continuing ...
Secondly, most science fiction accounts of time travel assume a localised effect. By that I mean you step into your time machine & reappear at the same local grid reference, here on earth, but either at a time in the past or in the future.
Reality is, that the universe is expanding & as it does so, our earth, solar system, galaxy etc revolves, whilst that expansion continues taking place, so that any spacial (not local) reference point is immediately redundant if you were in fact able to go forward or back in time.
In other words to go back in linear time you would have to not only reorganize the universe to an earlier state (or get back to it - the infinite parallel universe argument) but there is the we problem of actually transporting your physical body from one spacial reference to another spacial reference point (that looks like your local grid reference) because things have moved on & expanded since then.
If you were able to go back say millennia that would be an enormous physical distance to cover to start with, requiring enormous energy to accomplish, if it could be done.
I know what you're thinking, worm holes & vortex's etc but so far I haven't seen it suggested by science that they could be used for physical displacement & time travel as well. For the moment they remain in the realms of science fiction. Just my thoughts.
Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of energy law?
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ken_behrendt
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re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
I am convinced that the only "practical" form of time travel that may ever be invented will be one that allows a person to go "forward" in time. However, it will not be something as seen in movies like "The Time Machine" wherein the time traveler pushes a throttle forward or backward and then disappears as he flies of into either the past or future.
In my vision of a time machine, the time "traveler" enters his time machine and sets a "timer" for the amount of time "into" the "future" that he wants to travel. That action then activates some hypothetical process that immediately dampens all of the subatomic particle motions within his body and the interior of the time machine, so that these motions only proceed at, perhaps, a thousandth of the rate such motions proceed outside of the time machine.
Outside observers looking in through a window in the time machine will see its occupant as appearing to be motionless. As the occupant stares outside of the window of his machine, he will see the external cosmos moving by a thousand times its normal rate. People outside of his machine would only be a fuzzy blur unless they stood in one spot for several minutes. For every minute the time traveler remains in this state, one thousand minutes will elapse outside of his machine!
When the time traveler has "jumped" through time at an amount equal to the amount he initially set on his machine's timer, the process that suppresses the subatomic motions of the particles in his body will stop and those particles will resume their normal rates of motion and again match the motions of such particles outside of his machine.
He can then emerge from his machine and see what a world that aged at a thousands times as fast as he did looks like!
Of course, all of this assumes that a hypothetical process can be found to dampen the subatomic motions of all particles within a localized region of space. Then, one must have a machine, some of whose parts age at the same rate as the external world. This machine's electronics and power supply must remain stable despite the passage of decades or centuries of time. Obviously, such a machine would need to be constructed from the most tarnish resistant materials possible.
In the event, however, that the machine's power supply did failure during the time traveler's temporal jump, then no harm would be done. The occupant would merely stop traveling through time at a greatlyaccelerated rate and could then emerge from his machine and try to make repairs...
ken
In my vision of a time machine, the time "traveler" enters his time machine and sets a "timer" for the amount of time "into" the "future" that he wants to travel. That action then activates some hypothetical process that immediately dampens all of the subatomic particle motions within his body and the interior of the time machine, so that these motions only proceed at, perhaps, a thousandth of the rate such motions proceed outside of the time machine.
Outside observers looking in through a window in the time machine will see its occupant as appearing to be motionless. As the occupant stares outside of the window of his machine, he will see the external cosmos moving by a thousand times its normal rate. People outside of his machine would only be a fuzzy blur unless they stood in one spot for several minutes. For every minute the time traveler remains in this state, one thousand minutes will elapse outside of his machine!
When the time traveler has "jumped" through time at an amount equal to the amount he initially set on his machine's timer, the process that suppresses the subatomic motions of the particles in his body will stop and those particles will resume their normal rates of motion and again match the motions of such particles outside of his machine.
He can then emerge from his machine and see what a world that aged at a thousands times as fast as he did looks like!
Of course, all of this assumes that a hypothetical process can be found to dampen the subatomic motions of all particles within a localized region of space. Then, one must have a machine, some of whose parts age at the same rate as the external world. This machine's electronics and power supply must remain stable despite the passage of decades or centuries of time. Obviously, such a machine would need to be constructed from the most tarnish resistant materials possible.
In the event, however, that the machine's power supply did failure during the time traveler's temporal jump, then no harm would be done. The occupant would merely stop traveling through time at a greatlyaccelerated rate and could then emerge from his machine and try to make repairs...
ken
On 7/6/06, I found, in any overbalanced gravity wheel with rotation rate, ω, axle to CG distance d, and CG dip angle φ, the average vertical velocity of its drive weights is downward and given by:
Vaver = -2(√2)πdωcosφ
Vaver = -2(√2)πdωcosφ
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John Collins
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re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
Excellent thinking Ken. You mentioned localised time and that got me thinking - say you go back (or forward) in time, how can you be sure where you'd appear? The earth will have revolved once in 24 hours, but also have moved around the sun and our sun will have moved too - so where in space will you appear and how long will you last in a vacuum? Maybe you'd reappear on earth due to some law we are unaware of, but you might appear within a chunk of granite or perhaps some igneous rock or even 100 feet up in the air - ouch!
John Collins
John Collins
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ken_behrendt
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re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
John...
With the time machine I envision, there is no danger of one popping up in outer space or inside solid rock or up in the air.
I am not sure if dampening the motions of subatomic particles in a localized region of space would somehow also suppress the gravitational and inertial properties of objects in that space, but, if it did, this effect could easily be compensated for by just anchoring the time machine to the ground or floor upon which it rests.
If the time machine and its occupant do lose 99.99% of their normal masses while time traveling, then they will, if anchored, be easily carried along by the earth in its motion through space. In this scenario, the time traveler might find himself weightless inside the time machine and would have to fasten a seat belt to stay in his seat.
Being buried by surrounding geological formations (as happens in that excellent 1956 movie version of The Time Machine) could easily be avoided. As the time traveler peers outside the window of his machine, he might start to see the surrounding land surface beginning to rise as though it was muddy water covered with vegetation. When it reached a certain height, he could hit an emergency button on his control panel that would immediately stop the process that is dampening the subatomic motions of the particles from which his body and the interior of his machine are made. He could then emerge from his machine and, using a shovel carried aboard the machine, dig his machine out of the earth and then move it to higher ground.
There is, however, one action our hypothetical time traveler must never take while traveling through time in the machine envisioned. He must never stick his hand outside of the machine. If he did, he would then pull back a hand that had aged 1000 times faster than the rest of his body! I do not know what the physiological / metabolic consequences of such an action might be, but they might even prove fatal to the occupant.
ken
With the time machine I envision, there is no danger of one popping up in outer space or inside solid rock or up in the air.
I am not sure if dampening the motions of subatomic particles in a localized region of space would somehow also suppress the gravitational and inertial properties of objects in that space, but, if it did, this effect could easily be compensated for by just anchoring the time machine to the ground or floor upon which it rests.
If the time machine and its occupant do lose 99.99% of their normal masses while time traveling, then they will, if anchored, be easily carried along by the earth in its motion through space. In this scenario, the time traveler might find himself weightless inside the time machine and would have to fasten a seat belt to stay in his seat.
Being buried by surrounding geological formations (as happens in that excellent 1956 movie version of The Time Machine) could easily be avoided. As the time traveler peers outside the window of his machine, he might start to see the surrounding land surface beginning to rise as though it was muddy water covered with vegetation. When it reached a certain height, he could hit an emergency button on his control panel that would immediately stop the process that is dampening the subatomic motions of the particles from which his body and the interior of his machine are made. He could then emerge from his machine and, using a shovel carried aboard the machine, dig his machine out of the earth and then move it to higher ground.
There is, however, one action our hypothetical time traveler must never take while traveling through time in the machine envisioned. He must never stick his hand outside of the machine. If he did, he would then pull back a hand that had aged 1000 times faster than the rest of his body! I do not know what the physiological / metabolic consequences of such an action might be, but they might even prove fatal to the occupant.
ken
On 7/6/06, I found, in any overbalanced gravity wheel with rotation rate, ω, axle to CG distance d, and CG dip angle φ, the average vertical velocity of its drive weights is downward and given by:
Vaver = -2(√2)πdωcosφ
Vaver = -2(√2)πdωcosφ
re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
Sorry Ken, but now you've got me laughing. HA HA !!He could then emerge from his machine and, using a shovel carried aboard the machine, dig his machine out of the earth and then move it to higher ground.
Graham
re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
Hey Ken, I think for mechanical reasons, that the blood in that hand would travel at the same rate as the blood in the body, but the hand would have a faster metabolism, so it'd turn blue; and if you don't act fast enough (your thinking would be slow), it'd die and become gangrenous.
Disclaimer: I reserve the right not to know what I'm talking about and not to mention this possibility in my posts. This disclaimer also applies to sentences I claim are quotes from anybody, including me.
re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
Better take your laptop & a couple of good books along with you Ken. It could take days or weeks or even months (relatively speaking) to go far into the future.
P.S. Don't drink to much coffee b4 the trip, as Jonathan said, you don't want anything dangling outside the sphere of influence :)
P.S. Don't drink to much coffee b4 the trip, as Jonathan said, you don't want anything dangling outside the sphere of influence :)
re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
Excuse my pun, but I think I can solve this.
You put yourself in a time capsule and you become cryogenically frozen in time relative to yourself. After a few years you and your capsule are placed in a museum for all to view.
You do not have to worry about time displacement as you will be exactly where man has placed you on exhibit and you will be dusted and your machine maintained.
When you wake up you are in the future and only seconds has passed in your time. In the meantime if man ceases to exist and your machine is not maintained then, there is not reason to worry about where you will be, as the earth will be un-inhabited.
Ralph
You put yourself in a time capsule and you become cryogenically frozen in time relative to yourself. After a few years you and your capsule are placed in a museum for all to view.
You do not have to worry about time displacement as you will be exactly where man has placed you on exhibit and you will be dusted and your machine maintained.
When you wake up you are in the future and only seconds has passed in your time. In the meantime if man ceases to exist and your machine is not maintained then, there is not reason to worry about where you will be, as the earth will be un-inhabited.
Ralph
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ken_behrendt
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re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
Jonathan...
I think your prediction of what would happen to the time traveler's hand if it was momentarily extended beyond the region of space where subatomic motions are suppressed is accurate. It would require nutrients and oxygen at a rate 1000 times greater than the rest of the time traveler's body that was still inside the time machine. After only a few seconds of extending his hand, it would probably have irreversible cellular damage from oxygen starvation!
Fletcher...
You are quite right. For the hypothetical time machine I described, if the occupant sat in it while it was activated for an hour, then only 1000 hours would pass by outside of the machine. That's about 41.666 days which is not that much of a "jump" into the future.
No problem. All we need do is build a time machine with a more powerful means of suppressing all of the subatomic motions of the particles within a localized region of space. Let's make a machine that can dampen subatomic motions until they are only 1/1000th of their normal rate. At this setting, the time traveler sitting inside his machine for 1 hour will travel 416.666 days or 1.141 years into the future.
Still not fast enough for you? Then let's build a machine that can suppress subatomic motions inside of its occupant section to 1/1,000,000 of their normal rate! Now, for every hour the time traveler spends inside of his machine, 114.1 years will pass by outside. I think that this is a nice "leisurely" rate of forward time travel to engage in. One would have plenty of time to react in case there was some geological processes going on that might threaten to engulf or bury the machine.
Of course, some people might not even be happy with this rate of travel. In that case it might even be possible to suppress subatomic motions to 1/1,000,000,000 (i.e., one billionth) of their normal values. This would allow one to jump a temporal span of 114,077 years or 114.077 millenia for every hour spent in the time machine.
Ideally, as in the movie version of H. G. Wells' novel, one would have some sort of control panel where the current year, month, and day outside of the machine was displayed along with the time that had elapsed inside of the machine in hours, minutes, seconds. Perhaps the temporal jump timer could be replaced with a throttle handle that would allow the time traveler to vary the degree of suppression of the subatomic motions of the occupant section's atoms and molecules. With this one could, as in the novel and movie, instantaneously vary the rate of one's travel into the future.
The problem with this method of time travel is that any person who decides to engage in it had better do a lot of thinking before pressing that timer switch or pushing on the throttle handle inside the machine. All trips made into the future by this means are one way trips! One eventually would need to leave the machine and stretch one's legs. There might be the possibility that the new time he emerged into could be highly undesirable. Perhaps the atmosphere would have been turned toxic by some cosmic or seismic catastrophy. Or, maybe some deadly disease will have wiped out all life on earth, etc.,etc.
Graham...
Actually, I am quite serious about carrying a shovel aboard the time machine. One should also carry extra food, water, and emergency medical supplies and well as weapons. I even like the idea of equipping the machine with a winch and cable as are found on many sports utility vehicles! One can never know for certain what kind of world one will emerge into...
ken
I think your prediction of what would happen to the time traveler's hand if it was momentarily extended beyond the region of space where subatomic motions are suppressed is accurate. It would require nutrients and oxygen at a rate 1000 times greater than the rest of the time traveler's body that was still inside the time machine. After only a few seconds of extending his hand, it would probably have irreversible cellular damage from oxygen starvation!
Fletcher...
You are quite right. For the hypothetical time machine I described, if the occupant sat in it while it was activated for an hour, then only 1000 hours would pass by outside of the machine. That's about 41.666 days which is not that much of a "jump" into the future.
No problem. All we need do is build a time machine with a more powerful means of suppressing all of the subatomic motions of the particles within a localized region of space. Let's make a machine that can dampen subatomic motions until they are only 1/1000th of their normal rate. At this setting, the time traveler sitting inside his machine for 1 hour will travel 416.666 days or 1.141 years into the future.
Still not fast enough for you? Then let's build a machine that can suppress subatomic motions inside of its occupant section to 1/1,000,000 of their normal rate! Now, for every hour the time traveler spends inside of his machine, 114.1 years will pass by outside. I think that this is a nice "leisurely" rate of forward time travel to engage in. One would have plenty of time to react in case there was some geological processes going on that might threaten to engulf or bury the machine.
Of course, some people might not even be happy with this rate of travel. In that case it might even be possible to suppress subatomic motions to 1/1,000,000,000 (i.e., one billionth) of their normal values. This would allow one to jump a temporal span of 114,077 years or 114.077 millenia for every hour spent in the time machine.
Ideally, as in the movie version of H. G. Wells' novel, one would have some sort of control panel where the current year, month, and day outside of the machine was displayed along with the time that had elapsed inside of the machine in hours, minutes, seconds. Perhaps the temporal jump timer could be replaced with a throttle handle that would allow the time traveler to vary the degree of suppression of the subatomic motions of the occupant section's atoms and molecules. With this one could, as in the novel and movie, instantaneously vary the rate of one's travel into the future.
The problem with this method of time travel is that any person who decides to engage in it had better do a lot of thinking before pressing that timer switch or pushing on the throttle handle inside the machine. All trips made into the future by this means are one way trips! One eventually would need to leave the machine and stretch one's legs. There might be the possibility that the new time he emerged into could be highly undesirable. Perhaps the atmosphere would have been turned toxic by some cosmic or seismic catastrophy. Or, maybe some deadly disease will have wiped out all life on earth, etc.,etc.
Graham...
Actually, I am quite serious about carrying a shovel aboard the time machine. One should also carry extra food, water, and emergency medical supplies and well as weapons. I even like the idea of equipping the machine with a winch and cable as are found on many sports utility vehicles! One can never know for certain what kind of world one will emerge into...
ken
On 7/6/06, I found, in any overbalanced gravity wheel with rotation rate, ω, axle to CG distance d, and CG dip angle φ, the average vertical velocity of its drive weights is downward and given by:
Vaver = -2(√2)πdωcosφ
Vaver = -2(√2)πdωcosφ
re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
Why not just go for the fully optioned Delorean? :P
re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
Bill,
My fully optioned Delorean is currently in the shop getting updated with Orffyien bearings. I am told that this is the answer to not having a nuclear beer can converter. The DEQ confiscated mine as they claimed it was upsetting the natural cycle of things by turning banana peelings into time accelerated energy.
While waiting for this upgrade to be completed I have not been idle. I have two new inventions for investors to consider. One is frozen band aids for cold cuts and the other is concentrated water, "Just add water and stir". My orders for vacuum packed post holes appears to be dwindling, so I am not taking any options on abandon oil wells at this time.
I am also diversifying and have established a new business with three other partners. Is is known as the "Ketchum, Killum and Skinnem Fur company.
Ralph
My fully optioned Delorean is currently in the shop getting updated with Orffyien bearings. I am told that this is the answer to not having a nuclear beer can converter. The DEQ confiscated mine as they claimed it was upsetting the natural cycle of things by turning banana peelings into time accelerated energy.
While waiting for this upgrade to be completed I have not been idle. I have two new inventions for investors to consider. One is frozen band aids for cold cuts and the other is concentrated water, "Just add water and stir". My orders for vacuum packed post holes appears to be dwindling, so I am not taking any options on abandon oil wells at this time.
I am also diversifying and have established a new business with three other partners. Is is known as the "Ketchum, Killum and Skinnem Fur company.
Ralph
re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
looks like only thing you don't have listed is skinning farts with a pocket knife.........the pelts might be quite valuable if you can get stink off of them
the uneducated
if your gona be dumb you gota be tough
Who need drugs when you can have fatigue toxins and caffeine
if your gona be dumb you gota be tough
Who need drugs when you can have fatigue toxins and caffeine
re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
aaaaa------ winkie dinkey doo......, ya got some on your shoes...lol
re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
Ken, its been done. It's called cryogenics in science fiction & hibernation in the animal kingdom. What you suggest might be a first step to achieving a type of proxy time travel but I don't think it fits the traditional expectations.
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ken_behrendt
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re: Is time travel impossible because of the conservation of
ovyyus...
The big problem with the Delorean (I wanted to buy one once!) used as a time machine in the movie was that one had to achieve a speed of 88 mph before one could make a "jump" through time. What would happen if one made the jump into the future and in the intervening years someone had constructed a brick wall along the path (in the future) that the car would suddenly appear on?!
The time machine I envision is stationary with respect to the earth. However, although the motions of all of the subatomic particles in the machine's occupant section and the body of the time traveler will be greatly slowed down, one wonders what would happen if an effort was made to move the machine from its initial location.
Would outside observers discover that no matter how much force they applied to the machine that they would not be able to budge it? If so, then what effect would the machine have on the motion of the earth itself? This dilemma seems to be neatly solved if we assume that as the subatomic motions of the particles in the machine are reduced, the masses of the particles will also be reduced by a similar percentage.
Thus, outside observers would see the machine move normally as they applied forces to it, but that would only be due to the fact that its greatly suppressed rates of subatomic motion had been offset by an equally great drop in the masses of those particles. If the inertial mass of the machine's occupant section and the time traveler are greatly reduced, then, according to Einstein's "Equivalence Principle", we can expect the gravitational properties of the affected subatomic particles to also be greatly reduced. This seems to support the possibility that the occupant would, indeed, be almost weightless inside of the machine.
Fletcher...
The process I am envisioning with this hypothetical time machine does have some differences from cryogenic suspension. In that process, the kinetic enegies of the particles involved are reduced and actually removed from the particles. In order for the atoms and molecules to resume their normal activity, thermal energy must be supplied to them from an outside source to increase their kinetic energies.
In the time machine, on the other hand, we can imagine the particles involved to still retain their normal kinetic energies as their rates of motions slow, but the suppression of subatomic motions merely suppresses the rate at which kinetic energy can be transferred from one particle to another. This should mean that if a thermometer is placed inside the occupant section of the machine as the time traveler is jumping into the future, there will be no noticeable change in temperature on the instrument as the process begins to dampen the rate of subatomic particle motion inside of the machine and the occupant's body.
It also means that when the subatomic motion suppressing process is switched off, all of the particles inside of the time machine and the occupant's body will instantly resume their normal motions without the need for external energy to be supplied.
ken
The big problem with the Delorean (I wanted to buy one once!) used as a time machine in the movie was that one had to achieve a speed of 88 mph before one could make a "jump" through time. What would happen if one made the jump into the future and in the intervening years someone had constructed a brick wall along the path (in the future) that the car would suddenly appear on?!
The time machine I envision is stationary with respect to the earth. However, although the motions of all of the subatomic particles in the machine's occupant section and the body of the time traveler will be greatly slowed down, one wonders what would happen if an effort was made to move the machine from its initial location.
Would outside observers discover that no matter how much force they applied to the machine that they would not be able to budge it? If so, then what effect would the machine have on the motion of the earth itself? This dilemma seems to be neatly solved if we assume that as the subatomic motions of the particles in the machine are reduced, the masses of the particles will also be reduced by a similar percentage.
Thus, outside observers would see the machine move normally as they applied forces to it, but that would only be due to the fact that its greatly suppressed rates of subatomic motion had been offset by an equally great drop in the masses of those particles. If the inertial mass of the machine's occupant section and the time traveler are greatly reduced, then, according to Einstein's "Equivalence Principle", we can expect the gravitational properties of the affected subatomic particles to also be greatly reduced. This seems to support the possibility that the occupant would, indeed, be almost weightless inside of the machine.
Fletcher...
The process I am envisioning with this hypothetical time machine does have some differences from cryogenic suspension. In that process, the kinetic enegies of the particles involved are reduced and actually removed from the particles. In order for the atoms and molecules to resume their normal activity, thermal energy must be supplied to them from an outside source to increase their kinetic energies.
In the time machine, on the other hand, we can imagine the particles involved to still retain their normal kinetic energies as their rates of motions slow, but the suppression of subatomic motions merely suppresses the rate at which kinetic energy can be transferred from one particle to another. This should mean that if a thermometer is placed inside the occupant section of the machine as the time traveler is jumping into the future, there will be no noticeable change in temperature on the instrument as the process begins to dampen the rate of subatomic particle motion inside of the machine and the occupant's body.
It also means that when the subatomic motion suppressing process is switched off, all of the particles inside of the time machine and the occupant's body will instantly resume their normal motions without the need for external energy to be supplied.
ken
On 7/6/06, I found, in any overbalanced gravity wheel with rotation rate, ω, axle to CG distance d, and CG dip angle φ, the average vertical velocity of its drive weights is downward and given by:
Vaver = -2(√2)πdωcosφ
Vaver = -2(√2)πdωcosφ