Ace said:

Ok, whatever. I'm ok with that.

SUPRMAN said:

this is my opinion.

"time" does not exist. CHANGE exists.

humans measure change, by calling it time. it is a paradigm, something we use to explain the observable world.

in actual reality, we see cycles of change around us, winter, spring, summer and fall, and we assume we are moving through time.

but we are not moving, and "time" is not moving. the only thing that we can know for certain, is that things change.

SUPRMAN said:

you're right, but they are measurements of matter, and you can travel back & forth on matter. Time is not really a measure of matter.

Time might exist as something I can't quite conceptualize, I admit. Or it may be a creation of consciousness & memory. Maybe if I was to evolve to a higher consciousness & conceive of the 5th dimension, time might appear as ordinary to me as height & width, but for now it seems more theoretical than anything.

Not to say I'm right & you are wrong, it's just the only way I can see it.

XxAxX said:

that's how I see it, too.

Whether time exists on the physical level or not, would that really affect our ability to travel through it the way Hawking is suggesting? There are lots of things that don't "exist" in and of themselves in the universe, but they do "exist" in the sense that we use them as a measure or gauge. In that sense, we could make a trip through what we perceive as time, right?

Efan said:

yes, but I'm not sure I see that as a reason that we could travel through it, though

NDRU said:

We could travel through it just the way Hawking and Einstein have suggested. My (admittedly extremely limited) understanding is that several humans--astronauts--already have done so (albeit the time travel was only a fraction of a second or thereabouts).

Efan said:

Sure but as has been pointed out, in that sense we're already all traveling through it. I'm talking more about traveling backwards through it.

I know they say go fast enough and it will slow for you, therefore you could go forward in time and not age. But that is very different to me than going backward in it. That's one of the biggest differences between the first 3 dimensions and the 4th one. You can go backward in space, but not in time.

Efan said:

OK, I’m not very good or smart with this stuff, honestly. But I’ve been sort of obsessed with Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity, and can say that space-time is definitely a real physical (that’s the best word I cant think of right now ) thing.

Actually, when Einstein introduced the special theory of relativity he stated that energy is equal to the speed of light times the mass of an object squared. (e=mc^2). This of course meant that contained inside of every atom in our bodies is a massive amount of energy since the speed of like is an astronomical number to begin with. But Einstein established in that theory that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light (the ‘c’ in his equation), and that the speed of light is constant relative to the object emitting the light (regardless of how fast you yourself are traveling a ray of light beaming from your flashlight will hit the object you’re aiming towards at the same time).

Anyways, what bothered Einstein was that in Newton’s theory on gravity if the Sun were to disappear, the earth would move out of orbit and into a straight line immediately upon the Sun’s disappearance. Einstein postulated that this couldn’t’ possibly be true because the light from the sun wouldn’t reach the earth for 8 minutes. Ergo, since nothing can travel faster than light, the earth would have at least 8 minutes before it started to veer off of orbit.
Hence, within 10 years he came up with the general theory of relativity which bridges the special theory with Newtonian theory (amongst many other things). But to make a very long story short, since I’m not very good at waxing physics, in Einstein’s theories space-time is a very real phenomenon. It is also very relative and experienced differently by all objects.
So if you flipped E=MC^2 and tried to get an object to match the speed of light (or go faster to alter it’s time and go backwards), you would then end up needing an infinite amount of energy and mass to do it—hence, NOTHING can travel at the speed of light.

However, if we could travel at the speed of light and faster, time would definitely go backwards because it is a real concrete space-time attribute of the fabric of existence.
The altering of space-time through an object's speed was proven several times actually, a few times by the US Navy (I think it was the Navy?). They used two atomic clocks—synced in real time to each other. Then they flew one of the clocks on a 747 cross Atlantic and back. According to Einsteins theory of relativity and the speed for which the plane was going (a ridiculous fraction of ‘c’ ), it was postulated that the clock on the plane would be a fraction of a second behind the clock on the ground once the trip was over—they calculated to the .000001 (or something like that) time. And sure enough, the clock that was on the plane was EXACTLY the amount postulated in accordance with Einstein’s equation.

Sooooo, space-time is very real and is altered (or more correctly experienced ) by the each object traveling at it’s own speed. We alter the space-time around us just by our motion and speed of travel constantly (though it’s way too minute to notice at our speeds ).
This was taken into account and we currently benefit from this knowledge by utliziing our modern day GPS systems. The satelights wizzing around in space do so at such tremendous speeds that over the years, they lose a bit of time—therefore they are calibrated to deal with this, and thus our cars are not being told to make a left turn too early or too late. It’s amazing Einstein thought all this up, initially without the math—the math came later to prove the theories.

.
[Edited 5/12/10 11:49am]

NDRU said:

Isn't that just perception, though? You really can't go back to occupy the same space you were once in. In a constantly expanding universe, on a planet that's rotating and revolving inside of a galaxy that's doing the same, you really have extremely limited mobility. You can never go back to the same space you woke up in yesterday--because that space is now somewhere else in the universe and is completely unknown and inaccessible to you. Maybe time is the same way, but maybe we can find some way to navigate our perception of the past. But obviously, the greatest argument against it is the fact that we've never met anyone from the future, so I tend to agree with you, but possibly not for the same reasons. (I'm totally out of my element here, so go easy on my lack of knowledge.)

OOps. I forgot to mention in the above that if you go by the equation of Einstein, and were somehow able to get up enough energy to travel faster than light then you would essentially go backwards through space-time.

There's nothing to prevent that outside of the fact that it's impossible in a practical sense.

So if you alter space-time by slowing it down, why not stop it or go backwards? That was my point--Einstein's equation allows for it...sort of.

But Dan, the plane still ended up in the same place & time as the rest of the universe, but its travel time took a tiny bit less than it did for those on the ground.

Now that's an amazing thing and very cool & interesting and shows how brilliant Einstein was, but it still doesn't convince me that you can go back & see Jesus.

The plane was still in the present.

TheVoid said:

You're totally turning me on with your sexy science talk.

Efan said:

I don't know anything either, I'm just speculating.

But I do think it's physically possible to occupy the same space as yesterday, at least in theory, maybe not in this reality because stuff moves, as you said. But get on a space ship & go to the exact point in space--it seems possible.

But yeah, location is relative, and time is relative, as Einstein showed. I just can't conceive that we could move to an older position in time.

NDRU said:

Understood it's the way you see it.
Time would still exist, even if people did not. Time existed before man came on the seen.
My guess is that every civilization in the universe finds it convenient to mark time.
You know yesterday is not today, but you don't recognize that a specific period of time has passed?
How we delineate time is our choosing but time itself goes on with or without us.
When you die, time stops for you, but not for everyone else . . .

NDRU said:

I know. It confuses me too.
Because we KNOW that space-time is affected due to the fact that the atomic clocks don't work. We also know that mass affects the space-time around it, bending it because we've witnessed stars behind the sun which we shouldn't see, but were able to see because the mass of the sun bent the space-time and light around it to allow us to see it--this experiment was conducted shortly after Einsteins theories during a solar eclipse).

SO we know that space-time is real, and that it is affected. But I have no clue how to answer your question .


I'm confused by it, because let's say a spaceship takes off and goes über fast to Jupiter and back. By the time the pilot of the spaceship lands back on earth, only 30 minutes has passed for him. But 50 years passed for the rest of us. He's still 20 years old, and all his peers on earth are now 70 (if they are still alive).

But if that's true--and if space-time is relative and experienced that way (and we KNOW it is by tests), then what would it look like to us on the ground? WOuldn't it look like his spaceship was crawling at painfully slow and took 50 years to get to us? I mean, that confuses me. I would normally say there's no way the equation works if not for the fact that it's been tested, and our GPS systems are calibrated to account for it.


My take is that if you alter space-time at all (and we know we can), then why not alter it's direction?

Efan said:

We really should should occupy the same space at the same time and utilize our mass.

TheVoid said:

As you approach the speed of light, time will appear to slow down, nearing actual stopping, but when you arrive, time will have continued to move forward and you'll be back in the rest of the universe's "present" even if your own clock will have slowed.

But isn't there also a theory that you nothing can move faster than light? Maybe there is a reason that is true.

NDRU said:

Yes, Einstein stated that the speed of light is constant and the fastest thing in the Universe.


He stated this in his original theory, the 'special theory of relativity'.

E=MC^2 (c=the speed of light).


The reason why nothing can travel as fast as light is because anything with mass (that's everything ), by his equation would require an infinite amount of energy to get to the 'c' in the equation. Also, the faster you go the more mass you obtain in the equation--so you'd have infinite mass and need infinite energy to obtain the speed of light.

Why photons (which carry light) don't do this, I have no flippin clue


The most brilliant execution of an explanation to this is written by Bill Bryson (there's a terrific audiobook by Bill Bryson on this) in his book "A history of Nearly Everything.".
It's what finally made a few lightbulbs go off in my head about his theories.


The reason why I'm confused about Hawkin's assertions is that I'm trying to figure out how Hawking proposes we get around the Infinite mass/infinite energy problem.


I LOVE THIS STUFF!!
More than buttsex.

SUPRMAN said:

It's also been proven that it's experienced differently between species of animals. A virus that lives only hours or days would experience things in milliseconds where we experience things in seconds.

A ground slug...well, I'm not so sure.

Birds experience time more quickly than we do. Fascinating.

Now what I'm talking about is independent of Einstein's theory and not the same thing, but it's still fascinating.

Ok, seriously.... Does this -->E=MC^2<--- Not make any damn sense to anyone else but me???

TheVoid said:

How can a virus experience say a drop of water falling at a different speed than I do?
It would take more of the virus' existence to experience, so relative to lifespan there is a difference, but the actual drop of water falling is not governed by any perception, it's all gravity.
How do we know birds experience time more quickly than we do? They don't migrate more than once a year (one roundtrip). So they experience a 'year.' It's not faster than our year.

tinaz said:

Energy is equal to the mass of an object times the speed of light...squared.


THis is a massive massive massive FUCKING massive amount of energy.


It was what lead scientists to split the atom and crate the atomic bomb. So it's hard to say Einstein wasn't right.

SUPRMAN said:

Again, I'm not talking about experiencing something in a different space-time. That's not what I'm talking about here. The show I saw wasn't addressing relativity at all.

I'm talking about experiencing time through our own brains. For example, when you flash a bunch of cards with a cartoon drawing, you're brain is not seeing page 1, then page 2, then page 2, etc. You're brain is seeing a drawing move on the page--we experience time that way.

Certain birds precieve the fluttering of pages differently than we do. Their brains are just designed to see the flashing of the paper differently--more quickly.

It's the same time we're both experiencing, but we perceive things in that time differently. A nat would fly in front of the bird and the bird would immediately snatch it---a sloth, however, wouldn't even register it. Same time--brains are wired differently to experience that time.

You'd have to see the show to understand. It was fascinating. I never realized before then that animals perceive time differently.

TheVoid said:

Heres what I just read...


deofnwoifnroen dnjdnon jijfojf jfiofeofo.... nhueiphr93


ncdjnnie ninvienvn nvkpkp FUCKING mdkomco.


Did I tell you I HATED alegebra, geometry, trig and all things relative to any of that unless it directed me to the party on the weekend...


But I TOTALLY appreciate your effort!

tinaz said:

OK, let's pretend that vivid's penis is moving from his city to yours.

As his penis picks up speed it starts to swell. If you want his penis to be at your doorstep immediately--then his penis would swell to well larger than the size of the earth, and he'd need a TON of gasoline to get to your doorstep.

TheVoid said:

I don't think he is proposing to get around it, in the OP he says only forward time travel will be possible--the trip to Jupiter scenario you mentioned earlier

The spaceship will not end up in the past, it will end up in the relative future.

TheVoid said:

I agree that they experience time differently. People can also experience time differently from other people.
But the experience doesn't affect the passage of time.

NDRU said:

Ahhhhh..
Then that is very possible within the next few generations.

You could do that with an ion drive, though the 30 minute scenario might not be possible.


What really depresses me is that according Bryson (who got his material from actual physicist and scientists), a human being will never, EVER reach the edge of our own solar system if he travelled in a spaceship originating from earth. It would take, according to him, given our current possible scenarios with the technology we can imagine, thousands of years.

I'm more optimistic than that, but Bryson didn't make this stuff up--he researched it and only eloquently deliver the message by real scientists.

TheVoid said:

... That TOTALLY makes sense now!

You'd think the damn nuns would of put it in terms I would understand