would be sort of a trap wouldn't it?

You get something from the future that in turn alters that future which would produce another future that sends something to the past that alters it again... am I wrong?

If it kept happening like that in a loop, there would be no definite future would there?
 

Aleksei

Yeah, I can fly.
Joined
Mar 10, 2010
Messages
3,626
MBTI Type
ENTJ
Enneagram
7w6
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
There never is a definite future. The future (and matter itself) exists only as a cloud of probability, and doesn't take definite form until someone observes it. I shit you not.
 

Chris_in_Orbit

New member
Joined
Jul 7, 2008
Messages
504
MBTI Type
ESTJ
Interesting read, but it raises more questions...

In terms of what you are saying though, would there be something to observe once the time machine is built? Would each step take a sensible (logical) step forward?

I can see it as either being stuck or the next observable step would be something so out of sequence it would be mind boggling.

It's fine and nice to say things like there is no definite future, but where are all these parallel universes where the improbable is happening?...

Maybe it just comes down to the fact that my consciousness is only a very tiny sliver of all that there is, and for something to happen that is improbable is probably even more improbable for me or anyone else to observe.


New question: Ignore the "definite" part of my question. Is there a future after a time machine of this sort is built?
 

Aleksei

Yeah, I can fly.
Joined
Mar 10, 2010
Messages
3,626
MBTI Type
ENTJ
Enneagram
7w6
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I have no idea. I hope so, actually being able to travel through time would be boss.

Though I guess a time machine could plausibly move forward despite time uncertainty, by fast-forwarding time so to speak (which is the principle under which H.G. Wells' time machine operated, although I have no idea how it went back).

EDIT- On further reflection, I suppose the possibility exists that if you traveled through time by jumping forward through a wormhole or something, a new reality will simply emerge as you observe it.
 
Top