Time Travel

[ghostrunner]

Time travel into the past would be impossible without being very tricky to avoid the contradiction problem.

The "without being tricky" confuses me. If it's possible at all, how could you avoid the contradictions?

[cpebbles]

In a physical model in which time travel is possible, someone has long since screwed up the universe.

[InvincibleCakeEater]

In a physical model in which time travel is possible, someone has long since screwed up the universe.

this

[ghostrunner]

In a physical model in which time travel is possible, someone has long since screwed up the universe.

i've made this point before. and particulaly about time machine. If one was built, we'd have seen them by now.

I guess you could argue this universe has been screwed with, or that it's one of many screwups.

[TimeForGuinness]

Time travel into the future is possible today. Moving near the speed of light, time passes slower for you than the people at home.

Time travel into the past would be impossible without being very tricky to avoid the contradiction problem.

++

I think the contradiction in the past has to do with only going back to the point in which the device was created...but I'm not sure about that.

What if time isn't linear, then going to any point should be possible.

[wart57]

LISTER: Hey, it hasn't happened, has it? It has "will have going to have happened" happened, but it hasn't actually "happened" happened yet, actually.
RIMMER: Poppycock! It will be happened; it shall be going to be happening; it will be was an event that could will have been taken place in the future. Simple as that. Your bucket's been kicked, baby.


Red Dwarf--Future Echoes

[jim]

Not only is time travel into the future possible, we are all doing it right now!!

Actually, I believe that if you enter a black hole things get flipped and you can freely move forward and backward in time, but only forward in space. So, in a black hole, yes time travel forward and backward in possible.

[Arthur Dent]

Time travel into the past would be impossible without being very tricky to avoid the contradiction problem.

The "without being tricky" confuses me. If it's possible at all, how could you avoid the contradictions?

There's all the usual science fiction approaches to this including:
-When you go back in time, it's to another possible universe that has no causal link to the one you left. Feel free to justify with speculation about probability in quantum mechanics.
-Fate. It's impossible to make a contradiction because everything is pre-determined. As it was, and so it will be so.
-The universe blows up, people disappear, or whatever when you change the past. Incoherent nonsense, imo.

[ghostrunner]

Time travel into the past would be impossible without being very tricky to avoid the contradiction problem.

The "without being tricky" confuses me. If it's possible at all, how could you avoid the contradictions?

There's all the usual science fiction approaches to this including:
-When you go back in time, it's to another possible universe that has no causal link to the one you left. Feel free to justify with speculation about probability in quantum mechanics.

This is the only one that's ever made sense to me.

I suppose fate does too, but I reason that if you can go back once and see one thing happen and let it happen, you could go back again and intentionally cause something different. Maybe that's flawed somehow.

[AdmiralKird]

Just want to mention that future time travel was predicted by
Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity and has been confirmed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation

Like Arthur says, we can do this now; no BS.

well, assuming we ever have the ability to move humans at close to c. We are, of course, no where near that capability today.

You time travel anytime you fly in a plane, exceed elevation of sea level, or go into orbit. We do it all the time. You time travel when you accelerate in your car faster than someone at rest; everything is constantly time traveling at a different rate of other objects around it. When I type, my fingers age less than the portions of my body at rest. If an astronaut/cosmonaut is in orbit for a year he travels about 4.6/6.4 seconds (can't remember which) into the future relative to those on the ground. You don't have to go near the speed of light, for time dialation to occur, it just goes faster the closer you move at the speed of light.

There's an episode of the sci-fi series Andromeda about a ship called the Belleraphon that is launched from Earth that has massive time dilation properties. They explore for about 20years their time before they run into the Andromeda thousands of years in the future, which travels faster than light with no dilation properties.

So yeah you can travel into the future now. It's proven, we're just not capable of doing it at that high of a rate. Also the theory of relativity does not have anything in it against traveling into the past. If Einstein says it might be possible I'm not going to rule it out.