Ghosts, Time Travel, and Space / Inter-dimensional Neural Communication...

Lean'n'mean said:

Another paradox of time travel is aging. Could a time traveller return in time to a point beyond where he was just a twinkle in his father's eye, or similarly, could he go forward in time beyond his alloted span, and would he get younger as he went back or older as he travelled forward. Prehaps the answer would be in the speed of travel.
For example, imagine you left a young lady at some point in a village & then you took a spin around that village at the speed of light, on returning to that woman, she would now be old, yet you would only have aged a few minutes...............that would be a form of time travel since you could advance in time by say 50 years, in a matter of minutes.....I'll leave those more qualified to explain the physics of it.

There is another point to elucidate, if we travelled back in time,would we not meet our younger selves & if so, could the two of us coexist in the same time continuum ? The Doctor says yes but we can't have physical contact, so any sexual activity between the two would be impossible. I mention that, as according to a large number of psychoanalysts, we all have an underlying desire to make love to ourselves & it would be a good opportunity to find out if we are as good a lover as we think we are.

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I think some "psychoanalysts" are just "daffy".

The time travel debate will only be solved when someone openly can obtain a means to do so and then finds the facts and presents those facts instead of theory. But we have to keep a simple thought when it does come to time and travel. It is all a part of light. The measurement of light is what is a large part of the very fabric of what we do and our existence. Age, events, life. It would be nice to travel back in time, bet on races and make investments on things we knew in history would have panned out, and then come back to today and have some nice fat bank account from it all.

LuvMyMan said:

It is all a part of light. The measurement of light is what is a large part of the very fabric of what we do and our existence. Age, events, life. It would be nice to travel back in time, bet on races and make investments on things we knew in history would have panned out, and then come back to today and have some nice fat bank account from it all.

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Now that's what I call a good, honest and logical answer to hypothetical argument. Nothing like a spot of avarice to stir the senses.
The measurement of light, isn't that what Albert Einstein cracked?
E = mc 2, in which E represents units of energy, m represents units of mass, and c 2 is the speed of light squared, or multiplied by itself.

I've offten wondered if I'd feel guilty if I effectively cheated the lottery by going forwards, tsking don the number,s the gonig back in time. Wouldn't mind having the chance to find out. I guess the ethical way to do it would be to head back in time to a point where you knew some 'underserving' type won it - a Michael Carroll, or someone who was already rich, say - and pinch their winning week somehow... more complicated to arrange, though. I was thinknig recently of the practicalities of gonig shopping in the past, making sure I had the correct banknotes, correct years, and so on.

LuvMyMan said:

Yes I also agree, the so called "frozen head" they do for a person instead of the entire body. Not too smart a thing to do, what if they COULD bring a person back from the "deep freeze"???? You would be REALLY "miffed" that others spent the additional $12.95 a month to have their whole body frozen, while being a tight wad would mean only your head made it! But I do not think even in a few tens of thousands of years, that mankind could restore life in a body....think about it.

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Not convinced myself, but then if they could, I'm sure they'd be able to produce a body which far surpases the original - I mean, isn'tg that the idea? You die of your body being riddled with illness, or aged and frail, you come back and they igve you a new body with your youth back, in effect... I've never been sold on the idea of restoring the spark of life being possible.... I'm seeing a new zombie origin story here, though.

Zombie_61 said:

The thing that bugs me about the Grandfather paradox is that it doesn't attempt to explain in any way what would happen to Grandfather's descendants. Let's say Joe invents a working time machine, goes back in time 80 years, and kills his grandfather. What happens to Joe? He already exists. Does he just disappear, or drop dead, because the lineage that led to his birth no longer exists? Does his body die and his soul/consciousness gets transferred into another body in accordance with the new/alternate timeline he's created by killing his grandfather? And what if Joe's buddy Sam invents the time machine and kills Joe's grandfather--the outcome is the same, and the question still stands: What happens to Joe?

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Logically.... Joe goes back in time and kills Grandfather. Joe's father or mother on that side is thus never born as the ame person, and 'our' Joe, subsequently, never exists, so he can't go back and kill his grandfather, so the grandfather doesn't die, so Joe is born, and if he still makes the same life choice, we repeat the loop....

Now, I know the answer is, "We don't know," and I accept that. But this is an example of what I mean when I say "our current perception and understanding of time". We think we understand it, but the reality is that we don't. Not really. And certainly not thoroughly. And until we do, time travel will remain a disproven impossibility because we as a species are not yet ready to deal with the potential consequences.

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Certsinly, the implications would be so vast, we could only figure out by donig. Which might not be such a good idea...

Lean'n'mean said:

Another paradox of time travel is aging. Could a time traveller return in time to a point beyond where he was just a twinkle in his father's eye, or similarly, could he go forward in time beyond his alloted span, and would he get younger as he went back or older as he travelled forward. Prehaps the answer would be in the speed of travel.
For example, imagine you left a young lady at some point in a village & then you took a spin around that village at the speed of light, on returning to that woman, she would now be old, yet you would only have aged a few minutes...............that would be a form of time travel since you could advance in time by say 50 years, in a matter of minutes.....I'll leave those more qualified to explain the physics of it.

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Would it not be to her as if you'd never left? I don't think I'm following you there. Surely for as long as you were away, you'd age by that amount of time, but if you arrived back at the same time as you left, she wouldn't have known any different. Say you stay away for what (in terms of your body) is two years. You'd come back two years older, physically, but she'd not have aged a second if you arrive back at the exact moment you left. Now, if you're travelling at the speed of light, so it's no time for you, and it's no time for her....? I might be missing something.

There is another point to elucidate, if we travelled back in time,would we not meet our younger selves & if so, could the two of us coexist in the same time continuum ? The Doctor says yes but we can't have physical contact, so any sexual activity between the two would be impossible. I mention that, as according to a large number of psychoanalysts, we all have an underlying desire to make love to ourselves & it would be a good opportunity to find out if we are as good a lover as we think we are.

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It does sound like the ultimate breakage of the incest taboo! Can't see it myself. I suspect it would be very much on the weird side to consciously meet yourself, but I don't see any scientific reason why it would casue the universe to explode or anything. There are a few fashion disasters and a couple of relationships I'd have liked to have warned myself off, though.

GHT said:

Now that's what I call a good, honest and logical answer to hypothetical argument. Nothing like a spot of avarice to stir the senses.
The measurement of light, isn't that what Albert Einstein cracked?
E = mc 2, in which E represents units of energy, m represents units of mass, and c 2 is the speed of light squared, or multiplied by itself.

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Einstein's E=mc2 didn't crack the measurement of light speed, it only related it to mass/energy equivalency. Einstein also first proposed that the speed of light was constant to the observer, independent of the motion of the source.

Scientists and philosophers argued for millennia on whether or not light had a defined speed. The first quantitative measurement was in 1676. We didn't get particularly accurate until the late 19th Century.

Edward said:

There are a few fashion disasters and a couple of relationships I'd have liked to have warned myself off, though.

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LizzieMaine said:

Or history is simply immutable. You can't kill your grandfather -- or yourself. You can try, but something will always prevent that from happening. Because it didn't happen. You can't kill Hitler, you can't stop Pearl Harbor, you can't prevent the Titanic from sinking, you can't save Lincoln. And if you travel back in time to witness those events, you were always a part of those events in the first place.

But suppose you do travel back in time -- a time warp opens in front of you, you fall in, and you can't get home. To 2016, you've disappeared without a trace. Think of how many people have just "disappeared off the face of the earth," and no trace of them has ever been found. Dorothy Arnold. Ambrose Bierce. Judge Crater. Wallace D. Fard. Barbara Newhall Follett. And that's just some of the famous people -- think of how many unknowns, people you've never heard of and will never hear of, who one day just upped and disappeared. Maybe they lived out their lives, under assumed identities, in another time. Who's to say that's impossible?

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I agree about the unexplained disappearances. However, it is far more plausible that they merely shifted to a different space time version of what we consider the "present" rather than going backward or forward in time.... Equally intriguing though...

philosophygirl78 said:

I agree about the unexplained disappearances. However, it is far more plausible that they merely shifted to a different space time version of what we consider the "present" rather than going backward or forward in time.... Equally intriguing though...

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It's equally plausible that they were simply shot in the desert by Pancho Villa.

GHT said:

View attachment 43061

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Ha! Fortunatley, that's one I never did...

Edward said:

Would it not be to her as if you'd never left? I don't think I'm following you there. Surely for as long as you were away, you'd age by that amount of time, but if you arrived back at the same time as you left, she wouldn't have known any different. Say you stay away for what (in terms of your body) is two years. You'd come back two years older, physically, but she'd not have aged a second if you arrive back at the exact moment you left. Now, if you're travelling at the speed of light, so it's no time for you, and it's no time for her....? I might be missing something.

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Logically you are right of course but it is yet another paradox, 'the Twin Paradox' to be precise. I must admit I find it hard to grasp but it has something to do with not traveling in the same time frame, i.e. the earth's & the speed of light. Einstein's prediction from WIKI;

"If we placed a living organism in a box ... one could arrange that the organism, after any arbitrary lengthy flight, could be returned to its original spot in a scarcely altered condition, while corresponding organisms which had remained in their original positions had already long since given way to new generations. For the moving organism, the lengthy time of the journey was a mere instant, provided the motion took place with approximately the speed of light."

If the stationary organism is a man and the traveling one is his twin, then the traveler returns home to find his twin brother much aged compared to himself. The paradox centers around the contention that, in relativity, either twin could regard the other as the traveler, in which case each should find the other younger—a logical contradiction. This contention assumes that the twins' situations are symmetrical and interchangeable, an assumption that is not correct. Furthermore, the accessible experiments have been done and support Einstein's prediction. ...

Edward said:

It does sound like the ultimate breakage of the incest taboo! Can't see it myself. I suspect it would be very much on the weird side to consciously meet yourself, but I don't see any scientific reason why it would casue the universe to explode or anything. There are a few fashion disasters and a couple of relationships I'd have liked to have warned myself off, though.

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Ah but it would be no more incestuous than masturbation, as Woody Allen said " It's sex with someone you love "

Like Lizzie has stated about the past being immutable, would it be possible to go back in time & say bet on something you knew was going to happen if you hadn't already done so in the past...............would it be possible to change history & alter what has already happened, even if it was just a bet ?
As for past relationships, would you really have wanted to be forewarned of the consequences...I doubt it.

Lean'n'mean said:

Logically you are right of course but it is yet another paradox, 'the Twin Paradox' to be precise. I must admit I find it hard to grasp but it has something to do with not traveling in the same time frame, i.e. the earth's & the speed of light. Einstein's prediction from WIKI;

"If we placed a living organism in a box ... one could arrange that the organism, after any arbitrary lengthy flight, could be returned to its original spot in a scarcely altered condition, while corresponding organisms which had remained in their original positions had already long since given way to new generations. For the moving organism, the lengthy time of the journey was a mere instant, provided the motion took place with approximately the speed of light."

If the stationary organism is a man and the traveling one is his twin, then the traveler returns home to find his twin brother much aged compared to himself. The paradox centers around the contention that, in relativity, either twin could regard the other as the traveler, in which case each should find the other younger—a logical contradiction. This contention assumes that the twins' situations are symmetrical and interchangeable, an assumption that is not correct. Furthermore, the accessible experiments have been done and support Einstein's prediction. ...

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The Twin Paradox is resolved with general relativity and the idea of inertial reference frames. Both twins cannot be in the same inertial reference frame the entire time, and both cannot be in non-inertial reference frames. In other words, both cannot be simply floating out in undefined space without the influence of some frame of reference. They both have to start and return somewhere. It's the person who accelerates away from and back towards that *somewhere* that defines the time dilation, or "stays young" relative to the other.

Lean'n'mean said:

Ah but it would be no more incestuous than masturbation, as Woody Allen said " It's sex with someone you love "

Like Lizzie has stated about the past being immutable, would it be possible to go back in time & say bet on something you knew was going to happen if you hadn't already done so in the past...............would it be possible to change history & alter what has already happened, even if it was just a bet ?
As for past relationships, would you really have wanted to be forewarned of the consequences...I doubt it.

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I think the only answer that makes sense is that history is fixed -- all of it. If you look up the parimutuel results for Aqueduct on July 17, 1940 and see a given sum, and then you go back in time to that date and go to that track and place a bet, only two things can happen -- either your win is already included in those results and everybody's amazed at the long shot you won, or something happens to prevent you placing the bet. You get lost on the way to the track and miss the race, somebody picks your pocket on the way in and you have no cash, you get to the window just as the clerk is closing down, or some other freak circumstance interferes. Or if you go to a bookie, he gets suspicious and has some of the boys work you over in the alley.

Even if you can travel in time, you cannot cheat it. Ever. History happened, and that's the only way it can ever happen.

Or, there are an infinite number of parallel time lines, each the result of the decisions everyone makes every minute, and by going back in time and placing that winning bet you initiate yet another timeline. Otherwise, all actions are predestined and we have only the illusion of free will.

I always liked that one.
We can't go back in time very far because the Langoliers have eaten it.

JimWagner said:

Or, there are an infinite number of parallel time lines, each the result of the decisions everyone makes every minute, and by going back in time and placing that winning bet you initiate yet another timeline. Otherwise, all actions are predestined and we have only the illusion of free will.

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I don't think that means decisions aren't discretionary, only that they are permanent.

Zombie_61 said:

I'm not sure I understand the point you're trying to make here, so any attempt to reply at this point would probably just make things worse.

Simply that time travel (as presented by sci-fi) is a paradox. It is not possible. A thing both existing and not existing at the same time is an example of a paradox. Like our time traveler...

The thing that bugs me about the Grandfather paradox is that it doesn't attempt to explain in any way what would happen to Grandfather's descendants. Let's say Joe invents a working time machine, goes back in time 80 years, and kills his grandfather. What happens to Joe? He already exists. Does he just disappear, or drop dead, because the lineage that led to his birth no longer exists? Does his body die and his soul/consciousness gets transferred into another body in accordance with the new/alternate timeline he's created by killing his grandfather? And what if Joe's buddy Sam invents the time machine and kills Joe's grandfather--the outcome is the same, and the question still stands: What happens to Joe?

Now, I know the answer is, "We don't know," and I accept that. But this is an example of what I mean when I say "our current perception and understanding of time". We think we understand it, but the reality is that we don't. Not really. And certainly not thoroughly. And until we do, time travel will remain a disproven impossibility because we as a species are not yet ready to deal with the potential consequences.

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Of course it explains what happens to the descendents. The mere fact that one could kill a grandfather or oneself by traveling back in time renders the concept a paradox and not possible. Puzzle solved.

HudsonHawk said:

It's equally plausible that they were simply shot in the desert by Pancho Villa.

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Indeed.

JimWagner said:

Or, there are an infinite number of parallel time lines, each the result of the decisions everyone makes every minute, and by going back in time and placing that winning bet you initiate yet another timeline. Otherwise, all actions are predestined and we have only the illusion of free will.

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I've always liked this line of thought, but I really think we are thinking small (but very big for us - certainly, I'm impressed with these thoughts that others, not me, have come up with) in that the "answer" (i.e., how the universe works, how it got here, what really drives it) is so far beyond what we've thought that we are adding 2+2 while the universe is a quadratic equation in the billions. We have no choice but to keep trying, but I think we are far, far, far away from getting to the answer.

I thought the answer was 42.