time travel!?

[unownunown]

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 163330.htm

what do you think?

i fail to see how this approach to time travel avoids any paradoxes. i feel like almost any time you time travel (and actually try to interact with the future/past) paradoxes and similar bullshit will arise. like, if you can send messages back and forth through time you can inspire people to commit actions that can cause paradoxes.

i think it is (somewhat) accurate to compare time (at least our current understanding of time?) to a one-lane circular race track filled with cars all moving at the same speed. you can go forward. you HAVE to go forward. but don't try to go backwards or jump cars because shit is going to get fucked up yo.

i also kind of am hoping that whatever they discover supports a 10 or more dimensional universe. just think about it! that would be awesome.

in closing, here's a rotating tesseract.



edit: and since this is about the LHC, here's some more weird shit

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/short ... s-sab.html

[Christopher]

if you change something in the past it creates a new timeline parallel to the one you came from, so no paradox occurs in either timeline

haven't you seen back to the future?

[unownunown]

well... i've watched primer too much, so i'm inclined to think of parallel timelines as more of loops. and they get really messy really fast.

[deadbeatriot]

but how plausible is that?

i'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but i would assume that changing the past would imply that those changes have already happened. i guess i subscribe to the idea that 'whatever changes you make have already taken effect'

[snipelfritz]

Back to the Future is just a silly movie. A Wrinkle in Time, however, that's like a book and books are for smarty-britches. So all you have to do is bend time so that the two places/times meet and go between them that way. You're not really traveling at all, you're just making reality your bitch.

Conversely to unownunown, I don't see how paradoxes are possible. If someone travels back in time and does something, that something would have already happened. That is, if you go back in time and meet yourself you would've already met your future self which is now you in the present.

Now here's the most difficult scientific feat, to come up with some practical and useful application for time travel.

[unownunown]

but how plausible is that?

i'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, but i would assume that changing the past would imply that those changes have already happened. i guess i subscribe to the idea that 'whatever changes you make have already taken effect'

how plausible is time travel really, anyway?

if the changes have already happened, then is anything really changing?

i guess i think that if someone travels back and time and does something, it doesn't happen until they do it. there has to be that one instant where something changes. i think the only way paradoxes are unavoidable is if you subscribe to like, parallel dimensions, or um... i don't remember what it's called, but it's the idea that every single option ever existing spawns a different reality and you're really just traversing those when you time travel.

but... you guys need to watch primer. it's like the best time travel film of my life.



snipz, there are tons of useful applications for time travel. and some not-so-useful greedy ones, too. what do you mean?

[Monkeyboard]

Time travel will be incredibly hard to apply on a non quantum level.

As a matter of fact current theories have particles flying forwards and backwards through time constantly.

But the chances of getting a whole macrosystem to move through time are about as big as you tunneling a meter or two before you die.

[CaptainWampum]

Time travel is for little girls.

[futuresailors]

Time travel is for little girls.

Only if your wormhole expander isn't shaped like mah junk dipped in gold.

[Jwar]

Has anyone ever read Rant by Chuck Palahniuk?????? Basically, if you bang your grand-ma you can be your own grand-pa. Word.

[Gearmond]

meh, its all a bunch of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.



i just hop into a police box and hope for the best.

[tuffteef]

im from the future your yesterday i am today
IVE SEEN IT BEFORE YOUR EYES
AND ITS STILL THE SAME!

[snipelfritz]

if the changes have already happened, then is anything really changing?

I guess that's exactly my point. The changes have already happened. That's why it's the past.

I never really thought about it without traveling back. That makes that Primer scenario very interesting.

snipz, there are tons of useful applications for time travel. and some not-so-useful greedy ones, too. what do you mean?

Not saying it isn't possible. I'm just saying it's the next inevitable step in scientific progress. I doubt they had any idea that the space program would lead to cell phones and GPS in the 1950's/60's. Stuff like that, not just being able to plant diamond mines or something which would really do nothing more than flood the market of an already over-priced commodity driving their worth down rather than creating more wealth for the "farmer."

Same goes for fossil fuels(which we really don't need any more of, a heroin addict doesn't need more smack). Anyways, if these things were planted millions of years ago, wouldn't we already have found them? Unless they're somewhere we'd never look, like under Manhattan or something. To me, saying that they will not exist until we go back in time and plant them doesn't make sense. "Go back in time" happens in the future, but "plant them" has already happened in the past. But I'm no molecular whozitwhatzit

[hclapp219]

This is kind of related: I was listening to Science Friday on NPR a little while ago, and they had some guy talking about parallel universes and stuff. He said that if you accept that space is infinite, that parallel universes must exist because there is a finite way of arranging matter. That means that somewhere out there in a parallel universe, you didn't catch yourself after you tripped yesterday, Rebecca Black is a superstar and Sarah Palin is president.

*cue Twilight Zone music*

[snipelfritz]

This is kind of related: I was listening to Science Friday on NPR a little while ago, and they had some guy talking about parallel universes and stuff. He said that if you accept that space is infinite, that parallel universes must exist because there is a finite way of arranging matter. That means that somewhere out there in a parallel universe, you didn't catch yourself after you tripped yesterday, Rebecca Black is a superstar and Sarah Palin is president.

*cue Twilight Zone music*

What if it's just the same universe repeating itself(physically, temporarily doesn't matter) over and over and over? I like to believe there will never be a universe where Sarah Palin is anything more than governor of the least important state in the union. I will fall on my face however many times it takes for that to happen.

I feel like going back in time almost any amount of time would suck beyond belief. Modern conveniences rule!