Just saw Paycheck. As a Philip K. Dick fan, I couldn't resist. They changed Dick's story about as much as I had expected, but it was pretty entertaining.
Anyway, it led to an interesting debate between my wife and I.
Time travel stories fascinate me, and I mentioned how interesting it was that the time machine's own existence became a significant factor in the future it predicted (made me think of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle). Lori then suggested it was like a series of books she had read, in which a woman travels back to the middle ages, and tries to change history, but in so doing, actually causes the events to happen.
While I agreed that the bleak future in Paycheck comes about because of people acting to prevent future events, I felt it was different. This led to a discussion of the different views of time travel in science fiction.
In Paycheck, the future is changeable. With a thoughtful approach, as was used with the bag of trinkets, the future could be changed for the better. I suppose this would require seeing the future obstacle, getting the object that is needed, looking again to see if it will work, then seeing the next problem, and repeating until the desired outcome is achieved.
I saw it as being compatible with the most common, simplistic view of time travel, as seen in Back to the Future, Star Trek, Millennium (the movie) and many other places. Change something and you change everything that comes after. Of course, few examples really show how big a difference even a tiny change could make. This line of thinking also has the most paradoxes, at least when dealing with the past.
I saw Lori's example as the more deterministic view of time travel seen in such movies as The Final Countdown. Everything happens once, and the time traveller was always part of it. Not bad, except that it means there is no free will.
A variation on this is seen in the remake of The Time Machine, and in Terminator 3. Certain events are destined to take place, and if you prevent them, the time line will readjust itself to make them happen some other way.
Another line of thinking is that time travel actually involves parallel universes, all slightly offset in time and capable of changing. That eliminates paradoxes because you're not actually changing your own history, but rather participating in someone else's present, but it makes things extremely complicated just the same. There is also something unsatisfying about it, since it's not really time travel. This version is used in Dragonball Z.
Of course, Paycheck differs from all of these, in that it only deals with future events. There is never any indication that the past can be viewed or changed at all. The future we see, as in Dickens, is merely the shadows of things that might be, if nothing is changed.
By the time I was done explaining this, Lori was not so much convinced as she was confused. She admitted that she has never really understood time travel stories. Not exactly a victory, but it works for me.
Any thoughts on this? What are your favourite time travel movies? What theory of time travel do you like best?
Post Edited (01-05-04 13:38)
AndyC wrote:
>
> Any thoughts on this? What are your favourite time travel
> movies? What theory of time travel do you like best?
>
My favorite time travel movies are "Back to the Future" (for the pure fun of the story, and you gotta love Christopher Lloyd's character) and "The Final Countdown." These are the two that come to mind. The Simpson's Time Travel Toaster episode was pretty funny, too.
Star Trek TNG (forget even discussing Voyager) fell on its face with time travel episodes, but they were fun.
I once read a logically simple explanation that one cannot travel backward in time to a point BEFORE the time machine being used existed. I suppose that could be seen as being more of a technological issue than a theoretical one.
Einstein's Special Relativity tells us that what most of us think about time is at the very least incomplete. I suspect that that Theory was only the beginning of our understanding of how time exists. One of my college profs years ago was found of asking if time really existed or if it was an artifact of man. Certainly there are theoretical equations that include time as a parameter, but we have to remember that these theories are HUMAN constructs within our own perception.
Whew.
Beyond the basic space-time stuff decribed in Special Relativity, I don't believe time travel per se is possible. A few years ago the concept of worm holes was a popular mechanism for time travel. However, I think these same theories gave reasons for why it would be impossible (uh, like the gravity well in a worm hole is essentially the same as that in a black hole). Fun to talk about and play with on ST episodes, but not really practical.
I saw a show not too long ago (was it the new Twilight Zone??) where a lady went back in time to kill Hitler as an infant. She went to work as a nanny for Hitler's mom. Anyway, she killed the infant, but the Mom was so frightened of Hitler's dad finding out that she bought a baby from a street woman. You guessed it - that baby was raised as young Adolf.
Most of these stories sort of follow the same type of pattern, in that sense, I think. Even though they are essentially predictable, they are still fun. Sorry, I haven't seen Paycheck; if it is different, then it will certainly be worth a look.
Sliders was sort of the opposite premise - that all these universes exist at the same time and the sliding was from one to another. That was an interesting concept for a show, in my opinion.
Hmmm, thinking some more about Star Trek, the approach to time travel varied quite a bit. The Guardian of Forever allowed McCoy to change history, drastically changing the present. Kirk was able to put things back exactly as they were, simply by stopping McCoy from doing one thing, in spite of all their interactions with people by Kirk, Spock and McCoy over a couple of weeks, and one guy who was killed by accident.
Going forward to TNG, Time's Arrow seems to have a more deterministic approach, with Data's head being found before he went back in time, and the time travellers being part of events as they happened.
First Contact, however, has the Borg going back in time, and Earth changing into a Borg planet before our eyes, until they are defeated in the past.
Enterprise, however, returns us to the deterministic view, when the Borg in the past send their signal, which is apparently what attracted the Borg in the first place, before the Borg went back in time.
Of course, there are plenty of other episodes of the various series, and movies, that jump around the map in their approach to time travel.
Can anybody name some other examples?
A couple of variations on time travel can be found in the Frank Capra movie IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and the old TWILIGHT ZONE episode "Walking Distance". These two are very satisfying because they downplay the dreams of time travel. The moral being live the moment without looking to far into the past or the future.
I've always been annoyed by the rhetorical question "Where do you see yourself in 5 years? In 10 years?". Has anyone ever imagined a horrible scenario for themselves? If not, then what is the purpose of this exercise? Sure, planning is important for shaping individual futures but looking too far ahead can lead to disappointment when, inevitably, not everything pans out.
Time travel just seems like the ultimate fantasy to me. It doesn't stand a chance in Hell of ever occurring. It's on par with imagining yourself as a God with no moral or ethical concerns for anyone else. The ability would be too intoxicating for mankind. If the power existed in the future then current events would be altered every other day. It would take only one obsessive-compulsive personality to destroy the universe.
Scott
MOTAZart.com (http://www.motazart.com)
Howstuffworks.com has an interesting article on how time travel might work.
Go here to view it:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/time-travel.htm
Also, here is a lecture of "Space & Time Warps" by Stephen Hawking (a PDF document):
http://www.hawking.org.uk/pdf/warp.pdf
Interesting stuff!
Post Edited (01-05-04 16:49)
KINGDINOSAUR wrote:
>
> I've always been annoyed by the rhetorical question "Where do
> you see yourself in 5 years? In 10 years?". Has anyone ever
> imagined a horrible scenario for themselves? If not, then what
> is the purpose of this exercise? Sure, planning is important
> for shaping individual futures but looking too far ahead can
> lead to disappointment when, inevitably, not everything pans
> out.
>
Actually, pretty much every day I imagine "what if I got splatted by this time tomorrow." It's not as depressing as it sounds. Like you said, it helps me make sure my wife and I do not part (too) angry at each other, that a chance to say "I love you" is not wasted, etc.
AndyC wrote:
>
> Can anybody name some other examples?
>
Probably my favorite ST-TNG episode involving time, uh, not really travel but 'issues' I believe was called "Conundrum" (I am not good at remembering episode names). Anyway, it was the one where the Enterprise collided with a vessel suddenly coming through a rift in space-time and was destroyed. They lived the event over and over until they found a way 'out' of the loop.
However, there were some frustrating things about this. At the end, they realized how long they had been in the loop by checking a Star Fleet time beacon (or some such) and noticing that it was different than their on board chronometers. Is that even remotely logical within the framework of the story? If they were RELIVING the same couple of days, would their chronometers not be RELIVING the same couple of days also, and therefore, NOT get out of synch??
I don't mean to nitpick, but that just seemed to unnecessarily destroy the ending. Why not just leave it as "whew, we made it through that scary situation" without having to try to tie it up neatly. The universe is big and scary and unknown, and leaving 'what the -bleep- just happened to us' as a confusing unknown would have been, in my opinion, more artistic.
Anyway, that is an episode of TNG that I really liked. But it failed on the time travel issue on one main point - they offered too much detail. Because time travel is pure science fiction, the imagined details overtake the essence of the story.
As for this episode relating to a deterministic future vs. a random one, I think it suggests the future is deterministic. That's the only reason they would have been able to send messages "back" each time - because the Enterprise was really MEANT to survive.
That's part of the beauty of 'Back to the Future:' virtually no 'science' and the mechanism of time travel is just 'fun.'
Incidentally, I really did not like the "Time's Arrow" episode of TNG...I found that hokey, very hokey.
What I thought was a MUCH more interesting story was in the original ST when they find the planet inhabited by people 'from' the 1930s. That made some sense ... their observations of Earth was from that time period, and that is what they mimicked. It seems to me that with that approach, they avoided the hairy issues and pitfalls of time travel, but got to play with the story of Star Trek era folks dealing with 1930s Chicago-like gangs.
Finally, I remember the episode of TNG where Picard had to kill himself. Hokey. My word for the day.
My head hurts now.
Personally, I think the parallel universe version makes the most sense, because if you in fact do go back in time and make a change, the things that happened between those moments don't suddenly disappear.
My favorite Time travel movie is the Time Machine -- 1960's version. Morlocks!
>I saw a show not too long ago (was it the new Twilight Zone??)
Yup, that was UPN's Twilight Zone, starring Katherine Heigl.
>At the end, they realized how long they had been in the loop by checking a Star
>Fleet time beacon (or some such) and noticing that it was different than their on
>board chronometers. Is that even remotely logical within the framework of the
>story? If they were RELIVING the same couple of days, would their
>chronometers not be RELIVING the same couple of days also, and therefore,
>NOT get out of synch??
I think it was based on the idea (which I disagree with) that the time loop was limited to just their ship, so while they kept repeating the same day, the rest of the universe moved on. Of course if they really were going back in time each loop, they would still have been in sync with the rest of the universe.
I've always liked the original Star Trek episode where they go back in time and meet Gary Seven who is working to detonate a nuclear weapon at a certain distance over the Earth. It was supposed to be the starting point for a spinoff with Robert Lansing and Teri Garr, but it never got off the ground.
I also like the Back to the Future movies, The Final Countdown (I love the scene where they encounter the Japanese zeros) and Time After Time.
Nobody knows what would happen if time travel were real, but it would probably happen like a short story I once read. Sending the small prototype time machine into the future works because the future hasn't happened yet, so there's no danger of changing anything. When the inventer sends it two minutes into the past, the entire universe ceases to exist. :)
I love time travel movies but most of them always fall apart in theory.
My favorite short was a new Twlight Zone episode where they had hunters of the future pay extra money to travel back in time on a set path and shoot dinosaurs that have already become extinct - so as not to cause any kind of change in the course of history. Somehow one of the men falls off the path and steps on a butterfly..killing it. When he returns back to his time, he finds everyone speaks German and it looks like Hitler won the war. The theory I enjoyed was that even one small change could set a chain of events in motion that we cannot even conceive possible.
Terminator is the theory I'm more apt to follow, that everything is set in time....that time is perhaps a constant look of existance that has already taken place and we are stuck in our moments. Travelling back in time only reiterates the fact that everything is not destined..so much as already set. That would take a big step into thinking that the past, future and present tense are all the past tense..in a sort of balled up thread. Vs thinking that this implies our future is destined and we have no control, it more suggests that we are simply following the path of the future of what we have already done a million times over? Ok..too much thinking
I find that most time travel movies and TV shows don't seem to work in the end. They are either too far fetched because the writers don't know what they are doing or the story is too simplistic. The ending of Millenium, for example, was so confusing for most people. Set the thing in reverse to go to the future? The TV Dr. WHo movie was even worse. Now as a Dr. Who fan, I understood the idea of the Eye of harmony being inside every Tardis and being on Galifrie and Being just outside of the Galifrien system. Time travel paradoxes allow for this. But the writers had a hard time making that known in the story. It just fell apart. It just doen't tranfere well to film.
I have always wanted to travel through time. However, after I got my Degree and Mathematics and studied the idea, I found that some ideas of Time travel may not work. The idea of Parallel Universes, though the String Theory allows for this, The idea has within it a problem. If one is to assume that all possiblities have occured within these universes, then there should exist a universe where no other possiblities can exist. Therefore, within that universe, the laws of physics do not allow for any other Parrallel Universes. If this Universe is not ours, then we don't exist, if it is ours, then no other parrallel universes exist. This proof by condradiction shows that the concept of parrallel universes in which ALL possiblities take place is NOT possible. (Sort of like and extraineous root of equations higher than a quadratic equations. They are "solutions" to the problem but they don't work.)
I prefer the One path only view of time travel. (See above poof and replace "Parrallel Universe" with "Alternate Time" for the reason why.) However once again, time must allow for one thing. If I send one of our new 2004 - $20.00 bills back in time to 1999. The matter and energy the will become that twenty exist in another form in 1999. Therefore, I have just added matter and energy to the universe by doubling some portion, the amount that makes up the $20.00 bill. Therefore, in order for time travel to work, either matter and energy is NOT constant and we can get more energy out of something than what we put into it or we need to remove the $20.00 from it's place in time and make its existence be ALL of time.
Thet will be hard, but not impossible.
Susan Wrote:
> My favorite short was a new Twlight Zone episode where they had
> hunters of the future pay extra money to travel back in time on
> a set path and shoot dinosaurs that have already become extinct
> - so as not to cause any kind of change in the course of
> history. Somehow one of the men falls off the path and steps on
> a butterfly..killing it. When he returns back to his time, he
> finds everyone speaks German and it looks like Hitler won the
> war. The theory I enjoyed was that even one small change could
> set a chain of events in motion that we cannot even conceive
> possible.
Your twilight zone episode is based on a story by Ray Bradbury, who first posited the theory of the "Butterfly Effect" as it relates to time travel.
"Time Guardian" anyone ever figure that one out ?
Without the mind there is no time. Yep it rhymes.
I have thought long and hard about time travel and this is what i think - how could you travel to the future if the future doesnt exist? thats like trying to swim to atlantis - how can you go somewhere that doesnt exist.
On traveling back in time - Possibly, but would you actually be able to change anything if its already happened,and why would you want to? It might just make something worse happen, like in the back story to C&C Red Alert with Stalin taking over with Hitler gone
What you are describing reminded me of the two major interpretations of the Quantum Theory: the Copenhagen Interpretation and the New World Interpretation.
In the Copenhagen Theory, the universe is completely random. Einstein had a bit of a problem with this, which led to his famous quote "God does not play dice with the universe."
The New World Interpretation is analogous to the multiple universe version of time travel. In New World Interpretation, each instance of a possible decision, the 'universe' splits into two equivalent paths (one for each outcome of the decision).
Neither of these views is entirely satisfactory, just as the two 'views' on time travel (deterministic vs. multiple universes) is entirely, by itself, fully acceptable to many of us.
Actually, I think the chronometers would have to be out of sync with the beacon. They would still be set to the day they have been repeating, while the beacon, being outside the phenomenon, would show the correct date.
I thought PAYCHECK was one of the best thrillers I have seen in awhile. The whole concept of the machine that can see into the future was a bit far-fetched, but the movie definitely was NOT boring.
AndyC wrote:
> Actually, I think the chronometers would have to be out of sync
> with the beacon. They would still be set to the day they have
> been repeating, while the beacon, being outside the phenomenon,
> would show the correct date.
>
That's the rub. If they were reliving THE SAME THREE DAYS (or whatever period of time it was), then that is the same three days for the beacons outside, too. 2 pm Tuesday, December 2, 2003 is 2 pm Tuesday, December 2, 2003, even if you keep repeating it. While they are in, say, their third iteration of the same time, the beacon is in that time as well, because that is the day/time it IS.
I guess that is the 'science fiction' part of it, that the Enterprise can redo a period of time while the rest of the universe marches merrily along, but there are all kinds of paradox issues that arise.
Mathematically, that case would represent a discontinuity. Consider for a second a baseball thrown from the Enterprise, just BEFORE is goes back to repeat that time period. The path that baseball travels is a trajectory that, within the Laws of Physics, is determined by the initial conditions of the flight. Lets assume the ball flies with a constant velocity. In Physics, the trajectory should be time-reversible. That is, if we pick an arbitrary time 'in the future' and march the trajectory backwards to the point it was thrown, that trajectory will be indistinguishable from the forward one.
As the Enterprise comes back to the point that the ball was thrown (the first time, as the ball is not in the rift, as you are saying the beacon is not in the rfit - if we are assuming the timeline does not apply to the beacon, we can equally assume it does not apply to the first baseball). Now, in the baseball's frame of reference, it is distance = (velocity * Time since thrown) from the Enterprise. But, to the Enterprise, it is the time that the baseball IS thrown. The baseball's trajectory is no longer properly reversible - it's position and velocity, etc. become discontinuous.
So. Two baseballs? Which one does an observer at the beacon see? Which one does the Enterprise see? I think this is different from the "Twin Paradox" in Special Relativity which does not with deal time travel.
Incidentally, Special Relativity postulates that the Speed of Light is contant and non-reachable by any object with nonzero rest mass. If I recall correctly, time travel would require moving FASTER than the speed of light to be consistent with Special Relativity.
I just thought of another one that was pretty entertaining....Ground Hog Day with Bill Murray. It seemed like the point of that one was "relive this until you get it right." It was interesting how he spent that day while thinking he really was in an infinite loop.
Jamtoy : What if you send the $20 bill back in time, and it becomes pure energy.....
might that be the equivilant of turning matter into energy...
If the energy potential in a bill was converted to its raw state....Good by Portland!
E=MC2, don't ya know....
Actually, that episode you're talking about is called "Cause & Effect" and the Enterprise was caught in a Temporal Causality Loop.
ASHTHECAT wrote:
> Actually, that episode you're talking about is called "Cause &
> Effect" and the Enterprise was caught in a Temporal Causality
> Loop.
Thanks...as I said, I am bad with episode names.
What was the recent time travel movie with dennis quaid? That is one reason why I think some movie producers need to leave time travel stories ALONE. It contradicted itself so badly that I couldn't enjoy the movie for that fact
I loved the Back To the Future series, even though they are RIDDLED with paradoxes.
If I had to choose a favorite story, it would be "Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury.
This short story had a time travel company that financed rich people to go into the prehistoric past to hunt dinosaurs. While on the journey, the guide talked about the danger of changing the past in the slightest, since it could have disastrous outcomes. He used the example of killing a mouse. All future generations of that mouse are now dead. What hapens to the animal that needs to eat that future mouse to survive? This domino effect could continue until the first caveman gets sick or loses a limb as a result, which would change the future big time.
Though it's only about 20 pages, it's a GREAT little story.
As far as my favorite time travel theory, I believe that with a multitude of infinite universes, we don't really travel in time so much as we branch into alternate realities where every possible variation in our lives leads to different outcomes (Sure, this is a Star Trek TNG episode, and probably the plot of the whole Sliders series, but I have the least gripes about it.).
There are a number of paradox theories that come to mind which people use to try and prove time travel can't exist; like the Grandfather Paradox. This states that you can't go back in time and kill your grandfather because if he dies, you wouldn't be born, so how could you go back and kill him? Paradox. No movie yet has been able to get around this one.
The movie Millenium tried to use time travel and prevent paradoxes at the same time, but with the low budget and cheesy acting ["It's a damn paradox, Louise!"] it takes multiple viewings to see this level of depth in this movie. Good attempt, tho.
I recall the grandfather paradox was actually brought up in The final Countdown. They solved it by demonstrating that they couldn't change the past, because there was only one 1941, and they were already a part of it. That presents the problem that a person who does not yet exist can suddenly appear with uninvented technology and knowledge of the future. The only possible explanation is that all time exists at once, and there is no free will. I don't know if they thought that far.
Just the same, I thought it was cool that the rich old man who came to see the ship off at the beginning turned out to be the guy who got left behind in 1941.
OK, I see what you mean. If the ship actually jumps back in time at the end of every loop, that also wouldn't allow Frasier to be trapped in the anomaly for 80 years, which is one of the cooler things in the episode. I'm satisfied with the explanation that the Enterprise is stuck in its own little pocket universe where time repeats. Stranger things have happened.
Then once again, since both matter AND energy are interchangable, the net result is the addition of matter and energy to the universe. Same problem occurs.
Even in Portland
(Did I understand your post right?)
Our eye (conciousness) is simply scanning a location (the world) and it takes a certain amount of time to go "from here to there". Location + Movement = Time
Believe it or not your body, a bycycle, or an automobile is a type of time machine. Each has it's own speed and terrain.
The pursuit would be can you get your consciousness and/or body somewhere faster than most others can.The tranporter room may be closer than expected, but to "go into the future" is a statement where the problem is. It lends to the idea that something dosn't yet exist, but if you do know that the past, present, and future are all happening at the same time then you have a chance to unravel the time travel riddle.
Time travel isn't meant for everyone because everything does indeed have it's own time and place. It's kinda like the question of what if everyone didn't have to work. That would be a life without a story (trial/struggle). Every story has a beginning, middle, and a end. If you were to find the secret of time travel then you would destroy that which fuels what is above. Your life "emotions" are like incense to the one who created you. Your life serves a multitude of purposes.
Time travel is an interesting concept...
As to which view I favour... probably something between a 12 Monkeys - fixed future - and a Farscape/Terminator/Star Trek view - one where there is a pre-destined future but it can be changed, although the nature of existence is such that the universe will tend toward the intended course. I favour this because, as a student of history really people can only be carried by trends and circumstances. Although History is really a conflict between macroscopic and microscopic forces.
I have to reject the whole idea that somehow time travel creates parallel universes and so on. That's pretty stupid - I mean, isn't it suggesting the spontaneous creation of a universe, last time I checked universes didn't need people time travelling to come into existence. It's just such a messy explanation...
Someone also mentioned the impossibility of other universes - but I've read articles where scientists had claimed to discover another dimension which is infinitely long and thin which apparently joins them all up.
Finally, I don't like the "the future hasn't happened" yet attitude. The future is an entirely relative point. If I send person A back in time, their future becomes my past - yet I still exist. Perhaps this highlights the fact that 4 dimensional thought is beyond the grasp of our primitive minds, which is why these time travel stories are inconsistent. It's pretty hard to put together a story about time travel that is dramatic and coherent.
Yeah, but. . . if time is repeating itself, then shouldn't their thoughts be repeating too? In which case they never will notice that something is wrong. Yeah, I'm nitpicking and it isn't the worst episode ever in TNG.
Jamtoy : Hummm....kinda. What i should have said, is if the integration of the bill into matter is not accomplished, then the energy potential of the bill becomes released. Kaboom, as it were.
A "Big bang for the buck", shall we say.
And that....makes me think a time machins would need some of the components of a transporter, since time travel could either be enclosing someone in a "Temporal bubble", or converting to energy, and reestablishing in another temporal "Reality"....
Oh, now my brain hurts....
Funny that, what with all the rest it gets.......
Oh, now my brain hurts....
Funny that, what with all the rest it gets.......
You should warm up before exercising, especially if you don't do it that often
Looks like we have some mental gymnast on the board. Maybe this was just a warm up.
I'm not sure about traveling back in time. I do have a belief about traveling foward though. According to Einstein's theory of Relativity, if you could move at the speed of light for a period of time and somehow get back to earth, you would return in a time that to you may have been minutes or even seconds. However, from the viewpoint of everyone that is on earth during your journey, it may have been a period of months or even years.
I believe that there was a movie or two that might have made use of this theory of time travel. Does anybody know of any?
It sounds as ridiculous as any other theory about time travel. However, I'm not sure that it's really a "theory" at all as the common misconception about theories is that they are not proven but are actually ideas or hypothesis. This is wrong; theories typically have an overwhelming amount of evidence to support them. In essence, there are no (outside the bound of the theory of Relativity) that can even be considered as theories about time travel.
So if you're looking for proof or an actual theory on time travel. Look into Einstein's work on quantum mechanics and celestial physics. If you want instant gratification or some kind of explanation that might help you believe that some sort of time travel actually exists, I'll take a stab at it.
Einstein actually recorded and witnessed this (apparently as a boy, although I can't be sure). Imagine a train passing by as you watch it at a perfect 90 degree angle. At noontime, light from the sun will pass directly downwards through the top of a cattle car through cracks in the roof. You would think that the light, which travels at 2.998 x 10^8 m/s (about 186,000 mps), would simply pass straight down and hit the point on the floor of the car DIRECTLY below the point that it touched on the roof. But it doesn't. The light actually BENDS; it hits a point farther back from the point that you would think it would hit (in the opposite direction that the train is traveling). Now I don't believe that Einstein actually saw this as a boy, but I know that he proved it to be true. If you want to really understand what the hell this has to do with Einstein's theory and the possibility of time travel, I suggest you check out some of his work AND a little experiment that was performed with a certain jetplane and an atomic clock.
Oh yeah, Andy. I wanted to ask you...I didn't quite understand your connection between a time machine and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I don't see how the relationship between momentum and position (if you know your exact position, you cannot know your exact momentum and vice versa) has anything to do with how a time machine might change the course of history. Maybe I'm missing something. Fill me in.
In case anyone missed my question...Does anyone know of any movies that include the use of Einstein's theory to (if you haven't figured it out yet, everything the equation E=mc^2 is based upon) explain the possible existence of time travel?
LATE
I'm not sure about traveling back in time. I do have a belief about traveling foward though. According to Einstein's theory of Relativity, if you could move at the speed of light for a period of time and somehow get back to earth, you would return in a time that to you may have been minutes or even seconds. However, from the viewpoint of everyone that is on earth during your journey, it may have been a period of months or even years.
I believe that there was a movie or two that might have made use of this theory of time travel. Does anybody know of any?
It sounds as ridiculous as any other theory about time travel. However, I'm not sure that it's really a "theory" at all as the common misconception about theories is that they are not proven but are actually ideas or hypothesis. This is wrong; theories typically have an overwhelming amount of evidence to support them. In essence, there are no (outside the bound of the theory of Relativity) that can even be considered as theories about time travel.
So if you're looking for proof or an actual theory on time travel. Look into Einstein's work on quantum mechanics and celestial physics. If you want instant gratification or some kind of explanation that might help you believe that some sort of time travel actually exists, I'll take a stab at it.
Einstein actually recorded and witnessed this (apparently as a boy, although I can't be sure). Imagine a train passing by as you watch it at a perfect 90 degree angle. At noontime, light from the sun will pass directly downwards through the top of a cattle car through cracks in the roof. You would think that the light, which travels at 2.998 x 10^8 m/s (about 186,000 mps), would simply pass straight down and hit the point on the floor of the car DIRECTLY below the point that it touched on the roof. But it doesn't. The light actually BENDS; it hits a point farther back from the point that you would think it would hit (in the opposite direction that the train is traveling). Now I don't believe that Einstein actually saw this as a boy, but I know that he proved it to be true. If you want to really understand what the hell this has to do with Einstein's theory and the possibility of time travel, I suggest you check out some of his work AND a little experiment that was performed with a certain jetplane and an atomic clock.
Oh yeah, Andy. I wanted to ask you...I didn't quite understand your connection between a time machine and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I don't see how the relationship between momentum and position (if you know your exact position, you cannot know your exact momentum and vice versa) has anything to do with how a time machine might change the course of history. Maybe I'm missing something. Fill me in.
In case anyone missed my question...Does anyone know of any movies that include the use of Einstein's theory to (if you haven't figured it out yet, everything the equation E=mc^2 is based upon) explain the possible existence of time travel?
LATE
PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT was a good movie.
I'm not sure about traveling back in time. I do have a belief about traveling foward though. According to Einstein's theory of Relativity, if you could move at the speed of light for a period of time and somehow get back to earth, you would return in a time that to you may have been minutes or even seconds. However, from the viewpoint of everyone that is on earth during your journey, it may have been a period of months or even years.
I believe that there was a movie or two that might have made use of this theory of time travel. Does anybody know of any?
It sounds as ridiculous as any other theory about time travel. However, I'm not sure that it's really a "theory" at all as the common misconception about theories is that they are not proven but are actually ideas or hypothesis. This is wrong; theories typically have an overwhelming amount of evidence to support them. In essence, there are no theories (outside the bound of the theory of Relativity) that can even be considered as theories about time travel.
So if you're looking for proof or an actual theory on time travel. Look into Einstein's work on quantum mechanics and celestial physics. If you want instant gratification or some kind of explanation that might help you believe that some sort of time travel actually exists, I'll take a stab at it.
Einstein actually recorded and witnessed this (apparently as a boy, although I can't be sure). Imagine a train passing by as you watch it at a perfect 90 degree angle. At noontime, light from the sun will pass directly downwards through the top of a cattle car through cracks in the roof. You would think that the light, which travels at 2.998 x 10^8 m/s (about 186,000 mps), would simply pass straight down and hit the point on the floor of the car DIRECTLY below the point that it touched on the roof. But it doesn't. The light actually BENDS; it hits a point farther back from the point that you would think it would hit (in the opposite direction that the train is traveling). Now I don't believe that Einstein actually saw this as a boy, but I know that he proved it to be true. If you want to really understand what the hell this has to do with Einstein's theory and the possibility of time travel, I suggest you check out some of his work AND a little experiment that was performed with a certain jetplane and an atomic clock.
Oh yeah, Andy. I wanted to ask you...I didn't quite understand your connection between a time machine and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. I don't see how the relationship between momentum and position (if you know your exact position, you cannot know your exact momentum and vice versa) has anything to do with how a time machine might change the course of history. Maybe I'm missing something. Fill me in.
In case anyone missed my question...Does anyone know of any movies that include the use of Einstein's theory to (if you haven't figured it out yet, everything the equation E=mc^2 is based upon) explain the possible existence of time travel?
LATE
>My favorite short was a new Twlight Zone episode where they had hunters of the
>future pay extra money to travel back in time on a set path and shoot dinosaurs
There was another episode where a man discovered that his radio was picking up broadcasts from during World War I. He used it to warn his son not that his ship would be ambushed. His son lived and Germany won the war.
>I have always wanted to travel through time.
I found a site on the net once, that was selling what it claimed were working time machines or plans to build them. You had to be careful using them though, because the aliens that the technology was taken from don't want humans using them and they monitor the Earth's energy centers for any disruptions.
>I recall the grandfather paradox was actually brought up in The final Countdown.
>They solved it by demonstrating that they couldn't change the past, because
>there was only one 1941, and they were already a part of it.
Except that they COULD have changed it. If the captain hadn't ordered the fighters to return at the last minute, they would have easily defeated the Japanese fleet.
The thing that always bugged me about time travel movies is that the bad guy goes back in time and the heroes stand around discussing it, say they have to catch him before he changes anything etc. Once someone goes back in time, any changes they might make would be instantaneous (assuming that the past can be changed).
JohnL wrote:
>
> Except that they COULD have changed it. If the captain hadn't
> ordered the fighters to return at the last minute, they would
> have easily defeated the Japanese fleet.
>
Ah, but they didn't. That is what begs the question about whether the timeline was predetermined. I COULD have had two sandwiches for lunch today, but I didn't....
B0SoxSuk (Austin) wrote:
>
> Einstein actually recorded and witnessed this (apparently as a
> boy, although I can't be sure). Imagine a train passing by as
> you watch it at a perfect 90 degree angle. At noontime, light
> from the sun will pass directly downwards through the top of a
> cattle car through cracks in the roof. You would think that
> the light, which travels at 2.998 x 10^8 m/s (about 186,000
> mps), would simply pass straight down and hit the point on the
> floor of the car DIRECTLY below the point that it touched on
> the roof. But it doesn't. The light actually BENDS; it hits a
> point farther back ...
Einstein could not have observed this, as a train is moving too slow and therefore the effect is too small to see. The consequences of Special Relativity are only observable when the speeds are 'relativistic:' a significant fraction of the speed of light.
Albert Einstein was master at contriving 'everyday' examples to illustrate his points. This train example is one of those; an example he chose to explain the theoretical idea AFTER he developed the theory.
>
> Oh yeah, Andy. I wanted to ask you...I didn't quite understand
> your connection between a time machine and the Heisenberg
> Uncertainty Principle. I don't see how the relationship
> between momentum and position (if you know your exact position,
> you cannot know your exact momentum and vice versa) has
> anything to do with how a time machine might change the course
> of history. Maybe I'm missing something. Fill me in.
>
Well, two key points here on the HUP. First, and this is just a detail, even if neither position or momentum in that direction is exact, they are still related. It's a minor point, but it is actually important.
Second, the HUP principle applies to ANY pair of complimentary observables. Momemtum and position is one such pair (the one we use most often in Chemistry, for example), but ENERGY and TIME are another. This means that you can write an analogous Uncertainty Relation for E and T, just like for x and p:
(delta-E) * (delta-T) >= h/(4 pi)
delta-E is uncertainty in energy
delta-T is uncertainty in time
h is Planck's constant
Don't believe this? Do a Unit Analysis on position time momemtum (say m * kg m/s) and you will find that x * p has units of energy * time, which of course, are the units of Plank's constant as well. So, in simple terms, ANY pair of observables whose product has units of (energy * time) has an associated uncertainy relation.
So, to apply to the time travel theory, I guess, one could argue that if you define energy precisely enough, time becomes quite uncertain. If you start in a state that is of poorly known energy, but at a precise time, alter the system so that you define the energy precisely, the time becomes uncertain. If you return the energy to it's poorly defined condition, it is likely that the time is different.
The time-energy relationship is used in Statistical Mechanics to construct ensembles. The Stochastic Theorem states that you can sample all states of a system by either watching one system for infinite time, or an infinite number of system for an instant. This is very important, and is used to compute bulk thermodynamic quantities from quantum mechanical properties.
There's two little flaws in using this energy-time Uncertainty Relation to describe time travel per se. First, The HUP applies to quantum particles, not macroscopic humans (or other bulk objects composed of about 10e25 particles). So, the uncertainties in time apply to the individual particles, but the statistical average for the bulk person is likely not really changed.
The second big flaw is how the UP is applied. The time uncertainty relates to the natural "lifetime" of the state, not where on some externally defined timeline (or point in space-time, if you prefer) the system lies. In other words, the time uncertainty relates to the uncertainty of time, from its creation, that the state MAY last. A state with a very precise energy has a very uncertain lifetime. But this does not mean that if you create a such a state (it's all the time with lasers, for example) that the system might disappear because its 'time' is uncertain and it might move to a different time.
I can only guess, but I am assuming that AndyC was refering to the energy-time version of the HUP.
Whew.
I posted this link in a previous post but no one commented on it.
I'm curious to know what you think of his ideas on time travel.
It's titled "Space & Time Warps"
Here's the link again:
http://www.hawking.org.uk/pdf/warp.pdf
Post Edited (01-08-04 00:12)
JohnL wrote:
>
> The thing that always bugged me about time travel movies is
> that the bad guy goes back in time and the heroes stand around
> discussing it, say they have to catch him before he changes
> anything etc. Once someone goes back in time, any changes they
> might make would be instantaneous (assuming that the past can
> be changed).
This is a question of reletive time. The thinking (flawed though it may be) is that if Bob goes back in time, and then affects nothing for one hour, then the folks in the future have one hour to take action.
It's silly, really. Observation affects everything. I read that somewhere in a book on Quantuum Mechanics...
In any case, the problem only exists in films where the meilu allows for only one timeline.
Grumpy Guy wrote:
> It's silly, really. Observation affects everything. I read
> that somewhere in a book on Quantuum Mechanics...
>
Technically, yes. Observation of something causes what is called "reduction" of the wave function. Before observation, all possible outcomes for an observation exist - the only thing that exists before the observation is the probability of an outcome. However, once you observe it, the probability for what you observed is 1 and all others go to zero. Hence you have reduced the wave function from all possible outcomes to only the outcome observed. The best 'everyday' example of this is the model of Schrodinger's Cat.
This is also the basis for what is known as entanglement. If TWO events occur simultaneously (forgetting the problems with simultaneity in Special Relativity) and a number of possible states exist, but they are linked by the initial event, then observing one state also reduces the wave function of the other. In a sense, then, it is argued that 'information' about which state to reduce to travels faster than the speed of light.
The example generally used here is an atom that simultaneously emits two photons, but the Law of Conservation of Angular Momentum requires them to have OPPOSITE SPINS (that is, the angular momentum of the atom does not change). However, photon A can have spin UP or DOWN, so you don't know it until you observe it; likewise, you don't know the spin of photon B, but it must compliment that of A. As soon as you observe the spin of photon A, you instantaneously know the spin of B. Since in the quantum theory, the real state of A just prior to observation is a mixed state
Spin Function of A = 0.5 (UP) + 0.5 (DOWN)
you are not saying that A was UP (or DOWN) the whole time since emission. Therefore, B was not in the compliment state the whole time either. By reducing the function of A at observation, you also reduce the function of B - INSTANTLY, and without observing B. Since B "knows" which state to reduce to ONLY upon your reduction of the A function, the information about which state to reduce to traveled to B in ZERO TIME.
Anyway, sorry to digress so far. Entangled states are being studied within the context of developing fast computers and such. Already quantum based algorithms are being used to explore super secure cryptography.
JohnL wrote:
> Except that they COULD have changed it. If the captain hadn't
> ordered the fighters to return at the last minute, they would
> have easily defeated the Japanese fleet.
But there are a number of clues that suggest that the Nimitz was always part of events. They made a point of bringing up the grandfather paradox, things turned out exactly according to history even when they interfered, and only one person in 1941 saw the ship and lived, and she kept the secret. Most importantly, the guy who gets left behind in 1941 was at the dock to see the ship off before it travelled through time. The whole point was that the timeline is predetermined. The captain obviously felt it was worth the attempt if there was any possibility of saving Pearl Harbor, but circumstances prevented any noticeable involvement.
Grumpy Guy wrote:
> It's silly, really. Observation affects everything. I read
> that somewhere in a book on Quantuum Mechanics...
Ah, that relates to my reference to the uncertainty principle, which seems to have been questioned in half a dozen redundant posts. In fact, it was intended more as a parallel than a direct application. I do understand that it doesn't apply directly. The point was that one cannot really know the future, because seeing the future affects its course, just as the position and velocity of a particle cannot be measured without affecting it. I thought that was fairly obvious. The trick here is not to think so literally, and look for the similarity in the basic concepts. That's the difference between being able to memorize a definition out of a book and really understanding what it means.
In Paycheck, the mere existence of the machine was enough to drastically change the future. This presents the idea that it might not really be possible to see the future, and that the machine merely creates self-fulfilling prophesies. None of this was in Dick's original story, by the way.
Post Edited (01-08-04 14:51)
Is that the one you're thinking of? I didn't think much of the book, it read too much like a movie script.
>What was the recent time travel movie with dennis quaid?
I forgot to answer this before; I believe the movie you're thinking of is Frequency. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0186151/combined)
I personally like a modification of the parrelel universe method. in this method, every change you make reasults in a new alternate universe. Kill your father, and there is now a universe where a time traveler killled a man (the father) and another one without all ths messed up time twisting. You are now stuck in an alternate universe where you do ot exist, but rather poped out of a time machine from a parralel unverse. It would be like in "I'ts a wonderful life", that funkey cristmas movie. And in the universe from witch you came, everyone would be wondering just where the hell you were. And anouther thing-if you changed time in a way that did not kill you, there would be a alternate you, that you would have to kill.
Anyone see the movie "Tomorrow Man" with Corbin Bernson? Took Time Travel for granted and dealt pretty will with the ramifications..
time travel cannot exist. we would have seen people from the future in our time. therefore visa vi it's not possible.
butt monkey wrote:
> time travel cannot exist. we would have seen people from the
> future in our time. therefore visa vi it's not possible.
That on it's face is illogical. The absence of evidence of something happening does not mean it is impossible. For example, in the year 1800 AD, they did not see internal combustion engines, but they were certainly possible. They did not see nuclear fission reactions, but they were certainly possible (and happening, they just were not observed and recognized as such).
And the phrase is "vis-a-vis."
And the phrase is "vis-a-vis."
The phrase should really be Q.E.D, I think. I don't think 'vis-avis' is the right phrase in that sentance, anyway
FearlessFreep wrote:
> And the phrase is "vis-a-vis."
>
> The phrase should really be Q.E.D, I think. I don't think
> 'vis-avis' is the right phrase in that sentance, anyway
>
Yeah, I started to mention that, but did not want to get TOO nitpicky... :)
I HAVED used Q.E.D. before, but I don't use vis-a-vis, so I looked it up. I found "opposite to" or "in relation to" and I figured "in relation to" was close enough in the context of his post (trying to give BoD).
Q.E.D. is, one of my 'favorites.' I really dig the way Will Patton's character says it near the end of "No Way Out."