Talk:Time travel/Archive1

Back in time
I went back in time and killed Mal Stacey as a child. As everybody knows, Mal Stacey is the guy who flew the Enola Gay and dropped the "Little Boy" nuke on to Tokyo, causing Japan's immediate surrender in World War II. Thus, my actions saved the lives of everyone in Tokyo. What I didn't forsee, however, is that by removing Mal Stacey from the timeline, it would lead to the events of BOTH Hiroshima and Nagasaki being bombed instead. Oops! Daecon 13:24, 10 July 2008 (EDT)
 * Nice :)  ħ uman  20:08, 9 February 2009 (EST)

Science-fiction show...
Liveblog episodes on your blog. TheoryOfPractice 21:42, 9 February 2009 (EST)

Bullshit
Why is this in the category of bullshit? Time travel is at allowed under the laws of physics. The faster an object moves the further forward in time it moves (time dilation) should a open wormhole (please stay with me, i am talking purley hypothetical grounds here) be connected to two points then one end be accelerated the wormhole would create a tunnel backwards in time. Similarly, if a object is moving faster than the speed of light (again, impossible in current quantum mechanics but this is all hypothetical) then it will move backwards in time--BenB (talk) 13:47, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You are a) conflating special relativity with quantum physics, b) assuming that "theoretically possible" means "plausible with current technology" and c) torturing the English language. 13:54, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It is possible, I've seen someone using a time machine! 14:07, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Richard Feynman postulated that positrons are just electrons travelling backwards in time, something perfectly consistent in quantum electrodynamics. Not that any information could be transmitted backwards in time, so it doesn't violate relativity. Bondurant (talk) 14:09, 19 May 2010 (UTC)


 * No, positrons are positivley charged electrons, or anti-matter, and are some what common in the universe (they happen in starts) you may be thinking of tacheons which are theoretical particles that travel faster than the speed of light and thus, according to relativity, backwards in time.

and forgive me for confusing special relativity with quantum mechanics. I did not however, claim that "hypothetically possibe" meant that it was plausible with current technology. however, that does not mean thought experiments can be done. and yeah, i know my spelling sucks, i am bad at typing, get over it--BenB (talk) 14:30, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * (EC)It is certainly a big, BIG, danger to conflate "it doesn't violate the laws of physics" with "it's possible". Indeed, that should really be "it doesn't violate the laws of physics as we currently understand them". The wormhole thing is indeed a viable mechanism, but the crux of it being possible as a "time machine" relies entirely on wormholes A) even existing and B) being open and stable C) allowing information to pass through them (there are interesting experiments in wave harmonics that allow things to break the speed of light, but not transfer information faster than light, and it's this information that is the crux of everything here). 14:34, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I am not confusing positrons with tachyons. See here. If you reverse time in the Dirac equation then an electron becomes a positron and vice-versa. Bondurant (talk) 14:41, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I stand corrected--BenB (talk) 16:39, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

precisely one second per second
What about time dilation? -- Nx  / talk 14:05, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * It's still going at 1 locally. 14:12, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * But it says relative to objects at rest. If you move fast you would travel forwards in time faster relative to the local clock of objects at rest, no? -- Nx  / talk 14:17, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think anything is at rest in relativity. It's all relative. 14:20, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, if you like Brian Cox's interpretation, you're travelling down the time dimension at the speed of light. But time dilation doesn't matter, that's only relative, anything locally, that is, just itself, is experiencing a constant rate of time passing. If you could observe time dilation happening, say, on a person standing next to you, it'd always look as if the other person was the one either moving faster or slower. You don't think, "hey, they're going at normal speed, I must be going slower" (I think it's the "Stasis Leak" episode of Red Dwarf that shows this really well). 14:26, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Isn't travelling at the "speed of light" through time ridiculous? Speed is defined as $$ds/dt$$, so your "speed" through time could only really be $$dt/dt$$, which doesn't really make sense. 14:53, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I know, but it's the relative to objects at rest thing that confuses me. i.e.: you have an object at rest on Earth (though since the Earth is moving, is that object really at rest?), you take off in your rocket, fly around at 0.9999c for 2 hours, then come back. On your rocket 2 hour have passed. Back on Earth, 20 (completely made up number) hours have passed. So from the perspective of the object at rest, you've traveled at 20h/2h. -- Nx  / talk 14:44, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Relativity means that there is no absolute rest. There's nothing for them to be at rest with. This is the part that goes back to Gallileo. Hang on, I've pulled it from the article. It's just wrong. 14:50, 19 May 2010 (UTC)

Unsure about giant new addition
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Time_travel&curid=68453&diff=677062&oldid=668523&rcid=720717

Not sure this heads in the right direction, would we add "examples" to alien abduction, say? 14:58, 29 October 2010 (UTC)


 * I would suggest that we should hive it off into a separate article and set about debunking it.--BobSpring is sprung! 15:03, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Good idea. That last section, about the guy who claimed to be one, could be titled with his name, and see alsod.  What about the other bit, which struck me as even more dubious?  15:09, 29 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi guys. I acknowledge your concerns' validity; I considered making John Titor its own article, but actually thought that might be overkill, so I just added it here. As to the first paragraph, I added it for a couple of reasons:

That said, I'm not married to it or nothin'; if changing it makes the article better, so be it. :) Respectfully, Ghost ornamental (talk) 06:37, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * It's really more a lead-in to the John Titor part than anything else, with the picture and movie mere throwaway mentions comparatively. I felt that while, to use your example, Human, alien abduction has a very well-known set of tropes it employs, time travel far less frequently appears in our modern mythology (as opposed to our fiction) and so I thought a few brief examples were in order. Lol, perhaps not. However,
 * Some people actually take these time traveler pictures seriously, and especially in the case of the silent movie, debunking is a simple matter. The bridge photo would merely require a little research into '40s-era sunglasses/protective goggles/whatever, and models of handheld cameras. Granted I have not done that research :D - and so I admit that one's a mite tenuous. I mentioned it mostly for completeness' sake, and thought about a mention of the wp:Andrew Carlssin hoax as well, another one people still manage to believe.
 * Thanks for popping in, Ghostie, we all respect that, I think. Why not go ahead and cut the stuff about Titor into an article, it looks like you've got some pretty good stuff there.  And rework the intro before him however you think it works.  Ideally, here, there will just be an interesting "see also" or sentence with a link to it.  06:51, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Re: that guy on the bridge: Forgetomori researched that.--ZooGuard (talk) 09:38, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

The Time Travel Fund
Could be mentioned here: an amusing spoof ($1 invested, $1 for administration charges, $8 dollars for the certificate). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 17:59, 14 March 2011 (UTC)