Your opinion on time travelling...

[Dreamlax]

Here's what I think and what I've heard:

So far, nothing we know of travels faster than the speed of light. Therefore, time must travel at the same speed. In order to go farther into the future, you must travel faster than the speed of light. But in doing so, time must be going backwards. If you shot a bullet out of a gun, and managed to run faster than that bullet, the bullet would appear to be going backwards. The same effect should happen with light, meaning for every year you travel 1.5x the speed of light, half of that year would occur again (or something like that).

Travelling back in time would have it's bizarre effects too. There is that thing called the Grandfather Paradox, where, if you managed to travel back in time, and you shot your grandfather, that would mean that your father could not have been born, therefore you can't have been born, so you couldn't have gone back in time to have shot your grandfather. This makes logical sense, but if you managed to travel back in time and actually shot your grandfather, what would happen to you? But travelling back to yesterday, would you still know that you were going to travel back to today tomorrow? You would be in an infinite loop, and nothing, absolutely nothing would change that, because that day would happen exactly the same way it did... unless you knew the things you learnt the day you travelled back in time.

Time is not something to be fiddled with. Anyone who wants to try and make time travel possible, UP YOURS. You could screw up all of our lives and leave us in continuous loops!

[DiGiTaIErRoR]

We're not the ones traveling through time, and time is only relative.

Oh...

Gravity is faster than light, how so you ask? Black holes can bend light.

Just something to think about.

[barrk]

I think this question can only be answered by Dr. Who. Anyone know where I can find him?

[filburt1]

Originally posted by Dreamlax
Time is not something to be fiddled with. Anyone who wants to try and make time travel possible, UP YOURS. You could screw up all of our lives and leave us in continuous loops!

Who knows that this hasn't already happened!?

[barrk]

Originally posted by filburt1


Who knows that this hasn't already happened!?

I do hope we are in a continuous loop! That way I could be with Tom and the kids forever and get happier with each loop!

[filburt1]

You are very a optimistic person, Katie.

[barrk]

Of course! What point is there in not being optimistic??

[beachbum]

Hi
I think it was Steven Hawking who put it best...If time travel is ever going to be possible then why have we never been visited by someone from the future?
Regards
Stuart

[kedaman]

Originally posted by beachbum
Hi
I think it was Steven Hawking who put it best...If time travel is ever going to be possible then why have we never been visited by someone from the future?
Regards
Stuart

because it's useless

[beachbum]

Originally posted by kedaman
because it's useless

Hunh? What is useless? Time travel? Them visiting us? Pls elaborate

[kedaman]

for them, not for us of course

[nishantp]

DigitalError, i thought gravity also travelled at the speed of light. Suppose the sun suddenly disapeared. would the earth not stay in orbit for 8 mins, before floating away? Im sure ive read it somewhere. But of course, this is all theoretical, and nothing can be proven

[filburt1]

Gravity is just a curvature in space. Ever heard of the famous rubber sheet analogy?

[Guv]

There is a Sci-fi time machine story with a cute angle on this. In the story, there are those who wonder about no visitors from the far future as per the Hawking comment posted by Beachbum.

At the end of the story, the protagonist ends up in our version of the twentieth century, which is completely different from his version. He is the only one surviving from his world due his being in transit when the system destroyed itself.

He realizes that any universe with a time machine gets tinkered out of existence by trying to change the past, eventually causing the time machine not to have been invented.

In this story, those who ran the time machine tried to make their present better by intefering with various historical events.

[beachbum]

Originally posted by filburt1
Ever heard of the famous rubber sheet analogy?

Filburt!!! U should have stopped wetting the bed by now

[filburt1]

Originally posted by beachbum

Filburt!!! U should have stopped wetting the bed by now

If you haven't...

Picture a sphere on a rubber sheet. Since the sphere (in this case, the Earth) has a large mass, it distorts space (the sheet) with its mass.

[filburt1]

Googlin:

http://www.mail-archive.com/fockspac.../msg00042.html
http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia...elativity.html
http://astronomica.org/cgi-bin/figure.plx?CH=19&NUM=28 (pictures here)

[beachbum]

Originally posted by filburt1
Picture a sphere on a rubber sheet. Since the sphere (in this case, the Earth) has a large mass, it distorts space (the sheet) with its mass.

Filburt, i think that most theories like this are a function of our knowledge at the time. Many years ago religious scholars believed that the earth was at the centre of the universe, later astronomers believed that the sun was at the centre of the universe etc etc etc. Your example is just a simple way for ppl to try and conceptualize something that is hard to understand. In 20 years time scientists may indeed say "hey harold, remember that rubber sheet theory we had the public going with?"
Regards
Stuart

[DWillems]

If you go back and shoot your grandfather, I think you will be trialled for murder and hung from the nearest tree

[Dreamlax]

There is nothing to say that the Sun doesn't revolve around the Earth, the planets could have funny shaped coil-type orbits, but we just believe that they have elliptical (I think that is the word) orbits.

If we still followed everything thinking the Earch was at the centre, our laws of physics would change, much like they do.

[CiberTHuG]

Originally posted by DiGiTaIErRoR
Gravity is faster than light, how so you ask? Black holes can bend light.

I thought gravity affected space and time, and space and time affected light (and anything else for that matter).

*shrug* I would imagine the speed of gravity is the speed of space. For that to make sense, the gravity affect has to propagate through space. It propagates as the speed of the medium. Like the idea that ripples in water travel slower if the water is more viscous (sp?). I would imagine that the speed of light is some how related to this propagation speed of space.

I don't rightly know.

[filburt1]

Originally posted by beachbum

Filburt, i think that most theories like this are a function of our knowledge at the time. Many years ago religious scholars believed that the earth was at the centre of the universe, later astronomers believed that the sun was at the centre of the universe etc etc etc. Your example is just a simple way for ppl to try and conceptualize something that is hard to understand. In 20 years time scientists may indeed say "hey harold, remember that rubber sheet theory we had the public going with?"
Regards
Stuart

Well, we're also trying to comprehend something 4th dimensional when we are only 3D. Which, theoretically, is impossible, as is time travel.