Posted on 05/18/2010 2:19:49 AM PDT by SwaggerStick
I believe time travel is possible and in the future time travel will be harnessed. Perhaps harnessed is the wrong word and should be replaced with managed. That’s it, I believe time travel can be managed and at sometime in the future we will learn how to manage this time travel. But there is a caveat, time travel is only possible into the past, there will never be a way to time travel into the future. For in the true sense, time is but a serial event consisting of the passage of previous events in time.
When we talk about a Time Machine we usually think about traveling into the future or traveling backwards in time. And for the most part our thoughts are for selfish reasons, or maybe I should say, for our personal enjoyment or gain. Perhaps we would like to travel back in time so we could enrich ourselves by wagering on a horse that we know would win a future race, maybe we would like to travel back in time so we could be youthful again. We can also think of many reasons to travel forward in time, like advancing time one hour after that dentist appointment or one hour after some other unpleasant task in front of you.
To contemplate the reality of traveling forward in time means you really have to stretch the imagination, you have to start thinking like Buck Rogers. There are a lot of so called possible ways to travel into the future, wormholes, speed of light travel, etc. But in reality these are only ways to slow down time for those going through the wormholes or traveling at the speed of light, for everyone else time will march on. And the big problem for those who manage to slow time down; there is no way to go back in time. If you could slow time down for yourself while the rest of the world moves on, what good would come of it? Maybe if you’re dying of some disease and want to slow time down for yourself until the rest of the world discovers a cure that might be a good reason but when you step out of that Time Machine who will you know, will your home still be yours, will any money you have be worth anything, and will you even like what you see?
To contemplate the reality of traveling backwards in time is a whole different situation and I believe it to be very possible. Now, I must throw in another caveat, it is possible for a single being to travel back in time while the rest of the world travels forward in time. In fact, everyday there are many people traveling back in time, but they are doing it on an individual basis.
The idea of traveling backwards in time needs a more specific definition and a consensus of understanding. The reality of traveling backwards in time is a mental state not a physical state. There will never be a way to physically travel backwards in time, you will never be able to make yourself physically present at some previous time event.
Lets say fifty years ago you watched Ted Williams hit a home run in Fenway Park. You can go back to Fenway Park and sit in that same seat, but Ted Williams will never appear and while you’re sitting in that seat you will not be fifty years younger.
I believe the human brain remembers every single second of our lives. And every second of our life is a time event. These time events are all safely stowed away in serial fashion just as they occurred. Everyday people are being hypnotized to recall some string of time events that they cannot voluntarily recall.
Lets say fifty years ago you watched Ted Williams hit a home run in Fenway Park. Now lets say technology has advanced to the point at which a couple of electrodes can direct your brain to recall any time event from the past. You sit back in your easy chair, put on a cap that contains those electrodes, set the event timer for fifty years ago and set the duration for three hours. For the next three hours your mind in vivid detail is recalling every second that passed as you watched the game in Fenway Park fifty years ago. You’ll even taste the hot dog you ate, hear the sounds, and smell the smells. For all practicable purposes – you have gone back in time. This is not only possible, it will happen in the future. It’s a simple matter of memory recall.
The scientific community can study black holes, wormholes, speed of light travel, etc,, but it will be medical technology that truly brings us back to the past.
I think the general response given in the past is, “if time travel to the past is possible, where are all of the tourists?”
I think I need more coffee.
And time travelling to Fenway Park for anything will simply end up breaking your heart.
Unless you were that zombie on the sidelines in ‘86 screaming, “must kill buckner.”
I find the concept of a time machine amusing. I sure wouldn’t want to be the first to try one, though. I imagine perhaps a miraculous success as the first human safely travel back to a specific point in time and finds themselves surrounded by a black, frozen void as the machine’s atmosphere leaks into space...the inventor and engineers not having taken the expansion of the universe into account...
Nothing to it. I can time travel on the toilet, with no hands.
If “time travel” into the past is indeed feasible, it’s already happened and is part of history. If I, or you, have done it, we’ve done it and are destined to do so at that future time when we did so.
Time travel into the future implies a preexisting future, and thus also demands predestination.
‘First, start with a Delorean, since it has a stainless steel body . . . ‘
The real trick is the flux capacitor; once you’ve built that, the rest is easy.
"Now" is just a fiction invented to keep the future from slamming into the past. ;-)
Simple spelling errors such as this make us look much more foolish than reasoned discussions on the nature and navigability of spacetime.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
1. Memories don’t work like that. Your brain isn’t a hi-fi recording machine. Memory storage is much more cut and paste and uses significant amounts of shorthand to both store and recall events. Read “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert for more on this point.
2. Read “Pastwatch” by Orson Scott Card if this idea/perspective of time travel interests you.
"Captain, I have a sudden urge for cream cheese..."
I think the general response given in the past is, “if time travel to the past is possible, where are all of the tourists?”
Time traveler captured in museum photograph. Maybe the hard part is knowing what to look for.
yu ar rite.
sory
L
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