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Researcher uses math to investigate possibility of time travel

#1
C C Offline
https://m.phys.org/news/2017-04-math-possibility.html

EXCERPT: After some serious number crunching, a UBC researcher has come up with a mathematical model for a viable time machine. Ben Tippett, a mathematics and physics instructor at UBC's Okanagan campus, recently published a study about the feasibility of time travel. Tippett, whose field of expertise is Einstein's theory of general relativity, studies black holes and science fiction when he's not teaching. Using math and physics, he has created a formula that describes a method for time travel. "People think of time travel as something as fiction," says Tippett. "And we tend to think it's not possible because we don't actually do it. But, mathematically, it is possible."....

MORE: https://m.phys.org/news/2017-04-math-possibility.html
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#2
Zinjanthropos Offline
(Apr 28, 2017 03:01 AM)C C Wrote: EXCERPT: After some serious number crunching, a UBC researcher has come up with a mathematical model for a viable time machine. Ben Tippett, a mathematics and physics instructor at UBC's Okanagan campus, recently published a study about the feasibility of time travel. Tippett, whose field of expertise is Einstein's theory of general relativity, studies black holes and science fiction when he's not teaching. Using math and physics, he has created a formula that describes a method for time travel. "People think of time travel as something as fiction," says Tippett. "And we tend to think it's not possible because we don't actually do it. But, mathematically, it is possible."....

Wonder what that says for existences/realities? How about time itself? A moment is fleeting, not even sure if it can be timed/measured. To go back in time, would every moment exist in some kind of weird and wonderful filing system so it can be accessed? And of course, where are the time travellers?
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#3
stryder Offline
(Apr 28, 2017 08:03 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:
(Apr 28, 2017 03:01 AM)C C Wrote: EXCERPT: After some serious number crunching, a UBC researcher has come up with a mathematical model for a viable time machine. Ben Tippett, a mathematics and physics instructor at UBC's Okanagan campus, recently published a study about the feasibility of time travel. Tippett, whose field of expertise is Einstein's theory of general relativity, studies black holes and science fiction when he's not teaching. Using math and physics, he has created a formula that describes a method for time travel. "People think of time travel as something as fiction," says Tippett. "And we tend to think it's not possible because we don't actually do it. But, mathematically, it is possible."....

Wonder what that says for existences/realities? How about time itself? A moment is fleeting, not even sure if it can be timed/measured. To go back in time, would every moment exist in some kind of weird and wonderful filing system so it can be accessed? And of course, where are the time travellers?

Considering that Mathematics is the purest form of Programming and there are many examples of things that can work in virtual worlds that wouldn't work when applied to physics. I doubt there would be little to worry about.  There is obviously a lot of suppositions of theory, however it's a bit like building a house of cards.  Unless you can be absolutely sure that your foundation is solid, anything placed after it can be extremely shakey and might cause the speculation to collapse leaving nothing more than just a lot of arm-waving and procrastination.
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#4
Zinjanthropos Offline
My biggest concern about TT is what if a whole lot of travellers go to the same past event? Wouldn't matter when you left but it would matter once you got there. I always thought it would be nice to be able to observe the past somehow. A device capable of doing so could be the greatest tool ever for deterring criminal activity Big Grin (as long as it's admissible in court)
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#5
C C Offline
(Apr 29, 2017 04:53 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: My biggest concern about TT is what if a whole lot of travellers go to the same past event? Wouldn't matter when you left but it would matter once you got there.


Such a problem would seem to likewise invite David Deutsch's parallel universes solution or multiple time dimensions as a remedy. (Time Travel Simulation Resolves “Grandfather Paradox”)

Otherwise, our world would somehow already be the product of all the (if possible) time-travels that could have taken place that would have affected us; and such will remain perpetually so. That would be due to there being a single version of the cosmos (one timeline) and all of its changes co-existing (figuratively) as static states like a flipbook, including the time-travel consequences. The commonsense experience of one state of the world being replaced by the next change would be an illusion of the divisions of consciousness (the latter's correlation to a lifelong sequence of differing brain patterns). Something submitted at the very start of H.G. Well's classic novel[1] and ventured again by Hermann Weyl[2] decades later in the context of Einsteinian spacetime. Though they literally referred to cognition as moving / flowing rather than being content with the relational connections of its millisecond intervals.

Quote:I always thought it would be nice to be able to observe the past somehow. A device capable of doing so could be the greatest tool ever for deterring criminal activity Big Grin (as long as it's admissible in court)

The past on Earth specifically (we might note) rather than just the past activity of an extraterrestrial criminal several parsecs away observed via some remarkably detailed, light-information gathering device. Presumably just to identify the culprit in the act since the deed would already have been done / be unpreventable just the same as without.

- - - - - - - - -

[1] H.G. WELLS: “Now, it is very remarkable that this is so extensively overlooked,” continued the Time Traveller, with a slight accession of cheerfulness. “Really this is what is meant by the Fourth Dimension, though some people who talk about the Fourth Dimension do not know they mean it. It is only another way of looking at Time. There is no difference between time and any of the three dimensions of space except that our consciousness moves along it.

[...] said the Medical Man. [...] “And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the present moment.”

“My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the present movement. Our mental existences, which are immaterial and have no dimensions, are passing along the Time-Dimension with a uniform velocity from the cradle to the grave. Just as we should travel down if we began our existence fifty miles above the earth's surface.”
--The Time Machine

[2] HERMANN WEYL: The objective world simply is, it does not happen. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line [worldline] of my body, does a section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time." --Philosophy of Mathematics and Natural Science

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#6
Zinjanthropos Offline
Let's say a TT machine gets built. I would say that not only would the gov't keep it top secret but the rules(laws) for usage would need to be quite strict. That said, I can't find a legitimate reason for allowing TT machines to be mass produced and offered for sale to the general public. It would be interesting to see how gov't would use it however. Surely military and espionage usage but not much else except a tool for science.
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#7
stryder Offline
Admittedly my stance is affixed by my own theory, so currently my perception undermines any open-minded prospectus.

I've attempted to mention my reasoning before (admist word-salad) let's just say that I fell long down the rabbit hole while attempting to understand physics and realize that there is no way that I can venture back from what I learned.

I don't believe that I see the universe and time the same way as others currently do.  The main reason for this was working out how to prototype matter from energy in a simulation (Well I did go as far as building a universe from scratch, but that tends to raise alarm bells with people). 

Where Tippett assumes that we are in a singular linear timeframe within a single universe I disagree.  I see this universe as a composite of many parallel, paradoxes and spacetime folds at subatomic levels, which means I see it a multiverse.  This would imply the universe is an abstraction and attempting to abstract it further would therefore be considerably difficult. (thus the rational to building a house of cards and identifying if the foundation is solid)
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#8
Zinjanthropos Offline
Quote:thus the rational to building a house of cards and identifying if the foundation is solid

I've likened time to a cartoon. The appearance of free flow that occurs when each moment acts as a single drawn page amongst innumerable pages that when shown in rapid sequence simulates the motion of objects and time.
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#9
RainbowUnicorn Offline
(Apr 29, 2017 04:53 AM).Zinjanthropos Wrote: My biggest concern about TT is what if a whole lot of travellers go to the same past event? Wouldn't matter when you left but it would matter once you got there. I always thought it would be nice to be able to observe the past somehow. A device capable of doing so could be the greatest tool ever for deterring criminal activity Big Grin (as long as it's admissible in court)

unfortunately that would not be possible.
the very premise that you would be travelling in time to cause causation due to explicit derived causality would mean your pre determination not to change things would in turn cause a collapse of the time line into a improbable continuim.

this would create a time line wall after the event(like an event horizon) forcing an improbability field to develop around your ability to expereince time continuity in any direction other than a entropic collapse of events into a mass appocolyptic state.

should you just wish to observe and not create causality then it seems all the more probable. The moment you become the end point of a time line to the time line your expereincing, things get quite condensed.

Time Travel its self is a complicit atribute of time.
however... time travel along your own time line backward and forward is a different matter.
many people time travel relative to others. This has been proven by people going into orbit.
however, the relatavistic point of causality is a whole different game.
if we are capable of changing a event to our liking then we have already changed it and thus the travel has already been completed.
thus your memory of travelling is removed by the event being changed.

thats just a theory Smile
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