Nobody disputes that physicists have been using the theory to discuss theoretical time travel for decades; it's your added "can only go as far back as when the time machine was built" part that we're disputing.
Is Time Travel (going backwards) Possible?
Nobody disputes that physicists have been using the theory to discuss theoretical time travel for decades; it's your added "can only go as far back as when the time machine was built" part that we're disputing.
I think that, using the mechanism described in the Morris paper that I cited that the statement is true; one couldn't use the wormhole time machine to go back to a time before the time machine existed. Can you give a counter example?
Of a time machine? No, of course not.
Perhaps it would help facilitate discussion if you were to quote the section of that paper you are referencing. I'm assuming (guessing), though, that the mechanism is wormhole-specific and requires each end to be at a location in spacetime; so yes, that particular method would be limited to the lifetime of the wormhole itself (not that a wormhole has ever been observed). Those theories also - as I understand them - require quantum effects to be taken into account, and relativity does not play well with those: thus the prevalent theory is that wormholes, were one ever to be found, could not be used in that manner and would destroy themselves. Kip Thorne (one of the co-authors of that paper) wrote a book about it, I believe. That wormhole theory is only one tiny part of the discussion on time travel, though. You can't take that and make global statements about time travel.
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yeah, assuming a limit like that is like declaring that you need to consume gasoline in order to move from one place to another. Just because one machine requires that, doesn't mean another does.
It's certainly reasonable that a machine built to talk to itself or to a partner component cannot do so prior to the existance of both ends of the pipe.
But that's not the model most fictional time machines work on. Instead, they transfer themselves or their subject from now to then directly (without a reciever/landing platform).
Did we ever get a Physicist to answer the basic question of whether time travel was possible for BG?
Not from the sense of do we have a machine, or can we generate enough energy to do it, but in the same fashion of can we go faster than light (which is No.)
I'm not asking for an example of an actual time machine; I thought that was obvious. I'm asking for a theoretical time machine (much like the one in the paper that I cited) that allows time travel back to a time before the machine existed.
I can't just swipe the the text, but the paper is available online. The relevant paragraph is just below Figure 2, on page 1447. The time machine is created by accelerating one end of the wormhole to relativistic speeds and then reversing the process. Essentially, it is the twin paradox, with the two mouths of the wormhole taking the place of the twins. Since time travel in this method would involve travel through the wormhole, one can't go back to a time before the wormhole was created.
I do understand that such a time machine may never be physically realizable; maybe no time machine is physically realizable, but that's not relevant to the point I'm trying to make. My point is that I am unaware of any theoretical time machine (using general relativity) that allows travel to a time before the machine was created. Since you seem sure that my statement to that effect was false, can you provide a (theoretical, not actual) example of a time machine based on general relativity that would allow one to travel back to a time before the machine was created? I could very well be wrong about this, but I'm not willing to accept that I am just based on an assertion that I am.
hopeless
Adventurer
Only if it has already happened.
I'm not a fan of paradoxes because from my viewpoint time travel should only be possible if its revealed the world is as it is because they had to go back to the past for their world to be what it is.
For example if someone from now hadn't been stuck in the past say around the second world war whose to say where we would be now, what if because of their presence and memories of what was to come it allowed the world to develop far more peacefully than had he or she not been present?
What if the microchip or the massive build up of American industry wouldn't have happened if someone hadn't gone back and recommended certain things be done to prepare his homeland for what was going to happen, he could have even tried to warn them about 9/11 but the information may have been passed to the wrong person and misused to bring about Homeland Security.
The idea about going back to kill your own Grandfather has always struck me as ridiculous after all your target of choice is based on what you know not what actually happened and its more likely you end up bringing about what caused you to make the trip in the first place after all Primeval might be a good sci fi tv show but when they got around to explaining the origin of those anomalies thats when they fell apart.
I suspect you have 1-upped the rest of us. We all entered this discussion assuming a lack of information on a time machine, whereas you have arrived with specific information on a time machine proposal.
Since the rest of us are unhindered by our lack of knowledge, we have no such preclusions that a time machine has to be limited to its own existance timeframe.
My own time machine concept shifts the subject from our current quantum reality to one that is running "behind". As such, I do not assume I need to build a landing pad (or expect one) to be on the other side. to me, it would be like taking all the contents in the chamber and changing it's frequency to the new QR. And poof. time travel. without paradoxes, per my other explanation on quantum realities.
I would expect it is a one way trip, unless I send the parts for a machine in advance (or send a guy capable of making a new one).
good times.
The retromotive time machine was invented a long time ago:
You've got your burden of proof backwards. You made the assertion - the burden upon you is to prove it, not in me to disprove it. I cannot prove a negative. I cannot prove what relativity *doesn't* assert. Failure to provide a real fireball spell does not prove that Sesame Street lyrics are a fireball spell; similarly, failure to provide a theoretical example of a time machine does not prove that your claim is true.
The logical flaw in your cited evidence is that it does not directly address the question. The question is what General Relativity stipulates about time travel; your cite does not address the overall question of time travel, merely one suggestion for a time machine. It at no point claims that this would be only method of time travel; thus it can not validate your assertion.
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I posted in this thread the mathematical formula that proves conclusively that time travel is possible, in either direction.
However, after people started building their own time machines based upon my posted formula, and getting into all sorts of trouble as a result, I went back in time and prevented myself from posting the formula here, thereby preventing all of that ruckus and mischief.
So never mind - please carry on with your discussion.
Johnathan
However, after people started building their own time machines based upon my posted formula, and getting into all sorts of trouble as a result, I went back in time and prevented myself from posting the formula here, thereby preventing all of that ruckus and mischief.
So never mind - please carry on with your discussion.
Johnathan
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