Recently I've become insanely obsessed with the ideas of Time Travel and Faster Than Light Travel, the first thanks to a friend of mine I've been talking to. So, now I'll start my post officially!

In March, Discover Magazine had an issue about Einstein, and things that his theories are now proving to be theoritically possible. Time travel with traversable wormholes and faster than light travel. Yes, we all say these things are impossible, but recently we are beginning to think that his equations may prove them actually possible.

Worm holes were theorized by him, and what they are is this: Literal shortcuts through the curvature of spacetime. In short, it's like a paper. Paper's surface is two-dimensional. Say an ant is on it. You pick up the paper, and fold it so that two ends meet. The ant can skip across instead of going all that way, thus having a short cut. But, you moved it in three dimensions.

We are in a three, four, or maybe more dimensional Universe, but can only move in three spatial dimensions: Front and back, side to side, and up and down. Width, Breadth, and Length. Thus, we cannot fold space, just like a two dimensional creature cannot fold two dimensional space.

But, we can pull three dimensional space towards a point with enough gravity. Thus, you literally pull your destination towards you and you can move faster than light while it is there, as the distance seems shorter but it really isn't. We just can't do that yet.

As for true Faster Than Light travel, you could do a different, more speculative thing than warp space time.

Imagine a particle that has NO limit to its speed. It can go as fast as it wants; as long as it is above the speed of light. Such a particle might exist; but it would be an imaginary particle. This particle is the Tachyon, which is completely speculative. No one knows if it exists or not. But, you wouldn't be able to stop it to make a ship.

Instead, what if you could momentarily replace all the molecules in your ship with the molecules that make up tachyons. Just hit a button, and everything in the ship would just turn into tachyons, until you hit the button again in which it would go back. After a while, you could program flights and everything, without the hassle of time or objects in space because of one thing: You'd be imaginary. Hit any speed above light speed, and you are moving faster than everything around you. You would be able to go through objects, as the electron shells would be slower than you and your electrons would be faster, and be able to theoritically just go in between them.

In a sense, you would be able to teleport.

You could also use a fusion or fission engine. All around us, hydrogen and helium and stuff like that floats by in space. While in space, you could suck in the hydrogen, helium, stuff like that, and then use it, and maybe by using fusion/fission (Forgot what one) you could use the energy from it, it'd be like what stars use, to possibly accelerate to the speed of light, possibly faster if you were to use something to stop gravity from affecting you, and to disable all friction.

Now on to Time Travel!

When someone says three dimensional, they mean: An object with length, width, and breadth. But, and object must have some extension into another dimension; a speculated fourth dimension: Time. However, even in Two dimensional space you have an extension into Time, meaning it is NOT the fourth dimension unless we can magically skip dimensions. Instead, it is a Zeroeth dimension: that means We move in four dimensions in three dimensional space: Thickness, Width, and Breadth are spatial dimensions, while Duration is the time dimension. and object without extension into Duration would vanish as soon as it appears. You cannot have no duration. Thus, lets look at it this way: Thickness is x, Breadth is Y, and Width is Z. Duration, the time dimension, is W.

All objects must have the W dimension, or they do not exist. We go into One dimensional existence, the Z dimension. It is merely width, so all that exists in that Universe is a solid line possibly. In two dimensional space you can add thickness or breadth. I'll add Thickness, X. So your in a XZW Universe, you can move front, back, side, side. You start thinking "Could there be a higher-up dimension in which people can also move up and down? Is this all there is?" as you move in your two spatial dimensions, unaware of the fact you are moving in three dimensions. Then, you gain all three spatial dimensions. You can move up, down, side, side, front, back. It took up until recent times (The Victorian Age about) for anyone to begin any speculation about a fourth dimension. It wasn't until H.G. Well's "The Chronic Argonaut" in the nineteenth century that people gave Time a dimension: the fourth.

In H.G. Well's "The Time Machine" the narrator explains that up until recent times people could only move in two dimensions: Side to side, front and back, until flight began being thought of. According to him a savage has very limited movement in the up and down dimensions, while a sophisticated man can move in all three spatial dimensions with ease from technology.

Then, he goes on to explain that a sophisticated man could also move through time with the right machine; a Time Machine. That was when the term was first used. It stuck like glue and became a phenomenon later on. This isn't that tale.

Time was like a river, you could traverse up and down it by using the right machine.

Now, in the early days of the 21st century, does any man give serious scientific thought on the nature of such a device.

What if one could create an electromagnetic field of such strength the Universe has not known since the dawn of time and itself! What if you could create a field so powerful that space time literally SNAPS from it's strength, and makes a bubble of it around you that is pushed into a dimension with merely time. The energy you used to do that would propel you up and down the stream of time, and you would be able to stop.

That was when I noticed a problem in that theory (Not my theory, I credit a friend of mine from T3E, a very intellectual man I do say). If the bubble did not hold, and you lost movement of spatial dimensions, you would merely go forward or backwards for time indefinite. But, what if the magnetic field was what held it? What if one could traverse time as if it was a river?

It is simple. The bubble holds as time cannot penetrate it. Once it pops, the spatial dimensions within would be in that dimension. Due to the nature of Universes not wanting untimely doom and all one would assume that it would not allow that. It wouldn't.

Instead, the bubble would be held by the magnetic field and have all the dimensions we know. To escape the time stream is where we stopped... Unless... No, that wouldn't, would it? Would being able to use the energy of quantum physics that makes it so virtual objects appear and disappear in empty space, thus creating vacuum energy (Which if used would destroy the Universe in theory) be able to pull you out of the dimension of time only?

In theory, one could actually split our Universe by using time travel. Using the Grandfather Paradox, one would be unable to kill his grandfather before the conception of his father, no matter how hard he tried. You could kill him, but you would enter a horrible paradox that could rip the Universe apart.

Guessing that the Universe wants to stop paradoxes from doing that, one of these things could happen:

Everyone else act like you just vanished.
The Universe is stuck with you.
or, my favorite: The timeline splits. In one you win and are never born, in another you fail. Something happens stopping you. Your gun jams, you trip, you fall and die.

But, the paradox could do any of those three if it is prevented from destroying the Universe.

But, for such a device, an immense amount of energy would be required. This will be about the energy source: A singularity perhaps, or perhaps... Vacuum Energy.

A singularity is basically a very small thing with immense gravitational pull; basically a black hole. However, you could possibly harness the ability to make and control them at will, thus creating a power source. Whatever you want goes in, Hawkings Radiation comes out, powering your device. We would need much advancement though, technologies beyond modern possibilities.

Or, Vacuum energy. A vacuum is a very unlikely source of energy; however, they say it has enough energy in an area the size of a coffee cup to boil all the oceans of Earth. We could harness this energy possibly, the how I'm not sure. However, one problem exists: Using it could destroy the entire Universe. But, think of this: You make an artificial vacuum. Vacuum energy is detected in it, and then you pull enough out. Before it sends a wave that'll destroy the Universe and expand from it at the speed of light you release the vacuum to air, canceling it out and you then create that electromagnetic field, and bam!

Theoretically gravity would work, but gravity is such a weak force that you would need many, many black holes to get a mere rip, to snap space time you'd need a trillion neutron stars being devoured by trillions of black holes every second pretty much. Unless gravity just interacts weakly with us in our dimensions that we perceive, it is very weak. Electromagnetic forces are much stronger. It can escape gravity, so obviously it is stronger.

Or, you could use dark matter or antimatter somethings.


Our Universe has so many possibilities for these things, makes one truly wonder if we will be able to do them someday.

This post has been edited by Mr. E: Jul 6 2008, 06:58 PM

When it comes to time travel to our past this link speaks of ideas I have had for many years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4097258.stm

Time travel forward is just a matter of changing the rate of progression of your time frame of reference. At all times progression is continuious and conservation of energy is preserved.

It is however a one way trip. Time travel backwards requires discontinuity and conservation of energy is broken. What this says is that all of the energy in the universe would be just short of enough energy to stop or reverse time. Time rate of progression is a variable but can only have positive values.

However super luminal velocities are possible and this is demonstrated by the jets of black holes. Sn1987A demonstrates this very effectivly. Velocity C is a visual limit not an physical one. The actual speed limit is the speed of gravity.

This is demonstrated by the earth and the sun. The suns actual position is seven minutes ahead of its visual position. Aberration of sunlight occurs because the earth orbits the actual location and not the visual one. This is further demonstrated by the sun rotating arond the galaxy. The earth orbit does not elongate by shortening on the leading edge and trailing on the following path.

The information of where the sun and earth are is visually seven minutes in delay while gravitationally they are in sync. This requires the gravitational information to be updated by many thousands of times the speed of light.

This also requires the universe to not be cyclical but a single event in a time dimensional reference, not a spatial dimension as string theory proposes. The universe is the internal process of a particle undergoing a change in state.

From inside the univers it appears to have a time frame of reference with a limit approaching infinity. Externally it would be observed as haveing a time frame of reference approaching zero. The universe exists because the time dilation across it is absolute.

String theory and speed limit c is busted. Thats my story and I'm sticking to it.

This changes the internal mechanism of black holes as well but that is beyond the scope of this quesrion.

But in travel to view the past as it happens, does not break continuity with your present and does not influence the past in any way shape or form, could not conservation of energy, still be preserved?

But in travel to view the past as it happens, does not break continuity with your present and does not influence the past in any way shape or form, could not conservation of energy, still be preserved?

If you actually leave the present and move to the past this paradox arises. The energy in your body no longer exists in the present. The past just gained the same amount of energy. Energy cannot be destroyed or created only chnaged in form.

The total energy of the universe must be equal at all points in time. Time travel to the past and a point in the past now has more energy than the present by double the amount of energy in your body.

Time travel forward is not time travel but simply a difference in time rate of progression. At all points energy is continuious. If we were looking at each other from two different frames of reference then. I might look as though I were moving very slowly because a second is an hour your time. You would seem to move very fast to me because you have an hour of motion to my one second of observation. We are in different time rates of progression but all points are continuious.

By manipulating time frames of refernce ET could go from here to there very quickly with no sonic boom. In one second of observational time ET accomplished five minutes of travel time.

What if Time is part of the Universe though, meaning if you go back your energy remains but moved in a different space. To a two-dimensional being, moving in a third dimension is leaving the Universe, but if his Universe has three dimensions the three-dimensional mover merely moved the mass and energy that is his body in a way that we don't perceive; thus, we merely might not perceive time as a way to travel yet.

That's kind of how I see it, and I think it makes sense. The present doesn't LOSE energy/mass, but just has it in a different place because you still are there, only older.

Hmm, I do not think you fully understand my question.

We record history by sound and images.
Couldn't it be possible to find a way to play back a place in such a way that you are not actually going to the past, where as you are simply viewing events without ever leaving the present.
Conservation and paradox not involved or violated.

Don't know. Light is energy. If you zipped to 25,000 light years from earth you would be looking back 25,000 years, but what could you see from that distance?

I believe both time travel and hyperdrive travel are possible. I have seen it. We also can manipulate the past when we are in it to attain the desired future to a certain point. We must not be allowed to violate our own existence. I have seen that tried and he failed. Keep on talking about it. You may find someone who will give you more insights.

Thats an easy statement to make. Can you provide an explenation or a contextual story.

Here is an interesting link, on Faster than light.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...;pagewanted=all

Thoughts?

We know for certan that relativity is wrong. The issue is that we have nothing to replace it with so it remains the closest approxamation available. Many physicist still cling to relativity as being correct and go through all kinds of mathmatical hijinks to prove this.

The evidence keeps building that C as a speed limit is busted. Quantum entanglement is known to be instantanious. There are examples in the lab and in nature that demonstrate superluminal velocities and changes in time frame of reference.

There are no known examples of time shifted in any direction that is not positive. There was one proof I read that suggested super luminal velocities were an illusion created by a particle spinning backwards in time, but the math involved was the only illusion I saw in it.

String theory is all the rage, but it is still an unproven concept. String theory places no limit on time travel or parallel universes, but I believe string theory is wrong. The reason I believe this is that the strings are virtual and it looks to me like it is just a mathmatical abstraction to arrive at a solution because we don't know the real math involved. And with all the people working on it string theory has been unable to make any predictions or even show a unity for gravity.

I think our failure to find a solution is because we do not properly understand time. Time is the fundemental unit of energy for a universe size particle and when this is established I think the solution for gravity will be found.

It depends at what speed you zipped 25,000 light years away. If you would be able to do that in one year you would be waiting for images that were send away 24,999 years ago, so you'd be watching the past.

Either you believe it or you know it. That makes a huge difference.

What comes to mind:

turning a beam inside-out and creating a vacuum for light/energy. Light itself has a very peculiar way of behaving: when you travel at the speed of light, you'd expect that if you'd reach out ahead, you should be able to just stay in front of a lightbeam, but.... when you measure it right there, it would still have the speed of light. It is a constant beyond relativity.

This experiment only shows that you can make light travel faster than what we thought it would, but I think I could imagine more ways to make that happen. However, all of these fabricated lightspeeds would only work in a controlled environment. Hm, untill it's possible to make a beam produce it's own predecessor/environment/multiplier, a nano tech beam...

In the first post in this thread I think lies one mistake that is part of the misunderstanding. To exist we (as humans) do not live in 3 dimensions, but at least in 4. With of course the 4th being time. However our limited knowledge of time keeps us in a box, limited, again, by those 4 dimensions. I do not think time is the fundamental unit of energy, but only the container. This container in itself has no particular shape or dimension and therefore is flexible beyond our current comprehension.

I view time as an absolute by which all things depend including all energies.
Without time at all, what would you have?

That's kind of what I think. Time is Duration, that's our extent into Time, as the spacial extensions are our extensions to space.

Without time there is no duration. Spatial dimensions exist but nothing endures in them to move. So essentially nothing. is without time, but you would be unable to spatially move without space meaning space itself is just like time, we just move through it better.

Maybe there is some dimension that we can't perceive until we can perceive traveling in just time.

You SD, as everyone else, has his/her/it's own perception of time.

Within every being there is a different clockspeed (related to metabolism).
Within every being there is a different perception of history.
Within every being there is a different perception of future.
Within every being there is a different perception of the Here and Now.

So, already within these relatively ordinairy observations we can see a huge difference in the way we as individual beings (can) understand time. It is possible to change the individual perception of time. As said before, time is a container, a ruler, even an "instrument", helping you to put existance in perspective. The more you understand of it, the more it helps you. This also means understanding that there is other time than just the "absolute".

If you'd stay inside the "box" that your current life is, for most people that would mean that time is a constant factor, which would perfectly work well for "modern" society.

The absolute Nothing could only be where there is No Time. This is a state of existance that I think is possible within normal fluctuations, but merely as a floating "moment".

I think "all things" could only "depend" on time if time itself was active, which it is not (all the time). Time mostly seems like a kind of follower, but better: an integrated "co-exister". It does not follow and it does not lead, it is just there, no matter the situation. A constant relative. You can't choose your own family...