Apparently, there is a Time Travel Convention being held at MIT. All Time Travellers are welcome.
Since the problem of Time Travel may not be solved until well after MIT has ceased to exist, the convention organizers are providing lat-lon coordinates. Unfortunately, this web-page (and the organizer’s web page) probably won’t exist that far into the future, and as such, this should be documented on physical media (such as paper, clay tablets, etc).
It certainly is a funny notion, but the organizers seem dead serious. And who knows, with 1.21 Gigawatts of power being delivered to a flux capacitor… “If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour… you’re gonna see some serious shit.”
The Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(events start at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
3 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02142
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)
I’d like to think that if you dump 1.21 giga-watts of power (surprisingly enough, both the hard and soft ‘g’ are acceptable in pronouncing it) into anything, it won’t matter whether the object goes backwards or forwards in time. You’ll see some serious shit anyway.
Time travel, including into the past, remains a very real possibility under General Relativity — in fact, the very equations of relativity show us how it could be done, and Professor Mallett at the University of Connecticut is
working on a device that could transport subatomic particles backwards in time. In fact, I’d be a bit surprised if he doesn’t attend the convention. (^_-)
The wiki article on Time Travel is a good overview of the subject. Suffice it to say that the case is not closed, either on the impossibility or the impracticality of time travel. We can only hope that future theoretical developments will be able to eventually answer those questions, one way or another.
Time travel is, and has always been, the darling of fantasy-prone scientists and science-fiction authors.
And I say that not because it’s impossible, but because there is a lot of science to wade through between here and a DeLorean.
The problem with time travel under General Relativity is that the equations are entirely too simplistic. That is not to say that the math is simple, merely that they don’t take into account certain things.
The first proof that General Relativity offers to indicate time travel is possible is a phenomenon called ‘time dilation’, in which objects moving at greater speeds seem to experience time more slowly to an observer on the ground. Logically, one would assume this process is reversible, and of course the equations allow for some interesting stuff. Unfortunately, none of the equations say exactly ‘how’ one is supposed to accomplish this. And all other equations do is take this possibility of time travel and make it almost laughable.
To vastly oversimplify, I can show that 2+2=4, and also that 4-2=2. But what if 2+2 was the natural order of things, and 4-2 required more energy than ten stars the size of our Sun produce in their lifetimes? Reversing the natural flow of time is taking a piece of the universe and turning it inside-out (figuratively speaking). The universe, it would seem, has built-in measures to keep this from happeneing.
It’s cute tricks with math, nothing more. In my opinion, no one will ever send anything larger than perhaps a single particle leaping into the future or the past. And at that, likely not more than a few moments.
You are such a total moron. Cute tricks with math? Idiot.
To simplify it down to a level you *might* understand, GR tells us that we are all living in a four dimensional spacetime. You movement through this spacetime follows a geodesic curve; part of that curve is a time-like component. Through some very clever mathematics and some highly unlikely arrangements of matter, is entirely possible for the time-like component of the geodesic curve you are following to be in opposite “direction” of what the rest of us think of as the normal flow of time.
Next time, try reading one of the many, many links that I posted for your enlightment. Or did you think that Dr. Kaku was just playing some cute math tricks?
Oh yeah, and “The first proof that General Relativity offers to indicate time travel is possible is a phenomenon called ‘time dilation’, in which objects moving at greater speeds seem to experience time more slowly to an observer on the ground. Logically, one would assume this process is reversible…”
That’s the worst explanation of time dilation ever. “seem to experience time more slowly”? LOL.
This is fucking great. It would be amazing if this would happen. However, why would there only be one time travel convention? If we can fix all the problems, including wars and diseases that the human race has experienced, why fix it now? If the people from the future actually come, we should learn from them about all sorts of cures and solutions and then go back in time when human history first began and arrange a time travel convention for that time. Why now? Why should we change history now? I feel that we are cheating in some sense. It’s almost like asking someone for questions on a test. We should be smart enough to figure out are own problems and not receive information from people from the future. Since species evolve and new forms of species or life forms come into this world, it’s hard to imagine a time when everything will be stable and relaxed. As long as we have intelligent beings on this earth, it will be hard to determine the correct sociological structure or the correct way to live. There will always be some kind of clash. There could be a million bit of information that we could learn from the people from the future. However, what about problems during the future? Who is going to fix those problems? Is someone from a later time going to tell someone from an earlier time how to prevent this? In addition, if so, might that decrease the chances of that person from the future to exist? What if from this convention, we develop a world where we accidentally erase time travel? Why can’t someone from the future go back to when a meteor hit the earth millions of years ago and develop some type of machine to prevent such a mess so the dinosaurs would still be alive and rule this earth? This could happen also. I think that the time machine is a way to develop an infinitive number of parallel universes. Right now, we are in the parallel universe where someone suggests that we should arrange a one and only time travel convention. I think that this could really happen. I also think that if we are informed of how to prevent such messes in this world, that we have to inform the people of the future that the cures and answers they provide us could prevent them from ever existing. So the question is, what time should we help and why?
Josh, the joke is that “you only ever need one time travel convention” because by defintion, if someone has access to time travel and they know about the convention, then they can always attend. Think about it this way: to a (potential) time traveler, there’s no difference between a time travel convention this year and one next year.
Of course, that assumes that people in the future *know* about the convention, right? Hence the plea from the organizer to print the date and location in the newspaper, bury them in a time capsule in your backyard, write them on acid-free paper and slip them into infrequently used library books, etc.
I’m betting that no one from the future shows up, personally, but not because I believe time travel is impossible. The most realistic possibilities require that a device of some kind, such as the end of a wormhole, be available in the destination time. Last time I checked, we didn’t have anything like that operating yet. (^_^)
And yes, that means that you couldn’t go back in time to any period before the time machine was first turned on, so Operation: Dinosaur Rescue isn’t looking too good at this point. (^_-)
Lastly, if people from the future return to our time and provide us with information, then it is logically impossible for us to be able to use that information in such a way so as to prevent them from ever existing; because if we did, they would never have been able to provide the information to us in the first place.
So, it isn’t ‘cute math tricks’, it’s “Through some very clever mathematics”.
Who’s the total moron?
And if you read ANY of the current literature on the subject, you’d know that the geodesic model of spacetime is currently being completely revamped because it is now believed to be incorrect. Time does not follow any three-dimensional structure, geodesic or otherwise (including the donut-shape proposed by Homer Simpson).
This incorrect assumption on the nature of spacetime comes from Einstein’s comparison of spacetime to a rubber sheet, in which planets orbit a star because they ride around the ‘dimples’ in a rubber sheet. New theories in physics show this hypothesis to be incorrect.
Read up. And saying “you’re a total moron”, is pointless. I could just fire back with “go fuck yourself”. But writing something that proves you wrong is more satisfying.
Which new theories put paid to relativity, again? The “current literature”? I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you read Nature? Science? Ok, Physical Review Letters? Physics World? No? How about Scientific American? Not even that? Oh, right, but you’re well versed in the “current literature” — by which, you mean, five year old popular science books about cosmology.
No one is “revamping” Minkowski-space, or any of the other **four dimensional** mathematical models of spacetime, because they are *correct*. The nature of spacetime does not “come from Einstein’s comparision of spacetime to a rubber sheet”, how could it? The mathematical models of spacetime that are part of relativity are based on *mathematics* (specifically, Lorentz Transformations), and they are as valid today as they were yesterday.
Maybe you’re talking about M-theory. Well it’s true, some versions of M-theory include many additional *spacial* dimensions, which are compactified. And it turns out, you can use them to do some very interesting things, like describe the gravitational force using a particle (ok, string) in a quantized spacetime. But, surprise!, just as Relativity didn’t “invalidate” Newtonian mechanics, but merely reveal it to be a low-energy approximation to GR, M-theory doesn’t invalidate Relativity — it reveals it to be an approximation of a more complete theory.
So, you’re doing pretty poorly on the “proving me wrong” front, probably because I’ve seen 13 year olds on Usenet with a more complete understanding of Relativity than you have. You might just want to go ahead and fall back to telling me to “go fuck myself”, because every time you try to talk about Physics, you make yourself sound like an even bigger idiot.
And yes, there is a big difference between “cute math tricks” and “clever mathematics”. The former implies that time travel is all just some algebraical sleight-of-hand, while the latter simply acknowledges that the mathematics of General Relativity are immensely difficult. If you’d like, ignore my trite remark about how clever they are, and simply think of them as fucking brilliant.
One more thing. I want to make it clear that, if a more complete physical theory were to elucidate a basis for *why* time travel was not possible, I would not be entirely surprised. It seems to confirm our intution on the subject, doesn’t it? And yet, intuition played very little role in the development of Quantum Mechanics, a very counter-intuitive theory. So I know better than to try and think about Physics using common-sense reasoning.
General Relativity offers a very sound mathematical footing for time travel to rest on, even if the mechanisms needed to produce the required warping of spacetime are immensely impractical. And GR is still the most complete physical theory of spacetime that we’ve got to work with, so until I see a consensus in the scientific community that indicates otherwise, I’ll continue to believe that time travel remains a very real, if remote, possibility.
You really are one of those people who thinks he knows everything, aren’t you?
There’s really one problem you fail to acknowledge, however. Whether you call them clever mathematics, cute math tricks, or your personal ode to your mental masturbation (which oftentimes astounds me not only in its lack of knowledge, even as you argue your point, but in the tenacity with which you hold to that lack of knowledge), it still requires orders of magnitude more energy than that put out by the Sun in its lifetime.
That was my original point. No civilization, no matter how advanced, would be likely to have the technology to do such a thing. Ever. Period. The only way I can even think of to get that much matter to convert to energy in an instant is by mutual annihilation with anti-matter. Take ten or twenty stars, add anti-matter, somehow harness the energy?
Or perhaps you’d speak of using cosmic strings or exotic matter. The existence of neither has been proven. So using a unicorn to get the fairy to the magical tower int he forest seems just as likely.
That’s the beauty of mathematics. Cute and clever, and full of ’sleight of hand’ (and yes, that is *exactly* how I think of it). It can show only that something ‘could’ exist, not that it does, or ever will.
Or do I need to remind you that mathematics can be used to show how you can hang an elephant from a cliff by having its tail tied to a daisy? Want to take odds on how likely it is that transcends paper and works in the real world?
By the way, J, I don’t know where your new vitriol is found precisely, but I think it’s misplaced.
The fact is, you don’t know everything. And as you compare my knowledge to a 13-year old on Usenet, I’m forced to ask if that 13-year old is where you learned to ignore Newtonian physics and decide you could mount that fan to the back of a sailboat to power the sails that time?
You don’t know everything. And what you do know is fairly meaningless to the discussion at hand. Whatever scientific gold or tripe you happen to believe in, you have to be able to prove not only that something can be done by manipulating pen on paper, but that it could be done in *reality*. Otherwise, it will garner as much enthusiasm from pretty much anyone who doesn’t shit wave functions as a second-rate card trick.
And time travel, most scientists would acknowledge, is a *practical* impossibility, if not a theoretical one.
Btw, this convention just got mentioned on the Today show.
How is it logically impossible to not prevent people from the future from ever existing? I thought that this was titled the first and only time travel convention. I know that people from the future can come back again and again. If someone from the future comes to the convention and provides us with details, of how to cure AIDS and cancer, they might risk the chance of not existing in the future. Unless, does this mean that by organizing a one and only time travel convention, it has already happened before it began? I did not major in science or mathematics, so I am unfamiliar with the specific details. But I just don’t know how it is logically impossible.
Josh, I said that it’s logically impossible for people from the future to provide us with knowledge that we could use to prevent them from existing, yes. Otherwise, how could they come back to provide us with that knowledge? cf. the Novikov self-consistency principle.
Carl, I’ll take your points one at a time.
Go fuck yourself, asshole.
“Ode to my mental masturbastion”? So I guess you *are* falling back on the telling me to go fuck myself plan, then? Hey, here’s a fucking idea! You keep _claiming_ that time travel under GR takes a lot of energy, so, why don’t you fucking prove it to us? Go ahead, cite a publication or something. Show us the solution for the field equations that you’re talking about. I’ll wait.
Yeah, those highly unlikely cosmic strings. You know, if you’re going to argue about this stuff with me, you want to actually *read* that “recent literature” that you were going on about before.
Yes, yes I *do* want you to show me the mathematics for this. Go ahead and show me the mathematics that predict that an Elephant will be able to hang from cliff by the stem of a daisy.
You know it’s funny, because you’re point about mathematics not necessarily representing an accurate model of reality is correct, you just put it terribly. GR, however, is an accurate model, as show by its continuing abilitiy to correctly predict the results of experiements.
Just as a quick and dirty, read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel
Now, wormholes would require astonishing amounts of energy, impossible to produce. Giant spinning cylinders require an immense amount of resources and some way to keep a vessel from being completely destroyed. Spooky action has more to do with quantum teleportation than actual time travel.
So… much like a Dyson sphere, the math may be all well and good, but the practice is another matter entirely.
And if you think my explanations are bad, all you have to do is explain it better for the average layman to understand. After all, that is usually my aim. And GR is not entirely accurate, or else the Unified Field Theory would be a reality instead of just a frustrating puzzle.
Thanks.
Nazis! Nazis! Nazis!
Its all the work of Nazis… and the people who invented margarine.
I have come from the future to telll everyone that what MIT is doing is not going to hhappen because the worlld ends and Aliens take over.
Hrm… coincidence that the above comment is comment#666?
Left on Friday the 13th?
I want to know more about the pizza button.
Certainly we all could use a pizza button.
Up untill Colin’s reply on May 7th, 2005 at 6:54 pm,
I’ve understood basicly what your arguments are, but I would like to bring another theory to the discustion.
I do belive in fourth demonstionallity as a factor of time travel, but to add a fictional twist, isn’t the Star gate theory just as plusible? If you think about the stargate (Movie)Theory , it explains that 4d is shown as a cube representing time/space in the it, it included 7 exact points (six sides to the cube plus one for destionation) If you think about BTTF, it Requries Approx 6-7 numbers for a correct destination.
Ex: 10/26/1985/01:21 AM – If you inclued 0 it is seven numbers. these coordintes are nessisary to get to your location, and all I read is you two arguing about how much power it would take, power can always be Generated, its the rest of the problem that needs worked out.
Sorry if I’m taking this too serously, and please forgive me for spelling errors.
Signed,
Palidin