• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!
  • Welcome to our archives. No new posts are allowed here.

Is time travel to the past possible?

Kreton

Kreton

Doesn't know
DP Veteran
Joined
Apr 11, 2011
Messages
13,350
Reaction score
6,591
Location
Across the street from the family across the stree
Gender
Male
Political Leaning
Independent
Given infinite time and resources do you think it is possible for a person to time travel to the past?

Keeping it to 2 options, yes or no, since this is just your opinion.
 
Kreton said:
Given infinite time and resources do you think it is possible for a person to time travel to the past?

Keeping it to 2 options, yes or no, since this is just your opinion.
Click to expand...

If you are fast enough to get ahead of light, you can see it all happen again.
 
Who knows?

But what if all those bat **** insane CTers are actually extremely well respected future scientists trying to warn us about something? And what if what they're trying to warn us about is catastrophic? And what if that catastrophic event is the apocalypse?!?!? OH **** ME THE WORLD IS COMING TO ANN EEEEEEEEENNNNNNNDDDDDDDDD!!!!!
 
I think it's theoretically possible, yes. If it were really possible, I'd leave this very moment. I got places to go and people to do.
 
I would bet that it is possible, just so difficult on many levels to become practically impossible...
 
No. It is already gone.
 
cpwill said:
No. It is already gone.
Click to expand...

According to Einstein's theory, time (the past included) is still there. We only view the "present" within our perceptual range and "present" is not universal constant but instead depends on distance and speed. So say a planet 500 million light years from earth had the ability to see earth in real time they may be looking in our past or future but it would be their 'present" time.



Think of time as a animation book, we flip the page and our perception changes (the present) but the previous pages (the past) are still there. If his theory is correct it is just a matter of finding a way to flip back the pages.
 
No. No amount of resources will allow you to transport your physical form into the past. Assume for a moment that you did...do you understand what that would mean? It would violate the very first rule of thermodynamics, in essence. Matter from the present would cease to exist, with no byproduct, and matter not historically present within the past would suddenly come into existence.

The consequences of this is beyond mind boggling. Think butterfly effect, but with much more catastrophic and immediately apparent results. When you materialize in the past, how do you do so? What happens to all the stuff that is occupying the space you materialize within? Etc etc etc.
 
My understanding is that the greatest scientific minds of our time believe that it is theoretically possible at a minimum to create a "wormhole" that will allow folks in the future to travel back in time to the point at which the wormhole was created. That is, of course theoretical since we have no idea how to create a wormhole in time nor do we have any idea one would travel through such a hole.

It is also proposed that such wormholes already exist "out there" in the universe, perhaps on the inside of black holes, and that we might one day discover a way to both locate such holes and then travel through them in such a way which does not lead to the immediate destruction of both time traveler and time machine (no theoretical model for doing so has yet been proposed).

In so far as traveling back in time via a "time machine" that would allow the traveler to select any arbitrary date and location in the past and then travel to it is concerned, there is not even a reasonably constructed theory that would allow for it.

So is it possible?

Theoretically yes, with limitations.
 
KevinKohler said:
No. No amount of resources will allow you to transport your physical form into the past. Assume for a moment that you did...do you understand what that would mean? It would violate the very first rule of thermodynamics, in essence. Matter from the present would cease to exist, with no byproduct, and matter not historically present within the past would suddenly come into existence.

The consequences of this is beyond mind boggling. Think butterfly effect, but with much more catastrophic and immediately apparent results. When you materialize in the past, how do you do so? What happens to all the stuff that is occupying the space you materialize within? Etc etc etc.
Click to expand...

If we consider "the universe" to be the closed system we're talking about and time is just another dimension within that closed system then we wouldn't really be creating or destroying any energy by time travel, just moving that existing energy back and forth across an already existing dimension.
 
no because time is delusion
 
Kreton said:
Given infinite time and resources do you think it is possible for a person to time travel to the past?

Keeping it to 2 options, yes or no, since this is just your opinion.
Click to expand...

I think it is possible, but not in the way most people currently think, i.e. "time machine taking us and what we can carry back to and from the past."

No, I believe it will be possible by riding your own thought stream backwards, mentally.

It is clear we are traveling forward through time, as evidenced by birth, growth, death. Every second we exist is a second once removed from the past. Yet our thought process continues as if nothing happened.

Now consider the possibility of simply enabling a clear stream of memory and then riding it back while retaining conscious knowledge of the time you start from.

Someone would say impossible because then you would change the time stream and all memories of the future built on it would dissipate.

Perhaps so, but you've just created a new parallel stream...and I believe that every action we take at each moment in life creates parallel divergent streams in which our conscious can flow up, down, and sideways if we had the capability of controlling that memory stream.

One could literally experience an infinity of parallel lives back and forth in time. In fact, some of our observable mental states, like schizophrenia, may be proof of this phenomena. :shrug:

Just a "thought" anyway. :)
 
Last edited:
The galaxy, the Sun and the Earth are moving through space. You'd have to go back in space as well as time. If it was possible to go back in time at the location that you left then the Earth would not be at the same position in the past.
 
My intuition tells me no. But I have seen people a hell of a lot smarter than me using math I will never understand explain how it MIGHT be possible. So I don't know.

I do believe that if it is possible you are creating a new timeline and not affecting the one you left. I don't believe the universe will allow a paradox.
 
Baralis said:
According to Einstein's theory, time (the past included) is still there. We only view the "present" within our perceptual range and "present" is not universal constant but instead depends on distance and speed. So say a planet 500 million light years from earth had the ability to see earth in real time they may be looking in our past or future but it would be their 'present" time.
Click to expand...

Oh I would agree you can see the past. You just can't get there.
 
The past doesn't exist. You're referencing a memory - a biochemical process - which is taking place in the now only. Mind is tricky like that.

It's like watching a movie. There was a physical time and place where the movie was filmed, but those events are long gone. You can play the movie over and over again but it will never transport you to the time and place it happened.

Travel to the future is possible, if the speed of light (or close to it) can be achieved... but all that is, is an acceleration of events, not a true time jump. There's also no going back.

Basically time travel is impossible, at least in the 3rd and 4th dimensions.
 
I'd say no because that would change the whole concept of history. There wouldn't be any such thing as it would be constantly ever changing due to the new influences traveling back in time. There would be some serious social engineering going on. Just imagine if someone went back and took out Hilter as a baby, how different things would be just from that one event.
 
Likely not. I lean toward the question simply being incoherent. It's not clear, for example, what someone means when they say "travel back in time and change the past". If you alter "the past", then "the past" cannot be the past (because it never happened). Therefore, you have not altered the past. Etc, etc. Just incoherence. Putting words together in a way that has no coherent sense.

Typical conceptions of "backwards time travel" (Back to the Future etc) are not actually conceptions of backwards time travel at all. They're imagining Person A getting deposited into a state of reality (call it State Y) that supposedly is (ie, is identical to) a state of Person A's past (call it State X). But State Y is clearly not identical to State X (there is a glaring difference - the presence of Person A). Therefore Person A is not in his past (State X) but in some other state of the world (State Y). Close but no cigar.
 
Baralis said:
According to Einstein's theory, time (the past included) is still there. We only view the "present" within our perceptual range and "present" is not universal constant but instead depends on distance and speed. So say a planet 500 million light years from earth had the ability to see earth in real time they may be looking in our past or future but it would be their 'present" time.





Think of time as a animation book, we flip the page and our perception changes (the present) but the previous pages (the past) are still there. If his theory is correct it is just a matter of finding a way to flip back the pages.
Click to expand...



I thought the idea was more that the information is still there. When we view a star 1,000 light years away, we can access the information regarding that star - but that does not mean that the star itself exists in the state it did 1,000 years ago.
 
KevinKohler said:
No. No amount of resources will allow you to transport your physical form into the past. Assume for a moment that you did...do you understand what that would mean? It would violate the very first rule of thermodynamics, in essence. Matter from the present would cease to exist, with no byproduct, and matter not historically present within the past would suddenly come into existence.

The consequences of this is beyond mind boggling. Think butterfly effect, but with much more catastrophic and immediately apparent results. When you materialize in the past, how do you do so? What happens to all the stuff that is occupying the space you materialize within? Etc etc etc.
Click to expand...

This makes the assumption that in order to time travel one must be dematerialized and rematerialized, like a transporter in Star Trek. Could one not time travel physically as if going from point A to point B in a car?

Also the first rule of thermodynamics, or its more popular name of "conservation of energy" is that the total energy of an isolated system is constant and cannot be destroyed or created, it can only be changed. First off, this assumes that the universe and time itself is an isolated system. I'm not so sure that it is. Second it assumes that it couldn't be arranged to trade an equal amount of energy for your energy simultaneously when you travel back in time. Essentially bringing energy forward in time and replacing it with your energy at the same instant your replace that energy in the past. Third it assumes that we are correct about the first rule of thermodynamics. There may be a way to create/destroy energy...we simply just don't know how and can't conceive of even being able to do so.
 
Yes, I believe it's theoretically possible. But I don't believe we will ever achieve it. If we ever achieved time travel in the future, we would have run into time travelers by now in our present or past.
 
CrabCake said:
Yes, I believe it's theoretically possible. But I don't believe we will ever achieve it. If we ever achieved time travel in the future, we would have run into time travelers by now in our present or past.
Click to expand...

This response begs the question.

How do you KNOW we haven't run into anyone from the future?

One of prime issues with traveling into the past is the Time Travel Butterfly Effect. It posits that changes effected by the presence of a time traveler will ripple into the future causing a different future. Therefore, time travelers would strive to remain anonymous.

So they would be here or in the past and we would never know it.
 
Kreton said:
Given infinite time and resources do you think it is possible for a person to time travel to the past?

Keeping it to 2 options, yes or no, since this is just your opinion.
Click to expand...

No. The same conundrum exists that was presented in the back to the future movies- if you travel back and prevent your parents from meeting and making you, how did you ever exist? The past will always have strong attraction, maybe because the present is so fleeting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom