Time-travel possible?

[Rota]

We definitely know travel forward in time is possible with just raw speed. You can go for a drive, and because of the speed you travel, you move ahead in time. It may be an imperceptible fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond, but it's still time travel. I don't see any reason why there couldn't be some method of going backward, too. We just have not discovered it yet... and we probably never will, even if a method exists.

[JOJ]

We definitely know travel forward in time is possible with just raw speed. You can go for a drive, and because of the speed you travel, you move ahead in time. It may be an imperceptible fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond, but it's still time travel. I don't see any reason why there couldn't be some method of going backward, too. We just have not discovered it yet... and we probably never will, even if a method exists.

but there is a mater transport through space and atoms right? seeing as how there can be matter transport....

[neko_lord]

We definitely know travel forward in time is possible with just raw speed. You can go for a drive, and because of the speed you travel, you move ahead in time. It may be an imperceptible fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a nanosecond, but it's still time travel.

Props for being the first person in the thread to even come close to mentioning relativistic velocities (Lorentz transformation). The closer to the speed of light you are, the more the time dilation impacts you.

Of course, we won't begin to talk about tachyons...

[brownchocolate]

Wait you guys don't know how to time travel yet? Wow I thouht I saw wildor at the last supper yesterday....

[KOOPS95]

According to relativity, if a particle such as a tachyon exists, by moving faster than light it would travel backwards through time. Of course, we aren't made of tachyons, and thus I doubt it's possible for any atom based things to be jumped backward time-wise.

[Rodri]

I have sort of been working on a story that relates to travelling backwards in time. It's a bit of an extrapolation of Star Trek matter transporters.

Imagine if you had the ability to transport a whole ship to a point in the universe that can be seen by a powerful telescope and arrive at that point instantly. If that point is distant enough then you have travelled back in time, as we all know that light has a fixed speed and the light from distant stars and galaxies may have taken many many years to reach us. So if you could transport to that light source, as we see it in the present, then you have travelled backwards in time the same amount of time that it has taken for that light to reach us. The problem with this method is that it cannot be reversed because if you transported back to the solar system by fixing it's co-ordinates from your new location, then you will travel backwards in time again.

Faster than light travel has certain problems that have not yet been solved, such as the crushing G-forces you would experience at such speeds.

Look, I know Star Trek is a flawed series with many scientific errors and fallacies but if that one bit of technology could be worked out and extrapolated in the way I described, it would open up the stars to us.

[japanpimp]

Imagine if you had the ability to transport a whole ship to a point in the universe that can be seen by a powerful telescope and arrive at that point instantly. If that point is distant enough then you have travelled back in time, as we all know that light has a fixed speed and the light from distant stars and galaxies may have taken many many years to reach us. So if you could transport to that light source, as we see it in the present, then you have travelled backwards in time the same amount of time that it has taken for that light to reach us.

This is simply just jumping from point A to point B faster than light. Picking point B by way of a powerful telescope is irrelevant. Because what you see may no longer exist. So just punch in some cords and hit the button and hope to god it is not an astroid or star or sun or planet that you jump to.

[Satan]

What is time? Just wondering.

[Alusair]

Imagine if you had the ability to transport a whole ship to a point in the universe that can be seen by a powerful telescope and arrive at that point instantly. If that point is distant enough then you have travelled back in time, as we all know that light has a fixed speed and the light from distant stars and galaxies may have taken many many years to reach us. So if you could transport to that light source, as we see it in the present, then you have travelled backwards in time the same amount of time that it has taken for that light to reach us.

I'm not sure if that would actually work, or maybe I just don't understand it.

One example could be that it takes the sun's rays approximately 8 minutes to reach us. If, say, the sun completely and spontaneously exploded, it would thus take us 8 minutes to realize it. If the sun exploded, and we (as in you and I, for sake of example) instantly transported to it, the sun would still be destroyed, despite the earth continuing to get sun rays as normal for the next 8 minutes.

If instant transportation were possible, though, it would also be possible for us to teleport to the sun, shine a light to earth (let's assume it's strong enough to be seen), teleport back, and see ourselves shining a light at... ourselves, from eight minutes ago.

We would be seeing ourselves from the past (or at least our light emissions), but we wouldn't actually be traveling in the past. Time itself would have continued to move forward, and not once actually gone back.

Unless the time-travel factor has to do with the fact that we're teleporting between areas of great distance despite laws of psychics suggesting this is impossible without some span of time to do so.

Further elaboration, if possible, would interest me greatly.

[Satan]

If someone knows what time is, I'd love to here your explanation.