Time travel is science fiction

[Farsight]

Whoa, guys. Time travel is science fiction. It's pseudoscience.

 

I'm afraid you can't even travel forwards in time. People say things like "we all travel forward in time at one second per second". But it's just a figure of speech. This travel is notional, it isn't travel in any real sense. There's no motion through time, none whatsoever. Because time is a cumulative measure of motion through space. Look inside a mechanical clock, and you don't see time flowing. You see cogs and sprockets whirring. Because clocks clock up motion. Every measure of time employs motion, be it the motion of the earth, the motion of a pendulum, the motion of a crystal, or the motion of light. It always comes back to motion, and that motion is motion through space. That's the only "travelling" that's taking place. We don't "travel" forward in time, and we'd need negative motion to "travel" backwards in time. And there is no such thing as negative motion. Motion is motion. Backwards motion is still motion.

 

Ever heard of a stasis box? It's science-fiction too, but it's useful to demonstrate something: get in the box, and the "stasis field" prevents all motion, even at the atomic level. So you can't move, your heart doesn't beat, and you can't even think. When I open the box five hundred years later, to you it's like I opened the box as soon as you got in. You "travelled" to the future by not moving at all. Instead everything else did, and again, all that motion, be it the motion of planets or people or atoms or light, is through space.

[Farsight]

It's not a matter of belief, Swanson. It's a matter of scientific evidence, and this is a science forum. So show me the scientific evidence that supports your assertion that "we are already traveling into the future". If you cannot, and instead must rely upon "moderation" to defend your stance, then this discussion is not scientific, and instead is fruitless.

[swansont]

Today it's May 7. Yesterday it was May 6. On May 6, May 7th was in the future. Now we're here.

[insane_alien]

best proof of time travel ever.

[Farsight]

Today it's May 7. Yesterday it was May 6. On May 6, May 7th was in the future. Now we're here.

And you've been sitting at your desk all that time. All that happened is the world turned, and things moved. The little cogs inside your clock turned. And that little calender display on your clock turned too. It went click, and then it showed a 7 instead of a 6. May 7th was never literally "in" the future, and you didn't travel to it.

 

I'm sorry Swanson, but the scientific evidence is on my side, not yours. Time travel really is science fiction. So in placing this thread in speculations, you're upholding speculative pseudoscience quackery, not rational scientific discussion.

[pioneer]

Time travel is possible, but only in a limited way, since it takes a lot of energy. Let me build a scenario. You are with your friends in a room having a party. This room is within a rocket ship.

 

You leave the party (rocket room) to pick up the pizza. After you leave, the rocket takes off, reaching relativistic speeds, such that the time in the moving party reference begins to slow. For the sake of numbers, one week passes in your stationary reference, while one hour passes in the rocket party reference, after your friends return. When you enter the rocket, you are in the past, one week earlier. Your friends are still dressed the same way, the conversation is still the same. They ask you where is the pizza, since you had an hour to get it.

 

If your friends went outside for air, they would be in their future. The Red Sox game that was to be played tomorrow, to them, is already over. One can time travel, in a narrow way, without breaking any physical laws. But it takes energy.

[Greippi]

The Hafele-Keeling experiment observed gains and losses of time by atomic clocks flown on commercial airliners.

 

This experiment has since been repeated.

[swansont]

And you've been sitting at your desk all that time. All that happened is the world turned, and things moved. The little cogs inside your clock turned. And that little calender display on your clock turned too. It went click, and then it showed a 7 instead of a 6. May 7th was never literally "in" the future, and you didn't travel to it.

 

Try convincing your boss he can't schedule a meeting for some point in the future because the future is fictional, and you'll never get there. See how long you stay employed when you continually miss them, and deadlines for projects, because you claim they aren't real.

 

I'm sorry Swanson, but the scientific evidence is on my side, not yours. Time travel really is science fiction. So in placing this thread in speculations, you're upholding speculative pseudoscience quackery, not rational scientific discussion.

 

Proof-by-repeated-insistence isn't scientific evidence. If you want to claim that time doesn't really exist and that past, present and future are illusions, I don't really care. But don't pretend (here, at least) that you are the one doing science. And while I thank you for your input, I won't be deferring to your expertise on pseudoscientific quackery.

 

(Besides, I'll let you in on a secret. It was another staff member who suggested moving this.)

[Moontanman]

At one time traveling to the moon was science fiction, huge volumes of material could have been quoted proving such a thing was totally impossible.

 

Time travel is highly improbable but when it comes down to actually claiming something is imposable I shy away from that absolute...

[Sayonara]

Especially when it's something we do as a matter of course.

[Mr Skeptic]

This idea seems interesting. But, can you make equations work out without time? I happen to use time in a lot of equations, and they give me a lot of very good answers. Are you saying that time is just an accumulation of motion/events?

[Genecks]

best proof of time travel ever.

 

Farsight replied to swansont before swansont replied.

[insane_alien]

Farsight replied to swansont before swansont replied.

 

its due to this thread being split from a previous one i think you'll find.

[ponderer]

And you've been sitting at your desk all that time. All that happened is the world turned, and things moved. The little cogs inside your clock turned. And that little calender display on your clock turned too. It went click, and then it showed a 7 instead of a 6. May 7th was never literally "in" the future, and you didn't travel to it.

 

I'm sorry Swanson, but the scientific evidence is on my side, not yours. Time travel really is science fiction. So in placing this thread in speculations, you're upholding speculative pseudoscience quackery, not rational scientific discussion.

 

Don't you need to take a relativistic view? What is the temporal frame of reference? The only frame of reference is now. In order to move forward in time you must move forward relative to the current now. If you travel along with everything else in the stream of time, you are not travelling relative to the current now. You are always in the current now.

[swansont]

Don't you need to take a relativistic view? What is the temporal frame of reference? The only frame of reference is now. In order to move forward in time you must move forward relative to the current now. If you travel along with everything else in the stream of time, you are not travelling relative to the current now. You are always in the current now.

 

It is always now. However, a watch that only displays "Now" is pretty useless other than as a novelty. "Now" is a tautology. For a discussion of the question of "When will 'then' be 'now,'" I refer you to the movie Spaceballs

 

Relative to an arbitrary flat reference frame, I can only make my clock go slower. But it still ticks. What was once the future is now the present.

[the tree]

You are always in the current now.

For clarity, there really shouldn't be a definite article there. 'now' is local, there isn't just one.

[usernamehere]

perhaps this will be of interest?

 

Links deleted

Edited May 27, 2010 by swansont
remove links

[swansont]

perhaps this will be of interest?

 

Links deleted

 

usernamehere, if you have something to add that's on-topic, post it. One of your links went to a commercial site asking for payment to use, which isn't going to fly.

 

Preferred actions are, in order: post, link to a website, link to a freely available document. And the degree of preference for those drops off sharply.

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

HardonColluder , your post has been moved to a new thread since it is proposing a new line of discussion that is not the same as Farsight's.

Edited May 28, 2010 by swansont
clarification

[JohnB]

Could we reach a decision on this soon, please?

 

I'm writing an article on "Perceptions on Time Travel in the Early 21st Century".

 

It will be due yesterday.

[swansont]

Time and the photon graph posts have been moved to their own thread

 

 

———

 

 

 

People, please stay on-topic. A speculations post is not an invitation to pimp your own hypothesis. Start a new thread

[HardonColluder]

It would make more sense just to delete it as it's not science , it's gibberish . But I think simulating the big bang on supercomputers can actually be considered a kind of virtual 'time travel' . As my statement is no longer associated with 'time travel' but a thread on 'gibberish' I regret writing it .

[JDT2GAA]

Time is a constant flowing like a river, you can swim against the current but you wont get anywhere think of it like this but in a river you also get rocks and natural bits that remain fixed in place who says time can not be like this if you get latched onto one of those "rocks" you are no longer moving with the time but you can let go on either side of the rock yes? so you could theoretically travel backwards or forwards in time if you go by the theory that time is a constant flow, but then that would also suggest that you can not use a device to travel because to build it you would have to be outside of the time flow, but you cud launch off of the "rock" in the same manner u would a wall in a swimming pool kick off it and generate forward momentum and then the past would be the future for you because that is the direction you are headed. (yes i am aware this is probably a load of rubbish but aren't most theories proved to be wrong ???)

[rigney]

If we can eventually get our pathological disorders and telepathic ideas on the same track, no sweat.

Edited June 7, 2010 by rigney
Consecutive posts merged.

[Clipper]

Today it's May 7. Yesterday it was May 6. On May 6, May 7th was in the future. Now we're here.

 

I like this!

[PhysBang]

This idea seems interesting. But, can you make equations work out without time? I happen to use time in a lot of equations, and they give me a lot of very good answers. Are you saying that time is just an accumulation of motion/events?

This is really the question: can Farsight show us how to do a physics problem without time? I'm sure that since he's been writing about physics for over a decade now, he can answer this question without any post-poning, shifting of the topic, or deception.

Edited May 17, 2014 by PhysBang