• checkeredpast said on Jan 22, 2008....

  hey now hold on buster!!!!!!!!! what exactly of mine is checkered then huh?

• curmudgeon said on Jan 22, 2008....

  Here's a perceptual paradox:
   
  One day I was walking down the street when a block away I saw a gorgeous young blonde walking towards me in a bright yellow minidress.
   
  When she was 2/3rds of a block away she had aged into a thirtysomething in a slightly more conservative yellow dress.
   
  When she was halfway down the block from me she was in her fifties in a rather unappealing yellow dress.
   
  When we finally passed each other, she had turned into this white-haired old hag in a frumpy, horrid yellow dress and shoes that didn't match.
   
  Did I see the light she radiated from far away? Or did I see what I wanted to see when I couldn't see her clearly?
   
  We dream of times past and future when what we really ought to be doing is studying the way things are moving in this moment. Is what we see really as it is, or as we want to see it?
   
  Great post!

• desdemona said on Jan 22, 2008....

  time traveling hurts me noggin'

• somethingunUSual said on Jan 22, 2008....

  Man I really hate time travel. Think of all the atoms, the microbes, the particles, the winds, the dew drops, the bugs, the blinks, the sighs, the coughs, the sneezes that make up any given single MOMENT of existence in a single location and HOW CAN THAT be frozen some place where you can just step right in sync and become a NEW part of it??????? Sorry for the run-ons but this drives me nuts vbecause it's so ridiculous no matter what some skeletor in a talking wheel-chair has to say to sell more books to the general public.

• StoneMaster said on Jan 22, 2008....

  
  Don't ruin Back To The Future for the next generation, dude....
  I think it's been figured out that time is an illusion...
  Can you travel through an illusion?

• TheNakedProfessor said on Jan 22, 2008....

   
  But what if the very illusionary nature of time is an indicator of why HoleInTheCosmos' speculative psychological and subjective achievement may be as real as reality gets? If consciousness is the foundation of reality, then we may not need "machines" or "vehicles" to move us into active past and future situations. More problematic than getting there is the trouble of being there and interacting with familiar situations and people who don't know us and might kill us as "witches."
   

• sheemAfeM said on Jan 22, 2008....

  Where are they all? The time travelers I mean?
   
  WOuld they come back through time and take advanatage of us?
   
   I think I may have been violation by a time traveler who seduce me unwillingly - very strange...

• somethingunUSual said on Jan 22, 2008....

  oh yeah, now here';s a good reason to develop the complicated technology of time travel and harness all the energy it takes to get back and have sex with sheemAfeM! Yeeeeeeeaaahhhhh!!!!! makes sense to me.

• GracefullyGrowing said on Jan 22, 2008....

  How strange.  My Wednesday Wonders post was going to be about time travel this week.
   
  Interesting post.
   
  ~Grace~

• HoleInTheCosmos said on Jan 22, 2008....

   
  Yes, Grace, I just got back from two weeks from now where that post of yours will be so popular that I decided to post one of my own upon my return this morning. Sorry about that. But that must mean that you are going to post it anyway. I look forward to reading it...again.
   

• GracefullyGrowing said on Jan 22, 2008....

  LOL Cosmo.   So, do tell.... WHO WINS THE SUPERBOWL?????
   
  ~Grace~

• HoleInTheCosmos said on Jan 22, 2008....

  Shit! I knew I forgot something!

• GracefullyGrowing said on Jan 22, 2008....

  
  
  

• mOOn_platOOn said on Jan 22, 2008....

   
  Here's my  theory: you have to "travel" through space to traverse time, and you have to "travel" through time to cross any real distance in space.
   
  I swear to you, this makes sense if you have the time to think about it.
   
  If we can move fast enough in spaceships to exceed the speed of light, we'll gain infinite mass and be outside the boundaries of "time" as we know it. We will then be able to reach "down" into any time that has ever or can ever exist.
   
   
   

• lfbno7 said on Jan 22, 2008....

  On a tangent, I believe in an afterlife, and I believe that there is a library there that contains all of our history, a library where you can open the "book" and experience the events as an onlooker without influencing them.

• polarheart said on Jan 23, 2008....

  I travel time all the time here at SC :-)

• hotaka said on Jan 23, 2008....

  I think mOOn_platOOn has a good point. It is easy to imagine if you think of the 2D grid where time lines flow one way and space flows perpendicular to the time lines. If moving through space gets you along in time, then moving through time must get you along in space. I figure if you could time travel you would remain in the same point in the universe, meaning once you stopped traveling the earth would have moved away during its revolution around the sun, the solar system would have moved away as the Arm of Orion spins around the edge of the galaxy, and the galaxy would have moved on a bit too as it travels with the expansion of the universe.

  What I always wondered was about how light and time are related to physical matter. It's like if you can travel faster than light then you can outpace time. That's fine if you are leaving a point such as Earth and trying to get ahead of your own light emmitted at take-off. But it's just light. The physical you is still racing ahead. You can might be able to watch yourself take off but you wouldn't be able to meet yourself, not simply by getting ahead of your light. But time is a funny thing. If there is a past then every instant of our physical selves is preserved in some kind of flow and we can jump back into the flow and see ourselves of whatever else was there. But if the total amount of matter in the universe is constant at anytime then by removing your physical self from one period and transplanting it into another period would you be removing matter from one physical state of the universe and adding it to another? Time is something measured through change. If nothing changes there is no time. Change is measured by light. If lights stops then does time stop? I read about an experiment where scientists managed to stop a laser dead in a cloud of super cooled gas. Did time stop inside the cloud or inside the laser beam?

  Perhaps moving to the future is easier. If you can create a time stasis chamber where time inside the chamber moves more slowly than outside the chamber then anyone inside could emerge into a later time period, say several seconds to several millenia later depending on the difference of the flow of time inside and outside the stasis chamber. Aparently Russian scientists have already managed to transport someone a few seconds into the future. Maybe it was more. I forget. The idea was explored in an SF novel called Spin. The author is Robert Charles Wilson.

  Interesting post!

• ALIENated said on Jan 23, 2008....

  In order to stop my mind from wandering, I am happy with the notion that there
  is no way to visit the past ... it is gone. However, we can visit the future by 
  jumping over a given amount of time. We time travel every night. We go to sleep
  and suddenly it is 6, 7, or 8 hours later. Someday, space travelers will also be
  time travelers (see the original Planet of the Apes) or so Einstein says. 
  Speed affects time. I doubt that Man will ever go faster than the speed of light,
  so He will have to be put into suspended animation (prolonged sleep) to travel
  the great distances to other worlds. But who would do this? When they came 
  back it would be hundreds or thousands of years later. Of course, there is
  quantum physics. Read Timeline by Michael Crichton if you really want
  a headache.
  
  I think our fascination with time travel is that we would love to visit our past,
  hang around behind a tree at our old school, and see what we were really like
  as a kid. Or maybe visit that stacked teacher or hot neighbor lady and
  sweep her off her feet. In Time Enough For Love, Robert A. Heinlein's
  hero travels back to his childhood days and lusts after his young mother.
  Now that is a real paradox. What if you were your own father or your own
  grandpa? Those are but a few problems with visiting the past and why I do 
  not think God would allow it. It coud get more messed up than is we allowed
  polygamy.
  

• ALIENated said on Jan 23, 2008....

  Sorry. It could get more messed up than if we allowed polygamy.

• ShakenToTheCore said on Jan 23, 2008....

  There are few things in the past i would want to relive and Jumping forward would ruin the surprise. Besides, in our lifetime it'll never happen. Never!

• Trinov said on Jan 24, 2008....

  Hi, I have a blog about a time travel/space jumping experience, totally passive and very frightening, but it happened and it was very ordinary in other ways.... Just think of everything of being in the mind of the Creator, who has given us now computers and virtual reality as a parable for a usable working paradigm to understand and re-create these phenomena. According to our Rabbi who is a Kabbalist, a real one, time flows backwards as well as forwards --even in certain places on earth..... There are books on people who have had time travel experiences, usually somehow into a very ordinary scene of a few decades back. The world is much more complex, and simple at the same time, than we are used to thinking about it. We here on this planet are just at the beginning of a real technology or a real science--its the physicists who are now opening the box for all of us! Time travel may be possible for your grandchildren, who like Hermione in Harry Potter 3, are possibly visiting here now, but being damn careful about it.

• HoleInTheCosmos said on Jan 25, 2008....

   
  How did Schroedinger's Cat show up here? I thought he was dead.
   
  Oh wait, that was in Reality 936548.
   
   
   

• HoleInTheCosmos said on Jan 25, 2008....

  I still don't see how we can get back to somewhere that no longer exists. But if it does still (and always does) exist, then we are predetermined entities without free will - are we not? Because the future then would also always exist and our perceptual points of awareness just haven't passed over it yet.
   
  If somehow a boundless quantity of possible pasts and futures is co-existent yet still predetermined, the question of free will becomes irrelevent and unsolvable.
   
  The Rip Van Winkle approach to future travel strikes me as futile. Sure I can bypass a century, but why? So I can feel COMPLETELY out of place and obsolete? Unless bringing past knowledge or items into the future somehow offsets the disadvantages of being Primitive Man, why would I place myself at such a disadvantage? Just to satisfy a curiosity about how "things turn out?"
   
   

• HoleInTheCosmos said on Jan 25, 2008....

   
   
  Hot - I think you're referring to the Einstein-Boseman condensate. I guess I'm slow, but isn't there a difference between stopping light and moving faster than light? In effect, Mr. E says that we gain infinite mass by reaching the speed of light. But we haven't changed at all simply by slowing down photons and walking past them. If we halt all the light in the universe won't we just be blind?
   
  And if stasis technology is developed, stasis jewelry that retards aging will certainly become popular. Wouldn't you love to own the patent on that one?
   
  Ifbno7 - where does this belief come from? Please tell me.
   
  Shaken - never say never. But I still contend  that there IS NO PLACE TO GO anyway, so I'm with ya.
   
  mOOn - we may gain infinite mass, but when we do, will we be in any condition to make choices or carry out our original plan? Will our minds survive such a transition without changing into something else - like a mass mind, perhaps, with different ideas?
   
  sheeMa - hey, there's a lot of Time to cover. Asking why no time travelers are here is like asking why there isn't a fishing hook in one particul;ar spot in the ocean. But if ever there was a good reason to time travel, it would certainly be to cuddle up with you.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

• Trinov said on Jan 26, 2008....

  Hi, could not help one more comment, for it is good to see an attempt at extrapolation on a blog----If you think of time, as a moving tape, as in a tape recorder, then moving from one spot to another on the tape is not so difficult. as in the parable of the two dimensional world that was a popular story in your parents' or grandparent's day where the 3 dimensional observer could see the past and future of the two dimensional being, so fifth dimensional observer could see--- ....what if going faster than light?etc--which by the way some British scientists ALREADY claimed to have done a few months ago with some type of energy beam,--- would increase the mass to infinity?, mass which is only a form of consentrated energy( E=mc² remember -- therefore mass is only energy divided by the speed of light squared, no problem-- "According to the theory of relativity, there is no essential distinction between mass and energy" page 197 from "The Evolution of Physics", by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, Simon and Shuster ,1961)--to the point where that mass (or energy) might merge with another dimension of higher energy? or maybe not be a problem at all, but perhaps be a means of seeing possible futures?.....as to free will,we have it in our choices, and our choices may or may not create other parallel permanent or temporary dimensions....(R.D. Laing, an ahead-of-his-time psychiatrist and Catholic philosopher, noticed how certain thoughts (or choices) were "erased", and how to pay attention to this while it is happening to you!)-- (Madeline D'Engle,in the teenage science fiction story "A Wrinkle in Time" dealt with that concept of erased events, as did Back to the Future)........There are lots of discussions on time travel and interdimensional travel and trouble, and claims of time travel and time interferance in all references to The Philidelphia Experiment, which was originally an attempt to hide ships from radar. It is very hard to find the truth here, (as in anything),but anyone interested in these concepts, really curious about the possibilites and not just as something to bullshit about, can find quite a bit of material to chew on --for example the book "Time Travel, myth or reality" by Richard Heffern, Pyramid books, NY 1977) which also gives a bibliography, including a Scientific American article , in volume 216, pages 98-108, "Can Time Go Backward" by Martin Gardner, also a few books by Brad Steiger etc, and that was over thirty years ago and more stuff has come out by now and not only on the internet.

• justmetoo said on Feb 15, 2008....

  hmm... i once read a theory by (i believe it was einstein):

  "If you can move at the speed of light then relevant time will stop"

  Depending on how you perceive this, time doesn't 'stop' so to speak... merely 'you' are no longer bound by the laws of time in the present time...

  Time and space is linked, that we know... but how do you convert Time to Space? (I believe this is your perception on time Travel Hole?)

  To travel back in time, you would also have to manipulate space... As an apprentice Electrician i often had this discussion with my Tradesman and he brought up a good point "If you travel back in time, say 1 year from now... how do YOU know this planet will be in the same position? Perhaps when you travel back in time, you'll end up floating in space and therefore implode...?"

  I think to travel through time you also need to travel through space (time and destination unless you're travelling through a wormhole or something where you have 2 points of origin Past-Present)

  You can go go back to the past anytime you want... you just can't change what has already happened.

• lfbno7 said on Feb 16, 2008....

  The Giants win the Super Bowl.

• Trinov said on Feb 16, 2008....

  Hi, to justmetoo, It is possible that space is a product of time, for without time we could not walk three steps in space. Also, if we think of our homes as being on a moving ball, which is in a different position re the solar system and the rest of the galaxy and the other galaxies every second, we have to understand that we are contantly moving at great speeds even when we are asleep in bed. So any human jump in time has to take into account all these factors, if this jump is manipulated from within our four dimensional time-space 'continuum'.
  
  And so any jump in either space or time would have to be configured in a time-space program/algorithm etc.
  
  However, it might be much easier to configure from outside of our four dimensional plane :Just as we can look down at a piece of paper with a map, or a chess board, and move a pencil over the map, or a piece on the chess board, which is a 'jump' in and out of a two dimensional space, then a jump back or forward in time, or across 'space' would have to be done, or configured from the point of view of the fifth dimension, and I believe modern physics talks about ten dimensions, at least.
  
  Just as two hundred years ago, most people could not conceive of electric light, of 'talking' between continents, of leaving this planet, or brain surgery, etc we cannot conceive of the break throughs in science that will happen in the future. We would look just as ridiculous to your great grandchildren to be, as the Chief Clerk of the Patent Office of the US in 1890 looks to us today. He wanted to close the office in the 1890's because he declared that everything that could be invented already was invented!
  
  The purpose of science fiction should not be just re-fitted cowboy stories or war stories in space, or 'if it goes on like this', or silly utopias that seem impossible,--instead it should be a vehicle for imagining what could be, what our collective minds can create as possilbilities.

• lfbno7 said on Feb 16, 2008....

  Where does the belief in a library in heaven come from? That's an old one. I forgot the name for it, but that's because my memory is swiss cheese. But it is supported in the works of the psychologist Michael Newton, whose deeply hypnotized patients report that very thing, a library in heaven, where you can research your own life if you want, because there's a book with your name on it, in 4-D.

• mOOn_platOOn said on Feb 16, 2008....

  Don't you change what happened if you are suddenly part of the scenario? Even consciousness alone (the act of observing) effects the environment.
   

Comment on "Time Travel -? There Is Nowhere To Go!"

Currently tagged	time travel space-time continuum telepathy Stephen Hawking carl sagan Rip Hunter time HG Wells space anomalies past phenomena future UFOs alternate reality parallel worlds Destiny fate precognition (Click to add tags below)
Tag this post	(Separate tags using commas, for example: New York, dating, vegetarian)
Your comment
	Comment Anonymously