time-travel
Feb 10 2008
I don't even pretend to understand the physics behind this but I have made efforts, including boring one of my trainee teacher mates who had a phd in theoretical physics for an entire evening withincessant questioning "yeah but how the fuck does this happen?" - he was cool and humoured me, good lad.
Independent- Is time travel possible, and is there any chance that it will ever take place?
This shit always wrecked my head. i also bugged an old sub-teacher and my ALevel maths teacher about this stuff and STILL it pickels my head but always sounds AMAZING!
Feb 11 2008
#2
Feb 11 2008
#3
"A compilation of drunk girls passed out in various ways."
Fuckin hell that's a perfect illustration of why getting steaming drunk is fucking the stupidest shit ever!
Feb 11 2008
#4
I hate insomnia.
That article you posted wasn't very good. at the end it asks "will we ever travel into the future?" and then gives loads of reasons why we can't travel into the past.
If I read it right...
Feb 11 2008
#5
Oh I'm not suffering insomnia - I'm working 
My understanding, well what I remember when the physics nerd tried explaining stuff, was:
faster we go, times slows down
as we approach speed of light, time slows to a halt, and if we go fast technically we can go back in time
but to go faster we need infinite amounts of energy
as for going forward, I haven't a baldy and probably never will
Feb 11 2008
#6
Conor
Stoopid dp
XX
Feb 11 2008
#7
Conor
You should give us Sunday night dudes a chance. Some of us had other stuff to post first (there is some mad stuff in the TV Guide this week if you went to distract from your studies still further. )
Of course time-travel will be possible one day. That is the good news, the bad news is you may not live long enough to see the breakthrough. And breakthrough it will be - a Eureka kinda moment - "of course why didn't i think of it before.." A coming together of accumulated wisdom and knowledge - it can't be forced, it will happen at some point.. for those who say it is impossible i quote Picard.. "Something is only impossible until it is not". 
Love
LW XX
Feb 11 2008
#8
Conor you've got that the wrong way round, you described going forwards.
Get some sleep! Or at least do some work.
The only way to go backwards seems to be a wormhole or something, whatever that is. plus going backwards is what has all the time travel paradoxes (grandad, where are the people from the future) so fuck that!
I can't believe I'm up at this hour talking about time travel. This must be what its like to be a stoner.
I like to think of the cryogenic freezers in futurama as a sort of time machine. Its all a matter of percieving.... time...
like we're all travelling forwards in time just all at the same rate.
Feb 11 2008
#9
Na Jess I'm right on this one, at the most basic level - I don't understand it though
from a nerd forum
for one, faster than light travel is prohibted by the laws of physics. if something were to reach light speed it would have infinite mass, energy, gravity, and it would require infinite time to accelerate it there.
and second, time dilation. as something accelerates time slows down for them. they dont perceive it, but someone looking at them would. at lightspeed someone would see time stop for that person.
if someone were to travel faster than light time would begin to reverse. so basically, they would disappear out of this time and reappear in an earlier time.
Maybe YOU should get some sleep
Feb 11 2008
#10
Yeah if you travelled FASTER than light (which is impossible), if you travel near to the speed of light (theoretically possible) then time will appear to slow down for you so when you get off your spaceship, it will feel to you that only a few seconds (or somethings) have passed while back on earth years will have passed. you have travelled forward in time, bit like Fry in the freezer but even cooler.
Anyway, I am right. Going to have another go at trying to sleep now seeing as I have to get up in 3 hours but.... I'll be back.
Feb 11 2008
#11
Sorry the thurst of mine was the second part - I'm with ye
Feb 11 2008
#12
if youse had paid attention to Flight of the Navigator instead of fixating on that long faced bitch Sarah Jessica Parker in the pink hair youse would have known this!
Feb 11 2008
#13
Dude I haven't watched that since I was 7
Feb 11 2008
#14
xConorx wrote:
as for going forward, I haven't a baldy and probably never will
i'm travelling forward in time right now
Feb 11 2008
#15
Not exactly a lolcat, but definitely physics related.
Feb 16 2008
#16
A positron going forwards in time is exactly equivalent to an electron going backwards in time.
Time doesn't exist for photons, so I guess you could say they travel backwards in time (if that has any meaning at all).
Relativity permits time-travel...space-time is four-dimensional, consisting of three spacial dimensions we can travel along in either direction, and a time direction along which we can only move one way. But all four are supposed to be theoretically equivalent so if we could reorient ourselves along the dimensions we could travel back in time.
I don't think 'time travel' is going to happen any time soon though.
Feb 17 2008
#17
Feb 18 2008
#18
Anna wrote:
Time doesn't exist for photons, so I guess you could say they travel backwards in time (if that has any meaning at all).
What is meant by this?
Feb 18 2008
#19
Photons are their own antiparticles. So a description of a photon moving forwards in time is exactly the same as one moving backwards in time.
Feb 18 2008
#20
Ah, okay. But then there is no sense in saying that they are moving backwards in time.
Did they ever discover that hypothetical particle that moved faster than the speed of light?
Feb 18 2008
#21
Tachyons?
Feb 18 2008
#22
We won't ever travel into the past cos if we had, we'd know about people from the future doing it in our past. Innit.
Feb 18 2008
#23
xConorx wrote:
Tachyons?
Yes.
Feb 18 2008
#24
mikus wrote:
Ah, okay. But then there is no sense in saying that they are moving backwards in time.Did they ever discover that hypothetical particle that moved faster than the speed of light?
Yeah as I said it doesn't really have any meaning to say that. But it has great implications for why we see time flowing in one direction. (If you reverse time, you have to have the universe creating a spherical ball of photons that converges on an atom for every forward in time emission of photons). Time is also linked to the second law of thermodynamics, the asymmetry in temperature and entropy in the universe, and its expansion. All these are linked too.
There's no experimental evidence for tachyons, but even if they existed they wouldn't violate causality cos one moving backwards in time could always be interpreted as one of opposite energy moving forwards in time.
Feb 18 2008
#25
This is really complicated, I just don't see how it could all have just 'happened'
Feb 18 2008
#26
LOLscience: http://flickr.com/groups/lolscience/pool/
In the future all information will be relayed through the medium of lolcats. Evolution innit.
Feb 18 2008
#27
jef costello wrote:
This is really complicated, I just don't see how it could all have just 'happened'
Are you winding up?
Feb 18 2008
#28
Fuck sake Revol course he is!
Feb 18 2008
#29
revol68 wrote:
jef costello wrote:
This is really complicated, I just don't see how it could all have just 'happened'Are you winding up?
You believe in the watchmaker as well then?
Feb 18 2008
#30
jef costello wrote:
This is really complicated, I just don't see how it could all have just 'happened'
It basically did just happen. There was a vacuum fluctuation, and then a huge expansion (in one second, a volume the size of a proton blew up to the size of the observable universe). Since the positive energy of the matter is matched by the negative energy of gravitational attraction, the total energy in the system is zero.
Sunday night posting is a sure-fire way to have a thread die on it's arse so here's a physics-type lol cat
