ALL SCI-FI

[Gord Green]

Researchers claim time travel is possible

By George Harrison, The Sun

http://nypost.com/2016/11/27/researchers-claim-time-travel-is-possible/

There are multiple timelines playing out in parallel universes, according to a team of researchers.
The sensational claim was made by a team of physicists, who believe that the parallel universes can all affect one another.

Professor Howard Wiseman and Dr. Michael Hall, from Griffith University's Center for Quantum Dynamics, claim that the idea of parallel universes is more than just science fiction.

Fellow researcher Dr. Dirk-Andre Deckert, from the University of California, helped further the researchers' theory, which goes against almost all conventional understanding of space and time.

If there really are multiple, interacting universes, then it would be possible for time travellers to visit Earth, and every imaginable scenario would be played out in a parallel universe at some point.

The team's "Many Interacting Worlds Theory" provides a whole new perspective on the ideas underpinning quantum theory, a notoriously complex strand of physics.

Professor Wiseman said: "The idea of parallel universes in quantum mechanics has been around since 1957.
"In the well-known "Many-Worlds Interpretation", each universe branches into a bunch of new universes every time a quantum measurement is made.

"All possibilities are therefore realized — in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonized by the Portuguese.
"But critics question the reality of these other universes, since they do not influence our universe at all.

"On this score, our 'Many Interacting Worlds' approach is completely different, as its name implies."
According to the theory, our universe is just one of many enormous worlds, with some identical to our reality and others completely different.

The Express reports that the worlds are all real, and all on the same timeline, but interact when they essentially bump into each other.

Dr. Hall believes that the group's sensational theory fits with current scientific understanding, offering a new perspective rather than rewriting the physics rule book completely.

He said: "The beauty of our approach is that if there is just one world our theory reduces to Newtonian mechanics, while if there is a gigantic number of worlds it reproduces quantum mechanics.

"In between it predicts something new that is neither Newton's theory nor quantum theory.

"We also believe that, in providing a new mental picture of quantum effects, it will be useful in planning experiments to test and exploit quantum phenomena."

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So perhaps all those time travel stories from THE TIME MACHINE to BACK TO THE FUTURE do have a reality in science.
What are your thoughts on the possibilities ? Paradoxes would be eliminated if every time one occurred a parallel timeline would be entered.

[MetroPolly]

there's a bumper sticker that says: Time travel is possible, at the speed of 1 sec/sec.

Sorry, gord, but until you pull up in a DeLorean, I'm gonna be a skeptic here.

Besides, the whole parallel worlds idea is fine, until you realize that if true, you may not have created any paradoxes, but you do end up in a world where things are different, but you remember the "original" timeline. If you don't go crazy eventually from that, others might think you have anyway.

[Gord Green]

Actually, I have to agree with you Polly. However, I'm never willing to say "impossible" when it comes to scientific research. Knowing that the core of quantum physics in non intuitive uncertainty means ya really gotta keep an open mind!

[MetroPolly]

You're right on the money, Gord.

Heisenberg made being a skeptic really hard. If anything is possible, given enough time and outcomes, then nothing is truly impossible, just really, really unlikely..

[Gord Green]

There is a theory that ALL time is simultaneous.

Imagine that all Space-time is represented by a graph (make it only two dimensional for ease of understanding, that is, just with a X and Y axis).

"Now" is represented by a single point anywhere on that graph. The passage of time is therefore the point moving along that axis, better known as a "line". This point describes this line by its moving in one direction on the Space-time graph.

"Time" is that line moving at a rate determined by its velocity relative to C (The speed of light).

All the other points on that graph exist, past, present and future.

What if all you had to do to access any of those points is something as simple, metaphorically speaking, as lifting your pencil point and putting it down somewhere else on the graph?

Perhaps it only takes the act of moving that pencil to access all space and time.



Food for thought.

[Bud Brewster]

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My reason for not accepting the "all time is simultaneous" concept is that it seems to throw out cause-and-effect.

If our future exists simultaneously with both our present and past, then the events which we think have shaped the present (and will shape the future) are not doing that at all!

That would mean that reality is like a reel of film on a projector. All the frames (the moments in time) are set and unchangeable. An artist doesn't actually make choices that determine the finished painting. Every brush stroke is part of a future which already exist. Even the finished painting already exist in the future, along with all the unfinished versions while he worked on it.

In the same manner, an explosion doesn't destroy a building and kill the people in it. The destroyed building the dead people already exist in the future, along with all the moments before and during it's destruction.

Throw out cause and effect and you can't have time travel stories at all. A time machine can't arrive at a past moment in time where no time machine arrived in the "original time line", because the arrival of the time machine either did-or-did-not happen at that moment, and the moment can't be changed.

Time travel stories depend on the idea that a time traveler can leave the universe and move "outside of it" through time, either forward or backward.

If he is moving backward in time, he returns to a reality that was already created by the movement of time, and he then reinserts himself into the universe, where he begins to cause new "effects" in the timeline. Reality is literally rewritten from that moment forward, because of the changes the time traveler made.





If the time traveler moves forwarded in time, he basically allows the universe to run ahead without it being affected by his presence. He arrives at a point in time when "history" shows that his own existence ended the moment he left in the time machine! He can't "find out how his life went in later years", because he vanished and had no effect on reality from that point forward.


_


When he goes back to his point of departure and lives out the rest of his life normally, he changes that entire timeline he previously visited, in which he had not existed from the moment he left in the time machine.





So, I reject the "all time is simultaneous" concept because (A) it robs us of all those wonderful time travel stories, and (B) it robs us of free will, that wonderful power we have to chose our own destiny and take credit for our own good decisions!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

Good argument Bud, BUT remember I used a two dimensional graph only to show the concept.

Reality is actually at least a 3, more likely a 13 dimensional construct. Any variation from cause and effect skews the line into a third dimension causually and into 4 through 13 on the quantum level.

Regardless of what time point we pass to ALL the other ( lnfinite ) points still exist. We just don't experience them because "our" point is the path taken.

Look at any graph and you'll see that ALL possible points exist. Just because we don't put our pencil point on them does NOT negate them from being there.

Oh, and it seems you can only move your pencil one way to draw your line. You can't go back on your line because THAT line has already been taken. So you could choose any other point along that line and draw a tangent to it which would cause an alternate future, or go to another point and experience an all new reality.

It causes NO violation of cause and effect because ALL eventualities right down to the quantum level are covered as possibilities .

You can't change YOUR past because you can't go back on your timeline, only branch off on a new one from a previous point.

Simple, Huh?

[MetroPolly]

Am I the only one getting dizzy from this discussion?

[Bud Brewster]

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Well, let's see now. I'll only comment on the aspects of the concept which I completely understand.

Like . . . ummm . . .

Let me get back to you on this. On another timeline, perhaps.
_________________
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

That works.....Take your time.

This theory is predicated on the assumption that at the Big Bang not only ALL the matter and energy in the Universe was created but ALL time was too.

We experience time points because as the Universe expands into nul-space time is created as a moving thing. It only moves in one direction because the Universe is only expanding, not contracting.

That is why Einstien's theory of time dilation in his special theory of relativity shows that as the delta-V of a particle increases time slows down just as mass, which is connected to the Higgs-Boson in a Higgs Field, increases as well.

Relative to your argument though, you can make any changes to your past timeline and those changes will only effect your new line. Of course your old timeline stopped when you left it and if you picked up where you left off there would be NO changes reflected in it.

If, however you resumed with the newly created timeline your actions would be reflected in the new reality you've created. You don't have to go back and change your actions , just go and reassume your reality from your point of departure.

Easy peasy!

[Gord Green]

At least......That's the way I do it !

[Zackuth]

I don't know why all this fuss about time travel is about, I've been time traveling from one second to the next all my life.

[Gord Green]

Bud, I think your point only works is if that timeline is looked at as a straight linear line in the Spacetime graph.

In reality that line takes curves and diversions in multiple dimensions, although never turning back on itself. There is nothing perceptible to anyone else's line because that line is only really perceived in their mind through the sensory input of their bodies.

As for everyone else, their perception is the aggregate of ALL the quantum probabilities boiled down to a mean. I could explain that with a couple of pages of mathematical notations but word explanations are easier to understand.