h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Okay, now my head hurts. Well, not really, but it might in a parallel universe.

I think that "In Search of Schrodinger's Cat" (Yes, I have that book too) says that, if you get a long cylinder with the density of either a black hole or a neutron star spinning at 2 rev.s per second, it puts enough drag on space-time that it actually turns travel in one of the XYZ dimensions into travel in the 4th dimension (time). There are pulsars out there that spin that fast, but they are unbelievably unlikely to be shaped like a long cylinder.

The problem, of course, is 1. Building the thing, and 2. Escaping its gravitational pull when you want to leave. Also, I think it was mentioned earlier that: How are you going to get back if said cylinder doesn't exist yet (presuming that you visit the past)?

Ooog. This is all too technical for a sleep-deprived teen. See you all tomorrow. (Make that later today; it's 12:08. Hey, there's a practical application for time travel - stay up late doing your work, then go back & get 9 hrs. of sleep! You'd age more than everyone else, though.)

That cylinder thing. Was that anything to do with Max Plank's Black Body Radiation. I just remember it out of "ISoSC" and it sounded awfully familiar. Something about a cylider with a radiation absorbing material coating the inside of the hollow chamber, with a hole to allow a beam of light into the cylinder which could then be plugged with a mirror. The light would be absorbed and at saturation would be radiated back out again by the material, it bounces around in there, absorbing and radiating, and I seem to remember something about how this would make a very effective explosion if you unplugged the mirror and tried to let all the pent-up energy out at once. Anyone know what I'm dribbling about?

Clive

Will it make me younger if I travel back in time?????????
I think I will try it
I am 47 so it would be nice if I could knock of a few years or 10

No, but with some plastic surgery and a telomerase injection you could live longer and look younger.

BTW, I have no idea regarding the cylinder-with-mirrored-plug bit. It seems to me that the light would just keep bouncing around in there.

I accept that I might have misquoted that but I'm sure I read it somewhere.

Time travel does exist - it's the only reasonable explanation for all creation. Eg: "Big Bang theory" - what started the big bang. "God" - who created God. Usual answer - he created himself, obviously wrong and stupid idea from religious zealots. The truth is that time travel must have caused all existence.

OK, here's the facts

When you travel forwards in time you actually arrive before you depart, which can cause all sorts of problems, so make sure you travel far enough to not be in the same place as yourself as you could cause a paradox, or summat else bad like that.

How to escape from a black hole. OK here goes: You must go as fast as you can and use the gravatational pull of the black hole to go faster than light and therefore theoretically be able to escape the hole, because, although light can't escape it's clutches, something (although this doesn't make sense, as when you're faster than light you're everything and nothing at the same time) that's faster than light can. You have to make sure you break the light barrier (incedently the speed limit for the Universe, so don't let any pigs catch you ) before you reach the event horizon, which is basically the piont of no return. With me so far. Oh well/good (delete as applicable) Christ, I am going on a bit, aren't I? Anyway, evnt horizon. If you do break the light barrier before the event horizon then you must continue into the centre of the hole, in which is supposedly located the Omni-zone - the gateway to the other six parralell Universes. But I digress. For those of you who don't know, a black hole compresses all matter that falls within it to infinity, therefore the only way to escape is to loop around the singularity at the centre and basically slingshot yourself out of it. You should arrive at the very bring of it's clutches and travelling at a relative speed of 1mph, which means that after all this you still aren't travelling faster than light because the gravityof the hole hasslowed you down almost completely. For more information read "Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers", "Better Than Life", "Last Human" and "Backwards" by Grant Naylor.

It's been fun

Ben Walters

[email protected]

Uh, nothing can go faster than light except for tachyons, which may or may not actually exist to begin with.

Get's my vote!

So this conversation seems to have ended quite a while ago, but I'm new, so I feel the need to share my two cents. (sense) I have included the thoughts that sparked my own.

* Surely you cannot ADD 200lb of human flesh matter to an already infinitely large universe without causing problems.*

The theory in Quantum Leap is that that 200 lbs is merely swapped with another large fleshy lump in the time that you are visiting. All this body swapping could be the reason we don't know that we are being visited. It could also just be a canceled TV show.

*Time is not a direction. You cannot travel in it. There is only now. Time is a property of the universe. Now manipulations of that property are certainly possible- Einstein's theories suggest as much. What could we discover about time simply by changing our perception of it?*

Perhaps time is not a (one) direction. Space gets three dimensions, why shouldn't time. Humans trudge right along their one dimensional version of time while *a hoard of tourists [watch] Neil Armstrong [get] out of that tin can.* from the sidelines. We may just have blinders on to those visitors.

Then there are the joys of parallel universes. Perhaps traveling back in time occurs along the path that you had followed and time travel give you the chance to go back to those branch creating decisions and follow the other path. Like a fork in the road, left-Hitler is killed, right-he is not. The benefit of time travel is you would already know what lies at the end of one of those paths. The adventure would be finding what lies along the other.

I believe that time travel is possible, but not by any means of ours. It would require a four-dimensional construct (something capable of moving in the 4th dimension as opposed to us) that could then move us with it. This implies either a 4d being or a machine of 4 dimensions, whose interface is operable in only 3. Thus either way, we have no way of creating our own transport.

Also, time is not linear, it is a ring. This is proven through a method of representing the dimensions which takes into account the curvature of space and time. When using this model, we find that there is an infinitely small ring of 4d nonexistance precisely half the radius from the center. This ring is our timeline. Just as a 2d person would be invisible to us if we saw him head on, so we are a state of nonexistence to a 4d being.

How about this - is it possable to travel into the future and kill yourself(assuming that your future self didn't want to die)?
I mean, if you try to kill your future self they know their/your past/present so surely they can they avoid it.
Am I only making sense to myself here?

I see couple of problems with time travel that have not been brought up yet.

1) First, if you travel back in time to when you where 5 years old, do you become that 5 year old having the knowledge of the future, your past? Or, will there be two of you, the adult you and the 5 year old you? The same question arises if you travel to yesterday to have sex with you wife/girlfriend one last time or warn her of the car crash that will take her life. Is it you or the you of yesterday? Will you have to tell the yesterday you what will happen so the yesterday you can act upon it? Or what happens if the yesterday you catches you having sex with his wife/girlfriend? If you become the yesterday you or the 5-year-old you, then time travel is limited to your own lifetime.

2) Second, the earth is spinning on it axis, which is revolving around the sun, which is revolving around the Milky Way galaxy, which is spinning away from the center of the universe. You not only have to travel though time but also space. You would have to calculate where exacting where you are in the universe and then calculate where in the universe the place was at the time you wish to go and then jump though time and space and do this in an ever changing universe. Otherwise, you might find yourself in the middle of a star or in outer space with no air. BUMMER.

And for what it's worth, wasn't there some news a few weeks ago about proving Einstein wrong about the shape of space? *strains to remember* Einstein thought space was curved but some scientists thought they had proven that , curved or not, space spread out over an infinite distance is as near to flat as to make no odds. If that is correct will affect our notions of time travel - such as orbiting black holes and Wormholes and other seriously warped bits of the Universe - not to mention plotting co-ordinates for where to travel too.

Clive

As #~I just found you on my page I think you must have managed time travel!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Listen:
While I like science-fiction stories (books, T.V., movies, whatever) as much as anyone else, I don't think we can try to get our knowledge of time travel from them. Just because, in Quantum Leap, you can only replace other people, not enter as a new entity, doesn't mean that yu need to do this in reality. I think that, if you travel back in time, you are a different entity, not attached to the self you once were. (In a movie I once saw, they said that, while your past self was different from the you that went to the past, if the two touched, both would be destroyed. However, if I beleived this, I would be ignoring my own premise.) Actually, the theory that adding 200-odd pounds of flesh to the past will disrupt the Universe should be taken as evidence that time travel doesn't exist - not that some weird thing (a la Quantum Leap) should happen. Also, whatever time travel possibilities there were in Red Dwarf, this does not affect our reality.

One last note: While I think Dougles Adams proved his genius in writing The Hich-hiker's Trilogy (all five books of it - I love saying that), I DO NOT BELIEVE THAT A SINGLE THING IN THAT SERIES COULD HAPPEN!!! Sorry.

That is why it is called science FICTION!

'G'

Why are we so concerned with time travel? It screws everything up! The "X-Men" cartoon rapidly began to suck once time travel became the central plot device of EVERY FREAKIN' EPISODE!

And in real life, people get confused enough with simple things, like Star Wars Episode IV coming before Episode I. Imagine what Lucas could do to us all if he had time travel to work with!



And Douglas Adams has already pointed out all the grammatical problems associated with time travel.

Thinking about this subject logically, Time travel will NEVER become a reality.............

Proof...

If at some time in the future it became possible, would we not have had a visit by now???????

That's not nessacarily proof. The whole issue of not having had a visit BY NOW is quite irrelevant where time travel is concerned. Also, if time travel ever does become possible, I think we can safely assume the following:

1) It will be dangerous
2) It will be expensive
3) The process of time travel will be a lot more complex than stepping into some "booth with a clock".
4) The average family of four will NOT spend their vacation in another time period.

Space travel may eventually become common, but only one out of a billion people would get to become a time traveler (if it's even possible). What are the odds that one of the universe's 10 time travelling humans picks OUR particular time to visit?

There is one possibility, and I think it has been mentioned somewhere else in this forum (sorry, can't be arsed looking it up again), that if someone travels back in time, a parallel universe is automatically created, thus scuppering his/her plans to change this one.
'G'