Professor Predicts Human Time Travel This Century

PhysOrg.com ^ | 04 April 2006 | Lisa Zyga

[redheadtoo]

, Mallett calculates that the possibility of time travel using this method could be verified within a decade

I love predictions about the inventions of tomorrow. Now excuse me please, I'm going for a ride in my flying car.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Actually, the author lost me when he says energy and mass are the same thing immediately after saying E=mc2. The formula says that Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared which does not mean energy and mass are the same thing. I didn't read much of the article after that.

C^2 is a constant for converting units of measure. Saying that energy and mass are the same does not mean their units of measure are the same. It is like saying 1 dollar = 10 dimes. The dimes are just a smaller unit of measure of money than dollars.

Energy and mass are units for measuring the same thing.

A quantity of energy is measured in joules or newton meters which are defined as the energy required to accelerate one kilogram to one meter per second (kg(m^2/s^2). The energy in one kilogram of matter is approximately 1kg(300,000,000 m/s)^2 = 1kg(90,000,000,000,000,000 cm2/s2) = 9(10^16) joules. Therefore 1 joule of energy is a very small amount of matter (1/9(10^13) g). But energy and matter are the same thing except the former is kinetic and the latter is potential energy. Hope that explains it.

[DaGman]

Hope that explains it.

Thank you very much for the explanation. I had 12 hours of Chemistry in college (6 basic and 6 organic (with labs)), but never took Physics. So thanks.

As an aside, my son, on the other hand, has taken calculus based physics. But when he took basic physics, I seem to remember him telling me that when calculating if it is possible to travel in time you end up with a result that is divided by zero, which does not exist and which then means time travel is not possible. Does this make sense to you and if so, did I understand him correctly?

[mugs99]

That would suggest that there may be future stuff here already, if time travel is possible...

[mugs99]

If there really IS an alien spacecraft at Roswell - it makes more sense to me that it is from our future instead of another planet

[Marie]

btt

[<1/1,000,000th%]

In special relativity, you usually end up with the Lorentz factor somewhere in your equations. It looks like this:

If your speed is equal to the speed of light (the v), you're dividing by zero. If your speed is greater than the speed of light, your factor is imaginary, or complex, and has no physical meaning.

Your son probably did something along this line.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

There's a lot of folks who would agree with you. It seems to be less difficult to travel small distances in time than large distances in space.

My own point of view is that UFO sightings are new technology.

In the 19th century, UFO's looked like balloons or dirigibles.

In the first half of the 20th century, UFO's looked like planes.

At the end of the 1940's and 1950's, UFO's started to look like flying saucers. This was when the military was building aircraft with no fuselage or tails. They looked like saucers when viewed from a fairly large angle. One crashed in Australia around 1964 and is now part of UFO lore.

In the 1960's, UFO's were flying higher and faster. Right after the introduction of the SR-71.

In the 1970's, UFO's could be seen visually, but not with radar. Right after the F117 was introduced.

Since then UFO's have just been getting faster and stealthier. Just like our prototype military aircraft.

[Vaquero]

Hmmmm I have to remember what my father told me on my wedding day "If you ever travel back in time, don't step on anything"

[Vaquero]

can't go back in time.....that would be a pair-of-ducks

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Bonus points to anyone who can tell what Spidere Robinson story that's from : )

Re the whole Earth moving through space thing: In the TV sereis Seven Days they dealt with this by having their hero use an escape pod-like thing to follow the Earth back along its orbit. In Quantum Leap Sam's mind (?) seems to be able to travel through space when he Leaps into another body. Or maybe they will all just use flux capacitors.

[w1andsodidwe]

If time travel were possible, wouldn't we already know it? Afterall, someone from the future would have come back to our time (or sooner) and we'd know about it.

Actually, I have done it several times. Just fly from Hong Kong to LA. You arrive in LA before you leave Hong Kong. In theory, just keep flying clockwise around the earth and you become younger.

[Tokra]

In the 1960's, UFO's were flying higher and faster. Right after the introduction of the SR-71. In the 1970's, UFO's could be seen visually, but not with radar. Right after the F117 was introduced. Since then UFO's have just been getting faster and stealthier. Just like our prototype military aircraft

I've always found it amusing that all throught the 40s, 50s, 60s and early 70s people who claimed they were abducted by aliens described a wide range of aliens - insectoid creatures, octopus like beings, aliens with two heads or three eyes, etc.

All of a sudden in the late 70s everybody started describing the same kind of alien - big head, big eyes gray skin, etc.

In fact, people who believe this stuff say the fact that everybody describes the same type of alien PROVES that it must be true.

What I find funny is that the similar descriptions all started right after E.T. and Close Encounters were released! There's your proof!

[saminfl]

Basically what would be needed would be a way to induce long-term 'hibernation' in humans, some sort of suspended animation where bodily functions are brought to a near-stop, and then 'waking' the person up say 20 yrs into the future. To the person it will seem as if he travelled forward through time .....shutting his eyes in 2060 and arriving in 2080 .....and it will seem like it happened in an instant. And with future technology hopefully cellular processes (and aging) will have been slowed (or stopped) during this period of suspended animation.

Heinlein's "The Door Into Summer."

[Bubba_Leroy]

All you need is a DWG unit, prefereably the rechargeable AMD wrist watch model with the GRC79 induction motor, four I80200 warp stabilizers, 512GB of SRAM and the menu driven GUI with front panel XID display. You can pick up all the necessary time travel equipment here.

Or you could try e-mailing a parts list to 100 million or so addresses. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,60141,00.html

[Mark Felton]

"About physicists, well, we lie a lot. We don't mean to, but we do." -- Dr Sylvester Gates, physicist, author of supersymmettry theories

[SunkenCiv]

Message from a Time Traveler
Dan Simmons - Official Web Site | April 1, 2006 | Dan Simmons
Posted on 04/06/2006 7:33:24 AM EDT by Mr170IQ
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1610142/posts

"'You were a philosophy major or minor at that podunk little college you went to long ago,' said the Time Traveler. 'Do you remember what Category Error is?'

"It rang a bell. But I was too irritated at hearing my alma mater being called a 'podunk little college' to be able to concentrate fully.

"'I’ll tell you what it is,' said the Time Traveler. 'In philosophy and formal logic, and it has its equivalents in science and business management, Category Error is the term for having stated or defined a problem so poorly that it becomes impossible to solve that problem, through dialectic or any other means.'"

[GOPJ]

..and I predict the United States will kick out the illegals and seal the borders!

Soon..