Time travel

As a child, I was drawn to the enigma of time travel. It provided a mental escape while also igniting a fascination for the concept. A conversation with my high school science teacher about surpassing the speed of light still lingers in my memory. My reasoning was grounded in relativity – if an object is nearer to me than someone else, I essentially observe their future, as light reflecting from the object reaches me faster. Conversely, they bear witness to my past. My teacher, however, quickly dismissed my queries as echoes of Einstein’s theories. It’s a shame, as I had a host of other questions.

By my 18th birthday, I had conceived a design for a time machine. Without delving into specifics, it bore the resemblance of a flying saucer, comprised of several rotating shells, each suspended in a vacuum, and transferring enormous amounts of charge from the edges to the centers. The hypothesis was that while it’s impossible to move an object through time and space, one could alter the space defining an object’s position in both dimensions.

These days, I harbor doubts about its feasibility, but I still nurture the idea that it might offer a method for instantaneous travel to any location in the universe.

My confidence in time travel has dwindled due to inherent paradoxes and the seemingly absurd notion of alternate dimensions or timelines.

Consider this – if time travel is invented anytime within the next million years, we should already be encountering time travelers today. Given the egocentric nature of humans, it’s hard to believe that a time tourist wouldn’t reveal their futuristic origin or alert us to looming disasters, providing irrefutable evidence. Stephen Hawking echoed a similar sentiment. In reality, it’s difficult for individuals to keep such monumental secrets.

Another persistent issue lies in causality or paradoxes. The “grandfather paradox” exemplifies this – what happens if one travels back in time and kills their own grandfather before their father’s conception? Suddenly, you couldn’t possibly exist to carry out that action in the first place.

The belief in alternate timelines or multiverses implies that the well-established physical laws governing Energy Conservation are erroneous. It suggests that with every fleeting moment, entire alternate universes spring into existence based on our individual decisions. Consider the energy contained within a single atom, then multiply that by an infinite number of atoms and possible timelines – the resulting energy is mind-bogglingly vast, and frankly, a tad self-centered.

In my view, all matter fundamentally embodies movement>pressure>density. Since matter is perpetually in flux, the energy or matter that existed a thousand years ago still persists today, albeit in a different form. Therefore, ‘yesterday’ as you remember it doesn’t exist beyond a recorded impression in your mind.

I see time as a mere measure of relative movement. In an entirely empty space, a single moving object, like a ball, would lack a past, present, or future without another reference point. To summarize, time only materializes as our consciousness perceives change.

Despite these challenges, I strongly believe in the potential for faster-than-light travel. Light, being a waveform, shapes our perception of the world but doesn’t necessarily impose a theoretical speed limit.

However, I am fully aware that I might be entirely off the mark.

http://beforeitsnews.com/science-and-technology/2011/10/u-s-scientist-patents-time-machine-1216437.html

http://english.pravda.ru/science/tech/06-08-2010/114515-time_machine-0/

14 Responses to Time travel

  1. Jason White says:

    1) Theoretically, the total energy of the universe sums to zero. So, infinitely many parallel universes wouldn’t violate conservation of energy laws.

    2) You used the grandfather paradox in conjunction with the idea of infinite universes to say that it can’t happen and thus time is a figment of our conscious. I would have to argue that there is proof that time exists because we can prove that time slows down when moving. Each plane has a clock onboard. That clock has to be specially calibrated to account for special relativity. If they aren’t, Pilots and other Airport workers run into the problem that less time has passed on the plane than on the ground, so everyone’s time is slightly off. If time was a figment of our conscious, then theres no way it could have any possible impact on a physical device because it wouldn’t exist.

    • Jason
      Not sure I understand your first point? My view is that energy is movement. In a closed system energy can neither be created or destroyed, just transformed. In an open system such as the void of space energy radiates in all directions. Nonsense? Look at a star, don’t think for a moment that the light waves are only pointing towards us.

      The grandfather paradox is only one problem — I spend much of my 20’s spoking pot and talking about time travel — My main argument these days is that it would take incalculable amounts of energy to create alternative universes every time we changed our mind. And the idea is absurdly egocentric. Time is a relative measurement, our experience of time is subjective. i.e.: If i was standing closer to an object than you I would be seeing your future and you would be seeing my past. (talking in nanoseconds). The same of course applies to time as a measure of movement. Which is also explained in Einstein’s concept of time dilation. But we can calculate time objectively, mathematically. Personally I like Gallileo’s principle of relativity in that movement is relative and there is no absolute and well-defined state of rest. Does time exist? Sure it does, but it is subjective, which is confusing because science likes to be objective. My time is not your time. I can slow down my time relative to your time by travelling faster but that’s all.

      Unfortunately these days I am too busy working and paying a mortgage to think about all this, but it’s fun and I appreciate your comment.

  2. Steven Coley says:

    I’m just a kid but I’m interested of Time travelling is,Do time travel exist? I need a lot of information to state the problem.In my Theory my time travel is my dream I can see a lot of happenings in my dream.Its hard to say that time travel really exist?, I wanna know what the past is and I wanna know what is the future.Does Time travel uses electricity? I’m just trying to figure out what time travel is I want to travel way back in past times and futures happenings.
    Today I’m trying to demonstrate time travel by using electricity the core of the clock.
    It is confusing how to state time travel We could figure out and answer the question of the people together We can time travel whether its past or future

    • Hi Steven
      How wonderful is is to ponder time travel. I was very young when I started getting into conversations about time travel and paradoxes etc and swore to myself that one day I would invent a time machine and travel back to help my younger self. Sadly it has never happened. These days my thoughts on time travel are that it’s not possible as time is a contiguous stream of events. Every tiny part of the past is with us now. It is not gone or continuing in another place or dimension. It’s here, now, only moved, changed.
      The idea of different time lines is also ludicrous and egotistical. How can all matter in the universe be duplicated to create alternate an time line when we simply change our minds. Silly stuff. Anyway, don’t stop thinking about time-travel!!! One day you may prove me completely wrong. 🙂

    • Mahi says:

      Hi, steven if you are reading this reply me

  3. Tim says:

    I believe you could make time travel to the past possible if you could reverse the flow of energy (movement). Let me know when you figure that one out.

    Oh and the link you posted at the end is broken. Would you know of another place that article might be posted?

    • Rodster says:

      I’d be interested in how you can say that “what you need to get in your mind is the question of whether the material world creates the mathematical world, or vice versa”? Mathematics in physics is simply a description of change in terms of movement, vibration and pressure. How can mathematics itself effect change? I agree time is relative, but isn’t matter relative as well?

      The mathematics of our material physics is but a small subset of all math theory. We’re talking why many physics majors across world(s) shake and wag their fingers at math majors, for discovering and exploring non applicable mathematical theory to this world. To a physics major that is a waste of time, to a mathematician its like going into orbit and exploring new worlds. Worlds we will never know. Again the point is that a physics major will limit himself and say nothing except this world and nothing outside of this material world because we can’t experience and participate anyway in these world(s). I agree with the mathematicians, the reason its so important is because if the universe is truly infinite and agrees with theory of a infinite functional set, therefore eventually every possible mathematical world function has to eventually exist. So call it parallel or virtual worlds to our own, but having different rules and relationships then our own. You’ll say things like but we can’t ever even time travel to these relational worlds because the laws are inverted to my material existence and requirement to be, and I’d say so what. If the universe is infinite then everything that can be thought up as a mathematical rule will have to exist at some point. I won’t even say they exist in time since they probably exist simultaneously, I won’t even say they have a relational time axis as they may not. Some might use one of our dimensions of space as time. Others might use entirely different dimensions and some might not be constrained to speed of light propagation delays, etc, etc. Some might not be orthoganol in spacial dimensions. Some of them your existence could occur if aligned properly, some are antithetical to your material body. If you believe in the one time big bang then obviously you’d say the universe isn’t infinite but rather finite and then you’d be right that the only world that exists or ever will exist is the one we are experiencing right here and now (which is wrong). On the other hand if you believe in steady state or local expanding and contracting universes (correct view) that extend to infinite (realizing the infinite mathematical set of functions and numbers) time and space in each direction then you have to believe that these alternate worlds exist, because infinite implies all possibilities. So again I tell you that time travel is possible (because we are participating in a like law/ruled world and obeying those works of and infinite God) whereas traveling to antithetical worlds of mathematical physics is not, but these worlds still exist if the world is infinite like mathematical theory seems to believe. Again is it this physical universe that lets us learn what is mathematics (physics majors), or is it the mathematical world that eventually (out of infinite outcomes) creates all possible physical manifestations and other worldly physics to abide by the infinite set of possibilities? And I care not to argue with anyone about this, because in my opinion anyone who can’t sense the metaphysical aspect of infinite mathematics set is probably too stupid to argue with.

      In the end one can participate in backward time travel because they share the same rules as this worldview and one can use the rules to actual invert the flow of the time dimension and yes therefore entropy. It doesn’t take a black hole either BTW.

      There is a whole another subject matter here about infinite outcomes and world and worldrules, that is the existence of life after death even without a machine to travel to other worlds. So the reality of consciousness being really just a connecting of dots as you say impressions of images in the infinite material sea (called God) of possibilities then again since the world(s) are infinite, you must live again since the world has outcomes of your consciousness. Not to say that there aren’t rules/laws that dictate where we go irrelevant of what we might want. Jesus of Galilee probably was trying to convey this message when he said that we are constantly dying and being reborn across what is billions of time units to other relative observers maybe for another uinverse altogether.

      If the infinite theory of mathematics is all I had in my bag to say time travel was possible now that would be pretty lame wouldn’t it? But it isn’t.

      Rod

  4. Lukas says:

    I appreciate your honesty and integrity concerning your willingness to be corrected and pursuit of the “truth” rather than stand by a secular dogma called a theory. If more people in the science and academic community had that ethic, the world might actually move on from our retrograde of rennaisance.
    A few thoughts, however, on Time… and… Space (seperate for postarity). I agree with your statements that time is not a thing so much as a human perceptive measurement of movement, whether of mass or energy. In that, I think some others are getting the confusion that you were saying that any effect that appears like time dilation doesn’t exist except in people’s imaginations/calculations. Your article, as I understand it, didn’t say that, but it didn’t keep it from being assumed.
    Sorry. That being said, the idea of dilation of perceived and effectual metabolism of energy and events (also a course of energetic activity) surrounding a subject, usually human, I don’t think you discluded. Since the concept of time, in it’s reality as you and I possibly both view it, is a rate of metabolism (universally speaking) and not a substance, like the einsteinian rubber mat or more recently, a thick photonic syrup.
    This means that within all things material and/or structured lies both the imprints of “past” activities and the patterns capable of defining “future” activities within proper situations. Thus, perceiving the “past” and “future” is like having a dream, not an actual reality. I believe you supported that concept when trying to explain why Time Travel wasn’t possible.
    However, this is where I prepose a previously over-preposed concept of parallel realities based on this concept. Nature loves to conserve. In fact, it’s Law. Even if matter is disassociated or a species lies dormant in the genes of another for a time. I agree with you that an infinite explosion of realities everytime an event goes by is, by Physics standards, improbable.
    What if around matter, having imprints of the “past” and structures of the “future”, a discrete diversity of realities exists, like a prism seperating white light into a rainbow? What if each interprets the activities in the other realitivistically (as in, not in the same preportion, not Einstein-like) and mirrors those activities in it’s own? What if those different realities interwove into the others elegantly, as to not disrupt but to preserve the other by seperating and merging strings of events that reinforce the other reality? If this were so, it could mean that instead of a weird fantasy of quantuum physicists where everything is realitive and past is future and future is present, that multiple activities and possible functions could be carried out without as great a risk of “system failure”.
    The purpose of that little fantasy query is more about addressing the ideas of superposition, quantuum entanglement and some other recent mainstream physics ideas of time and probability.
    It’s nothing more than a theory on the wind, really. I’m curious to hear what you and others of similar mind think of it. No dillusions of time travel, though.

    • There is a wonderful experiment where sand is vibrated at specific frequencies on a plate to form elaborate patterns. The patterns are the inverse of the vibration or movement.
      This is something that persists on every level. We study matter and patterns without studying the complex but definable energies influencing or creating them. Reality itself as a whole may be the inverse of energetic systems in our universe.
      Whether there are different interwoven realities, who knows. Maybe, but my view is that reality is a bit like a barn dance in that the individuals all move both independently and at the same time to the music, but are enormously influenced by other individuals they encounter. The potential outcomes or realities are infinite but the actual reality is defined by a dance of various energetic influences. Hope this makes sense to you.
      So what I am saying is that infinite future realities are possible but the only reality that will ever exist is now.

      • Rodster says:

        You’re certainly welcome to have a right to your opinion, just not the facts. Conservation of Energy and mass has nothing to do with whether time travel is possible. Nor whether the world is infinite or fine. Because Conservation of mass and energy are simply relative to one persons observation. Yes the laws of conservation hold true with respect to a time and space, but nothing more. Somehow you want to think that each split of a universes time/space would be a split of its energy/matter perceived by each universe. Hence you are arguing that they must share the same initial energy. If this were true then they wouldn’t be parallel (imaginary to us) universes, because we’d feel their simultaneous creation and destruction by theft and return of energy. Nobody in their right minds believe that! If other universes could feel split universes they wouldn’t be imaginary (unreal) ghosts to us, they would be sharing the same space time. And quite frankly nobody is saying parallel universes share the same space time, nor same energy.

        Think of it like this please. Calculus does extend on the idea of infinite number sets. If the universe is infinite then mathematics of calculus isn’t a conjecture its a reality. That is everything that can exist will exist and already has existed to obey the infinite set. Now energy and mass laws are really just functions in mathematics describing how data (numbers) of space and time and mass interact in one subsets of infninite outcomes. In other words what you need to get in your mind is the question of whether the material world creates the mathematical world, or vice versa. If the mathematical world (that is the reality of all possible numbers and sets) dictates a real material manifestation, then even the laws of energy and mass have nothing to do with larger sets that don’t obey those rules. Further those rules are applicable only to observation. Observation to who? You? Me? My time? Your time? Predessors time? Aliens time? And what are you, me, somebody else observing but our own time, our own space. So energy and mass again only has bearing in the in the observed frame of reference. Yes another person on another time line (parallel universe) still experiences the law of conservation of energy and mass if he’s related to our world rules, but that doesn’t mean he’s sharing the same energy with you. This is the same question of relativity with time, time isn’t constant between two moving or acclerating observers. If time isn’t constant one can’t expect both of them to agree energy is observed the same? Right I mean energy is a inverse function of time? So there is the point who is right and who is wrong? Thats relativity at its worst and best. And no it doesn’t mean either one of them have to share the same energy from different perspectives, only they share a conservation of energy for themselves. There you go in essence the big question is if two observers see each others time contracted as they move relative to one another, who really is going slower? The answer is resolved by whoever accelerates and deceleartes back to the previous point of reference.

        Again like another poster said conservation of energy and mass has no relevance beyond observers in each time reference. In short you are trying to argue something nobody who believes in infinite unverses believes, that the sum of energy of created infinite universes is equal to presplit universe. Nobody who has intellectual of electromagnetics or relativity physics is conjecturing the real world exhibits those effect. Nobody denies that for a relative observer conservation of energy and mass exists, but to what observer is the only question. And infinite universes believers would say to all observers across all their oberved times.

        Two I’m an an electrical engineer about the same age as you and know a few things about electromagnetics, entropy, and relativity. Time travel is possible because all mass is really charge and electrical in nature. If I told you that the way to travel time in past is by antigravity then you’d be like oh great and I we know how to create anti-gravity. As a matter of fact some do.

        Regards,
        Rod

      • Thanks Rod, great comment! I’d be interested in how you can say that “what you need to get in your mind is the question of whether the material world creates the mathematical world, or vice versa”? Mathematics in physics is simply a description of change in terms of movement, vibration and pressure. How can mathematics itself effect change? I agree time is relative, but isn’t matter relative as well?

      • Rodster says:

        Please egoist time travelers don’t share your time traveling machine with Stephen Hawking. Everyone knows a time traveler needs Stephen Hawkings approval to be vindicated correct that they did indeed come from the future. As far as detecting egoist from the future, this would be pretty hard to be detected since the squelch level of this time’s occupants have ego’s the size of the universe. With everyone here in our observed time frame loving to hear their own voice who would even notice a rational voice from the future?

        Let me put it to you this way why would anyone share their time machine when they are smart enough to formulate it by themselves. Why to be taxed and outlawed on their own resource. No stupid apes need to stay in their own time lines, there is no need for them to cross over into other universes and replicate their stupid genes there two.

        Time travelers are elitist. Considering that most universes are just like this one of backwards political demigods and trouble makers and egotistical, how many of them do you figure will manage to figure out time travel? And then why would a smart man share such with his dumbest of brethrens? And even so suppose he goes back in time to visit himself to tell about his future, which of the infinite universe younger self would get the idea young in life? Like winning the lottery. And the dumber you are the more unlikely you should wait for your future self to come visit you anyway. I love these sites, always somebody asking for free candy like welfare. Gimme Gimme.

        Rod

  5. Unknown says:

    Rod calm down.. You’re talking down on everybody else like you’ve figured it out, and have a touch screen time machine sitting in a secret room… (you wouldn’t be on here talking crap). Fact of the matter is your just as clueless about this subject as everybody else on here, in fact not as well off, because at least no one on here has delusions of grandeur.. or narcissistic personalities.

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