Heavy Science. Time Travel.

Shadowprophet

Truthiness
Loving this thread,barely understand it but loving it none the less!
Make no mistake Thomas is the real deal, It's been years since anyone has had me on the ropes in a physics debate. I feel like a giddy little school girl right now
conan-o-brien-happy-giddy.gif
 

Ron67

Ignorance isn’t bliss!
Make no mistake Thomas is the real deal, It's been years since anyone has had me on the ropes in a physics debate. I feel like a giddy little school girl right now
conan-o-brien-happy-giddy.gif
He’s my physics Yoda!.But I’m more of a Look Skyward in confusion than a Luke Skywalker!
 

Shadowprophet

Truthiness
He’s my physics Yoda!.But I’m more of a Look Skyward in confusion than a Luke Skywalker!
They say that everyone you encounter can teach you something you didn't know. My thing is. I want to reach a point. Where I truly understand all there is to know about Quantum physics. I may never get there.

But. Part of me. The Giddy schoolgirl part. knows that pestering physicists to explain it to me is a good way to learn lol :p
 

CasualBystander

Celestial
I know you deeply understand the Subjects. So I will skip ahead of a bunch of explanation on this one, Relativity is the current theory we are working with yes. But. Relativity isn't proven, And in some cases has been broken. It's almost impossible to confirm anything with 100% accuracy...

Well...

Frame dragging and a number of other effects that Einstein predicted have been observed. Mostly in situations involving satellites or flybys.

The frightening (and comforting) thing about relativity is none of the effects is observer independent.

As far as speed and gravity caused displacement: our clocks are accurate enough to measure time displacement due to gravity and speed.

Your GPS can locate you to within a few dozen feet can't it?

So the various displacements aren't speculation and actually have to be accounted for in a number of engineering situations.
 

CasualBystander

Celestial
There was a sci fi novel about a guy sent back to retrieve things. Only the machine went both back and sideways. He brought back Moby Dick - but had to kill the leviathan eating him first.

The book was by Larry Niven: "The Flight of the Horse" - to quote from Amazon:
Future environmentalist Hanville Svetz travels back in time to retrieve extinct life: his quests for a horse, a Gila monster, and a whale unearthed a unicorn, a dragon, and Moby-Dick.

"Rainbow Mars" was the same protagonist trying to retrieve ancient Mars life - with a similar result.
 

Shadowprophet

Truthiness
The book was by Larry Niven: "The Flight of the Horse" - to quote from Amazon:
Future environmentalist Hanville Svetz travels back in time to retrieve extinct life: his quests for a horse, a Gila monster, and a whale unearthed a unicorn, a dragon, and Moby-Dick.

"Rainbow Mars" was the same protagonist trying to retrieve ancient Mars life - with a similar result.
That's true. I can't debate the existence of relativity in experimentation and practice. We use it regularly. However. The thing that consumes me about the whole issue is. We don't fully understand relativity. And to my understanding, we don't really fully understand The atomic half-life. Yet we assume entropy is random, Yet because of the way half-life works. It can't truly be random, There must be an algorithm, We base so much knowledge on things we don't truly know for certain. You know?
 

Shadowprophet

Truthiness
My ultimate point is, With Relativity, It's the Theory of relativity. It's really not, at any point the fact of relativity. Why the relativity thing bothers me to some degree is, We base so much of our understanding on a thing we haven't proven yet. and, while as you stated. those things. turned out to function just fine within relativity. How can it not for a curious person, How can it not burn a hole through your thoughts. Not knowing relativity as a fact? It's a literal burning curiosity I have.
 

Shadowprophet

Truthiness
It's completely arbitrary which number one assigns to the dimensions of space and time. The math doesn't change: they're all simply inputs into the equations. So I have no idea why you think it matters: it doesn't. The ordering is a purely philosophical choice. And in fact, all dimensions can be measured in units of time via the speed of light, so we could say that all dimensions are dimensions of time - one light-second equals 3 x 10^8 meters, for example (this is how natural units work) and one would still get all the right answers with our physics equations. Anyone with a theoretical physics background would know this, and refrain from debating pointless preferences regarding the ordering of spacetime units.


No that's not accurate. General relativity (GR) and quantum field theory (QFT) haven't been modeled under a single theoretical umbrella yet, so the singularity itself is an unphysical concept. QFT doesn't permit a physical singularity because that violates the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. So the general theory of relativity doesn't break at the singularity, rather, the postulate of a true point-like mass is a false description of the singularity. So "incomplete" is not equivalent to "broken."


No, GR isn't broken in the realm of superconductivity because GR is a theory of gravity, not quantum mechanics. GR doesn't have anything at all to say about superconductivity.


No, GR isn't broken in the realm of superfluidity because GR is a theory of gravity not quantum mechanics. GR doesn't have anything at all to say about supercfluidity.


Spontaneous symmetry breaking isn't the same as relativity breaking. You're trying to apply GR to realms beyond its applicability.


GR isn't a quantum mechanical theory, so it has nothing to say about quantum mechanics. The phenomenon you've cited are, however, well-explained by QFT.


No, QFT explains those phenomena quite well. The perfect diamagnetism of superconductors, for example, was accurately modeled mathematically by the BCS theory back in 1957, which precipitated a Nobel Prize in 1972.


I'm more or less obsessed with physics as well; I've devoted my life to studying it and advocating for a clear understanding of it. Which is why I take exception to reckless claims about relativity being broken, or claims that known physical effects defy understanding. Such statements do a grave disservice to the state of modern physics, and lead people to reject our very powerful and effective physical theories and instead embrace crackpot theories that hold no scientific value. We haven't figured everything out yet, but that's a far cry from saying things like "relativity is broken" or "quantum mechanics can't explain quantum phenomena" - that's simply untrue. There's still work to be done (thank God - life would be boring otherwise), but creating the impression that modern physics is clueless, when it's simply incomplete, is bad, and counterproductive. Science progresses by expanding what we know and understand, not by demeaning the very powerful physical theories that we have.

Superfluidity is really cool (pun not intended). Many quantum mechanical effects are fascinating. But they've been modeled quite successfully, and each step of progress brings us even deeper levels of understanding.
This thing here Thomas. All of it. This is the fascinating thing. I'd love to have an intricate talk about General relativity Vs Special relativity. <-- because they are different. as one poses a universal constant and the other is an expanding universe. And I'd love to touch upon quantum field theory with you. This is one of my misnomers from earlier. I like to believe. Quantum mechanics do fit within relativity Rather than me just assuming that. I assume they actually don't and that Quantum theory is kind of its own thing.
 
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It seems we disagree on QTF, I do however Agree That QTF doesn't fit neatly into General relativity. That's why we have Special Relativity. And honestly. It will never all fit neatly into one package. But. I keep pulling up all these facts and links, Which really are Wikipedia posts. so, Calling them facts is pushing it, And I keep getting nothing but No's from you brother. You can't deny all of Theoretical Physics and expect to hold any kind of conversation on the subject. Though, I do like you. You are exactly the kind of person I look for in a physics debate. However. You say relativity isn't broken then you change the model of relativity from general to special on me, Of course, it's not broken is GR, This is the very point And Reason Einstein changed special relativity to General.
Okay this is kind of a jumble - let me see if I can untangle some of this:

- special relativity is the bedrock of general relativity: general relativity utilizes the spacetime geometry of special relativity, and simply extends it from the special case of a flat Minkowski spacetime, to a curved Riemannian manifold. So SR is embedded into general relativity - they work in concert in GR.

- I don't deny any credible theoretical physics; I don't know where you got that idea.

- Wikipedia can be useful, but you have to be careful with it: the editors there often express their dogmatic bias against anything even slightly outside the mainstream, including at times even valid avenues of on-going academic research.

- You didn't specify which theory of relativity you thought was broken, so I had to defend both, because neither are broken, though GR is incomplete because it doesn't incorporate quantum phenomena.

- There's almost certainly a grand unified theory that will tie all fundamental physics together - we just haven't found it yet. I think it's vital to do so, however, because I expect that once we unify GR and QFT, we should be able to figure out how to technologically manipulate gravitation.

I will say this Thomas, Every time, Without fail. Always question everything I post science related. It's how I learn, and the method works. I think I may learn from you.
Same here, and thank you. I endeavor to be as accurate as possible when talking about physics, and I'll always be very clear when I'm speculating. Hopefully that will help to avert any confusion or contention.

I do strongly desire to ask you though. In your area that you specialize in. would something Like a physical manipulation of space-time be possible? with exotic materials.
Yes. I recently spent some time studying photonic metamaterials with an eye to spacetime engineering applications, because of the AATIP story and the materials mentioned recently in that regard. It's not my area of specialty but the literature was very clear.

After years of debate about the correct stress-energy tensor to apply for photonic metamaterials, a team of researchers recently found that the Helmholtz stress tensor yields very accurate results. And this stress tensor contains two terms, electrostriction and magnetostriction, which provide a mechanism for producing tension (negative pressure) within such materials when their microstructure is arranged in a triangular lattice. When the miscrostructure is arranged in a square grid, these terms have a positive value. So, to a minuscule degree at least, we now have a mechanism for producing negative and positive components in the stress-energy tensor within the material when it's activated with the right frequency of electromagnetic radiation, which means that we can produce positive and negative terms within the Einstein stress tensor as well (which produces negative and positive mass modulation), using photonic metamaterials. We don't know the upper limits on the magnitude of these effects yet. It's hard to imagine a way to produce any detectable mass change in this manner, but it does appear to be a promising proof-of-principle that it might be possible.

And this part is key, Would the Person or object only experience the time travel effect as long as the machine was powered on or active? My assumption is. The person or object would be obliterated or thrown back to it's original position in time if the machine was powered down. :/
Like I said before, I don't think that backwards time travel is possible, without some new and unexpected revolution in physics. Changing the rate that one moves into the future does appear to be possible though, and it's certainly possible to travel faster into the future within a gravitational field, or by accelerating to a higher relative velocity. If substantial negative energies become available, then one could also slow one's motion into the future.

In any case, such effects would be immediate. Let's say that you turn on your gravitational time machine and accelerate into the future - if the machine breaks or whatever, you'll have traveled some distance into the future, so that's where you'll end up. I don't see any reason to expect that a traveler would get thrown back to the starting point; time dilation just doesn't work like that.

My ultimate point is, With Relativity, It's the Theory of relativity. It's really not, at any point the fact of relativity. Why the relativity thing bothers me to some degree is, We base so much of our understanding on a thing we haven't proven yet. and, while as you stated. those things. turned out to function just fine within relativity. How can it not for a curious person, How can it not burn a hole through your thoughts. Not knowing relativity as a fact? It's a literal burning curiosity I have.
All cogent and viable models in physics are called theories: they're never called facts. The term "fact" is reserved for undisputed empirical observations. So don't get hung up on the word "theory," so far both theories of relativity have made all the correct predictions in every applicable regime that we can rigorously test them. Clifford Will wrote a brilliant review paper about the experimental status of general relativity - I highly recommend having a look through it:

“The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment,” Clifford M. Will, 2014
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.7377.pdf
 
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Shadowprophet

Truthiness
Okay this is kind of a jumble - let me see if I can untangle some of this:

- special relativity is the bedrock of general relativity: general relativity utilizes the spacetime geometry of special relativity, and simply extends it from the special case of a flat Minkowski spacetime, to a curved Reimannian manifold. So SR is embedded into general relativity - they work in concert in GR.

- I don't deny any credible theoretical physics; I don't know where you got that idea.

- Wikipedia can be useful, but you have to be careful with it: the editors there often express their dogmatic bias against anything even slightly outside the mainstream, including at times even valid avenues of on-going academic research.

- You didn't specify which theory of relativity you thought was broken, so I had to defend both, because neither are broken, though GR is incomplete because it doesn't incorporate quantum phenomena.

- There's almost certainly a grand unified theory that will tie all fundamental physics together - we just haven't found it yet. I think it's vital to do so, however, because I expect that once we unify GR and QFT, we should be able to figure out how to technologically manipulate gravitation.


Same here, and thank you. I endeavor to be as accurate as possible when talking about physics, and I'll always be very clear when I'm speculating. Hopefully that will help to avert any confusion or contention.


Yes. I recently spent some time studying photonic metamaterials with an eye to spacetime engineering applications, because of the AATIP story and the materials mentioned recently in that regard. It's not my area of specialty but the literature was very clear.

After years of debate about the correct stress-energy tensor to apply for photonic metamaterials, a team of researchers recently found that the Helmholtz stress tensor yields very accurate results. And this stress tensor contains two terms, electrostriction and magnetostriction, which provide a mechanism for producing tension (negative pressure) within such materials when their microstructure is arranged in a triangular lattice. When the miscrostructure is arranged in a square grid, these terms have a positive value. So, to a minuscule degree at least, we now have a mechanism for producing negative and positive components in the stress-energy tensor within the material when it's activated with the right frequency of electromagnetic radiation, which means that we can produce positive and negative terms within the Einstein stress tensor as well (which produces negative and positive mass modulation), using photonic metamaterials. We don't know the upper limits on the magnitude of these effects yet. It's hard to imagine a way to produce any detectable mass change in this manner, but it does appear to be a promising proof-of-principle that it might be possible.


Like I said before, I don't think that backwards time travel is possible, without some new and unexpected revolution in physics. Changing the rate that one moves into the future does appear to be possible though, and it's certainly possible to travel faster into the future within a gravitational field, or by accelerating to a higher relative velocity. If substantial negative energies become available, then one could also slow one's motion into the future.

In any case, such effects would be immediate. Let's say that you turn on your gravitational time machine and accelerate into the future - if the machine breaks or whatever, you'll have traveled some distance into the future, so that's where you'll end up. I don't see any reason to expect that a traveler would get thrown back to the starting point; time dilation just doesn't work like that.
There is so much I would like to discuss. I've not Had sleep yet. I can't wait to pick this up later though :) My thinking of time, Was since it was a fabric that the distortion would be temporary and in effect only as long as the force bending space-time was applied. I Assumed it would like a rubber band snaps back to its original unbent state when the machine was turned off. Now that I think about this though. You are Right in the classic example of time dilation When the man boards the shuttle and travels near the speed of light for so many years. upon his return, He doesn't just become older, So, I can see how, time dilation is a permanent effect once applied.
 

Shadowprophet

Truthiness
Okay this is kind of a jumble - let me see if I can untangle some of this:

- special relativity is the bedrock of general relativity: general relativity utilizes the spacetime geometry of special relativity, and simply extends it from the special case of a flat Minkowski spacetime, to a curved Reimannian manifold. So SR is embedded into general relativity - they work in concert in GR.

- I don't deny any credible theoretical physics; I don't know where you got that idea.

- Wikipedia can be useful, but you have to be careful with it: the editors there often express their dogmatic bias against anything even slightly outside the mainstream, including at times even valid avenues of on-going academic research.

- You didn't specify which theory of relativity you thought was broken, so I had to defend both, because neither are broken, though GR is incomplete because it doesn't incorporate quantum phenomena.

- There's almost certainly a grand unified theory that will tie all fundamental physics together - we just haven't found it yet. I think it's vital to do so, however, because I expect that once we unify GR and QFT, we should be able to figure out how to technologically manipulate gravitation.


Same here, and thank you. I endeavor to be as accurate as possible when talking about physics, and I'll always be very clear when I'm speculating. Hopefully that will help to avert any confusion or contention.


Yes. I recently spent some time studying photonic metamaterials with an eye to spacetime engineering applications, because of the AATIP story and the materials mentioned recently in that regard. It's not my area of specialty but the literature was very clear.

After years of debate about the correct stress-energy tensor to apply for photonic metamaterials, a team of researchers recently found that the Helmholtz stress tensor yields very accurate results. And this stress tensor contains two terms, electrostriction and magnetostriction, which provide a mechanism for producing tension (negative pressure) within such materials when their microstructure is arranged in a triangular lattice. When the miscrostructure is arranged in a square grid, these terms have a positive value. So, to a minuscule degree at least, we now have a mechanism for producing negative and positive components in the stress-energy tensor within the material when it's activated with the right frequency of electromagnetic radiation, which means that we can produce positive and negative terms within the Einstein stress tensor as well (which produces negative and positive mass modulation), using photonic metamaterials. We don't know the upper limits on the magnitude of these effects yet. It's hard to imagine a way to produce any detectable mass change in this manner, but it does appear to be a promising proof-of-principle that it might be possible.


Like I said before, I don't think that backwards time travel is possible, without some new and unexpected revolution in physics. Changing the rate that one moves into the future does appear to be possible though, and it's certainly possible to travel faster into the future within a gravitational field, or by accelerating to a higher relative velocity. If substantial negative energies become available, then one could also slow one's motion into the future.

In any case, such effects would be immediate. Let's say that you turn on your gravitational time machine and accelerate into the future - if the machine breaks or whatever, you'll have traveled some distance into the future, so that's where you'll end up. I don't see any reason to expect that a traveler would get thrown back to the starting point; time dilation just doesn't work like that.


All cogent and viable models in physics are called theories: they're never called facts. The term "fact" is reserved for undisputed empirical observations. So don't get hung up on the word "theory," so far both theories of relativity have made all the correct predictions in every regime that we can rigorously test them. Clifford Will wrote a brilliant review paper about the experimental status of general relativity - I highly recommend having a look through it:

“The Confrontation between General Relativity and Experiment,” Clifford M. Will, 2014
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.7377.pdf

Before I go to sleep, I have one more question. About time dilation, Okay. This could be simply because I'm overthinking things. I love to do that though. But. Lets set up classic time dilation. The man returns home. To a world that has aged 20 years more than he. Now, Here is where The twisted thinking comes in. Let's say for curiosity. We now take this mans friend we send him on a similar journey The man returns. Okay. Do these two men now share a quantum space-time that no one else shares? or is it just time being flexible and relative.
 
Before I go to sleep, I have one more question. About time dilation, Okay. This could be simply because I'm overthinking things. I love to do that though. But. Lets set up classic time dilation. The man returns home. To a world that has aged 20 years more than he. Now, Here is where The twisted thinking comes in. Let's say for curiosity. We now take this mans friend we send him on a similar journey The man returns. Okay. Do these two men now share a quantum space-time that no one else shares? or is it just time being flexible and relative.
As far as we know, it's a purely geometrical spacetime effect. Sharing a special "quantum spacetime" would imply some kind of preferred reference frame, which is forbidden by relativity.

Both of the voyagers have simply traveled a similar route through spacetime: it's not fundamentally any different than two people taking an airplane flight abroad and then coming back home.
 

humanoidlord

ce3 researcher
What's so neat about it is. It has absolutely zero viscosity If you stir it in its container. It will spin forever because it does not lose kinetic force. Or until the fluid changes, it states back to normal matter.
pardon my stupidity but would'nt this make a perpetual motion machine?!
 

Shadowprophet

Truthiness
pardon my stupidity but would'nt this make a perpetual motion machine?!
I'm not really advanced enough in my knowledge on superfluid to really make that call, I would assume though. that there is some reason that this zero viscosity effect in superfluids would not be considered perpetual motion. This one, Is slightly beyond my knowledge to answer brother.
All I know for certain about Superfluids are a few facts I've read about it. Superfluids have zero viscosity. A tendency to climb out of their containers in a way that almost seems to defy gravity. and a tendency to somehow seep through otherwise solid containers. in a possibly quantum tunneling method. Outside of these things. This is all I know about superfluid :)
 
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pardon my stupidity but would'nt this make a perpetual motion machine?!
The same question is sometimes asked about superconductors. The perpetual motion and current in these situations are perpetual only in a purely idealized theoretical sense. In practice, there's a variety of subtle effects and defects which act as resistance in any real physical scenario.

For example, consider a placing a bowling ball in deep space and spinning it. In an idealized situation with no other mass or energy in the universe, it would spin forever. But in the real universe there are always gravitational tidal forces acting upon the ball, and a tenuous plasma even in the deepest regions of intergalactic space, which would slowly reduce the rate of rotation.
 
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AlienView

Noble
My favorite time travel theory, though technically some might say it is not really time travel but time line
alternatives, which may appear like time travel is based upon an accepted 'theory' in physics:

"
The "many-worlds interpretation" is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction and denies the actuality of wavefunction collapse. Many-worlds implies that all possible alternate histories and futures are real, each representing an actual "world" (or "universe"). In layman's terms, the hypothesis states there is a very large—perhaps infinite[2]—number of universes, and everything that could possibly have happened in our past, but did not, has occurred in the past of some other universe or universes. The theory is also referred to as MWI, the relative state formulation, the Everett interpretation, the theory of the universal wavefunction, many-universes interpretation,multiverse theory or just many-worlds.

The original relative state formulation is due to Hugh Everett in 1957.[3][4] Later, this formulation was popularized and renamed many-worlds by Bryce Seligman DeWitt in the 1960s and 1970s.[1][5][6][7] The decoherence approaches to interpreting quantum theory have been further explored and developed,[8][9][10] becoming quite popular. MWI is one of many multiverse hypotheses in physics and philosophy........."

See whole article here:
Many-worlds interpretation - Wikipedia


'IF' this is true - Many timelines would exist - What you missed in one world's timeline might appear
in another - the right timeline might lead you back into the past - apparently, even though it might
actually be another world.
 

spacecase0

earth human
just in case no one else noticed,
General relativity fails in rotating frames
so it just does not apply to anything that spins (almost everything)

as to how time travel works,
most people assume that time flows from the past to the future,
I am convinced that it flows from unlikely timelines to the most likely timeline.
the world makes way more sense that way.
 

Black Angus

Honorable
So, the rate of time flows is a variable.................

Time passes faster the higher you are

Gravity fields slow time down.

How Gravity Changes Time: The Effect Known as Gravitational Time Dilation

An ET species that decided to set up a base deep inside a very strong gravity well would watch the rest of the universe in what would look like fast forward.

The Milky Way is an averagely large galaxy with a diameter of 100 000 light years and about 200 billion to 400 billion stars; but compared to larger galaxies like M100, M 87, NGC 4921 or Hercules A, the Milky Way looks like a dwarf galaxy.

Time would run "slower" in these larger galaxy's.

The rate at which time flows where you are sitting now is related to the mass of the planet you sit on and the background gravitational force of the sun, the local planets and indeed the galaxy you reside in. They all play a factor in the "background" speed of time in your locale.
 
My favorite time travel theory, though technically some might say it is not really time travel but time line
alternatives, which may appear like time travel is based upon an accepted 'theory' in physics:

The "many-worlds interpretation"
The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is the greatest plot device ever devised for writing really cool science fiction stories (some of the best episodes of Red Dwarf and Stargate SG-1 were made possible thanks to Everett's idea).

But there's no evidence of any kind that it's the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics, and even if it were correct, I've never seen a proposal for jumping between the various branches of reality.

just in case no one else noticed,
General relativity fails in rotating frames
so it just does not apply to anything that spins (almost everything)
That's a textbook example of an online "crank physics page." Here's an exact quote from the opening statement:

“Proof of inaccuracy of the first postulate is very simple and it is based on the fact that term of velocity is undefined in the Classic Theory of Electromagnetism as well as in the Theories of Relativity as its successor. The velocity should not be measured in respect to observer, but rather to another participant of interaction.”

So this guy wants us to try to measure velocity with respect to somebody else's reference point. But then we aren't measuring velocity with respect to our own reference point. How is that useful or meaningful? It's not, it's crazy.

I don't understand why so many people are eager to claim that relativity is wrong when they haven't even studied it so they can actually understand it - I just had another frustrating debate on a different forum about this, with a guy who's never learned how Einstein's theories work.

The general theory of relativity (GR) works perfectly for rotating reference frames - the Lense-Thirring effect (aka frame dragging, aka gravitomagnetism) predictions of general relativity have been confirmed in a variety of ways and they're correct to within observational accuracy. We've known this for over 20 years:

"Evidence found that spinning black holes drag spacetime: Just as Einstein's general theory of relativity predicts," 11/06/1997

as to how time travel works,
most people assume that time flows from the past to the future,
I am convinced that it flows from unlikely timelines to the most likely timeline.
the world makes way more sense that way.
Then why doesn't the past look any more improbable than the present? What's more unlikely about people riding around in horse-drawn chariots than men landing on the Moon and playing golf there? This model makes no sense to me.
 
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