You find yourself in the cretaceous

[untermensche]

Faith, not science:

Energy can be subtracted from this universe and sent into some past configuration of this universe.

Energy can be added to some past configuration of this universe and cause a change to it.

Humans can escape the confines of THIS universe except by dying.

 

[DBT]

Nothing is being added to a Block Time Universe.

Something is added to any configuration of the universe that existed in the past if you project energy into it.

You have added energy to that universe.

Impossible.

Time travel is a childish fantasy.

Fine for a creative writing project.

Not science in any way.

A block time universe is complete in all its facets and configurations. You fail to consider the nature of time in a BTU. Everything that appears to happen already exists.

 

[DrZoidberg]

You can trap them in a pit too steep for them to climb out and and repeatedly stab at them from a safe distance using a long pole with the help of gravity to make the impacts more powerful, no gun needed.

I wasn't suggesting you should wrestle them to death.

I thought it was implied.

The problem with the Scandinavian winter is exposure. Not food. There's food everywhere, all over Sweden (below the treeline). All year round.

Can we be more specific? Here's a typical situation: It's late winter (February or early March, before spring breaks) and it's been three years since beeches and oaks properly carried (they tend to do that). There is no fresh snow to allow you to follow tracks easily. What's your menu for the week?

There's all kinds of roots and shoots. And nuts. It's very season specific. It's not the tropics. Finding animals to kill is hard. It's way easier to gather stuff. It'll be a struggle initially. But once you've learned what to eat I think you'd do fine.

If you have a pan or something to boil water in you'll have no problem. Boiled pine needles can sustain you for a long time. Years. You will never run out of those. Snow or fresh water streams are everywhere. As is firewood.

Creepy crawlies are all edible. None are poisonous.

In the present day, dinosaurs like the penguins have colonised habitats where literally no mammal survives. We don't have a very clear idea of how cold tolerant non avian dinosaurs were, and which species were warm blooded, but we have no reason to assume they didn't colonise their whole world (especially given that that world was warmer than ours).

I think I will win a fight with a penguin

 

[untermensche]

Nothing is being added to a Block Time Universe.

Something is added to any configuration of the universe that existed in the past if you project energy into it.

You have added energy to that universe.

Impossible.

Time travel is a childish fantasy.

Fine for a creative writing project.

Not science in any way.

A block time universe is complete in all its facets and configurations. You fail to consider the nature of time in a BTU. Everything that appears to happen already exists.

The nature of this universe and every configuration of this universe that has ever existed is that you can't create energy. You can't add energy to the totality of matter/energy in the universe.

To change the past would require doing work on the past in some way.

To do work would require energy.

Adding energy to some past configuration of this universe is impossible.

Even if the past configurations were stored somehow and existed out there you could not add energy to any of them to change them.

 

[Jokodo]

I thought it was implied.

Can we be more specific? Here's a typical situation: It's late winter (February or early March, before spring breaks) and it's been three years since beeches and oaks properly carried (they tend to do that). There is no fresh snow to allow you to follow tracks easily. What's your menu for the week?

There's all kinds of roots

I said specific "All kinds" isn't. Name five plants with edible roots that are common in the forests of southern Sweden and which you can recognise from there exterior parts under light snow cover!

and shoots.

Shoots in February in Sweden?

And nuts.

Nuts in February when it's been a non-mast year? Most not trees only carry a lot once every 4-6 years, and they're pretty much synchronised.

It's very season specific. It's not the tropics.

Yes it is seasonal, and in order to survive the year, you need to survive all seasons. I asked how you plan to survive late winter.

Finding animals to kill is hard. It's way easier to gather stuff. It'll be a struggle initially. But once you've learned what to eat I think you'd do fine.

If you survive long enough, sure.

If you have a pan or something to boil water in you'll have no problem. Boiled pine needles can sustain you for a long time. Years. You will never run out of those. Snow or fresh water streams are everywhere. As is firewood.

Creepy crawlies are all edible.

How many crawl around in February?

None are poisonous.

In the present day, dinosaurs like the penguins have colonised habitats where literally no mammal survives. We don't have a very clear idea of how cold tolerant non avian dinosaurs were, and which species were warm blooded, but we have no reason to assume they didn't colonise their whole world (especially given that that world was warmer than ours).

I think I will win a fight with a penguin

You wouldn't survive in penguin land.

 

[Politesse]

I said specific "All kinds" isn't. Name five plants with edible roots that are common in the forests of southern Sweden and which you can recognise from there exterior parts under light snow cover!

and shoots.

Shoots in February in Sweden?

And nuts.

Nuts in February when it's been a non-mast year? Most not trees only carry a lot once every 4-6 years, and they're pretty much synchronised.

It's very season specific. It's not the tropics.

Yes it is seasonal, and in order to survive the year, you need to survive all seasons. I asked how you plan to survive late winter.

Finding animals to kill is hard. It's way easier to gather stuff. It'll be a struggle initially. But once you've learned what to eat I think you'd do fine.

If you survive long enough, sure.

If you have a pan or something to boil water in you'll have no problem. Boiled pine needles can sustain you for a long time. Years. You will never run out of those. Snow or fresh water streams are everywhere. As is firewood.

Creepy crawlies are all edible.

How many crawl around in February?

None are poisonous.

In the present day, dinosaurs like the penguins have colonised habitats where literally no mammal survives. We don't have a very clear idea of how cold tolerant non avian dinosaurs were, and which species were warm blooded, but we have no reason to assume they didn't colonise their whole world (especially given that that world was warmer than ours).

I think I will win a fight with a penguin

You wouldn't survive in penguin land.

The seasonal issue may be getting overemphasized a bit, here. The OP specified North America, which was nearly all tropical jungle or warm coastal plains at that time and probably not subject to wide seasonal swings beyond the wet-dry cycle typical of tropical environments today. The only exception being what is now Alaska and portions of Northern Canada, which are probably not what the OP was thinking of since they also specified tyrannosaurs, which did not ever live in the Arctic. Nor should a human traveler attempt to do so, if that fate can be avoided, as I like their odds of survivial even less in the snowy North.

 

[Jokodo]

I said specific "All kinds" isn't. Name five plants with edible roots that are common in the forests of southern Sweden and which you can recognise from there exterior parts under light snow cover!



Shoots in February in Sweden?


Nuts in February when it's been a non-mast year? Most not trees only carry a lot once every 4-6 years, and they're pretty much synchronised.

It's very season specific. It's not the tropics.

Yes it is seasonal, and in order to survive the year, you need to survive all seasons. I asked how you plan to survive late winter.

Finding animals to kill is hard. It's way easier to gather stuff. It'll be a struggle initially. But once you've learned what to eat I think you'd do fine.

If you survive long enough, sure.

If you have a pan or something to boil water in you'll have no problem. Boiled pine needles can sustain you for a long time. Years. You will never run out of those. Snow or fresh water streams are everywhere. As is firewood.

Creepy crawlies are all edible.

How many crawl around in February?

None are poisonous.

In the present day, dinosaurs like the penguins have colonised habitats where literally no mammal survives. We don't have a very clear idea of how cold tolerant non avian dinosaurs were, and which species were warm blooded, but we have no reason to assume they didn't colonise their whole world (especially given that that world was warmer than ours).

I think I will win a fight with a penguin

You wouldn't survive in penguin land.

The seasonal issue may be getting overemphasized a bit, here. The OP specified North America, which was nearly all tropical jungle or warm coastal plains at that time and probably not subject to wide seasonal swings beyond the wet-dry cycle typical of tropical environments today. The only exception being what is now Alaska and portions of Northern Canada, which are probably not what the OP was thinking of since they also specified tyrannosaurs, which did not ever live in the Arctic. Nor should a human traveler attempt to do so, if that fate can be avoided, as I like their odds of survivial even less in the snowy North.

The seasonal aspect is very relevant in Southern Sweden. I'm saying finding food can be a problem even at home, where you know some of the edible plants, he's saying there's plenty of food easy to find all year round everywhere in Sweden, and that he'd have no trouble identifying edible plants in the cretaceous either...

 

[Bomb#20]

More 19th century thinking... anything we haven't done can't be done. In the 19th century anyone trying to achieve heavier than air flight was frequently ridiculed because 'everyone knew it was impossible'.

Which is remarkable, since heavier-than-air human flight was already a thousand years old at that point. Marco Polo witnessed it.

Nobody has the slightest clue what it means to move into the past.

It is not something anyone has any experience with.

It is totally empty speculation.

The second you actually try to do it you realize you have no clue what to even try to do that is real.

Nonsense. We know exactly what to try to do that's real: study muons.

Is the standard model broken? Physicists cheer major muon result

[For the benefit of short-term thinkers: i.e., we do fundamental research. We pull on all the loose threads we can see, with no way to know in advance what they might be connected to. In 1900 nobody could possibly have guessed that studying the photoelectric effect was what would lead to us knowing how to factor large numbers in polynomial time.]

 

[bilby]

I thought it was implied.

Can we be more specific? Here's a typical situation: It's late winter (February or early March, before spring breaks) and it's been three years since beeches and oaks properly carried (they tend to do that). There is no fresh snow to allow you to follow tracks easily. What's your menu for the week?

There's all kinds of roots and shoots. And nuts. It's very season specific. It's not the tropics. Finding animals to kill is hard. It's way easier to gather stuff. It'll be a struggle initially. But once you've learned what to eat I think you'd do fine.

If you have a pan or something to boil water in you'll have no problem. Boiled pine needles can sustain you for a long time. Years. You will never run out of those. Snow or fresh water streams are everywhere. As is firewood.

Creepy crawlies are all edible. None are poisonous.

In the present day, dinosaurs like the penguins have colonised habitats where literally no mammal survives. We don't have a very clear idea of how cold tolerant non avian dinosaurs were, and which species were warm blooded, but we have no reason to assume they didn't colonise their whole world (especially given that that world was warmer than ours).

I think I will win a fight with a penguin

You won't find much snow in the Cretaceous. It's one of the warmest eras in the history of the Earth, and there was no permanent ice even at the poles.

Indeed, you might want to travel to a high latitude location, unless you like tropical heat and humidity.

Rainfall was high in most places though, so streams and rivers shouldn't be difficult to find.

 

[untermensche]

..Nonsense. We know exactly what to try to do that's real: study muons...

OK. Tell me.

What's the first thing you do to send somebody into the past?

Don't tell me to study something.

Tell me what we should do. Tell me something practical.

 

[bilby]

..Nonsense. We know exactly what to try to do that's real: study muons...

OK. Tell me.

What's the first thing you do to send somebody into the past?

Don't tell me to study something.

Tell me what we should do. Tell me something practical.

Are you seriously arguing that if something cannot be practically demonstrated, it must therefore be impossible?

Because the implication of your argument here is that physics is changed by technological development. That until the first person built a vehicle, vehicular travel was an absurd idea that could never be possible.

That argument is truly the dumbest argument I have seen in months. Despite the significant competition it has from some of the other lines of "reasoning" you have used in this thread.

 

[untermensche]

Are you seriously arguing that if something cannot be practically demonstrated, it must therefore be impossible?

No.

Because the implication of your argument here is that physics is changed by technological development.

My implication is that nobody has the slightest clue how to send a human back in time.

They do not even have a clue where to begin to try to do it.

If you can't even think of a way to try to do something than of course it is impossible.

I will not say something is possible when there is not a shred of evidence it is possible.

That is religion.

 

[bilby]

Are you seriously arguing that if something cannot be practically demonstrated, it must therefore be impossible?

No.

Because the implication of your argument here is that physics is changed by technological development.

My implication is that nobody has the slightest clue how to send a human back in time.

They do not even have a clue where to begin to try to do it.

If you can't even think of a way to try to do something than of course it is impossible.

Before the industrial revolution, nobody could even think of a way to do thousands of things that we take for granted - including the conduct of this conversation between people on different continents. "Of course it is impossible" would appear to be about as incorrect an inference as it is possible to draw.

I will not say something is possible when there is not a shred of evidence it is possible.

That is religion.

Nah, religion is when you claim that something exists for which there's no evidence. But the past certainly exists - History isn't a religion, and nor are archaeology or palaeontology.

Travel in time is an easy observation. You are no longer at the time when you started reading this reply.

So we have a known destination; And we know that movement is not only possible, but actually happening.

Not only that, but we know that neither space nor time are absolute. Time travel - or at least, time dilation - is an observed fact. Quantum mechanics includes various observations that are best explained by particles moving backwards in time.

All the elements are there; Your argument is akin to declaring that before oceangoing ships, it was impossible to travel from Europe to the Americas, and that therefore it never could be possible to make that journey, and the entire concept of intercontinental travel is absurd.

Which as I said, is an astonishingly bad argument, even by the standards of the woeful arguments you have put forward elsewhere.

 

[DBT]

Re, untermensche, your fallacy lies in assuming that if we don't know how to do something, it can't be done. We don't know whether travel to the past is possible in practical terms or not.

You don't know, but assume that you do. Your assumption of knowledge is that it's not possible.

 

[untermensche]

But the past certainly exists

It existed. The past does not exist anymore. You can't show it to me or point me in any direction to find it. You merely have a religious faith it is out there existing somehow.

Travel in time is an easy observation.

A human is stuck within time. Not traveling around in it.

There is no freedom of movement for a human trapped in time. You can't jump to tomorrow then jump back. You can't move to a past that does not exist anymore.

 

[untermensche]

Re, untermensche, your fallacy lies in assuming that if we don't know how to do something, it can't be done. We don't know whether travel to the past is possible in practical terms or not.

You don't know, but assume that you do. Your assumption of knowledge is that it's not possible.

It is not just that we don't know how to do it.

It is impossible.

My fallacy is that I take the idea seriously and look at the implications.

Do you have faith that we will one day be able to change the past?

That is an interesting religion.

 

[DBT]

Re, untermensche, your fallacy lies in assuming that if we don't know how to do something, it can't be done. We don't know whether travel to the past is possible in practical terms or not.

You don't know, but assume that you do. Your assumption of knowledge is that it's not possible.

It is not just that we don't know how to do it.

It is impossible.

My fallacy is that I take the idea seriously and look at the implications.

Do you have faith that we will one day be able to change the past?

That is an interesting religion.

By saying that it's impossible, you claim knowledge. You claim to understand the Universe and how it works well enough to declare "It's impossible!" with great certainty.

 

[untermensche]

By saying that it's impossible, you claim knowledge. You claim to understand the Universe and how it works well enough to declare "It's impossible!" with great certainty.

You believe the past is out there and can be approached somehow.

You have no evidence the past is out there.

You have a religious belief.

You believe things exist without any evidence of their existence.

 

[bilby]

By saying that it's impossible, you claim knowledge. You claim to understand the Universe and how it works well enough to declare "It's impossible!" with great certainty.

You believe the past is out there and can be approached somehow.

You have no evidence the past is out there.

You have a religious belief.

You believe things exist without any evidence of their existence.

So you believe that the past doesn't exist. Do you believe that the future also doesn't exist?

How are either of these belifs compatible with your belief that mass/energy cannot be created or destroyed? If past and/or future don't exist, and mass/energy exist in the present, where did they come from, and where will they go to?

 

[Bomb#20]

..Nonsense. We know exactly what to try to do that's real: study muons...

OK. Tell me.

What's the first thing you do to send somebody into the past?

Don't tell me to study something.

Tell me what we should do. Tell me something practical.

Well, sorry dude, but when the first thing you need to do is study something, "What's the first thing you need to do? Don't tell me to study something." is self-defeating. Don't ask questions you don't want the answers to.

My implication is that nobody has the slightest clue how to send a human back in time.

They do not even have a clue where to begin to try to do it.

It should be painfully obvious that if you want to try to do something that conflicts with our current understanding of the laws of physics, then the place to begin is to try to find out in what ways our current understanding of the laws of physics is wrong. Duh! That is why the place to begin is at any anomalous observation that our current understanding of the laws of physics cannot explain -- that's what might point us to "new physics" beyond what's already known. In 1500 that was the movement of the planets. In 1900 that was the photoelectric effect. In 2021 that's muons. The way we have always found out how to do the apparently impossible is by basic research into fundamental physics.