"The future ain't what it used to be."

Can someone truly build a working time machine?

(Continued)

I stand by my answer above.

For the fun of it, I ask anyone to engage in a little game.

I'll wager that before I can complete 20 questions for anyone to answer on the subject, one of two things will happen:

1. - You will conclude that my answer above is correct, or
2. - You will convince me that I am wrong.

Fair enough?

O.K. Here are the first three questions:

1. - What materials will you use to build it with? Be as creative as you like, but be sure to include a good description of each material and why you chose it for the specific job in performs in the machine.

2. - What will be your source of power? Again, be as creative as you like but be sure to describe the power source in detail and why you think it will work as the power source for a "Time machine".

3. - Where will you go? Careful! This is the most trick question of all. Be sure to think it through very very carefully before answering. Here's a hint - The first word in the question is NOT "When", but "Where". "When" is up to you. "Where" that is, get's MUCH trickier.

Good luck, and for what's it's worth, I HOPE you can prove I'm wrong.
 
Sorry about the blank posts above, they were dumb ideas. Since I couldn't delete them entirely, I erased them.

#1 My materials. I'll go with my most current idea, the Temporal Teliporter. Nice name? I just thought of it.

Have you read about the achievements Bell Labs have done in transportation? Using Bell's theory, they were able to teleport a single photon across the lab. It may not sound like much, but this is the basis of a teleporter.

What the device does is scans the 'transportee', destroys it, and transmits it's information somewhere else, where it recreats it perfectly.

Since I can be creative, I'll use this device, except improved a million times over, so it's capable of transporting a person.

The next device I'll use is the latest development in science, which is capable of transmiting light 300 times faster than it's usual speed. (Get where I'm going with this?) I posted the article on this achievement on the 'TT possible?' Topic.

That's my answer to question 1.

Second, the power source I choose will be fusion. Why? It sounds cool :) But nuclear will probably do the job.

And third, where will I go? I though about saying 2350, but you gave that hint on the where part. I'm pretty sure you're going to bring up the old "You'll end up in space because the Earth, solar system, galaxy, etc. are always in motion."

Well since the light that was accelerated ended up on the other side of the lab, and not in space, I'm pretty sure I'll be ok.

So, I'll get in the transporter, get destroyed, and send the information of me through the accelerator. I'll be zapped to the other side of the lab (before I left) and reconstruced in a second chamber.

And I will be in the future, a small percentage of a nanosecond younger than the rest of the universe.



<This message has been edited by Jack D (edited 06 June 2000).>
 
Hmmm...sounds just like the device used in the science fiction novel "timeline"
it also scanned, destroyed and rebuilt.
Dont worry If you make a teleporter device matter transporter tube, you wont feel a thing. it actually takes some time for the nerve impulses to reach the brain. to register any kind of pain and moving that fast you would bypass this .I think you would still be able to see somehow but i think all you would see was light.(based on the fact that when you astral travel you can still see and are not in the physical body)
your matter turned into energy and back to matter again.
then moving the transporter tube forward or backward in time. to be undetected.
Im impressed with your idea.sounds good.
happy.gif




<This message has been edited by pamela (edited 06 June 2000).>
 
Just wanted to add just because the light ended up on the other side of the lab only means it didnt move very far in time and by studying where it ended up in the lab and considering the Earths rotation you could tell exactly how many minutes or hours it was displaced in time and if it traveled forward or backward.(just guessing though-didnt read the article myself.)
You do need tracking devices and a very complicated advanced computer because if the tracking goes off or you are unable to hold it stable whatever you sent does end up in outer space. depending on how far you went.
=)



<This message has been edited by pamela (edited 08 June 2000).>
 
Right. That's why I'd only make a nanosecond time jump. Even after a second, the earth will be a significant distance away.
 
The Bell Labs experiment involved having two quantum-entangled photons prepared, which were then used first to record the information about the teleported photon, and then to impose it onto the other entangled photon. It's all horrible reams of equations, but the gist is that you have to have these entangled photons (or bits of matter, for your idea) to get the teleportation to work. If you went back in time, they wouldn't be entangled, so your information couldn't be mapped onto them, so you couldn't be recreated.

Plus, going faster than light doesn't mean that you go back in time.

You wouldn't see anything during the journey, though. Sight relies on your retina interacting with photons, and since your retinas wouldn't exist (only the information about them would) they couldn't interact with anything.
 
Bravo Jack D !
Explanation well demonstrated. I could not have put this to better words myself.
As for this Janus Character, you sure seem to have an opinion about somthing that you have no experience to form a basis of argument here, i.e. pertaining to the visionary experience of "Astral Travel"

The comparison was in "Speculation" as to what an individual may encounter while traveling as an energy form, therefore it is useless to argue over speculation.

------------------
"Everything you know,...is Wrong!
soon we shall all discover the truth."

p)'i4q4
 
Jack D:

Hmm. I like your creative answers. For #1, I'd have to say that sounds like the Star Trek transporter to me. I actually think this device will be do-able someday tho only for the purpose of freight shipment. I doubt any living thing could survive the experience. By your definition, (and Roddenberry's) you are "destroyed" and re-created. Seems to me there is more to the life force than just the information necessary to build our physical selves. Not to get religious here, but I do believe we are greater than the sum of our parts. An intangible "ID" if you will, that can't be quantified by data. We would have to assume that this "ID" or "Spirit" or whatever you call it, somehow was able to transcend the process and move independently to the destination to retake possession of the body once it was reconstructed. This seems more in the realm of the paranormal to me.

For #2, OK. Sounds as good as anything else. We assume the source can be isolated, controlled and focused on the equipment in such a manner as to power it effectively.

For #3, I'm not sure how your scenario demonstrates actual "Time Travel" tho. Time dilation perhaps, but that's not the same thing is it. I'm not sure how you wind up in the future, even a nanosecond, just by being transported across the room. Any more so than walking across the room. Your are surely "in the future" by the amount of time it took you to cross the room, but then that's the way time works anyway. Cause and effect. Seems to me this is SPACE travel but not TIME TRAVEL per se. Even the classic "Twins Paradox" is not Time Travel. Just dilation. Neither Twin is any more in the future of himself or the other than would be the case anyway. All that has happened is that the biological clock for each has run at a different rate due to the difference in relative velocity. If you'd like, I can give a demonstration scenario, but it's lengthy.

But your answers ARE thought provoking.

So, here's number 4:

How will you insure the prevention of a paradox regardless of "where" or "when" you travel to? i.e. - The Past OR the future.
Even the esteemed Dr. Stephen Hawking theorizes that the universe MUST have some "safety mechanism" that prevents Time Travel due to the impossibility of avoiding paradox if it were to be true. Personally, I can't think of a single Time Travel scenario I can't come up with some paradox it would have to lead to. (As long as we're talking Time travel in the classic "Time Machine" sense, since that's what this message thread subject is.)

Thank you for the reply.
 
Time travel or event hopping does not have the effect of erasing events, all that happens is that history no longer follows a sequential path in the forward direction. Although the events that lead you to YOUR present are sequential the sequence is no longer synchronised with a forward time reference.

------------------
"Everything you know,...is Wrong!
soon we shall all discover the truth."

p)'i4q4
 
I heard the above comment from someone else before, I believe the authour was referring to the myriad of shared belief that we in fact travel to an "Altered" dimension, or reality in which other self is also time~traveling to another dimension, so we perhaps never have to worry about that paradox, moreover since it is not the original past, of our reality, we never have to worry about other interferring paradoxes.

Dr. Mikaku said that Time "Forks" like a river, so keep that in mind as well.

------------------
"Everything you know,...is Wrong!
soon we shall all discover the truth."

p)'i4q4
 
Time02112:

"Time travel or event hopping does not have the effect of erasing events, all that happens is that history no longer follows a sequential path in the forward direction. Although the events that lead you to YOUR present are sequential the sequence is no longer synchronised with a forward time reference."


And the proof or even reasonable theory that this is so would be....what?

Or even Dr. Mikaku's statement for that matter.

None of this has ever been formulated into even a credible hypothesis, let alone a theory. It is speculation of the purest form with no bearing in anything that resembles a workable path to even reasearch into. As of now, it has about as much credibility as when past PhD.'s used to say it would always be impossible to go to the moon. Or that the earth "was created" in six literal days without even contemplating what constitutes the length of a single day.

I don't want to get sidetracked here because we're talking Time Machines, not multiple dimensions anyway. Besides, how would jumping to an alternative dimension (even assuming one or many existed or were created spontaneously), constitute Time Travel?

If you are going to "create" a parallel universe with the event of a "time jump", you are going to need WAY more power than Jack D's fusion or fission generators. In fact, you're going to need the power it took to create this one. Meaning you would have to instantly sap all the the power in THIS universe (destroying it in the process) just to invoke the event you describe.
 
I plan to power my timemachine with Baloneyonium. It is constructed the finest nebulonious steel milled in organic carrot juice. Of course questin #3 (how are you going to find your way around) is the one of the three that is laughably easy. All I gotta do is rip the ON-STAR system out of my uncles car. Duh!
 
As for #4 why would I need to prevent something that is impossible to begin with? Look, if you had a pair of doxes, you would have 4 all together right? I mean it is hard to have just one dox and have it be in conflict with itself. You need two of anything for that: thusly one dox has two parts so a "pair of doxes" adds up to 4. I guess, math confuses me.

If all possible paradoxes existed at once you could skip from one to another to another and never see one. That which does not make sense to an observer is in no way ruled out by the laws of physics. Any true paradox shows -proof positive- that perciever of it is confused.
 
The inertial properties of the earth are not a factor in determining the temporal displacement of accelerated photons, nor is it a factor in an accelerad temporal displacement experiment.

This can be explaned by considering a person on a trampoline. The person and the trampoline have the same inertial properties as the earth. As the person jumps he maintains the same inertial properties. If he did not he would not land on the trampoline. We can be convinced of this fact if we consider what would happen if this were not true. There are three inertial velocities relevant to the person on the trampoline. 1)Rotational velocity, 1037 miles\hr 2)Earths orbital velocity, 66638 miles\hr 3)Orbital velocity of solar the system, 671080 miles\hr. If the person makes a jump that last 10 seconds and does not maintain these inertial velocities he will be displaced relative to each by a value that can be determined with formula ( distance = rate x time ). Since no displacement is observed we must conclude that all inertial properties are maintained even when contact with the inertial reference frame is not. We can generalized this statement to include all froms of energy. It is also clear that all spatial inertial properties will be maintained through out any acceletated temporal displacement.
 
Valkerie: I would watch out when asking Time02112 for proof. He doesn't seem to take kindly to those types of questions...

But the many-worlds theorem is one at least tolerated interpretation of time travel. In the normal version, the infinite alternative universes already exist, and have since the creation of ours, coexisting with our own by some quirk of the math. Anyway, whenever a probabilistic event occurs, an infinite number of universes takes each possible path. Thus some ov the universes turn out one way, some the other. Then, the process continues for the universes which have that event in common (there are still an infinite number of each). So in effect, every tiny occurance makes an infinite number of universes diverge from our own. The energy doesn't need to be supplied, as it's already there. This is tough to explain without diagrams.

If you go back in time using this model, you actually spawn some new universes in which you appear at your destination time. Thus, any actions you perform (or murders - Grandmother paradox, anyone?) are not occuring in your past, but the past of an almost parallel universe.

Shadow: Ever read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? You kind of remind me of Ford Prefect :)

Tyme Master: I like your approach to the displacement problem, but in fact the Earth is not a perfectly inertial reference frame. What about the centripetal accelerations due to earth's rotation, orbit, the orbit of the Sun, the orbit of the Milky Way, the Local Cluster, etc.? These are small numbers, but rotating reference frames by definition are noninertial. In fact the person on the trampoline does move relative to it while he's in the air, it's just that the motion is so small as to remain unnoticed by the casual observer.
 
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