In a QM time-tree where time travel is allowed between two places by a directional node is a fractal. Any system which contains a complete copy of itself contains infinitly many copied of itself and the existance of a time machine instantaneously makes the timeling infinitely complicated.
Now the implication is that there are infinitly many traversible paths through the tree, and infinitly many recursive ones. We can never even know whether these two sets can or cannot be the same size since it is axiomically meaningless. Therefore we cannot know what these sets contain.
Therefore time travel, if phisically possible, means the timeline cannot be navigated! (Unless the universe is deterministic, in which case only one path can be travelled, but then it isn''t worth trying to build a time machine...)
Just my 2 cents.
PS don''t steal this for a time travel plot- it''s mine!
********
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Well, here's my 2.347 cents (inflation):
Einstein's theory of relativity (from what I understand) supports the theory that, the closer you get to the speed of light, time slows down accommidate. When you reach the speed of light, however, time stops for everyone but your system, allowing (seeming) teleportation(you would still feel the trip, but as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, you just 'appeared'). But, what if you (somehow) managed to accecerate past the speed of light?
Looking at what occurs, (in asymtote notation):
You^(goes up to)SpdOfLight, time v(goes down to) 0.
Looking at this, an interisting point to look at is what happens when You v(goes down to) SpdOfLight. A possible assumption you could make would be that time ^(goes up to) 0, meaning that the farther past the speed of light that you would get, time would go backwards to accomodate (theoretically). Any thoughts on this?
EDIT: Oops. Looked a little stupid.
Curse you windows and your poor explanation of my errors!!!
[edited by - Chigaimasu on May 11, 2003 1:14:51 PM]
Einstein's theory of relativity (from what I understand) supports the theory that, the closer you get to the speed of light, time slows down accommidate. When you reach the speed of light, however, time stops for everyone but your system, allowing (seeming) teleportation(you would still feel the trip, but as far as the rest of the universe is concerned, you just 'appeared'). But, what if you (somehow) managed to accecerate past the speed of light?
Looking at what occurs, (in asymtote notation):
You^(goes up to)SpdOfLight, time v(goes down to) 0.
Looking at this, an interisting point to look at is what happens when You v(goes down to) SpdOfLight. A possible assumption you could make would be that time ^(goes up to) 0, meaning that the farther past the speed of light that you would get, time would go backwards to accomodate (theoretically). Any thoughts on this?
EDIT: Oops. Looked a little stupid.
Curse you windows and your poor explanation of my errors!!!
[edited by - Chigaimasu on May 11, 2003 1:14:51 PM]
quote:Well my definition of time is more globally and relativity has nothing to do with it. No matter if you feel like the time is going faster than usual it''s still the same. Even if some particles is travlleing in lightspeed or whatever speed it''s still in the same time space. You could say that I think of time as relative to the universe itself, rather than the individual objects(particles).
Ok, but that sounds more like a religious belief than a scientific theory, since if time has nothing to do with what we experience or measure, how could we possibly test if you are right?
quote:So why bother trying to freeze a human when you perhaps could just stop his particles from moving?
Isn''t that what freezing is all about? Making particles move more slowly?
quote:
Ok, but that sounds more like a religious belief than a scientific theory, since if time has nothing to do with what we experience or measure, how could we possibly test if you are right?
it does? hmm... dunno if you got me right, ill try to explain a bit more about my theory. To me time is not relative, it is global or whatever you like to call it. By that I mean that it is impossible to stop time for just one person/atom or whatever. To stop time you must stop it for all. While it might be possible for whoever to travel in lightspeed and to him it would seem like time went slower, however thats just what he thinks! But time doesnt go slower, because if it was, then everyone on this planet would feel the same.
Think of it this way, for a color blind person a green apple could look gray, but it isnt, and why does it say the apple isnt gray? because the majority of the people says it's green.
It's the same about this time issue, the person travelling in lightspeed feels like time slows down, but the majority says it doesnt. However if we were to accept the lesser crowds point of view, the relativity, we wouldnt have any hard facts at all. As to a blind person the world is just black and with sounds, but we who can see says it's not. You see this would really screw up the look on the world we have. Everything would be whateveryone would think for themself that it would be, ehe, and you could stand up in math class and say I don't need to learn this because it could be just a bunch of bullshit, however the majority of the people has said math is that way and works that way. And thats why its teached in every school...
eh... get my point? or should i stand up in my math class tomorrow and say that I wont learn this as i think it's a more religous belief?
edit:> What u are saying is that everyone has right about what they belive and think, even if everyone else thinks different. Like if i think that my computer is yellow(but the majority would say it was gray) I would be right... but then we wouldnt have to have this discussion as everyone has right, to them at least even if one million scientist says different...
quote:
Isn't that what freezing is all about? Making particles move more slowly?
Well it is, but they use a technique that lowers the temperture, there should be another way slowing down particles a more harmless way...
[edited by - pag on May 11, 2003 9:26:55 PM]
[edited by - pag on May 11, 2003 9:28:03 PM]
Part of the idea of relativity is that there are no "hard facts" concerning such things. The perception of time and space is, by definition, relative. Defining units of measurement is only useful if you plan to stay in a reference frame where they will work.
What some people don''t realize is that the universe didn''t design itself to make perfect sense to people. The universe isn''t trying to do anything, it''s just sitting there, and we are trying to make sense of it.
Think about this. The velocities that humans experience never make it apparent that velocity influences time. We have come to believe this, and we make definitions that are convenient. If humans naturally moved at velocities that let us experience dilation and contraction, you would have a different perception of time and space.
The thing with the apple: chemical, biological, and philosophical situations are a totally different argument. Physics is meant to describe what is actually happening, whether you perceive it that way or not. It''s the most objective science...
...except for math, of course. Thanks to number theory, all of math is completely theoretical, and thus requires no faith or grounding in real life. Sometimes the real-life analogy to a mathematical idea can be incredibly useful for understanding it, but math is not actually based on real life.
This is one of those discussions where your opinion will probably never change as a result of talking to other people. There are ideas here that cannot be expressed with language. That''s a fundamental problem.
What some people don''t realize is that the universe didn''t design itself to make perfect sense to people. The universe isn''t trying to do anything, it''s just sitting there, and we are trying to make sense of it.
Think about this. The velocities that humans experience never make it apparent that velocity influences time. We have come to believe this, and we make definitions that are convenient. If humans naturally moved at velocities that let us experience dilation and contraction, you would have a different perception of time and space.
The thing with the apple: chemical, biological, and philosophical situations are a totally different argument. Physics is meant to describe what is actually happening, whether you perceive it that way or not. It''s the most objective science...
...except for math, of course. Thanks to number theory, all of math is completely theoretical, and thus requires no faith or grounding in real life. Sometimes the real-life analogy to a mathematical idea can be incredibly useful for understanding it, but math is not actually based on real life.
This is one of those discussions where your opinion will probably never change as a result of talking to other people. There are ideas here that cannot be expressed with language. That''s a fundamental problem.
quote:Think of it this way, for a color blind person a green apple could look gray, but it isnt, and why does it say the apple isnt gray? because the majority of the people says it''s green.
The color blind could build a device that measures the light from an apple to verify that it is different from the light of a grey surface. What device should we use to measure time, according to you? Obviously not a clock...
quote:It''s the same about this time issue, the person travelling in lightspeed feels like time slows down, but the majority says it doesnt. However if we were to accept the lesser crowds point of view, the relativity, we wouldnt have any hard facts at all. As to a blind person the world is just black and with sounds, but we who can see says it''s not. You see this would really screw up the look on the world we have. Everything would be whateveryone would think for themself that it would be, ehe, and you could stand up in math class and say I don''t need to learn this because it could be just a bunch of bullshit, however the majority of the people has said math is that way and works that way. And thats why its teached in every school...
Ok, so you believe the majority decides what is real or not. If most people think earth is flat, then earth is in fact flat.
quote:edit:> What u are saying is that everyone has right about what they belive and think, even if everyone else thinks different.
No, that''s definitely not what I am saying. What I am saying is that if we can''t measure nor experience "absolute" time, then "absolute" time is more of a religious than a scientific concept.
i dont see the point: time CAN be measured easily, and thus it can be proven (and is) that time slows downwhen traveling faster.
the particles of a spaceship traveling near lightspeed still have the same speed relative to eachother as when starting, assuming the spaceship didnt heat up when starting, only cos time moves slower you could falsely say they were moving slower.
the difference can be explained like this though: if you had a chemical mixture with reacts at a gives temperature (relative speed of the molecules in it) on earth, it would still react once the spaceship got near lightspeed: the molecules still have the same speed, only the time slowed down.
mathematicly said: distance = time * speed. when the traveled distance decrease, were inclined to say the speed decreased, but with relativistic effects time is truely different from what we percieve in RL.
i personally dont find this really non-inuitative once youve looked at it in detail, although a lot of people seem to think its not as they feel it should be. well it is.
the particles of a spaceship traveling near lightspeed still have the same speed relative to eachother as when starting, assuming the spaceship didnt heat up when starting, only cos time moves slower you could falsely say they were moving slower.
the difference can be explained like this though: if you had a chemical mixture with reacts at a gives temperature (relative speed of the molecules in it) on earth, it would still react once the spaceship got near lightspeed: the molecules still have the same speed, only the time slowed down.
mathematicly said: distance = time * speed. when the traveled distance decrease, were inclined to say the speed decreased, but with relativistic effects time is truely different from what we percieve in RL.
i personally dont find this really non-inuitative once youve looked at it in detail, although a lot of people seem to think its not as they feel it should be. well it is.
Einstein''s definition: "Time is what we measure with a clock."
Newton definition: "pure absolute time, in and of itself, which flows without reference to anything external."
Time for us is inextricably tied up with physical processes. These processes seem to bear out the postulates of relativity. One excellent example involves GPS satellite systems. Relativistic effects predict that a clock orbiting at 20000km would gain about 38 milliseconds each day - this would be disastrous for GPS which requires an accuracy of about 20 nanoseconds. This is a real effect, and the clocks aboard satellites were designed to tick slower to account for it. Apparently each GPS receiver also does relativistic calculations when determining a user''s location.
"pure, absolute time" doesn''t seem to have any relevance in the physical world and has been discarded as a concept.
Newton definition: "pure absolute time, in and of itself, which flows without reference to anything external."
Time for us is inextricably tied up with physical processes. These processes seem to bear out the postulates of relativity. One excellent example involves GPS satellite systems. Relativistic effects predict that a clock orbiting at 20000km would gain about 38 milliseconds each day - this would be disastrous for GPS which requires an accuracy of about 20 nanoseconds. This is a real effect, and the clocks aboard satellites were designed to tick slower to account for it. Apparently each GPS receiver also does relativistic calculations when determining a user''s location.
"pure, absolute time" doesn''t seem to have any relevance in the physical world and has been discarded as a concept.
I''ve only skimmed through this discussion, but it sounds like a lot of people need a healthy dose of the physics faq, especially the section on special relativity.
This topic is closed to new replies.
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