Time Travel

[Bleach]

One good thing about going back into the past say 200 years is that if you end up getting killed, it's no biggie. You'll still be born in 19 whatever and can do it all again!

 

[WAB]

The past does not exist.

"The past is a bucket of ashes." - Carl Sandburg

The future doesn't exist either.

"Today is a gift, that's why they call it the Present." - I got that from a very wise turtle in a film my kids used to watch.

 

[WAB]

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Hey wait, turns out the future does exist!










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No, WAB, ya dummy, that was the present.

...And now it's the past.

So much for Sandburg.

 

[Speakpigeon]

What is time travel? Stra Trek used it a number of times.

In the original movie version of HG Wells' The Time Machine you set a date and you go back or forward in the same place. Go forward in time, move the machine, go back in time and you are in a different spot.

There are conceptual problems. Wren you are standing on the Earth it is rotating, it is circling the sun, and circling the galaxy. Space-time.

If you are standing on the Earth and travel back in time you end up in space somewhere. If you travel forward you have to know in some coordinate system where you will be in the future.

The universe does not know time, it is in constant change. To me 'time travel' makes no sense. Matter changes positions, there is no past or future to travel to. For the scifi versions of time travel every moment of the past would have to persist forever. To travel forward in time would imply predetermination.

I agree with you, Steve. Time is not space. We can't travel in time as we travel in space. I couldn't possibly go back to my youth and shake hands with my dad for having done such a good job, as much as I'd like to do that. Doesn't make sense. In the time of my youth, I swear I was just me alone and not me and then some other guy come from the future. Didn't happen. Can't change the past, I guess. It's done, it's done. If it could be done it would just not be the past at all.

Me, I can only conceive of just one way to travel to the past that wouldn't change the Creation into Chaos. There's in my view just one way it could work. It would be fully consistent with all we know about life and reality. And possibly not very expensive. Quite practical, possibly. And no conceptual problem. Obvious, really. But nothing else, no, I agree.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

you’d still have the problem of not being able to use any of your senses

I'm sure you could still use your sense of humour.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Relativity tells us that observers in different reference frames disagree on both the timing and sequence of events. So there cannot be a universal "present"; And therefore the past, or the future, or more likely both, must exist.

Not necessarily. Relativity may be predictive without being ontologically significant.

And in fact it's just what I happen to believe so this suits me fine.

Hard to tell, though. I'm not sure how you could go about proving either way.

Anyway, go on, I don't want to interrupt anything!
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

In Cartesian rectangular coordinates there are 4 dimensions. (x,y.z.t). X, y, and z are in meters and t is in seconds. The word dimension mostly from scifi has subjective meaning.

We traverse distance in meters and the rate of change in distance is measured in seconds. It is as simple as that. You can say we move through space, but we do not move through time. Time is a measure of velocity through space. We move through space not through meters, we move through space measured by meters.

If time is somehow a reality unto itself, it needs another word and definition.

Yes, Steve, that must be true.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Relativity tells us that the rate at which an object moves through time is dependent on its velocity; Objects moving at c (eg photons) do not move through time at all as observed in their reference frame.

Said like this, it doesn't make sense to me.

Nothing moves "in their reference frame", I don't think. So, how would how an object moves as seen from a different reference frame affects how the object moves through their own time?

I get the point that a clock moving relative to us appears to slow down but that doesn't mean the clock "sees" itself as slowing down, I don't think. I'm sure the opposite is true. The moving clock will "look" at us and see us as slowing down.

So, moving in space doesn't affect the way you move through time. I'm sure it's not what you meant but it may be what comes out.

Moving will only affect what an observer staying put sees as to how much you seem to be moving through time.

Two observers moving or having moved in relation to each other will come to disagree as to how much time has elapsed. So, clearly, this rather suggests time doesn't exist at all.

And you can't possibly travel through something that doesn't exist. Problem solved.
EB