Time Traveling - Impossible?

[DrRocket]

More generally (to the forum) regarding time, anyone interested in presentism as relevant to "time travel?"

Specifically, was Einstein correct in concluding that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously as per the "world lines" of everything in the universe (including all three) all existing at once.

 

 

 

As usual you are arguing about something that you don't understand.

 

This has nothing to do with Einstein. Newtonian mechanics can be formulated, quite trivially, in terms of spacetime. It is simply a flat spacetime with a different metric.

 

The past, present and future are all in the spacetime manifold, but they do not exist "simultaneously", because "simultaneously" means at the same time.

 

The issue is really one of determinism versus non-determinism. Newtonian mechanics and general relativity are deterministic. That is what permits all of time and all of space to be described in terms of a single manifold.

 

Quantum mechanics is non-deterministic. That is a fundamental difference between general relativity and quantum field theories.

 

We do not have a single theory that encompasses gravitation and quantum theory -- yet. Until such a theory is constructed, no one can say whether Einstein was "right". Most people would bet that in the end general relativity will give way to a non-deterministic theory. But some pretty smart guys, like Roger Penrose and Gerard 'tHooft, take possible deterministic theories seriously. The jury is out.

[owl]

The Truth according to DrRocket:

This has nothing to do with Einstein.

 

Do you dispute the quote cited above:

Albert Einstein concluded in his later years that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously.

DrRocket:

As usual you are arguing about something that you don't understand.

 

As usual you continue to presume that you know better than I what I do and do not understand, and as always without an argument in reply to what I actually stated... just bogus assertion of authority rather than specific argument.

[DrRocket]

 

DrRocket:

 

 

As usual you continue to presume that you know better than I what I do and do not understand,...

 

Nearly all of the participants in this thread know better than you what you do and do not understand.

 

The basic problem is that you do not understand that you do not understand. As a result you argue against a strawman -- your misconception of the content of fundamental physical theories.

[foszae]

the problem inherent in the "arrow of Time" is potentiality.

specifically as events are uncertain in the future, they are malleable, changeable and predictable.

with no uncertainty to determine, it is suggestive that some of the rules of quantum physics do not apply in reverse.

what occurs to us in the present is actually the fallout of events which are pre-occurring in quantum dimensions. as they activate and produce result, we witness them in the present.

events in the past cannot be changed, there is no remaining potential result. what the results were is all they will remain.

 

the question that should be asked is why the future specifically is the realm of indeterminate circumstance.

[owl]

I keep trying to address the thread topic, but DrRocket keeps trying to make it all about me and my supposed lack of understanding the 'real issues' here, i.e., DrR's understanding of relativity, "the ONLY cosmology," as applied to time travel.

So, I will back up and take it one step at a time, focused on the the topic.

Keep in mind DrR's claim that, "This has nothing to do with Einstein."

From the link above to Gevin Giorbran's site... author of Everything Forever, Learning to See Timelessness... (disclaimer: I don't agree with a lot of his stuff, or with Einstein, albeit relativity blasphemy to disagree with the latter):

Einstein:

Time has no independent existence apart from the order of events by which we measure it.

I agree.

 

From a letter from Einstein to his friend, Besso,

...for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.

I disagree.

Quoting Giorbran:

Surprising as it may be to most non-scientists and even to some scientists, Albert Einstein concluded in his later years that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously.

 

Again, this means that everything that now exists and has ever or will ever exist... all exist now, in the present, "simultaneously."

DrRocket:

The past, present and future are all in the spacetime manifold, but they do not exist "simultaneously", because "simultaneously" means at the same time.

 

I asked DrR if he disputed the quotes by and about Einstein's take on time above. No reply, just continued attacks on me.

 

The Doctor concludes:

Nearly all of the participants in this thread know better than you what you do and do not understand.

 

It really doesn't get any more absurd than this. I have distinguished many times between the conceptual meaning and the math involved in " content of fundamental physical theories," and I understand very well the former without being a mathematician, while DrR insists that the math is fundamental to understanding. And fundamentally, he believes that to disagree with him is to be wrong.

He insists that I "argue against a strawman."

I argue against everything existing at the same time (as quoted again above), against there being no difference between past, present, and future, and against time being "something" that can be "traveled through."

I also argue against high speed space cadets determining how many years have elapsed by their slower clocks/calendars on an equally valid basis with how many times Earth has actually orbited the sun during their round trip journey.

Anyone here interested in the time travel topic, or has this just become another Owl bashing thread?

 

PS: I have expanded on my last point in my "Ontology of Time" thread (in Speculations) if anyone is actually interested in the topic.

Edited May 27, 2011 by owl

[DrRocket]

I keep trying to address the thread topic, but DrRocket keeps trying to make it all about me and my supposed lack of understanding the 'real issues' here, i.e., DrR's understanding of relativity, "the ONLY cosmology," as applied to time travel.

So, I will back up and take it one step at a time, focused on the the topic.

Keep in mind DrR's claim that, "This has nothing to do with Einstein."

From the link above to Gevin Giorbran's site... author of Everything Forever, Learning to See Timelessness... (disclaimer: I don't agree with a lot of his stuff, or with Einstein, albeit relativity blasphemy to disagree with the latter):

Einstein:

 

I agree.

 

From a letter from Einstein to his friend, Besso,

 

I disagree.

Quoting Giorbran:

 

 

Again, this means that everything that now exists and has ever or will ever exist... all exist now, in the present, "simultaneously."

 

This is all completely irrelevant. Like any other creative research scientist Einstein entertained many ideas. What counts is the final product, not the many avenues investigated as part of his research program. That final product is general relativity. You continue to exhibit lack of understanding of that theory and you continue to argue against a sraw man.

 

BTW Einstein also opined that time is probably, at the most fundamental level, statistical in nature. He was unable to turn that into a useful theory.

 

Einstein is so often quoted and misquoted that, much like the Bible, you can find an Einstein quote to support almost anything.

 

"Isn’t all of philosophy as if written in honey ? Something may appear clear at first, but when one looks again it has disappeared. Only the pap remains." – Albert Einstein

 

And my personal favorite:

"I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to." – Albert Einstein

 

 

 

 

DrRocket:

 

 

I asked DrR if he disputed the quotes by and about Einstein's take on time above. No reply, just continued attacks on me.

 

Pointing out gross lack of understanding of the subject matter is hardly an attack on you. It is an attack on your arguments. It is a logical necessity since you argue against aspects of the general theory of relativity that exist nowhere other than in your own mind.

 

 

The Doctor concludes:

 

 

It really doesn't get any more absurd than this. I have distinguished many times between the conceptual meaning and the math involved in " content of fundamental physical theories," and I understand very well the former without being a mathematician, while DrR insists that the math is fundamental to understanding. And fundamentally, he believes that to disagree with him is to be wrong.

He insists that I "argue against a strawman."

I argue against everything existing at the same time (as quoted again above), against there being no difference between past, present, and future, and against time being "something" that can be "traveled through."

I also argue against high speed space cadets determining how many years have elapsed by their slower clocks/calendars on an equally valid basis with how many times Earth has actually orbited the sun during their round trip journey.

Anyone here interested in the time travel topic, or has this just become another Owl bashing thread?

 

PS: I have expanded on my last point in my "Ontology of Time" thread (in Speculations) if anyone is actually interested in the topic.

 

You have just provided clear evidence of the fact that you argue against a straw man.

 

You don't understand that you don't understand. You refuse to put forth the effort to understand what the theory actually says. This makes logical dialogue essentially impossible.

[Iggy]

We all know that clocks run faster or slower under different conditions, as you described. ("Time dilation.")

I suspect that people age more slowly in high speed (etc.) conditions as well...

 

I'm curious what you mean by "high speed conditions"? How would a person know if they are in "high speed conditions"? Can you describe an experiment that measures "speed condition"?

 

To be more specific... regarding your statement (and apparently accepted relativity theory... as per "the twins paradox" and such):

 

Say to you on the rocket the round trip takes 5 years. But per special relativity, to us on Earth 10 years have gone by.

Is there not a "reality check" here... that a year is one orbit of earth around sun? Speeding out into space and back in a rocket does not make ten earth orbits into five just because the rocket's clock and calendar says that only five years have elapsed.

My question, "What am I missing here?" in post 67 replying to I ME was a serious question about how ten years, defined as Earth orbits around the sun, can become five years (for the rocketeers) by virtue of a fast round trip in a rocket ship which slows down their clock and calendar.

In science, a year is 31.5576 megaseconds where a second is defined as "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom". A year is not defined in terms of earth orbits.

 

In science, a clock is anything that measures duration. A mechanical stopwatch measures time by rotating a dial around a pivot point. For example, a second hand on a standard clock making a full rotation measures 60 seconds or one minute. The earth and sun likewise make a clock where one full rotation of the earth around the sun measures one year.

 

The twin paradox is an example of time dilation. It is an example of how two twins can age differently according to relativity. A twin who makes a round trip in a rocket with a high speed relative to the earth twin can age one year while his brother the earth twin ages 60 years. Every clock -- every means of measuring proper time -- in the earth twin's frame of reference including mechanical spring watches, pendulum clocks, digital quartz clocks, atomic clocks, and biological systems will tell him that the duration of the rocket trip was 60 years.

 

Every clock that the rocket twin has in his frame of reference (mechanical, digital, atomic, biological, etc.) will tell him that the duration of the trip is one year.

 

The earth and the sun do not travel with the rocket -- they stay with the earth twin. The number of earth orbits is therefore not expected to measure the proper time of the rocket twin. Both twins will agree that the earth orbits the sun 60 times during the trip just like any clock measuring the earth twin's proper time will measure 60 years. Both twins will also agree that any clock measuring the rocket twin's proper time will measure one year.

 

In other words, the point of the though experiment is to show that clocks (any method of measuring duration) in different frames of reference do not agree, so it doesn't make any sense to propose that both twins use the same clock from one of the frames. That misses the point of the thought experiment.

 

I have distinguished many times between the conceptual meaning and the math involved in " content of fundamental physical theories," and I understand very well the former without being a mathematician, while DrR insists that the math is fundamental to understanding.

You don't realize how apparent it is that you don't understand or aren't familiar with the concepts -- for example, of relativity and time dilation, and how much your mistaken impressions are the source of your arguments. You are imagining what relativity and time dilation might be and arguing against your own imaginings.

 

Have our variable clocks become the standard for relativity arguments based on "time dilation", or is a year still one earth orbit? If the latter, then days, hours, minutes, seconds, & on down are fractions thereof standardized by the above natural cycles ? If the latter, can we not admit instrument error for clocks and then credit relativity with corrective math for all such variation?

An earth orbit is just one example of a system that can be used to keep time. It is unrealistic, and geocentric, to think that it keeps the right time and any other system of time keeping in any different frame of reference or with a different gravitational potential disagrees because of "instrument error" that somehow exactly coincides with relativity.

 

The predictions of relativity are correct because the postulates of the theory are valid. In special relativity for example frames need to disagree about duration because they need to agree about a fixed velocity -- not because clocks in those frames are subject to instrument error.

Edited May 28, 2011 by Iggy

[owl]

DrR:

You have just provided clear evidence of the fact that you argue against a straw man.

 

From the perspective of logical argument, you continue to argue from “authority” (which is no argument at all) rather than specifically refuting my points, as in the several instances of "what I am arguing against” above. I made some cogent points. How about addressing them for a change.... like:

From my post 80:

I also argue against high speed space cadets determining how many years have elapsed by their slower clocks/calendars on an equally valid basis with how many times Earth has actually orbited the sun during their round trip journey.

 

You can ignore it but that doesn't refute or even address it.

Now, to back up a bit...

DrR:

You are missing the fact that time is not universal.

 

The fact? So then all inquiry into the ontology of time is settled because "the doctor" says so?

 

Everything everywhere moves, and that “takes time”... event duration, whether measured or not. It can be a nanosecond (a local micro-event) or a full Bang/Crunch cycle (a macro-universal event...if that cosmology turns out to be true.)

...And you completely ignored my presentation of presentism (post 69), as it contradicts your "facts" about time.

Then, rather than address the several Einstein quotes which contradict you, you sweep it all aside with:

 

This is all completely irrelevant.

 

... and dismiss all quotes you don't like with insistence that they didn't count... but only the "final product", GR.

(Just how "final" do you think that "product" is?... Like the dogma that "relativity is the ONLY cosmology?")

[DrRocket]

DrR:

 

 

From the perspective of logical argument, you continue to argue from "authority" (which is no argument at all) rather than specifically refuting my points, as in the several instances of "what I am arguing against" above. I made some cogent points. How about addressing them for a change.... like:

From my post 80: I also argue against high speed space cadets determining how many years have elapsed by their slower clocks/calendars on an equally valid basis with how many times Earth has actually orbited the sun during their round trip journey.

You can ignore it but that doesn't refute or even address it.

 

You simply prove the point that you are clueless about the theory that you purport to refute. Pitiful.

 

There is essentially no difference between the Timex on the wrist of the "stay at home twin" on Earth and time based on counting revolutions of the Earth. They will each disagree with the clock of the "space cadet."

 

This effect has been demonstrated rather conclusively by experiment. You are arguing against hard empirical data. Would also like to argue that bumblebees can't fly ?

 

You clearly have extreme difficulty in differentiating between a "cogent point" and complete nonsense. That is reflected in your continual arguments against your own personal misconceptions about what relativity actually says. My Labrador puppy understands it better -- he doesn't "know" so many things that are just plain false.

 

Now, to back up a bit...

DrR:

 

 

The fact? So then all inquiry into the ontology of time is settled because "the doctor" says so?

 

No, because the basis for the discussion is general relativity, and it is a fact that time in general relativity is not universal. It is also a fact that thus far general relativity is consistent with what is actually observed, which is contrary to the notions that you espouse.

 

You would well to pay attention to facts.

 

Observation also shows that it is a fact that you don't understand the content of the general theory of relativity and therefore it is a fact that your straw man arguments are logically fallacious.

 

Ontology based on ignorance and delusion is hardly a valid inquiry into existence.

 

“It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong” – Richard Feynman

 

 

Everything everywhere moves, and that "takes time"... event duration, whether measured or not. It can be a nanosecond (a local micro-event) or a full Bang/Crunch cycle (a macro-universal event...if that cosmology turns out to be true.)

...And you completely ignored my presentation of presentism (post 69), as it contradicts your "facts" about time.

Then, rather than address the several Einstein quotes which contradict you, you sweep it all aside with:

 

Yeah, I do tend to ignore illogic and lunatic rants. I probably will continue to do that. Life is too short.

 

Presentism is contradictory to the FACTS that support the special and general theories of relativity. It is a fact that clinging to ideas that are contrary to what has been observed and confirmed is irrational.

 

 

"There is no position so ridiculous that it has not been held by some philosopher." – Cicero

 

... and dismiss all quotes you don't like with insistence that they didn't count... but only the "final product", GR.

(Just how "final" do you think that "product" is?... Like the dogma that "relativity is the ONLY cosmology?")

 

More illogic. Go read what I said, not what you wish I said or what you hallucinate that I said.

 

You desperately need to learn some basic physics and mathematics. Arguing against that which you do not comprehend is just plain silly. Arguing against empirical data is way beyond silly. REALITY is that the local nature of time was shown in the Hafele-Keating and Pound-Rebka experiments.

 

Reality trumps delusion. Those are the facts ma'am, just the facts.

 

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way." – Mark Twain