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No Time Travel, Sorry

MOBE2001 writes "The bad news is that time does not change. Spatial velocity is given as dx/dt. Velocity in time(dt/dt) is nonsensical. As simple as that. In other words, no time travel to the past or the future, no motion in space-time, no wormholes and no hanky-panky with your great, great grandmother. There is only the changing present, aka the NOW. The good news is that distance is an illusion and we'll be able to travel instantly from anywhere to anywhere."

4 of 888 comments (clear)

  1. Not nearly as cool as timecube... by Otto · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This guy is good, but he's not nearly as entertaining or mind-warping as the TimeCube guy. Four days in one!!!

    --
    - Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
  2. Re: Really? A tie? by MSBob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You're wrong. For the guy who travelled at the speed close to C time did slow down. Let's say that at the onset of the journey both planted a bonsai tree that grows at 1 inch per month. Upon the reunion, the earthbound astronaut's plant would be 12 inches tall while the traveller's plant would be only 1 inch high.

    --
    Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
  3. Re:casuality is the key by NoMoreNicksLeft · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And what if these events occur, but aren't time travel at all? For the sake of the argument, assume you have the powers of a god, and sit outside the universe. As it plays out, you take a snapshot of the universe as it is in 1955. You save this. You let it play forward til 1985... then, you pause the VCR.

    You do your little god thing, rearranging everything in the universe as it should be according to your snapshot, with a few exceptions... Marty and the Delorean. He didn't travel back in time, though, to him it can look like nothing else. But by the metatime clock that you the god uses, time has rolled on as it always has, only the universe was partially reset once or twice. I like this interpretation better, because you don't have to play mindfuck games with it.

  4. Re:Drinking to much funny-juice by babelex · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Actually everything we do is in the future, because by the time you have thought it and acted the result is the future. Also past and future are definitely concrete, present AKA now never exist becuase it is infinitely small in time. Thus we only have the past and future to cling to and live for, present is a pure abstract construct that acts as a go between from past to present. You might just need that acid now..