Time Travel...? - Science a GoGo's Discussion Forums

Ron Mallett, PhD suggests that time travel is possible and aspires to create a working time machine in the next ten years. He supports his ideas with a lot of factual evidence and theories, but I am not sure of the reality of it all. He uses Einstein's theories of relativity and motion to substantiate his ideas. Here is an interview on the subject matter...

http://bit.ly/ec73hW

What do you think about his ideas? Or about time travel in general?

Thanks, Carr, interesting link.

A few points that immediately seem relevant are:

1. The fact that the circulating light beam can be seen to be causing a neutron to circulate does not necessarily prove that spacetime is being "twisted".

2. Dr Mallett seems to jump from arguing that one might be able to travel forward through time, to saying that past-directed time travel is possible. This assumption is not completely justified.

3. The introduction indicates that Dr Mallett is considering going back in time to save his father's life. Although the subsequent interview did not back that up, we must not lose sight of the fact that changing the past is a very contentious issue. A spacetime event cannot be changed.

Of course, this is the Sci-Fi forum.

If it hasn't happened yet then it cannot be tampered with. If indeed the people who died are still alive in the past at all points in time then death does not really exist. That throws a wrench into Chriatian theology because it clashes with the need for a ressurection and the Ransome sacrifice of Jesus who makes it possible. In fact, it can be viewed as tge repetition of that first satanic lie that asserted that we really do not die.

Originally Posted By: Rocko

If it hasn't happened yet then it cannot be tampered with

How could we be sure that it hasn't happened yet?

I posted this a year from now ... Bill S made me do it for proof of something :-)

Quote:

I posted this a year from now ...Bill S made me do it for proof of something

I think it was to prove that Pre was right about something, could be something he's going to say about Orac.

The thread seems to have stalled so I will give it a prod.

This is from what I would call the extreme fringe edge of QM scientists.

http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/01-back-from-the-future/

Quote:

The framework does not actually suggest that people could time-travel to the past, but it does allow a concrete test of whether it is possible to rewrite history. The Rochester experiments seem to demonstrate that actions carried out in the future�in the final, postselection step�ripple back in time to influence and amplify the results measured in the earlier, intermediate step.

The situation resolves all time paradoxes because

Quote:

In other words, you can see the effects of the future on the past only after carrying out millions of repeat experiments and tallying up the results to produce a meaningful pattern. Focus on any single one of them and try to cheat it, and you are left with a very strange-looking result�an amplification with no cause�but its meaning vanishes. You simply have to put it down to a random error in your apparatus. You win back your free will in the sense that if you actually attempt to defy the future, you will find that it can never force you to carry out postselection experiments against your wishes.

So the final interpreation

Quote:

Here, finally, is the answer to Aharonov�s opening question: What does God gain by playing dice with the universe? Why must the quantum world always retain a degree of fuzziness when we try to look at it through the time slice of the present? That loophole is needed so that the future can exert an overall pull on the present, without ever being caught in the act of doing it in any particular instance.

�The future can only affect the present if there is room to write its influence off as a mistake,� Aharonov says

However this leaves a big problem

Quote:

Whether this realization is a masterstroke of genius that explains the mechanism for backward causality or an admission that the future�s influence on the past can never fully be proven is open to debate.

AND IF IT CAN'T BE PROVEN STUDYING IT IS NOT SCIENCE :-)