Tralfaldamorian ideology

[zarathustra]

I fucking hate Local Area Networks. I'v spent the last 32 hours trying to set my computer up, and I get nowhere. I resolve to call the techies the next day, wake up, try to connect one more time, and it goes off without a hitch. Fuck technology.

Anyway, I said I would post a theory for time-travel, and my wake and bake sense tells me that I might as well do that now that I'm all toasted up with nowhere to go. This is a little more sci-fi than my usual explanation, but I still find it fun to go over it when I'm baked.

First of all, there are two theories of the apocalypse based upon the observation that the velocity with which planets are travelling away from their point of origin (the epicenter of the Big Band) is decreasing with time. One theory is that the Big Bang has launched all matter with an adequate escape velocity and that every iota of matter and energy will drift away and slowly die out. Thus the universe will end, not with a bang, but a whimper. My theory rests upon the second theory; that escape velocity was not reached, and that every atom and joule will be pulled back in to the massive gravity entity at the center of the universe, will be compressed into a size less than an electron, and another Big Bang will occur with time. If the latter theory is true, then every action performed by every entity has been perfomed an untold number of times. This is with the assumtion that the Big Bang occurs with the same force as it did before, which is logical due to the presence of an identical amount of matter and energy as the last one. There would be no reason for a discrepancy, since no outside forces exist that could act upon the original mass. My theory, in effect, is a waiting game. The easiest task would be to calculate the exact position in space where the place is you want to send your traveller, and how long from the time of launch this time will occur again. Once this is determined, on would have to develop some sort of travelling device that is unaffected by time or that can release inhabitants from the effects of time, possibly in the realm of advanced cryogenics. After this pod is produced, one would have to find a way to hide it from the effects of gravity. One would have to send it into space with adequate escape velocity, and program it to return to the correct place at the correct time. Since neither the fuel efficiency nor the presrvation technology exist in any forseeable future, the realization of this action is centuries, perhaps millennia, away. In addition, there may be side effects of removing that amount of matter. It could be a such a delicate cycle that this removal of matter would disrupt it and make it so there is no Earth to return to, or it could be negligible, like the effect of drinking out of a river. The river still flows. Even with this danger, it would be undone one cycle later when the travelling device is returned to the gravitational center. This technique would also avoid problems with the space-time continuum. Should we disrupt that the universe could never return to normal. This methodology would render time-paradox dangers inapplicable.

Realistically, the inhabitant of the waiting-pod would have to be data or some sort of advanced artificially intelligent android. That is why I sincerely believe that Jesus was an android sent back in time to kill the ancestor of Abe Lincoln, but his cpu was damaged in transit and switched over to Robotic Messiah mode. Those damned Future Republicans!

zarathustra Reviewed by zarathustra on 09-03-2004. Tralfaldamorian ideology I fucking hate Local Area Networks. I'v spent the last 32 hours trying to set my computer up, and I get nowhere. I resolve to call the techies the next day, wake up, try to connect one more time, and it goes off without a hitch. Fuck technology. Anyway, I said I would post a theory for time-travel, and my wake and bake sense tells me that I might as well do that now that I'm all toasted up with nowhere to go. This is a little more sci-fi than my usual explanation, but I still find it fun to Rating: 5

[KillaBuzz]

thatz sum coo shit. lol
PeAcE

[High phy]

i insist, you rock, it would be great to get baked with you someday

[GHoSToKeR]

There are some basic facts about time travel, because i've always found it fascinating. First, we need to understand that there is only one conception of time in which time travel makes sense - the â??tenselessâ?� theory of time. The common-sense view of time is the â??tensedâ?� view which holds that time, unlike space, flows or becomes. On this view, time, like a river, is a dynamic or changing entity. According to the tensed theory of time, the future is undetermined, unreal, and open. The past is set, but long gone. Only the present is real on this view, and the present is where the past and future meet. The tensed view of time is not only the common sense view, at one time it was also widely held by philosophers. Take this passage from Augustine(spellin?): â??How can the past and future be when the past no longer is and the future is not yet? As for the present, if it were always present and never moved on to become the past, it would not be time but eternityâ?�.

By contrast, the tenseless theory of time holds that the â??past,â?� â??present,â?� and â??futureâ?� are all equally real. On this view there is no becoming, no change, and the future is not open. In addition to the three spatial dimensions, time is conceived as a fourth dimension that is very much like just another spatial dimension. Events such as your birth, graduation, and death are all equally real (though not equally present) and we can plot them on a space-time diagram just as we would plot a point on a regular map. On this â??blockâ?� or â??staticâ?� picture of time the universe is a â??four-dimensional space-time continuum.â?� The notion of â??nowâ?� or â??the presentâ?� has no fixed position on this view. Indeed, past, present, and future are relative notions, relative to where you are on the space-time block. The events of your birth and death, just like Paris and Hong Kong, are equally real, they just exist at different space-time points. The temporal relations among all four-dimensional objects are fixed forever. As evidenced by the following quotation Einstein himself held the tenseless view of time because he believed, as do many philosophers and physicists today, that the relativity of simultaneity implies it: â??[t]he distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one".

From a four-dimensional perspective there is no such thing as change. The universe is like a still-born space-time jewel with many facest (e.g., space-time points), hence the name â??blockk world.â?� The best way to conceive of change in such a world is by analogy with the illusion of change created by still film frames moving through a projector.

It should now be easy to see why time travel only makes sense on the tenseless view of time. On the tensed picture of time neither the past nor the future exist; only the present is real. Therefore there is no past or future to travel to on the tensed view! On the other hand, the tenseless view makes time travel possible, at least in principle, because all space-time points are equally real. In the block universe â??pastâ?� and â??futureâ?� (relative to our frame of reference) are fixed forever. One interesting consequence of all this is that even if time travel is possible, it is not possible to change the past or the future. Thus all time travel stories in which people go back in time and change events that have already happened are inconsistent. Of course one can always try to render such stories consistent by claiming that the â??newâ?� past or future is really a distinct branch of time, different time line, different world, parallel universe, etc. But it is very different to travel â??acrossâ?� possible worlds as they do in the TV show Sliders and to travel in time as they do in the film Twelve Monkeys. For example, the film Back to the Future is a consistent story about possible worlds travel but an inconsistent time travel story because Marty changes things that have already occurred, such as the past and present events of his parentâ??s lives. There is nothing wrong with this but such stories are better dubbed possibility travel than time travel, because one is moving through possibility space and not time within our universe. To put it another way, if you go back in time and perform some action, according to block world, this means you always went back in time and performed that action. It cannot be that the past event unfolded the first time without you and then you go back in time and the past event unfolds for the second time with you! For example, if you go back in time and assassinate Hitler before the start of WW II then you were always the one to shoot Hitler; which means that you should not bother trying to do this, because it never happened! You may ask: but what prevents me from shooting Hitler if time travel is possible? People differ about how best to answer this question but since time travel is only possible in the block universe and since Hitler was not shot before the war, then we know that you cannot go back and shoot him now. It would be a contradiction if both Hitler was not shot before the war started and Hitler was shot before the war started; and logical contradictions just cannot happen. In short, the only time travel events that are possible (that can exist) are those that do not entail a contradiction.

[zarathustra]

This is true. In effect this is more Tralfaldamorian, which doesn't make sense unless you've read Slaughterhouse Five. The idea that past present and future exist simultaneously just as three different positions can exist in such a way, but that does not negate the possibility of influencing the past. There are many theories of how to travel backwards in time just as we travel forward. This includes the Retarded Wave Theory, that an electromagnetic wave has two sections that travel both forward and backward in time, but the latter is smaller and is cancelled out by the stronger Retarded Wave, and that it is possible to ride the smaller wave with specialized particles that aren't affected by the Retarded wave. It also includes the anti-space theory in which physicists hypothesize that there are bubbles of space in which physical laws are different, such that i n such a bubble time could either stop or be reversed. In a blocked universe, every moment would have a position in the space-time continuum that results in the next block. By using a physical route top travel to any of these times would be like travelling to another town. The problem is that if you have an effect on this block, like killing Hitler, you change which block is created next. Your original bloch would no longer exist, and a separate series of blocks would replace it. In this sense, it would not create a paradox due to the fact that the time block you came from was merely destroyed, yet had existed upon travel. In this sense, past present and future exist simultaneously yet can be changed by travelling through time routes.

[Mole2k4]

I'm going to be blunt,
from one person's perspective, time travel is a never ending loop.
For example, say I went back to 1666, did some stuff, decided to settle down, and then died at 1721.
Then, in 1983, I'm born find a time travel device in 20004 go back to 1666........
It's a never ending cycle and therefore I would never be in / there never would be 2005. As it would never exist as I would force time backwards to 1666, where i would die in 1721, be born again in 1983, and go back in time again to 2004.
Just a personal view, sorry to ghost, didnt read his post, too long on 56k

[Mole2k4]

zara i heard that, for example,
Gravity doesnt exist in our universe, it exist's in another, that is travelling parallel to our own, and it leeks out because it is too strong,

EDIT:

Maybe i'm thinking of somethig else.

[zarathustra]

Gravity has just as many theories as time, such as spacial distortion based on mass and the graviton particle, I wouldn't doubt such a theory existed. As for the time travel loop, I think it would create more of a fold. Time would be pulled back and the pass the point where it had turned back, like if you pick up a marble rolling down a ramp and put it higher up and let it roll back down again.

[GHoSToKeR]

zara i heard that, for example,
Gravity doesnt exist in our universe, it exist's in another, that is travelling parallel to our own, and it leeks out because it is too strong,

EDIT:

Maybe i'm thinking of somethig else.

The idea of "parallel universes" is highly theoretical. The theory of String Theory or M Theory equates for the existence of parallel universes, and is still doubted by many phsyicists.. I hate theoretical physics, lol :P

[zarathustra]

Remember: all of existence is theoretical.