<p>Hello everyone on College Confidential.
My mind is spawning so many thoughts right now! Anyway, do you believe that humankind will ever manage to travel through time (INTO THE FAR FUTURE OR PAST--I realize that some people here will probably say that "I just time traveled from ten seconds ago to now")?
In my opinion, the notion of time travel can only work under set conditions:
1. A technological device is invented for time travel, however the scientist who only knows how to operate it refuses to do so, dies, or destroys the device.
2. One can only travel into the future, thus paradoxes will not occur, but the quantum observer utilizing some device will not be able to return to his/her own time.
3. Time travel can only occur in deep deep space, because the universe we live in is in a curved space so quantum gravitation will slow down the observer's observation of the speed of light.
4. Objects with only a certain density or atomic mass can travel through time.</p>
<p>I realize that antiparticles go backwards in time according to Quantum Electrodynamics, but let's say there is an "antiparticle you" who wants to go forward in time or far backwards in time. Therefore, time travel will be in the opposite way for him.</p>
<p>Another thing, if time travel (INTO THE FAR FUTURE OR PAST) can occur, our mass would increase increase to infinity because as you get to the speed of light your mass gains. But then all that mass would be released to energy into space (most likely dark matter) and then you would become a massless photon traveling at the speed of light...</p>
<p>I don’t believe in time travel to the future, but my reasons for that might seem unrelated/controversial. In short, I believe that for free will to exist (which I believe it does), there must not be a future.</p>
<p>I’m not sure about whether the past exists as a place to which one might travel.</p>
<p>If you travel close to the speed of light, time would slow down for you. So if you traveled for a year like this, say five years could have passed on earth. Is that time travel? Does it even make sense?</p>
<p>In the sense that “I want to go to March 5, 1910” no, it will never be possible. The past has already happened, it is not still living and therefore we can not go back to it. Time is linear and we are on a one-way street.</p>
<p>It might be possible to do what Harvey said, but it seems like a waste for only a short bit of time. Plus, you wouldn’t even know where you’d end up.</p>
<p>To everyone:
I reiterate my statement about traveling at the speed of light:
“…our mass would increase increase to infinity because as you get to the speed of light your mass gains. But then all that mass would be released to energy into space (most likely dark matter) and then you would become a massless photon traveling at the speed of light…”</p>
<p>Millancad: Time travel does not refute free will–I think if it would exist, it would prove free will, since the quantum observer traveling through time has the ability to see how different probabilities taken by a person can change the future completely.</p>
<p>HarveyLewis: In theory, that would be time travel IF you existed on earth prior to going at the speed of light. </p>
<p>Everyone on College Confidential: Take a look at Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity: time, distance, and other physical measures only goes how fast, far, etc. we observe it to be. For example, (I remembered this example from Hawking’s book “A Brief History of Time”) there are two people on a train and let’s say the train is moving at 100 km/hour (that’s about 27.8 m/sec). They are playing ping-pong. The ball moves back and forth at a speed of 2 m/sec. So when the ball in the direction of the train, then the ball appears to move at 29.8 m/sec. When it moves opposite the train’s direction, then the ball appears to move at 25.8 m/sec. An astronaut (who has X-ray vision and the ability to see things from very far distances) happens to see the ping-pong match sees the ball moving. How fast does this move? 27.8, 25.8, or 29.8 m/sec? The answer is that since he’s at such a far distance it appears to go as fast as the earth’s rotation speed always in the opposite direction of the train. Thus, the speed of objects, the velocity of objects, the time, etc. are all relative.</p>
<p>That’s a physics lesson for you that you can read in about a minute. I hope you enjoy it!</p>
<p>To ravenclaw: What if that quantum physicist then uses the time machine?</p>
<p>It might cause a spacial implosion, which would cause the Big Crunch, or the time machine destroys itself due to the Laws of Nature (general term accepted by both religious people and scientists) and/or the Creator (general term to remove all religious tension).</p>
<p>I hope, that if anyone ever invents time travel, s/he will go to MIT’s Time Travelers’ Convention, held on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC) at East Campus Courtyard, MIT, 3 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02142 aka 42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees). It was/is/will be awesome.</p>
<p>^Eh. I dunno. I just had my one and only non-awkward “Congrats on your acceptance!” call from Harvard. And it was from the Harvard version of a black student union. Those things are always even more awkward than phone calls from undergrads whom you don’t know. If they can make those non-awks, they can probably do anything.</p>
<p>Well, pretty much everything I know about time travel I learned from one of the passages on the SAT. I’ve never been that interested in it. But I don’t think it will ever exist because if it did, then there would be visitors from the future in the present, which there aren’t (I believe that was Hawking’s take on time travel).</p>
<p>^Eh, not so tough. I like MIT way better. I’m honestly sort of meh on Harvard. It’s not Yale (<em>eyes glaze over</em>) or anything. But my mother is like “Prestige! Hahvahhhd! Allegiance to the Ivy League! MIT is full of nerds who are not suitable husbands for my progeny!” so I’m trying to keep an open mind.</p>
<p>Sorry about messing up your thread, people who are not TYiL.</p>
<p>^ I can see how that would be annoying. My parents have been asking me what I’d do if I get off of any of my waitlists (… and then I just waitlisted EVERYWHERE!). She was also pushing hard for me to choose Brown, same arguments about the Ivy League blah blah blah…</p>
<p>^Except Cambridge, and at an awesome college too. Little Murray Edwards me is hugely jeal.</p>
<p>I still can’t believe UChicago WL’d you. You’re you! Their RD was crazy though.</p>
<p>ETA: Eww, I illogically hate Brown. The only two guys I know there are incredibly stuck up. US News did this interview with one, where he was like “I transferred to an inner-city school. <em>snobby sniff</em>” According to the Harvard Club of Cincinnati (and Facebook) his brother just got into Harvard. Icky.</p>