What is a KMP? How does it convert to Km/H?

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Kolch - Crunching for the BOINC@Australia team since July 2004.
Search for your own intelligence...

What would happen if we sent an atomic clock up there to orbit the earth for a decade or so? Would it always match up to its partner in Houston?

It's been done with an atomic clock in a jet plane on a prolonged trip. It did not match up with the stationary control clock. It matched the prediction of relativity.

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What would happen if we sent an atomic clock up there to orbit the earth for a decade or so? Would it always match up to its partner in Houston?

The GPS satellites are a good example. They do have to take the shifts into account.

Peter

Strictly regarding travel through time, and not time dilation, another proof that it is not possible is that we still exist.

If time travel was possible, surely some idiot from the future would have screwed humanity's entire time line by now.

Yeah, you can't beat my logic. ;)

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/Mav

We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean.
We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.
(Carl Sagan)

Strictly regarding travel through time, and not time dilation, another proof that it is not possible is that we still exist.

If time travel was possible, surely some idiot from the future would have screwed humanity's entire time line by now.

Yeah, you can't beat my logic. ;)

yeah but what if the entire project was kept a secret until the time travel could be controled by others than the people time traveling.

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Strictly regarding travel through time, and not time dilation, another proof that it is not possible is that we still exist.

If time travel was possible, surely some idiot from the future would have screwed humanity's entire time line by now.

Yeah, you can't beat my logic. ;)

If it's possible, it doesn't mean that we ever figure it out.

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TEAM
LL

I heard a very interesting interview on the radio last night. It was the Art Bell show and one Ronald Mallet was discussing his own plans to build a time machine: article

Interested in hearing what others think about this.

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I heard a very interesting interview on the radio last night. It was the Art Bell show and one Ronald Mallet was discussing his own plans to build a time machine: article

Interested in hearing what others think about this.

I think it's a heap of bantha poo-doo.
Specially the infinite parallel universe theory which would apply to eliminate time paradoxes. How convenient.
Oh well...


Sleestak, yes, that's another possibility.

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/Mav

We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean.
We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.
(Carl Sagan)

I heard a very interesting interview on the radio last night. It was the Art Bell show and one Ronald Mallet was discussing his own plans to build a time machine: article

Interested in hearing what others think about this.

I think it's a heap of bantha poo-doo.
Specially the infinite parallel universe theory which would apply to eliminate time paradoxes. How convenient.
Oh well...

I don't know about the time-machine, but the multiple (infinite?) parallel-universe theory is now being taken very seriously by many big-name physicists, like Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku.

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I heard a very interesting interview on the radio last night. It was the Art Bell show and one Ronald Mallet was discussing his own plans to build a time machine: article

Interested in hearing what others think about this.

I think it's a heap of bantha poo-doo.
Specially the infinite parallel universe theory which would apply to eliminate time paradoxes. How convenient.
Oh well...

I don't know about the time-machine, but the multiple (infinite?) parallel-universe theory is now being taken very seriously by many big-name physicists, like Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku.

I am fascinated by parallel universes and the theory of infitinite probabilites. Actually, i don't think we'll even begin to get close to understanding time travel until we stop treating time as linear.

This would mean that Steve Irwin is doing an interview with Jay Leno right now, talking about his "close-call" with a stingray. :)

Here's a rather heady article on the subject.

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This would mean that Steve Irwin is doing an interview with Jay Leno right now, talking about his "close-call" with a stingray. :)

Here's a rather heady article on the subject.

Time travel would destroy all the race and sports books.

Then there's Wall Street...just think of all the economic ramifications.

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Account frozen...

Time travel would destroy all the race and sports books.

Then there's Wall Street...just think of all the economic ramifications.

Yes, but any sport-scores book you brough back into the past would only be useful for a short time because of the Butterfly Effect.

Simply existing in the past (where you never existed in your original timeline) would instantly set in motion a different chain of events, causing things to happen differently.

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Why can't there be a pre-determined history of everything. From point zero (the big bang if you like) to the end of time (whenever and how ever that may come).

If something happens it was always GOING to happen and nothing could be said or done to prevent it. Perhaps even a plan would be put in action to prevent something and so bring about the very events that it was designed to prevent.

If a time traveller was sent back to the past he could not change history because they were always GOING to travel back through time. I guess the commonly accepted name for this type of model of time is 'fate'.

Basically I think that the past, the present, and the future are all happening at the same time and no decision or action taken can take the history/future or everything from its predetermined state.

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Kolch - Crunching for the BOINC@Australia team since July 2004.
Search for your own intelligence...

Basically I think that the past, the present, and the future are all happening at the same time and no decision or action taken can take the history/future or everything from its predetermined state.

"Past, present and future all happening at the same time...". I think you've just contradicted yourself big time...

How do you *define* past, present and future? Aren't they *defined* as different times?

Besides the obvious contradiction, you seem to believe two falacies implicitly:

a) Assuming that, because something is named, it ought to exist.

b) Assuming that because some aspects of modern physics are seemingly contradictory, all contradictions must be right.

Let's work on (a) first:

I could invent a term like "anti-coherent moon force" and write 100 books about it, and become popular writer because of it; and yet it would not make the anti-coherent moon force exist. Similarly, the fact that time can be *represented* as a dimension on paper, even in physics formulas, doesn't make time be a dimension of space, that can be traversed, or that has any length whatsoever, for that matter. Even the concept that clocks "measure" time has to be taken with a measure of caution: Measuring time is not like grabbing a tape measure and holding it between two spots. I cannot see the clock 10 seconds ago; I only see the stop watch that exists at this moment, showing a 10. There is no evidence to suggest that the stopwatch of 10 seconds ago still exists anywhere.
So, what's called the "time dimension" is a dimension of *a form of representation* of "something" we call "time", which has probably more to do with the fact we possess memories (in the present only, for all we know), than with any evidence of time having "extent". All that we know is that there is a *phenomenon* of constant change.
Same applies to the term "time travel". Just because somebody invented it, it doesn't mean that it exists or that it is a possibility. And before you cite the case of clocks and speeds and relativity, let me just say that the revolution that Einstein started in our understanding of time is precisely the opposite of what many people think. The fact that the *phenomenon* of time, as it govens the physics of clocks, is relative to frames of reference, validates the concept of time as a process, rather than its being, itself, a frame of reference.

Now (b):

I've seen other posts of yours where you say, paraphrasing, that "we can't get over the paradoxes of time travel" as if this was a "problem" we need to overcome. Quite to the contrary: The universe seems to be quite self-consistent, and demanding consistency of our theories is a good thing. We're not really talking about paradoxes; we're talking about contradictions, rather: The concept of time travel leads to contradictions. If I could buy a time machine in the year 5000, travel back in time to the year 4000, and kill the inventor of the time machine, then, how could I have done it? See? Time travel is an absurdity no matter how you look at it. No seeming paradoxes; plain contradictions.
Secondly, the concept of time as a dimension leads to fatalism, as you yourself said (and accepted). But fatalism is already contradicted by experiments: Quantum uncertainty says that the position and velocity of a particle cannot be known with absolute precision, because they do not *have* absolute precision objectively in the first place. And there were many physicists that refused to accept the "objectively" part, until Bell's Theorem proved that there could be no other explanation. (This is a "paradox" which perhaps you need to overcome, BTW.) In other words, all the evidence seems to point out that the present isn't exactly determined, so to say that past, present and future are predetermined [sic] is not only a self-contradictory statement from the get go, but in fact a belief that is inconsistent with empirical evidence.

Additionally, I would like to point out that "time travel" can't even be defined in the first place, because the term "travel" depends on the definition of "time". How fast will your time machine take me back 1000 years? See the contradiction? How would you measure the speed of time-travel? Seconds per second? That's a unit-less number...

I am of the opinion that if you could go back in time you would re-appear at the same instant you left
because this is your timeline
I don't believe you can possibly go foreword in time because it hasn't happend yet

There is no such thing as time travel. (Never has been never will)
If you could travel around the earth in one second that would be fast. Go two times faster then two times faster again and keep going faster. the time it taks to return to where you started will allways be grater than zero. So going fast to change time onley hapens in your head not in realety.

I've seen other posts of yours where you say, paraphrasing, that "we can't get over the paradoxes of time travel" as if this was a "problem" we need to overcome. Quite to the contrary: The universe seems to be quite self-consistent, and demanding consistency of our theories is a good thing. We're not really talking about paradoxes; we're talking about contradictions, rather: The concept of time travel leads to contradictions. If I could buy a time machine in the year 5000, travel back in time to the year 4000, and kill the inventor of the time machine, then, how could I have done it? See? Time travel is an absurdity no matter how you look at it. No seeming paradoxes; plain contradictions.

The Universe is not self-consistent, and that's why we don't fully understand its intricacies and why there are quirks in well accepted theories.

It wouldn't be possible to travel back in time to kill the inventor of the time machine because if you were able to do so the time machine wouldn't exist. Therefore when that alternate timeline came round a 1000 years there would be no time machine for you to travel back. So it would never have been possible for you to have taken the original trip in the first instance. It would be like an in-built safety mechanism of time travel that what you did (or planned to do) in the past could not effect your present so that your trip back would be unnecessary or impossible.

It is easy to remove time travel pardoxes by accepting the fact that there is one continuous time line.. Where the past is determined by what has gone before, the present is determined by what has gone before, and the futer also is determined by what has gone before. So there is nothing that can be done to divert the future from where it is going. Even if you could travel back in time, the changes you bring have already been written in history.

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Kolch - Crunching for the BOINC@Australia team since July 2004.
Search for your own intelligence...

The Universe is not self-consistent, and that's why we don't fully understand its intricacies and why there are quirks in well accepted theories.

Where did you get the idea that the universe is not self-consistent? Show me one example. Even quantum indeterminacy follows statistical rules.

It wouldn't be possible to travel back in time to kill the inventor of the time machine because if you were able to do so the time machine wouldn't exist. Therefore when that alternate timeline came round a 1000 years there would be no time machine for you to travel back. So it would never have been possible for you to have taken the original trip in the first instance. It would be like an in-built safety mechanism of time travel that what you did (or planned to do) in the past could not effect your present so that your trip back would be unnecessary or impossible.

In other words, you're admitting the impossibility of time-travel. Or are you saying that there's some higher intelligence that telepathically observes the intentions of time-travellers and only okays those who won't mess with the past? But it would only take one future plotting time-terrorist to deny the existence of time machines for everyone. And if, as you suggested in another thread, future time-travelers built the Moon, and if the Moon was necessary for humans to evolve in the first place, then how did those time-travelers exist in the first place?
Now, do you realize how apallingly unscientific the position you're taking is? It's as contrived as the arguments of creationists, except with a different theme to it. Scientific inquiry is about identifying what exactly is poorly explained by present theories, that we're trying to find an alternative for. This is the first step, and one you haven't bothered to take. What's the big problem we need time-travel to explain? The Moon? I'm just as curious as you are about how the moon was formed, and there's still no satisfying model; but that's hardly a justification to come up with an explanation as contrived as "God created it" or "The aliens made it" or "Time travelers from the future built it". We could just as well say it was Santa Claus' gift to Earth one christmas, for krissake. The scientific theory-building process demands efficiency, if not simplicity. A Santa Claus theory would be pretty simple but would generate more questions than it answers, like "where did he bring the Moon from?", "how?", etceteras. To accept that the Moon was made by time-travelers from the future is to accept an explosively expanding set of questions about time travel that stand much less of a chance of being answered that the remaining questions about the moon's formation, --not to speak of the "lunacy" of it...

It is easy to remove time travel pardoxes

"contradictions", rather

by accepting the fact that there is one continuous time line..

"fact"???!!!

Where the past is determined by what has gone before, the present is determined by what has gone before, and the futer also is determined by what has gone before.

If the position and velocity of every particle at the present time is defined only probabilistically, then the present isn't in any exactly definable state. You've simply ignored the argument I made that the present is not "determined", therefore it makes to sense to speak of it as being "pre-determined".

So there is nothing that can be done to divert the future from where it is going. Even if you could travel back in time, the changes you bring have already been written in history.

Well, if those changes have already been written in history, that negates any use to time-travel. You're backing yourself into a corner of fatalism combined with possible but irrelevant time-travel. Warning: There's no escape from that corner. I've shown your "theory" as being a)unnecessary, b)contradictory, c)inconsistent with experiment, d)inefficient, e)based on assumptions that have already been debunked, such as the "determinacy" of the present (not to speak of determinacy of a future, which is debunked by chaos theory). Might as well accept that your "theory" was absurd, and give up the argurment now. You'll only hurt yourself even more if you keep struggling. Play chess? Ever heard of "jackmate"? You're asking me to "take your king"...

And, by the way, you've also ignored my last point, about the "speed" of time-travel, and the impossibility to define its unit of measure. Even without assuming the possibility of time-travel, the very assumption that the past and the future exist "somewhere, now" is not only a contradiction in terms, but it assumes that time has extent. If that were the case, our "awareness of the present" would be "moving through time", but this "movement" cannot be quantified, let alone explained. How fast is our consciousness moving through time? Velocity through space is measured as units of distance per units of time. Motion through time would necessitate a quantity that works out to units of time per units of time, which makes absolutely no sense.

Time has no extent. Only the present exists. Fatalism was debunked by Indeterminacy and Chaos theories. There's no such thing as the future being predetermined; and any beliefs that it is are just uninformed superstitions. And since time has no extent, and the future doesn't exist yet, there can be no such ting as time-travel.

And don't get me started about the question: "If visitors from the future built the Moon, where are they now?". If time travel were possible we'd be innundated by visitors from gazillions of future times.

And, by the way, there'd be no such thing as visiting a time without creating deep repercussions into the future. Ever heard of the "butterfly effect"?

Where did you get the idea that the universe is not self-consistent? Show me one example. Even quantum indeterminacy follows statistical rules.

The anomolies observed in the travels of the Voyager space probes is just one observed and measurable inconsistency with the law of gravity.

In other words, you're admitting the impossibility of time-travel. Or are you saying that there's some higher intelligence that telepathically observes the intentions of time-travellers and only okays those who won't mess with the past? But it would only take one future plotting time-terrorist to deny the existence of time machines for everyone. And if, as you suggested in another thread, future time-travelers built the Moon, and if the Moon was necessary for humans to evolve in the first place, then how did those time-travelers exist in the first place?
Now, do you realize how apallingly unscientific the position you're taking is? It's as contrived as the arguments of creationists, except with a different theme to it. Scientific inquiry is about identifying what exactly is poorly explained by present theories, that we're trying to find an alternative for. This is the first step, and one you haven't bothered to take. What's the big problem we need time-travel to explain? The Moon? I'm just as curious as you are about how the moon was formed, and there's still no satisfying model; but that's hardly a justification to come up with an explanation as contrived as "God created it" or "The aliens made it" or "Time travelers from the future built it". We could just as well say it was Santa Claus' gift to Earth one christmas, for krissake. The scientific theory-building process demands efficiency, if not simplicity. A Santa Claus theory would be pretty simple but would generate more questions than it answers, like "where did he bring the Moon from?", "how?", etceteras. To accept that the Moon was made by time-travelers from the future is to accept an explosively expanding set of questions about time travel that stand much less of a chance of being answered that the remaining questions about the moon's formation, --not to speak of the "lunacy" of it...

Did a quick google and quickly found this BBC article which basically confirms that my argument has both scientific weight and allows for the existence of time travel. I suggest you take the time to read it.

While it seems that it is impossible to travel back and make changes which would make your present paradoxical, it might still be possible to travel back and make the changes that we know have already happened. In fact we may be somehow compelled to do so, so as to continue our existence as it is in our present.

Well, if those changes have already been written in history, that negates any use to time-travel.

See above for link and rebuttal.

And, by the way, you've also ignored my last point, about the "speed" of time-travel, and the impossibility to define its unit of measure. Even without assuming the possibility of time-travel, the very assumption that the past and the future exist "somewhere, now" is not only a contradiction in terms, but it assumes that time has extent. If that were the case, our "awareness of the present" would be "moving through time", but this "movement" cannot be quantified, let alone explained. How fast is our consciousness moving through time? Velocity through space is measured as units of distance per units of time. Motion through time would necessitate a quantity that works out to units of time per units of time, which makes absolutely no sense.

I make no claims on how to build a time machine, how it would work, or indeed whether a time traveller would be able to make a return voyage. It's hard enough to make some people accept that time travel is theoretically possible, so there is little point yet in working out how it would be done. In any case, the theories I have reached so far have been largely by my own reasoning and use of logic based on what I have observed and read. The actual mechanics of building a machine or probing quantum physics for the answers would be far beyond me.

[edit]Oh and finally, I'm not sure that Chaos Theory and/or the butterfly effect are any more or less provable than the theory of time travel, though it seems probable to me that they are mutually exclusive.[/edit]

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Kolch - Crunching for the BOINC@Australia team since July 2004.
Search for your own intelligence...

Where did you get the idea that the universe is not self-consistent? Show me one example. Even quantum indeterminacy follows statistical rules.

The anomolies observed in the travels of the Voyager space probes is just one observed and measurable inconsistency with the law of gravity.

You mean the Pioneer anomaly? That does not prove "inconsistency" of natural laws. It just shows there's something we don't know. At most it might show our understanding of gravity is incomplete, which should come as no surprise, really: We developed our theory of gravity based on short range measurements, and assumed they would hold for long range measurments; then, when we finally get to make a long range measurment it turns out there's a minute discrepancy. Well, guess what: That's what Science is all about. If the anomaly is confirmed, it will prove there's some factor we didn't know, whether dark matter, whether the linearity of gravity. That in no way constitutes "inconsistency". As a matter of fact, there was a hint of confirmation of the anomaly by Ulysses and Galileo. "Inconsistency" would be if the laws of nature were to arbitrarily change. The fact that our understanding of nature is limited in no way constitutes proof of inconsistency of natural law.

Did a quick google and quickly found this BBC article which basically confirms that my argument has both scientific weight and allows for the existence of time travel. I suggest you take the time to read it.

I read it, and all it proves is that the bbc is becoming a tabloid. Not that they didn't do the token covering themselves... Read the first sentence: "Researchers speculate..."
Now, when researchers speculate, they usually keep it to themselves, until they feel they have something, or at least an idea for an experiment. To losen researchers' tongues on their speculations to such an extent it takes money. IOW, I'm sure their phone numbers are in someone's rolodex at the bbc, who said to them "can you write something on time travel? I'll give you 300 bucks. 600? No way! Alright, 500."

Well, if those changes have already been written in history, that negates any use to time-travel.

See above for link and rebuttal.

The linked article is pure trash. It only talks about how one could try and get around the contradictions, but it makes no attempt whatsoever to prove that time-travel being possible in the first place. In particular, it assumes that time has extent, which has never been shown to be the case. So, given a set of absurd assumption plus a contradiction, it speculates about getting around the contradiction. What about the absurd assumptions? What about addressing the problem that a "speed of time travel" cannot be defined?

And, by the way, you've also ignored my last point, about the "speed" of time-travel, and the impossibility to define its unit of measure. Even without assuming the possibility of time-travel, the very assumption that the past and the future exist "somewhere, now" is not only a contradiction in terms, but it assumes that time has extent. If that were the case, our "awareness of the present" would be "moving through time", but this "movement" cannot be quantified, let alone explained. How fast is our consciousness moving through time? Velocity through space is measured as units of distance per units of time. Motion through time would necessitate a quantity that works out to units of time per units of time, which makes absolutely no sense.

I make no claims on how to build a time machine, how it would work, or indeed whether a time traveller would be able to make a return voyage. It's hard enough to make some people accept that time travel is theoretically possible, so there is little point yet in working out how it would be done. In any case, the theories I have reached so far have been largely by my own reasoning and use of logic based on what I have observed and read. The actual mechanics of building a machine or probing quantum physics for the answers would be far beyond me.

I never claimed that you had claimed to know how to build a time machine. Nice way of running off a tangent. What I said is that you continued, and still continue to ignore the problem with defining a "speed of time travel". As well as failing to prove that time has extent. As well as failing to show a necessity for time-travel; i.e.: What is it that we cannot explain without time-travel that with time travel we can? The first step in coming up with a theory, as I said to you before, is coming up with a set of observations that would require it in the first place. Keep ignoring 90% of what I say in every post...

[edit]Oh and finally, I'm not sure that Chaos Theory and/or the butterfly effect are any more or less provable than the theory of time travel, though it seems probable to me that they are mutually exclusive.[/edit]

The butterfly effect is a literary thought experiment, not a theory. Chaos theory is quite provable, and in fact is used routinely in modelling weather and complex systems. And the "theory of time travel" that you mention, doesn't exist. It was never formulated. Speculated, perhaps; but it's not a "theory".