05-23-2003, 07:23 PM
Consider this -- if time travel were to be discovered, at ANY TIME from now until the end of time...
why hasn't anyone from the future come back?
Think on that -- no one, from now until the end of time, has come back to anytime from the begining of time until now. Why not?
That's not "proof", but it's a pretty darned hard question to answer.
A more direct reason why it can't possibly happen is that time travel could essentially un-make reality. The paradox of killing your own grandmother would result in reality constantly flip-flopping between two realities. Obviously, that isn't happening.
As for travelling at (or near) the speed of light, that's a different kind of "time travel" and one that could, in theory, occur. Moving AT the speed of light is theoretically impossible, since to accelerate to that speed would give a person (or object) infinite mass and therefore require infinite energy. Since neither of those (mass or energy) can get to infinity...
Moving near the speed of light, however, causes time to contract -- move more slowly for the object or person moving so quickly. So in a way, you are "time travelling" -- while you can't go backwards, you will be moving more slowly than those around you. So if you made a few hundred loops around the earth a .9 times the speed of light, you would age a very small ammount compared to those on earth.
gekko
why hasn't anyone from the future come back?
Think on that -- no one, from now until the end of time, has come back to anytime from the begining of time until now. Why not?
That's not "proof", but it's a pretty darned hard question to answer.
A more direct reason why it can't possibly happen is that time travel could essentially un-make reality. The paradox of killing your own grandmother would result in reality constantly flip-flopping between two realities. Obviously, that isn't happening.
As for travelling at (or near) the speed of light, that's a different kind of "time travel" and one that could, in theory, occur. Moving AT the speed of light is theoretically impossible, since to accelerate to that speed would give a person (or object) infinite mass and therefore require infinite energy. Since neither of those (mass or energy) can get to infinity...
Moving near the speed of light, however, causes time to contract -- move more slowly for the object or person moving so quickly. So in a way, you are "time travelling" -- while you can't go backwards, you will be moving more slowly than those around you. So if you made a few hundred loops around the earth a .9 times the speed of light, you would age a very small ammount compared to those on earth.
gekko
"Life is sacred and you are not its steward. You have stewardship over it but you don't own it. You're making a choice to go through this, it's not just happening to you. You're inviting it, and in some ways delighting in it. It's not accidental or coincidental. You're choosing it. You have to realize you've made choices."
-Michael Ventura, "Letters@3AM"
-Michael Ventura, "Letters@3AM"