Leading on from my other thread, faster than light travel?

Post by **Grudge** » Mon May 07, 2007 9:56 am

that's not quite the same thing

Post by **bikkeldesnikkel** » Mon May 07, 2007 9:56 am

It's faster than light that's for sure...

Post by **SIK** » Mon May 07, 2007 10:05 am

I've always liked Hawking's answer to the possibility of time travel. If it is ever possible, where are they? Surely people travelling in time have to travel to some point in time, so why has no-one ever chosen to travel to the time of our earth at any point in the past few hundred years?

Post by **MKJ** » Mon May 07, 2007 10:28 am

who says they havent

also, with an average of 6 billion people spanning the entire earth's surface, times the near infinite amount of moments in time, how big is the chance of you running into one of these peeps? :icon32:

Post by ek » Mon May 07, 2007 10:46 am

SIK wrote:I've always liked Hawking's answer to the possibility of time travel. If it is ever possible, where are they? Surely people travelling in time have to travel to some point in time, so why has no-one ever chosen to travel to the time of our earth at any point in the past few hundred years?

hi i am an idiot. regards, SIK.

Post by **seremtan** » Mon May 07, 2007 12:43 pm

you a rocket scientist now, mr olamepia?

Post by **iambowelfish** » Mon May 07, 2007 5:56 pm

MKJ wrote:who says they havent

also, with an average of 6 billion people spanning the entire earth's surface, times the near infinite amount of moments in time, how big is the chance of you running into one of these peeps? :icon32:

Uh, to answer a flippant comment seriously, they might not blend in so well, and that's assuming they wanted to blend in, and not a single time traveller ever decides to announce their arrival.

If any of these travellers hung around for more than a moment they would be noticed and news would spread.

And your infinite moments thing makes no sense. If they had travelled to any time in the past, we would have heard about it.

Post by **SplishSplash** » Mon May 07, 2007 6:42 pm

I can't remember where I read about it, but apparently according to the multiverse theory (it's more of an idea than a theory) you change universes everytime you time travel. That means if you traveled back in time, you would simply disappear from one universe and reappear in another one that was newly created (or unused before or whatever). You could never return to the universe you started out in. The universe you end up in, however may look exactly like the one you came from, with the only difference being the time traveler appearing in this one.

So if we ever developed time travel we wouldn't reappear in this universe, but in another one.

Furthermore, I think it's safe to say that in the vast majority of universes, humanity will never get to the point where they actually develop time travel. So the odds of somebody appearing in our universe (he would have to com from a different universe) would be incredibly small, maybe even approaching zero, I'm not good at maths.

But this is just what I read somewhere, and I can't even remember where.

Post by **MKJ** » Mon May 07, 2007 7:09 pm

iambowelfish wrote: If they had travelled to any time in the past, we would have heard about it.

cause mental institutions arent full of people who claim they're from the future, or are joan of arc, or what have you? :icon32:

Post by **Grudge** » Mon May 07, 2007 8:56 pm

12 monkeys

Post by **tnf** » Mon May 07, 2007 10:35 pm

Splish still doesn't get it, I've been coming from his point of view all along in terms of new models to explain the universe. All I was saying is that one is going to be required before we can really say FTL travel is possible, and one may indeed prove it is. One didn't need a new model to explain the universe to say that flight was possible because they saw it happening every single day.

I can't see how this goes that far.

Post by **R00k** » Mon May 07, 2007 11:18 pm

come on guys, either the cat existed already or it didn't.

Post by **Hannibal** » Tue May 08, 2007 1:18 am

tnf wrote:Splish still doesn't get it, I've been coming from his point of view all along in terms of new models to explain the universe. All I was saying is that one is going to be required before we can really say FTL travel is possible...

I think the headbutts occur because you two are focusing on (slightly) different things: plausibility vs possibility. As a good scientist, you are naturally choppin' bout the former notion; Splish, the dreamer who can't stop dreaming, is making a point about the latter. There is a lot of quibble room regarding the analogies n stuff and this is probably what's tripping up the discussion.

Post by **iambowelfish** » Tue May 08, 2007 1:33 am

MKJ wrote:
iambowelfish wrote: If they had travelled to any time in the past, we would have heard about it.
cause mental institutions arent full of people who claim they're from the future, or are joan of arc, or what have you? :icon32:

Thing is, they always forget to bring any items from the future. And they never do their research before they go or they'd be able to make accurate predictions about our immediate future. Sad really, if only they prepared better they could avoid getting locked up.

Post by **R00k** » Tue May 08, 2007 1:47 am

people from the future are the ones who made billions of dollars in profits off of 9/11, that's why they haven't told anybody who they traced it to.

Post by **tnf** » Tue May 08, 2007 2:13 am

Hannibal wrote:
tnf wrote:Splish still doesn't get it, I've been coming from his point of view all along in terms of new models to explain the universe. All I was saying is that one is going to be required before we can really say FTL travel is possible...
I think the headbutts occur because you two are focusing on (slightly) different things: plausibility vs possibility. As a good scientist, you are naturally choppin' bout the former notion; Splish, the dreamer who can't stop dreaming, is making a point about the latter. There is a lot of quibble room regarding the analogies n stuff and this is probably what's tripping up the discussion.

Well said. But I still don't see how the history of our pursuit of flying machines parallels our *current* pursuit of FTL travel as we've never observed said phenomena on the scale where relativity rules (for now) and do not have an explanatory model of the universe (string theory as an example of a candidate) that makes its possibility an undebatable, undeniable fact. Can't say its possible, can't say that its impossible...can't say one way or the other yet. That discusssion didn't exist in terms of flight. Flight was observed, its physics came to be understood long before the technology existed to allow us to utilize it. I didn't mean to poop on Splish's dream of intergalactic travel here, because I'm always qualifying statements when I teach regarding the possibility of changes in our fundamental understanding of the universe and how we have to be careful when we talk about what is and isn't possible and that you have to be careful about using absolutes. This is a bit like the time jules and I tried to explain that - from a purely pharmacokinetic standpoint, a drug like heroin isn't as hard on many body systems as several less insidiously addictive and life-wrecking drugs (tylenol for example.) For the life of me, I couldn't see where the debate was coming from because our point wasn't really one open for debate, it was just based on the biology of the drug and its metabolism, but maybe we were being too reductionist in our argument.

Post by **bikkeldesnikkel** » Tue May 08, 2007 3:24 am

Okay, I'll rephrase in a question since I'm not familiar with the exact science of QM - How does the instant communication between quantum pairs not go beyond the speed of light?

I'm not discussing human travel here. I'm trying to lead into another direction I think might be worth going in to. Since it's the closest real-world tie-in we have for faster than light travel. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Post by **Turing** » Tue May 08, 2007 9:30 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_at_ ... _(physics)

Thank fuck there's an internet out there.

Post by **MKJ** » Tue May 08, 2007 9:32 am

R00k wrote:come on guys, either the cat existed already or it didn't.

no it died :E

Post by JB » Tue May 08, 2007 9:35 am

blasted photons.

Post by **SplishSplash** » Tue May 08, 2007 1:35 pm

tnf wrote:Well said. But I still don't see how the history of our pursuit of flying machines parallels our *current* pursuit of FTL travel as we've never observed said phenomena on the scale where relativity rules (for now) and do not have an explanatory model of the universe (string theory as an example of a candidate) that makes its possibility an undebatable, undeniable fact. Can't say its possible, can't say that its impossible...can't say one way or the other yet. That discusssion didn't exist in terms of flight. Flight was observed, its physics came to be understood long before the technology existed to allow us to utilize it.

I realize this is not quite what your getting at here, but just imagine E.T. came by, said "Booya!" and left again. Boom, we knew it's possible. Does that help us in any way? No it doesn't.

Since you can't prove a negative (I heard that somewhere), your point of view has absolutely no merit at all.

tnf wrote:I didn't mean to poop on Splish's dream of intergalactic travel here, because I'm always qualifying statements when I teach regarding the possibility of changes in our fundamental understanding of the universe and how we have to be careful when we talk about what is and isn't possible and that you have to be careful about using absolutes. This is a bit like the time jules and I tried to explain that - from a purely pharmacokinetic standpoint, a drug like heroin isn't as hard on many body systems as several less insidiously addictive and life-wrecking drugs (tylenol for example.) For the life of me, I couldn't see where the debate was coming from because our point wasn't really one open for debate, it was just based on the biology of the drug and its metabolism, but maybe we were being too reductionist in our argument.

One could say that. Or one could say that you keep missing the point of a discussion.

When odium asked "Will FTL be possible?" or whatever he asked, I'm pretty sure he wasn't asking for the "But Einstein said it's impossible." answer.

Post by **Grudge** » Tue May 08, 2007 2:56 pm

SplishSplash argues for FTL like Christians argue for their god.

Post by **SplishSplash** » Tue May 08, 2007 3:41 pm

I'm not arguing for FTL, I'm arguing against pointless smartass answers.

Post by **xer0s** » Tue May 08, 2007 7:45 pm

Basically what it boils down to is: With our current understanding of physics, its not possible. But who's to say that our understanding of physics won't change tomorrow and our understanding of light speed could change with it.

Post by **MKJ** » Tue May 08, 2007 10:30 pm

xer0s wrote:But who's to say that our understanding of physics won't change tomorrow

we could travel in time and find out!