I always figured that time travel was disproved, in my most likely fallacious reasoning, by the fact that time is spacial. Going back in time would be the same sort of thing as saying, moving along an X, Y, or Z axis. So, in that respect the best one could hope to do is to tamper with how time is viewed or experienced. Such as having different clocks measure time differently based upon their speed and distance.

Again, I'm a dope and no scientist... but that's just something I've thought of. I've had it explained by a friend who IS a scientist from Virginia tech and he said "Imagine that we're talking about a building. I say that I'll meet you at this lattitude and this longitude. That's the X and Y coordinates. Then, I say I'll meet you on the 4th floor of that building. Thats' the Z coordinate. Finally, I say I'll meet you at say, 5 o'clock. That's the time coordinate. So, basically, to get "somewhere" in time you have to simply use it as a coordinate and reference point... I told him that time seemed differened compared to space but he said it's all the same. That gravitation and all kinds of other things can effect space and time as well.

Again, I'm probably butchering what he actually said but that's pretty much what I remember.

If time travel isn't possible, then obviously the scientists haven't been on a transglobal flight.

My uncle was a navigator in the Air Force for 20 years, and routinely flew all the way around the world on operations. It isn't a question of crossing the time zones and international date line that change the time, but when you travel like that, you act as almost a "force" against gravity and lose milliseconds that can rack up to a minute or two.

It may not be logical or even verifiable with our current level of scientific development, but time travel is real, even if it isn't quantifiable at this point.

the space flight astronauts famously lost a mintue or two of time, if I remember correctly. Time travel as in science fiction (Plotted courses going back centuries and millenia) is unlikely or possibly impossible, but the actual act of time travel not so much.

From what I've learned from watching documentaries and reading a little bit on this (yeah I know, credible huh?), Steven Hawking thinks time travel back in time is impossible because no matter what you do, you create a paradox, which to our knowledge, makes that impossible. Also, I think he said that if time travel into the past was possible, why don't we see any time travelling tourists? (to which that I would argue that the time travellers are concealing themselves extremely well, but that's just being devil's advocate).

As for time travel into the future. This is very possible from my understanding. The reason behind this  is because of space-time relativity. Now I'm no expert on this, but from what I understand, the faster something or someone goes, the slower "time" is percieved by the said object/person. For example, say someone travels in a spaceship at near light speed away from the earth for about a year of their own percieved time (inside the near-light-speed ship), then they return to the earth and find that everyone on earth has actually aged 40 years. It is because of space-time relativity (I forgot how this all works exactly) that time was percieved at a different rate because of the differing speeds. This is just an example and not exact numbers on how near-light-speed effects out time perception, but this is how time travel into the future would be possible. There was an experiment that I learned about in a documentary about NASA sending atomic clocks into orbit around earth, and when they came back, their time was by a very very small amount, behind earth clocks. Unfortunately I cannot find the article on this at the time though...

As for faster-than-light travel. I'm not too sure on this, but I've read that galaxies in the universe are expanding at a rate faster than light. But I've also read that this could be due to the combined velocity of our galaxies expansion and  the other. Not completely sure on this though...

Eh, from what I remember there were several experiments in the past that "proved" otherwise but turned out to be shams as soon as peers reviewed their work (I understand trying to observe effects to the opposite, but for the love of the flying spaghetti monster...show some real rigour). Rubbish news outlets picked them up at times and soon forgot in favour of some celebrity or other. Frustrating to say the least, I wonder what Roo has to deal with...In my field I get people vehemently claiming aliens constructed so-and-so in the past or they ask me to tell them about dinosaurs, heh.

Good to see some real work being done for once. C (speed o' light) remains the uncontested ceiling. Even if you exceeded the speed of light in some miraculous way; I doubt time dilation would compress to the point of going backwards...

Roo can bend space/time with his evil physicist powers.

I'm tempted to make a Soda brand called "Roo." It'll be advertised as the drink of "Fizzicists," hurr hurr hurr.

....oh my God, that is terrible, Kurara. Just...awful.

>D >D

"Fizzicists"

My sense of humor is actually warped enough that I find that pun hilarious!

Where's Roo to explain this?  That thing about the astronaut was less than a second.

Well here's the thing about Einstein, he claimed it was impossible, he didn't prove it was impossible. Further the study shows that a photon can't travel faster than the speed of light, but not that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. There's still a great many things that can't be explained or haven't been discovered yet, but science isn't necessarily hard facts, it's fact until someone proves otherwise.

Plus there are theories to explain time paradoxes, there have been 2 simple examples in things probably everyone has seen, Terminator and Dragon Ball Z. Terminator is basically that time is unalterable, even if you change something in the past the future will still remain basically the same with minor alteration. Or for you string theorists out there, if you go back in time you simply create an alternate dimension where you can do whatever the hell you want, but when you return to your own timeline it'll all be the same, like the Trunks saga in DBZ. Or maybe it's like Red Dwarf where Dave impregnates his girlfriend then puts the kid back in time which is actually himself as a child in an unending circle?

Getting back to the example with the clock and the astronauts, what really happened there anyway? Did they travel back in time or did they simply slow their personal time down? Is time linear or is it relative? Can you prove that it's impossible to create a paradox, or if you do create a paradox, can you predict the final result?

You really just have to laugh at people that claim to have disproved time travel with 1 experiment, for their information I came back 12 years from the future to write this forum post. What? Not everyone saves the world from Daleks you know.

The EPR Paradox is a paradoxical theory presented in 1935 by Albert Einstein, Boris Poldosky and Nathan Rosen in support of their argument that quantum mechanics still falls short in its explanation of reality.

A simple theoretical experiment to illustrate this paradox consists of a particle decaying into two identical particles.  Because the internal angular momentum or spin of the particle must be conserved, the two decaying particles will have two opposing spins.

As these particles decay, they are launched in opposite directions.  When the distance between the two particles reaches a great difference, say light years, the spin of one of the particles is measured.

At the precise moment the spin of one particle is determined, the spin of the other can be determined to be in the opposite direction because the two spins must equal zero.

Herein lies the paradox, since quantum mechanics dictates that the intrinsic property of an entity cannot be determined until it is actually measured.  By determining the spin of the second particle several light years away without measuring it, the experiment would introduce the existence of some strange force that can transmit the information of the first particle's spin to the second particle faster than the speed of light-- a force that cannot be explained by quantum physics.

Obviously the 2 particles use telepathy which travels in a X dimension independant of time in our dimension. Pocket dimensions, worm holes, dark matter, you can theorize whatever you want, maybe you're just missing information that would explain the otherwise inexplicable. Or you can just say it's magic. You don't have to explain magic.

I saw someone use a quote yesterday to describe the errors and pseudoscience in Star Trek. I gotta admit, I lol'ed.

There are no errors in Star Trek-- only complex dynamics.

I'm gonna go with 'magic', too.

Haha. Reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend of mine the other day. He's a Marvel fanboy. I love DC.

I kept saying that Nth Metal was superior to Adamantium. He disagreed.

Nth Metal is resistant to magic. Adamantium is not.

Magneto still pwn's your ass. Marvel Wins!

Honestly I've been more into DC than Marvel since I got back into comic books, but then I'm reading up on characters I never even looked at before.

Isn't Adamantium only the second strongest metal in the Marvel universe anyway? Plus the only real properties of Adamantium are its durability and toxicity. Nth metal is basically if Jesus was made of iron and jetpacks, that'd be Nth metal. More than likely Adamantium would cut Nth metal, but Nth metal lets you fly, gives you superhuman strength and a healing factor. And apparently several other "undiscovered" abilities, like prolonged exposure to Nth metal will let you control Nth metal with your mind! (Brightest Day arc) So if it's just a matter of which is better all around, Nth metal would win hands down. If it was Adamantium sword vs Nth metal sword, the Nth metal would break first, but the swordsmen could still fly away.

Science bitches, learn some:

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/09/neutrinos-travel-faster-th...

(currently under peer review)

I'm sad no one is talking about this... or never being able to strap on wings and fly in Titans atmosphere.

I did almost post on the neutrino story, actually. The thing is, it's still under high doubt that it actually happened, and of course, they want further verification and probably duplication. Makes sense.  As a science-type friend of mine said, while there's not a 0 chance that it happened, it's probably close enough to 0 that it's extremely unlikely.

I was reading a lab in Chicago had a similar result, they just figured it was a errot with the instruments and went about their day.

Yeah, from what I understand, this isn't the first time such a thing was reported somewhere, and it tends to be attributed to error, the most likely cause. :/

But you know, the chance of it happening, as Dr. Risuko Akagi once said, is "not a zero or a minus!" ;D

Time Flows at different Speeds depending on the Pull of Gravity.  This can be seen within our GPS/ Satellite network.  Their clocks are adjusted by micro seconds everyday to compensate for the quicker movement of there clocks. 

The larger the pull of gravity is, the slower time is.  So if you want to travel into the future persay, all you have to do is orbit a massive black hole.  Time on Earth would move faster then the person orbiting the black hole. 

So essentially, I think it is "possible" to travel forward in time(or experience it at different speeds as others depending on Gravity's pull), but not possible to travel back in time.

I want to hear Roo's opinion on this.  Please Roo...