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Gord Green Galactic Ambassador
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Joined: 06 Oct 2014 Posts: 2948 Location: Buffalo, NY
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Posted: Sat Apr 29, 2017 10:38 pm Post subject: Building a real-life TARDIS |
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Physicists have come up with a plan to build a real-life time machine that they say is mathematically consistent with known physics. And here's the best part: they've named the machine a "Traversable Acausal Retrograde Domain in Space-time," the acronym for which is actually TARDIS.
For those who aren't fans of the long-running British science fiction television show "Doctor Who," the TARDIS is the fictional time-traveling spacecraft of the Doctor himself. (Although in the show, TARDIS stands for "Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.")
The real-life machine imagined by physicists is, like the fictional TARDIS, shaped like a box that is capable of carrying passengers backwards and forwards through time and space. All that's needed to build it, say physicists, are the materials.
"People think of time travel as something as fiction. And we tend to think it's not possible because we don't actually do it," said Ben Tippett of the University of British Columbia, mastermind behind the contrivance, to Phys.org. "But, mathematically, it is possible."
Tippett and colleague David Tsang from the University of Maryland have used Einstein's theory of general relativity to come up with their mathematical model for time travel. They claim that the division of space into three dimensions, with time in a separate dimension by itself, is incorrect. Their model instead conceptualizes space-time as a continuum, whereby different directions are connected within the curved fabric of the universe.
Tippett reminds us that time is curved in the same way that space is: "The time direction of the space-time surface also shows curvature. There is evidence showing the closer to a black hole we get, time moves slower. My model of a time machine uses the curved space-time'to bend time into a circle for the passengers, not in a straight line. That circle takes us back in time."
It's all very exciting to think about, but it's another thing to imagine a machine that can feasibly (and safely) carry passengers through time. If the box-shaped contraption envisioned by Tippett and Tsang were to actually work, it would need to be built with some extremely exotic materials... and that's the rub. Such materials are so exotic that they haven't even been discovered yet.
So although building a TARDIS is mathematically possible, the materials with the necessary properties to open up a hole through space-time and also withstand a jump through it are merely theoretical. That doesn't mean that such materials couldn't one day be produced, but it's not clear at this time how to do that.
Of course, there are also the various paradoxes of time travel that we'd have to contend with, such as the grandfather paradox (if you could travel back in time and kill your grandfather, would you ever have been born in the first place?). So maybe time travel isn't something we really want to mess with, even if it is possible.
Then again, could you resist the temptation if a TARDIS suddenly appeared in your neighborhood?
from : MNN.com > Tech
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/research-innovations/stories/building-real-life-tardis-mathematically-possible-say-physicists
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Gord Green Galactic Ambassador
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Joined: 06 Oct 2014 Posts: 2948 Location: Buffalo, NY
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 12:38 am Post subject: |
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A little over 150 years ago there was no such material as "plastic". Today it is one of the most common materials we use.
New materials such as graphene have been discovered in the past few years.
Who can say what other materials are possible in the next few hundred years? |
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Skullislander Solar Explorer
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Joined: 13 Jul 2016 Posts: 74
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 1:36 am Post subject: |
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I would dearly like to see a time-travel/space travel device actually happen Gord as I would like to revisit the past, but that old chestnut rears its paradoxical head:
if you can alter decisions made in the past, will it change the future completely?
Assassinate Hitler, prevent 9/11 etc etc
OK say we prevent World War One, which sounds like a great idea.
However! My then-young Grandmother had her intended future husband killed in the trenches, and she went on to marry someone else who became my Grandfather.
So I am only here BECAUSE of the events of an atrocity like World War One!
So even bad events in the past are part of the natural state of things we have today.
A well-meaning time traveler in a Tardis could muck up the future by accident, it seems like really dangerous territory. |
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Gord Green Galactic Ambassador
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 2:26 am Post subject: |
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The only way around the paradox is that a trip into the past sets a "new" timeline. In other words it would create an "alternate" future from the point of divergence. You would never know because you exist in "this" route. The consequences of the difference would set a divergent time line. Seperated from your "reality" but never to converge.
As space curves and warps from a variety of reasons ( Mass and strong electro-magnetic forces....possibly others as well!) time (as a part of Space-Time) does as well.
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Skullislander Solar Explorer
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Joined: 13 Jul 2016 Posts: 74
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 2:35 am Post subject: |
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I wonder if this means I might have a double that exists in an alternate timeline, where maybe I am the President!
Or does this only occur if I build a working time machine or Tardis? |
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Gord Green Galactic Ambassador
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 2:45 am Post subject: |
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Actually, this means you have as many alternate doubles as there have been time travelers who have altered the past .
So-----None or infinite and all numbers in between! |
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Skullislander Solar Explorer
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 2:53 am Post subject: |
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Great answer Gord that actually contains its' own logic. |
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Gord Green Galactic Ambassador
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 3:02 am Post subject: |
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And, the unfortunate thing is that you could never know! |
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Skullislander Solar Explorer
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 3:04 am Post subject: |
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Nobody could deny this theory, and any exacting scientific professor sticking to rigid rules would be flummoxed and thrown off kilter by this theory! He would start stammering and stuttering and shaking, his face would go pre red with outrage!
I love it. personally! |
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Gord Green Galactic Ambassador
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 3:21 am Post subject: |
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Well, the truth is the quantum reality is so counter intuitive! On the quantum level things can be in multiple places at the same time or not there at all until you look for them!
Imagine if your car keys were only actually in your pocket when you put your hand in to get them!
It seems that there are at least two levels of physics---The micro-quantum level and the macro (big world) level. Perhaps there are more levels in the universe.
We are only now beginning to see the huge macro structure of the universe...The web like structures that are bigger than thousands of galaxies that connect everything.
Talk about mind blowing!!!
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Bud Brewster Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)
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Joined: 14 Dec 2013 Posts: 17183 Location: North Carolina
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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________________________________
Gentlemen, please. You're overthinking this. It's actually quite simple.
If I go back in time to 1976 and stop myself from marrying my ex-wife, I'll prevent the birth of my two children.
Is that a bad thing? Well, yes and no.
One of them is wonderful (and a member of this board), while the other one is a hateful ingrate I haven't spoken to in six years.
So . . . no loss there, eh?
However, this change in my personal history might result in a better marriage, with two-or-more children I love and adore, all of whom think their father is God's gift to mankind.
Here's the point, guys. A change in history will ALWAYS result in new good things and new bad things which replace the OLD good things and OLD bad things.
That's the way it works. There's no way to make history RIGHT. There are only ways to make if DIFFERENT.
Get it? _________________ ____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958) |
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Gord Green Galactic Ambassador
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Joined: 06 Oct 2014 Posts: 2948 Location: Buffalo, NY
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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There are really only four possabilities :
1) Travel into the past won't allow you to interact. In other words, ...Does "ghost" ring a bell?
2) A new time line would be created leaving the original intact and any changes you would make would be separated from it.
3) Any changes would already be incorporated in your reality.
4) Physical travel into the past is not allowed by physics.
Any changes to your own future wouldn't be recognizable to you because they already occurred to create your present. |
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Bud Brewster Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)
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Posted: Mon May 01, 2017 11:04 am Post subject: |
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Gord Green wrote: | Any changes to your own future wouldn't be recognizable to you because they already occurred to create your present. |
I understood all of what you said except that last part. How can events in my future have already occurred to create my present?
After all, the core principle of most time travel stories is the concept of "cause and effect". Ripples in time. The butterfly effect.
That's why I don't care for the other variations on time travel stories you mentioned, like the idea of "ghost" travelers who can't interact and can't cause changes. Where's the fun in that, eh?
Ditto for stories in which changes in the past just "create a new timeline", or stories in which the changes are already "incorporated in your reality". (After all, how can they be actual "changes" if there were already part of the reality?)
Back to the Future sticks to the concept I enjoy the most: the moment a time machine appears in the past, it has already changed history — because in the original timeline, a time machine did not appear at that place and at that moment.
According to the Back to the Future version of time travel, when a time machine leaves the present and heads for the past or the future, it ceases to exist in the universe until it reappears at its destination. When it arrives, it becomes something that did not exist in the universe until that moment.
If it appears in the past, "history" is rewritten from that instant forward, and whatever happened previously may-or-may-not happen again. There is no "destiny", no "prearranged events", and absolutely NOTHING is "meant to be"!
I hate it when the characters in a time travel story start spouting that last bit of nonsense! My first thought is, "Meant to be . . . by who? God?"
If there's a God who wants something to happen, why wouldn't it just happen? I mean, he's God, for god's sake! I dislike the suggestion that (a) there IS a God, but (b) He does real sloppy work and His plan for the universe keeps running off the rails!
Regardless of my spiritual beliefs in real life, I prefer fiction that doesn't muddy the narrative with a wishy-washy deity who needs mere mortals to do all the "heavy lifting" necessary to cause His will to be done.
So, I like a time travel story in which the traveler understands that any changes he makes will have both good and bad consequences. It's unavoidable. And he's solely responsible for those changes. _________________ ____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun Mar 11, 2018 12:21 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Gord Green Galactic Ambassador
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Posted: Mon May 01, 2017 12:40 pm Post subject: |
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I would more correctly say :
"Any changes in the past to your own future wouldn't be recognizable to you because they already occurred to create your present." |
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Bud Brewster Galactic Fleet Admiral (site admin)
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Posted: Mon May 01, 2017 8:49 pm Post subject: |
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________________________________
Bingo! I agree!
Back to the Future does an amazing job of hiding the illogical moments we aren't supposed to notice — like when Marty wakes up at the end of the first movie and stumbles into the living room to find his new-and-improved family!
His parents and siblings are now happy, well-adjusted, and prosperous. And yet Marty acts surprised by all this!
But wait . . . he grew up in this house! He was raised by these parents! All his memories should be about THESE people and not the poor losers we see in the early part of the film! Does Marty have no memories of his wonderful childhood in this completely new timeline?
Robert Zemeckis was clever enough hide these illogical moments while he presented the dramatic elements that made his movies so enjoyable.
He's both a great director and a skilled magician! ![Cool](images/smiles/icon_cool.gif) _________________ ____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
Last edited by Bud Brewster on Sun Mar 11, 2018 12:21 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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