The problem I keep running into with time travel. Lets say you went through time. Would you stay in the same space or would you move with the earth. Our moon makes the earth flip flop back and forth. So if you traveled in time say 10 years would you reappear out in space a million miles from earth? Or even 30 million miles?

We hae not even created the time machine yet.

That's actually a really good question. I haven't really much thought about that. Some of the theories on time travel are based on the theory of general relativity. So when one warps time, one also warps space with it. I don't really know what effect that would have on where you are while time traveling. Maybe I'll try to look it up and see what I can find.

very very good question! I think I once wondered about it too, but forgot it. No idea how would it be. Very interesting, what others have to say.

you would be in another dimension so the earth would move around you. imagine something uneffected by gravity hovering in the air, as the earth rotates the hovering object would be in another location. so if i time travel to the location im in right now; New York in 1916 and stay there for 12 earth hours, travel back to my present time - i would accidently appear in australia, but if i wait 23.8 or whatever hours depending on the wobble of earth i would appear the same general location (ny).

the interesting question is, what would keep you in the same point of space, IF you would appear in the same point of space, not on the surface of earth. I mean... what makes it the same point of space???

ur all missing the obvious..... how many airplanes have u been in that have no GPS ?

presumably, if ur whizzy enough to build a time machine, u would have the bonce to build a navigator in it. lets face it, three dimensional travel uses three dimensions to pinpoint co-ordinates, so why wouldn't four dimensional travel use four dimensions to get a fix ?

may be u could use the fifth dimension of personal timeline as a check digit.

Min xx

Well, GPSs use satellites, not dimensions, to navigate. How do you make a system like that which could last through time?

Although, as someone else pointed out, this does sort of depend on what sort of time travel we're talking about (for instance, a time dilation one-way trip to the future wouldn't be affected by this), it's a really good point.




Another potentially very nasty problem with backwards time travel would depend - I think - on which interpretation of QM physics one opts for. I've been thinking about this possibility for a while, but haven't mentioned it to anyone yet.

Briefly, the Everett 'many worlds' interpretation supposes that 'virtual particles' which can be shown to interact with one another before wavefunction collapse really exist, and that instead of ceasing to exist upon measurement, they instead found a new line of reality at a tangent to our own. This would imply that there is an undetectable 'parallel universe' for every possible state of every particle in the universe, and that these universes are increasing exponentially every instant. (The sound you hear is William of Occam slitting his wrist)

Anyway, assuming that's true (and the only other real alternative is almost as weird), then there is an (almost?) infinite number of ourselves living minutely different lives in parallel, each minutely different from the other.

Now, if, say, someone invents time travel in her attic, then there are an infinite number of slightly different versions of herself doing the same thing, some at a slightly different time, others at a slightly different position.

When she gets in her contraption and regresses through the time stream (or whatever), her infinite alter egos do the same. Ultimately, there will be an infinite explosion of flesh and machinery converging on a particular place and time in the past, in a wave formation through space and time. It might even resemble the big bang (in that the mass involved may be infinite), but would be more of a 'big splat'.

Lovely.

Does that make sense to anyone? Would that actually happen if that interpretation of QM is true?

Not only space but matter as well

In the movie 'Back To The Future', Michael J. Fox's character heads back in time from a mall parking lot to the middle of a corn field. Lucky it wasn't a forest or a huge rock that in time was there but not in the present.

well lets say that if you could you go back in time, to stop a disaster. If you stop the disaster it will never have happened and you never would have gone back in time to fix it, which means it would happen again and you would go back to fix it again. The problem is with time travel is that it creates an ultra dimensional infinite paradox of repetition and non existance. Rather than time travel i would say time-dimension travel, where you travel to an alternate dimension where time is different. This would stop the loophole of repetition from happening. But in order for this to happen you would have to be able to create, and control, an on-the-dot accurate tear in one dimension to another. But there would be no way of telling what dimesion that is. And its pretty stupid to go back in time anyway, things should be left the way they are. So in that sense time travel is very impractical/important.

actually if one changes his state of being [like killing grandpa] while traveling he would become displaced.

that would be bad. events could still paraphrase but. everyone would think your a loon no-one could id you.

you could travel time but youd be trapped in limbo never to find your home.

another bit is the "anonymous donor"

essentially time keeps the impact. so say you rescue a dead freind. well upon completion of the save the future you [motivated by his death] would disapear but time would just carry on and happily ever after.


the worst is "locked destiny".

you gaurantee time plays out the way it does. for example in the show "Primeval". the baddies want to chang the present to see what happens in the future.

but since you have looked in order to compare it becomes part of the past thus the act of looking locks events in place. so nothing happens.

the point i was trying to make was that airplanes dont fly to America without some kind of navigation. men didn't go to the moon without some kind of navigation. ppl trying to travel in time would not go without some kind of navigation.....

if u can build a time machine, u can build a device to navigate.


i dont think things like this would happen at all coz u wouldnt be able to change the past from what it is u remember as 'the past'. if u could travel into the past, u wouldnt be able to change the outcome of any events that u remember, though u may have an impact on the way they are done, simply because in 'the present' u dont know its u who causes the events until u get into 'the past' and actually do them.

no paradoxes possible in this version.

Min xx

Actually, according to one theory, it is possible to go back in time and kill your grandpa. This is due to the fact that there are parallel universes, so when you go back in time and kill your grandpa, you are in a different universe. I'm not sure I believe this but it is a valid theory.

haven't read all of the post
i just comment

well i forgot where did i got this info but if the concept of time travel is really folding spacetime to make a loop so that you can go back at past then it means that you will also move in space


i hope somebody post a clearer answer im also interested in this field though im not good at math and physics

Eh? We are moving through time all the time.

We move faster in time the faster we move in space. Whether or not a time traveller ends up back on the earth depends on where they go, not on how fast they move in time.

And what do you mean by the moon making us flip flop?

i think cerberusxp was referring to moving in time at a rate different to that normally experienced by ppl on Earth, and by implication moving backwards in time aswell.

its already been mentioned (by me i think, lolol) that ppl or objects moving at any speed (that's everything) are moving through time at this 'different' rate. its just too small a difference for everyone to notice it. the only time it really becomes readily apparent is when GPS satellites have to be programmed to prevent their 'drifting off' alignment with time.

its also part of the discussion here that it is not necessarily where a traveller goes but also when that determines whether or not they arrive on earth.... and the when CAN depend on their speed of travel.

lastly, the Earth has a gravitaional pull on the moon, but the moon also has a gravitational pull on the Earth, so the moon does not exactly orbit the Earth, but both bodies orbit around a point that is near to the centre of the earth but not AT it.
imagine swinging a weight on the end of a rope around ur head.... ur hand moves in a little circle as the weight moves in a big one.... thats the flip-flop..

love Min xx

Yes, but I don't quite understand your point here.

Of course, but the opening poster was talking about magnitudes of 1-30 million miles, far greater than the earth-moon wobble. Pehaps he is mixing up the earth and the moon?

My thoughts.... there must be a base time for timetravel... and the lower parameter of time is the base. meaning if timetravel is discovered in 2008 - then we cannot go below that time frame... (here is the catch - we wouldn't know if the government had it already from the montauk project (philiadelphia experiment)... what i read was that they created a reap in the fabric of time/space. ) Also, with the LHC Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the biggest and most complicated particle physics experiment ever seen ... playing around with atoms creating mini black holes ~ 2008 could be the date. And if you could go WAY back in time, then perhaps you would have to STAY there because you have created an alternate reality and would have to follow that time line, because just BEING in it would compromise the system in place... anyways, this opens up a huge area of debate. But, YES, believe I will see it in my day!

You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Check what we are discussing about before posting.

the point is that if u were travelling through time as opposed to experiencing it, then physical objects would not necessarily be in the same position in the past as where they were in the time u went from.

she did not specify the distance back in time that a traveller would go to 'miss' where the Earth was. obviously, the Earth would have moved only a little if the traveller went back in time to yesterday, but a lot if the traveller went back in time 20,000 years. she would go back in time, but not in space... theoretically !!

Min xx

But you would be experiencing it.

I wasn't thinking about travelling backwards in time. But in that case I suppose it would be so.

no hun, u wouldn't. as speed increases, so does mass, the energy required to keep up ur speed or even accellerate u, and time goes slower....

this is time dilation, and u age slower relative to ppl in a slower moving frame even though time appears normal to u. this has been proven countless times and is built into programming for GPS in the real world, right now, as ppl have said.
so if u could travel through time, u would just travel through time, and physical objects not in ur frame of reference would move physically in space away from the point where u were travelling in time.
u would 'materialise' back in time, but the laboratory floor ur machine was standing on wouldn't be there !!!

Min xx

wombat.... I am intitled to my opinion as you are to yours!

That's irrelevant. You would still see what's happening on earth even if you were travelling at near the speed of light.


Yes, in the case of travelling backwards through time. Or for any "jumps" in time.

Yeah, but you are wrong, and offtopic.

Some of you have missed the point. Say I went 15 seconds into the future. What would make me move with the earth? Would I end up in the wall that took 15 seconds to move to where I was?

LOL.... well, unless you are a Timetraveler and/or a physicist (which I doubt) THEN you ARE NOT an authority on timetravel...
and I am talking of timetravel.... and therefore on topic.

Hmm, that's an interesting question. Would you be where you "would be" if you were still there, or would you be where you were? Or would somewhere else entirely?


Even if I knew absolutely nothing about time travel, you would still be wrong.

And no, you were talking about CERN, the philadelphia experiment, 2008, when we will achieve time travel, and other irrelevant stuff. We are talking about where you would end up in space when travelling in time. Stop wasting time and posts on this.

well, if you think that time passing at different rates for different ppl is irrelevant to this discussion, where does 'seeing what happens on earth' fit in ?

the value for time dilation in moving objects near Earth to ppl on Earth is very, very slight. this is because the relative acceleration of the two frames is negligible. if u were to increase the acceleration of one of the frames eg: an airplane, to near lightspeed, then time would go noticably slower for the plane in relation to the ppl on earth... but u cant, so ppl in the plane and ppl on the ground experience time in the same way, at the same rate..

HOWEVER.....
if ur in a time machine, whether u achieve time travel through acceleration or an alternative method, the only time u experienced would be local to u, but u would be travelling through time in relation to the rest of the ppl on Earth.
if u went to a significantly different time in ur machine, the Earth would have been in a physically different position to that which it was in when u began to go back in time. .. even during the 'travelling' the Earth would move away from where ur time machine was coz the Earth is in a separate frame and moving in 3 other dimensions compared to ur time machines' one.

Min xx

This is a weird paradox. If you go back in time to change something it is automatically missing and therefore you didn't technically go back in time because the reason to go back wouldn't be there. So you are also erasing yourself because you would have never went back in time and the you who went back in time would be erased so is that not your future self thus erasing your future. It is highly confusing and that is my problem with time travel

better yet time travel is impossible

even if we could reorganise every atom in the univers. where would you come from?

I have thought about that many times when I've been watching time-travel movies/tv-shows. But then alot of things makes no sense in movies and tv-shows. I guess you been watching them to.

i do see what the Op is asking.

if you travel back in time how do you fix a location [hello randomness]

if its say 6 months different you should be floating in space dead. since earth is on the other side of the sun.

Hell, you might end up appearing in other part of the galaxy... or even in other galaxy!

The only time travel that exist is in the mind. Only in the mind.

Really, if I could time travel, I would go back in time and make sure sine, cosine and tangent is never invented.

No you would not. This is what I am saying look 23.8 hours from say right now the earth has moved a few thousand miles through space. You have not moved relative to the physical (what would be the force to make you move physically?) . I'm saying Nada. Therefore you would reappear in space. On the other hand say you had an event horizon and went through you would not know where the other end is. Unless there were some way of mapping it. But then again this subject is the proverbial Pandora's box as you will. Because travel through worm holes comes into play, plus dimensions factor in. Alternate realities tangent to our own. There is a documented case where a palace guard in Spain disappeared from the front steps and reappeared in Mexico city. Instant matter transfer. I believe this had some thing to do with ley lines. So we do know that this is possible. Time travel is not that much more of a leap. Or is it? So as another poster pointed out randomness. How ever if we have destination points fixed it is different. On an episode of psyfactor there was a cave in Arizona where an Anazazi decedent and a probe disappeared. The local tribe sealed the cave. A few months later the tribe contacted the Office of Scientific Research and gave the probe back. It was 400 hundred years old.

'Documented' isn't the same as 'true'. Do you have a reference for this?


Ummm... Psi Factor is fictional, you know that right?

Also, the rotation of the Earth slows down over time, so if you go too far or back in time you could appear in a different part.

Supposedly psi factor was based on files taken directly from the OSIR office of scientific investigation and research. Which was a Gov. agency now defunked (turned private) for many many years. I suppose it was all fiction.
As for the other, it was documented by a priest when the Spanish had just taken over Mexico. What 1600 something? It's possible the writtings were faked. How ever they were supposedly discovered at the Vatican. The priests documented everything back then. A lot of information was lost, such as locations to gold mines here in the U.S. along with locations of gold caches, many documents were lost in sunken ships too. Cannot remember where I read this it was at least 35 years ago.

Yup. No such thing, though I think anyone could be forgiven for believing Ackroyd, who to my mind has fallen off the tightrope between good, convincing sci-fi and wilful dishonesty. Saying that, though, surely even credulous viewers would find a slight cause for pause in the claim that this high-level, ultra-secret shadowy agency had decided to turn its Beyond Top Secret files into a second-rate TV series...?


Okay. I mean, to me this sounds utterly doubtful, and the 'lost Vatican documents' cliche is a real red flag to any story, but without a reference...

Ah, got a reference. The story seems to be that one Gil Perez allegedly claimed to have been instantly teleported, from the Philippines to Mexico City, in 1593. The story, it seems, is questionable for the fact that that no actual account of this appears until a century after the events were supposed to have happened, and no records exist of any of the things there should be records for - imprisonment and inquisition by the Inquisition.

I'd also add that this could feasibly be a tall tale, embellished later, to account for actual desertion, given that this is what he is said to have been imprisoned for, primarily.

At any rate, not something to take with anything but a very large pinch of salt, surely.

Interesting tale though, thanks for mentioning it

Maybe u would actually... Thinking about it, in acceleration the rate is 'distance covered per time unit per time unit' and speed is even easier... 'a set distance covered in a set time unit' in those cases, if you alter the time unit, u would automatically alter the distance wouldn't you ?

maybe if a time machine really worked, altering the 'time travelled' would automatically alter the 'distance travelled' in the same way and in the same ratio that altering speed or acceleration does ?

Maybe...

Min xx

I've actually read something about a physicist recently proposing how time travel would be possible. He suggested using some ridiculously powerful energy source to fold a portion of space/time back in on itself to create a donut shaped time loop, or something. Of course, we don't have the means for that kind of energy at this point in our civilization.

But to say that time travel is just impossible is kind of jumping the gun a little bit. You don't know that.

As to the original question, I think that transcending time would go hand in hand with transcending space, as the two are invariably linked.

Rudy Rucker speaks of a 4th dimensional view of the universe in his book The Fourth Dimension, and proposes that it would be seen as a sort of cube (I understood it as a cube, but I could be wrong) with myriad lines running through it. The cube itself would be the universe in its entirety, from beginning to end and everything in between. The lines would represent everything in the universe, objects and people, at every point in their existence. If one were outside of the universe, one could view any object on any line at any point. Insofar as that theory goes, time travel would simply consist of traveling to an earlier point on a line.

I know that this seems far fetched, but take into account the example that both Rucker and Carl Sagan have used before to explain the 4th dimension:

If you have a two dimensional world with a two dimensional being (like A. Square in flatland), and a three dimensional sphere passes through that land, the two dimensional creature would only see a two dimensional cross section of the sphere as it passes (i.e. a cricle that grows from a point to a larger circle, and then shrinks back to a point). But since he exists in the third dimension and can travel on a three dimensional plane, the sphere could see as much or as little of the two dimensional world as he pleases. So a 4th dimensional being would be able to move on a 4th dimensional plane, which includes the axis of time, and could thus move through all space/time at will. The question is whether or not a 3 dimensional being could ever think and perceive in the 4th dimension.

Keep in mind that, in the case of the two dimensional creatures, they were not, themselves, completely two dimensional. Otherwise, they'd never see each other or be able to touch one another. So, though they didn't realize it, they actually existed in a three dimensional world, as the sphere shows A. Square in Flatland. And it's no secret that we actually already live in a sort of 4th dimensional universe. So it's possibly maybe a little possible that somebody could one day possibly think in the 4th dimension. Maybe then we'll have somebody who can time travel .

I'll prove that time travel isen't possible. I am going to make a pact with myself that If time travel does become possible that I will go back in time to visit my self in a few minutes from this present moment. If it's not created in my life time then I'll pass the pact on each generation specifying the date and time until it is possible to go back in time. Well obviously i don't have to wait because i don't see any time travellers appearing beside me as I type this post. Time travel disproves God because there will be two of one person. What happens if you kill your grand father in the past? does time loop? Terminator 1 plot is not possible in terms of time (John conners friend who is sent back in time from the alternative future is the father of John Conner thus creating the alternative future, The alternative future created the same alternative future, I don't think so.) Time travel is balls.

Time is an illusion. A rock doesn't see time a rock just exists in a now. We have memories that create the illusion of past but there is no solid past just moving energy. In order to go back in time each instant of the universe would have to be somewear. How long is an instant? Also each instant would be the same size as the universe we are currently in. So there could be an infinate number of universes the same size as this one which has saved everything from the start. Seconds is a man made metric system there are no seconds in real life, it's only to help us grasp concepts and help us build things. There is no instant there is just a constant, well not even a constant just a now.

All in all Time travel defeats all sense of purpose in life. One more thing! You can't rewind energy it moves one way.

hmmm nice reply, but what if you just go to the dimension you want with the same time as your present but with reality that you want, is this making sense?

hmm by the way time travel..can we not use machine just our own body only.?

time travel is indeed very possible . we just need to create a machine that is capable of it and once that has bin created you can travel in the future or past. people say that you cannot travel in the future because it has not happened yet well this is true the future hasnt happened yet . but you lifes are predetermined by fate even this post im writing now is fate and thats why we will be able to travel into the future is becasue its our futures have already bin written on how we will live them and what we do for jobs etc. i know thats not a nice thought but its the truth.

Ummm... so time travel is possible, as long as you have a time machine? Isn't that a truism?


What makes you think that our futures have already been written, hocus?

as i said nuclar it eint a nice thought is it not being in control of your life? but its the truth are lifes are written when we are born and the paths are chosen for us. for instance if something is supposed to happen to you or it will sooner or later its meant to be.
ever heard the story of the lad who walked out on his girlfriend?

To be honest, I don't really mind the thought - it probably doesn't make a difference to daily life. I tend to think free will is a fairly confused concept anyway.

But what I was really wondering was why you think life is "written when we are born and the paths are chosen for us".