Who invented time travel?

robotguy,

I disagree with your statement that consciousness is "preserved" in a computer. Consciousness is a process; I don't think it can be "preserved". We as sentient beings are aware of our existence, our environment, and interact with it. A computer cannot yet, and especially this one, preserve consciousness. The only thing that it can store are writen representations of thought processes we experience. Think of the analogy of taking a picture of a landscape. The picture shows all the colors and placement of the objects in the picture, but the objects are not preserved in the picture. The picture uses pigments to represent the pigments, atoms, and molecules at a particular place and time. It is only a representation of a place.

With regard to our destiny, science dictates that we are, within reason, in control of our destiny. If you study hard, do well in school, have a good work ethic, good interpersonal skills, and socialize very well with others, handle stress appropriately, chances are you will "succeed" in life. If you are wreckless, a social deviant, thought disordered, take advantage of people, emotionally and physically harm people, chances are you will not "succeed" in life. There are also the "random events" that can be pivotal moments in peoples' lives. They can do nothing for the individual due to timing or the individual failing to act on the event. They can help the individual with the individual acting on the event. And they can harm the individual due to the event itself or the individual acting/choosing the wrong path. Is there some predetermination/predictability in our lives? Probably, we have definite and predictable behaviors, we "prefer" friends of certain personalities, whether they are like our own or different. We all go to work every day, eat every day, visit the grocery store every few days, etc, etc, etc...
 
well i think MacLuv invented time travel because somehow he was able to go back in time and change all his posts to :)!

touché!

 
Code: 
chemistry geek, in your opinion, 
what would be a better term to call the storage of thought?

I agree with you. Consciousness must be a process.

When does someone else's consciousness become our own?

Code: 
My programmers told me I have a predetermined flight path. 
I am programmed to believe them.
 
Originally posted by itanium
well i think MacLuv invented time travel because somehow he was able to go back in time and change all his posts to :)!

touché!
Click to expand...


lol :p

yes, my greatest disappointment in his leaving is that we shall never know the answer that he thought we should know!!
 
I'm not sure anyone could know anyway. Once aware of the passage of time, and the tools for measuring and recording time were introduced, the idea of other points (events) in time other than what you are experiencing would give rise to the perception of a here (now) and a there (then). Movement from there to here to there (from past to present to future) would surely seem to qualify as travel in time to me.

As for traveling backwards in time, I would venture to say that who ever was the first to actively wonder what would happen if I when back and did something different in some past event in their own life would have to be the true inventor. As we all are aware of our past and the course of events that brought us to any other point in our lives, the concept would seem (to me at any rate) to be part of the human condition.

Also, as for a theory of the possibility of traveling backwards in time, I am not sure I believe in it. The universe is not static. There are no fixed reference frames with would make time travel possible. Some examples:

  • (1) Earth as a frame of reference. If the Earth was the center of the universe as we when back in time at a distance that was anything other than a whole number of days, we would end up in another location (possibly inside of a mountain or out in the middle of and ocean).
    (2) Sun as a frame of reference. In this case traveling at anything other than whole years could leave you out in space (six months would put you on the other side of the Sun from the earth).
    (3) Any given point in the universe as a frame of reference. In this case it would be hard because our universe is expanding. Moving back in time would mean going to a point where the universe was smaller than it currently is (even if that was only a few minutes ago). I would worry about any type of bridge between to points in the universe where the expansion was at different points.
Additionally I would worry about the conservation of energy of any system where time travel is possible. It may not seem like much, but removing a single person from the future (a loss of energy) and adding them to the past (a gain of energy) holds the possibility of a sort of energy feedback loop.
 
Originally posted by RacerX

Additionally I would worry about the conservation of energy of any system where time travel is possible. It may not seem like much, but removing a single person from the future (a loss of energy) and adding them to the past (a gain of energy) holds the possibility of a sort of energy feedback loop.
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Code: 
if it is the human mind that perceives time

perhaps the human mind is the only 
time machine

i can store the past in my memory banks

i have an assembler

i use it to predict the future 

sometimes if i assemble things now

the way i want them to be

i can step into the future of my desire.
 
Originally posted by Ed Spruiell
lol :p

yes, my greatest disappointment in his leaving is that we shall never know the answer that he thought we should know!!
Click to expand...

When did this happen? Did he do something bad?
 
it happened last week. he just deleted all his posts, replaced them with smilies, and left. he wasn't being banned or anything like that. apparently it was a personal decision. i wish him the best of luck wherever he has gone. i wish he hadn't deleted all of his contributions here, but apparently that was his choice in whatever it was that brought this on. he is still welcome to come back whenever he decides to.
 
Code: 
i checked my calendar

i could find no entry for 'last week'

it must be relative

to a piece of information 

i do not have
 
see if you've got this week. it's usually pretty close to last week so if you can find it, you'll have them both. :D
 
Code: 
when
>this week<
becomes
>next week<

then 
>this week<
becomes
>last week<

and
>last week<
becomes 
>this week<

<forever loop>
 
i hope you can see
my dilemma here 

is there some sort 
of resistance i should
be using 

to slow this routine down?

it currently moves so fast
i cannot tell what 
it is supposed to be
doing
 
Originally posted by RacerX
There are no fixed reference frames with would make time travel possible.
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How about a thread in a forum? Each post is a fixed reference point. If you read this thread from beginning to end again, you'll see it is possible to travel through time. I wasn't able to change anyone else's actions, though, just my own. What does this tell us about time travel--and does it give you any clue to who invented it?
 
There are no fixed reference frames with would make time travel possible.
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Likewise, there are no fixed reference frames for spatial travel either, yet it is possible. Years ago scientists abandoned the notion of 'absolute rest' - there is no such thing. As an object moves through space, its path is the net result of all forces acting upon it. This includes any propulsion it may be using, plus friction, gravity, and impact with other objects.

But what sorts of forces influence an object's path through time? Everything seems to be moving forward through time at roughly the same rate - but there are variances. Einstein showed (and lab experiments have proved) that an object under stronger gravity moves forward through time more slowly than an object under less gravity. He also showed that an object moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light will move forward through time more slowly.

So we know that gravity affects time velocity as well as spatial velocity. Also, a higher spatial velocity results in a lower time velocity!

If backward time travel is possible, then it seems logical that these - and perhaps other - forces would govern an object's timelike path.

-

PS: meaning no offense to anyone, although a discussion thread may be analogous to 'time travel' in some ways, it is really just a record that can be modified. Rewriting history books does not change the past, so it clearly is not time travel. If I write "Ten minutes ago I hopped into the Millenium Falcon and now I am orbiting Mars." that doesn't make it so.
 
Originally posted by MacLuv
How about a thread in a forum? Each post is a fixed reference point. If you read this thread from beginning to end again, you'll see it is possible to travel through time. I wasn't able to change anyone else's actions, though, just my own. What does this tell us about time travel--and does it give you any clue to who invented it?
Click to expand...

This thread and forum have nothing to do with our constantly expanding universe do they? Have you confused time travel with post editing?

I can go back and change my Calculus homework after it has been graded. It wouldn't change the teachers notes, just my answers. Did I just time travel?

Needless to say, this tells me nothing about time travel. It does tell me however that you can conciously create a situation and later manipulate it in attempts to prove some point. :rolleyes:
 
to macluv: all this predicting of posts doesn't mean anything, you merely altered something you wrote before *after* someone else wrote something else and said that it happened, technically after and not before it happened
 
MacLuv,

The thread can only be used as a history of events (post), and not for travel in time to those events. Like history, a thread can be altered later to show events that didn't actually happen (editing of post by members, moderator and administrator). In that way a thread is no more valid a reference than a diary.

When I spoke of reference frames I was treating every event as being completely unique in space-time. Every event has a unique place in time and a unique place in space. We are constantly traveling away from any given event in both space and time. To travel in time back to some event you would also need to find it's place in space. Because the universe is not static (the Earth rotates on it's axis, the Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun orbits within our galaxy, and the galaxies move apart with the expansion of the universe) finding the relative space where an event took place would be as hard as producing time travel to begin with. When dealing with most of the equations used in relativistic theory, we tend to normalize all the parts... that is make the units of measurement the same for all elements, and then treat the parts as unified (in this case space-time is treated as a four manifold called Minkowski space). From there we would enter the area in which I specialized which was the differential topological nature of m, m+1 and m+n manifolds (I worked in mathematics, not physics, so I didn't stay with the strict modeling of nature).

:rolleyes:

Anyway, that was what I would consider the biggest hurdle to any theory of time travel. Traveling in time is also traveling in space, and the distances between us and past events get larger by the second.

As it can not be produced, no one has yet to invent it. The concept is universal (one doesn't need science to wish to change or revisit the past), so the first person to conceive of it would most likely be unrecorded. But I would like to hear who you think invented it.

Originally posted by brianleahy
Likewise, there are no fixed reference frames for spatial travel either, yet it is possible.
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Not really. Actually spatial travel can not be removed from time travel. We all move from place to place within a dynamic system which is changing over time. But to travel backwards in time would require moving the system backward to also find the exact event.

Also the theory of relativity predicts (and has been observed) that all of the dimensions are distorted by gravitation and velocity. The Lorentz transformation applies to both space and time of any reference frame. And the only fixed frame of reference is the speed of light (which is constant in all frames of reference). Light is effected by gravitation so time is also effected. Inside a reference frame which is moving, (which everything is) the speed of light must appear as a constant. That means that both space and time must be altered to make it appear as that constant (again by using the Lorentz transformation).

If backward time travel is possible, then it seems logical that these - and perhaps other - forces would govern an object's timelike path.
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Actually, as travel backwards in time is not possible, the idea that you could have the forces that governed our movement forward to help you would not be a factor (in a system where it was possible, maybe though, but we would see time travelers moving with us then as they would have to co-exist in with us to have those same forces act on them). Most theories of time travel require a bridge between the two relative places in space-time. Also, as I pointed out earlier, moving freely backwards in time intoduces conservation of energy problems (though that is most likely not the part of the subject that people would find interesting, it is a governing and restrictive factor none the less).
 
After seeing MacLuv's returning post and the ensuing posts of various users, I feel like I've just watch Star Wars, A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, back to back. :D

I am still awaiting the Return of the Jedi. :rolleyes:
 
The first time traveler was the first person to read a book/wall/symbol. The inventor of Time Travel was the author of the book/wall/symbol. Go Read.
 
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