Some thoughts

[TarJak]

Originally Posted by Wolferz

Step into my Delorean.

That sounds a little creepy.

Like space, time is more of a concept than an actual object or element. If you think in terms of strings being created by objects in space that cannot be looped back on themselves with current known technology, you'll start to understand what Mittelwaechter is taking about, The strings may cross at various points in both space and time.

You perceive your string being intercepted by other objects via your senses. Your brain interprets their inputs and in some cases stores them for later recall. Not always efficiently, however in very great detail which in some cases can be recalled even after your string has traveled a great distance past the points. This whilst not travel in the strictest term is the only way I'm aware of in being able to "go back in time".

Your brain is the time machine that lets you replay your perception of events along your string.

[Mittelwaechter]

@ Red October1984

Sorry if my language, my wording sounds weird to you. My mothers language is German.
It's advantage is to be very precise in describing and I simply tried to translate it into English. A complex theme in simple words would make me talk endless to make sure you're able to get my point.

I'm not an expert for time mechanics or time travel or space theories. You watched my theory unfold in it's original timeframe. If it sounds convincing to you, I take it as a compliment. As I mentioned, this all is theory - not knowledge.

I'd like to encourage you to challenge everything said about time travel and come up with something more plausible.



@ TarJak

Well said, Sir.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Oberon

It's a bit like the wind, you can only detect it through its interaction with another object.

That's especially true if you're in a balloon. You can see the ground pass, but you can never feel the wind at all, because you're carried along with it.

Originally Posted by Red October1984

The way some of this is worded give the impression that some people have seriously pondered this subject.

A great many people have seriously pondered it. Not necessarily time travel, but the passage of time, and what it means.

A wonderful series of short stories are contained in Larry Niven's book The Flight of the Horse. A future world is ruled absolutely by the United Nations. The only problem is that the Secretary General is a hereditary title and the current one has the mental capacity of a five-year-old. There is a contest between the Ministry of Space and the Ministry of time for funding, so the main character, Hanville Svetz, is tasked to bring back a real live horse. The fun starts when it turns out that H.G. Wells invented the concept of time travil, so you can't actually travel into the past beyond the 1890s. If you try you end up in a fantasy realm. Poor Svetz goes after a horse and ends up with an angry unicorn in his time machine. Go looking for a whale and find the biblical Leviathan - a creature so huge it eats whales for lunch. Brilliant stuff. And don't get me started on his Teleportation series...

[BrucePartington]

Originally Posted by Platapus

I am still waiting for someone to invent a device that can simply detect time.

I am not even asking to measure time, just detect "time".

The tricky part is that for you to create a detector, you need a reference, in this case, the absence of time, if such thing even exists in our universe (I know it did in ST-DS9).

I seem to remember reading somewhere that GPS satellites had to adjust for time warp while sending data to our GPS receivers. This is to compensate for the space-time warp caused by Earth's gravity.
And this time I am *not* making things up just to tease Red.

Edit: here it is on youtube

[Red October1984]

Originally Posted by TarJak

That sounds a little creepy.

STRANGER DANGER!

Originally Posted by Mittelwaechter

@ Red October1984

Sorry if my language, my wording sounds weird to you. My mothers language is German.
It's advantage is to be very precise in describing and I simply tried to translate it into English. A complex theme in simple words would make me talk endless to make sure you're able to get my point.

It doesn't sound weird. I'm just trying to put it in my own words and understand it all. I'm getting there.

I'm not an expert for time mechanics or time travel or space theories. You watched my theory unfold in it's original timeframe. If it sounds convincing to you, I take it as a compliment. As I mentioned, this all is theory - not knowledge.

It does sound convincing. It makes sense.

I'd like to encourage you to challenge everything said about time travel and come up with something more plausible.

I can try. It's a lot to think about. I'd rather listen and learn some more before I try to get a theory of my own.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

That's especially true if you're in a balloon. You can see the ground pass, but you can never feel the wind at all, because you're carried along with it.

Really good example.

A great many people have seriously pondered it. Not necessarily time travel, but the passage of time, and what it means.

It is truly something to be curious about...

[August]

Originally Posted by Platapus

I am still waiting for someone to invent a device that can simply detect time.

I am not even asking to measure time, just detect "time".

How do you measure something without being able to detect it?

[TarJak]

Originally Posted by August

How do you measure something without being able to detect it?

With great difficulty, however you may be able to measure it if you can detect and measure the effects it has on other things which are more readily observable.

[Mittelwaechter]

By the way, this thread itself is some kind of time machine.

You can jump back to the original posting and follow the thread providing several conserved moments in time. You can travel along this string from pearl to pearl in both directions, reconsuming a small portion of reality at its recorded location.
The very same way as you did consume it the first time.

The documentation of information given at a moment - the storage of an event - seems to be the key for time travel.

If we were able to store all the information of our senses or sensors - all the locations of any objects in reach - and replay them with our device, we could travel through our recorded sections of time. Back and forward.

We would have to store and recreate the part of the universe we want to observe.
We could not travel back to Cleopatra, because we didn't record her existence.

During our trip we would miss the information of our real time string. To catch up, we would have to speed consume a record of our absence, until we synchonize with real time. Or we would have to accept a gap, but this is quite common I guess.

In real time we chose what string to follow and accept to miss the events of an other one. We chose to read this post and accept to miss the brilliant information on channel 9.

We obviously create a time machine without realizing it. All documentation, all stored information is a try to enable us to travel back in time. We have developed different languages and techniques to store "time" - "information" - "location" of relevance or importance. Everybody records his own experience and knowledge of the universe if he wants to. Our devices to record and replay grow better and better.

Uk and Plett were only able to remember the information their fathers had taught them and they could only tell it to their children.
Some generations later they invented writing and reading and were able to store small parts of information about their universe. Following generations could come back and read or "re-live" this experience. Gutenberg enabled us to store more information, enabled more poeple to store their personal experience and to share it with those to come. Paintings, photography and movies, songs and records, tales and books, harddrives and clouds - all to store and replay information of more and more complex, filled up and concentrated parts of the universe.

Google Street View is a sort of time machine of stunning quality. We may jump to a certain location and look around. Jump to a connected location and look around.
Thousands of CCTVs stored data are a kind of time machine. We have no common access to these records, but that's only an artificial restriction. We would need a common viewer technology to "travel in time".

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by BrucePartington

The tricky part is that for you to create a detector, you need a reference, in this case, the absence of time, if such thing even exists in our universe (I know it did in ST-DS9).

I seem to remember reading somewhere that GPS satellites had to adjust for time warp while sending data to our GPS receivers. This is to compensate for the space-time warp caused by Earth's gravity.
And this time I am *not* making things up just to tease Red.

Edit: here it is on youtube

In which case, one has to wonder what is at the centre of a black hole, because if gravity affects the passage of time then the rapid increase of gravitational fields would also affect time (a bit like the episode of Stargate when an off-world team dials back in from a planet that is being devoured by a black hole. [A Matter of Time]). Is the center of the black hole made up of anti-time or an absence of time?

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by August

How do you measure something without being able to detect it?

that is my point exactly.

We are talking about "traveling through" something we can't measure nor detect.

[BrucePartington]

Originally Posted by Oberon

In which case, one has to wonder what is at the centre of a black hole, because if gravity affects the passage of time then the rapid increase of gravitational fields would also affect time (a bit like the episode of Stargate when an off-world team dials back in from a planet that is being devoured by a black hole. [A Matter of Time]). Is the center of the black hole made up of anti-time or an absence of time?

I feel inclined to agree with the common proposed concept: gravity inside a black hole is near infinity, hence it voraciously devours matter, light, and time-space from all around it, creating the Singularity. So I would think time inside a Black Hole is stopped in relation to outside time.
I am comfortable with this.
What really bugs me is not knowing whether it will keep on growing, or will it satiate itself one day and finally take a nap.
The first possibility leads me to think there will remain only Black Holes in the Universe that devour each other, creating a singularity so massive it will explode and create a new Big Bang. Scientists agree that existing Black Holes are at the limit of the laws of physics, suggesting they will grow no further.
The second possibility leaves the universe free to keep expanding.
And this is the point at which my mind starts to warp.

And gravity is a very weak force in our universe. For it to bend and even stop time, time itself must be even weaker.

Mind warpers for you to enjoy:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/2013...gravitys-waves
http://www.space.com/828-leaking-gra...ic-puzzle.html

[August]

Originally Posted by Platapus

that is my point exactly.

We are talking about "traveling through" something we can't measure nor detect.

But we do measure time all the,... erm, time! Clocks, TDR's, sundials, hourglasses. All devices for measuring time.

[Red October1984]

Indeed...

[Mittelwaechter]

The circumference of the planet is about 40 000 km at the equator. Any location on the surface moves around the planets axis in 24h.
It moves about 20 000 km in 12 h when using the am/pm system.

Let's scale it down to your watch:

a 4 cm diameter x 3.1415 results in about 12.5 cm circumference. So roughly every centimeter a mark will space your marks into 12 hours.

We construct the gear to move your watches short hand those 12.5 cm in half a day (12h)

Now, what you do when kooking at your watch is scaling down your position on the planet in relation to its rotation, represented by the short hand of your watch.

You don't read the time, but you check your location in relation to the sun.

Edit: I guess mankind started with a constantly repeating phenomenon to be observed by everyone: the sun rising, travelling over the sky and disappearing under the horizon. The geocentric sundial positions a shadow in relation to the position of the sun.
The heliocentric system moves the surface of the planet in relation to the fixed sun, so the shadow represents the movement of the planets surface, the location of the sundial itself.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by August

But we do measure time all the,... erm, time! Clocks, TDR's, sundials, hourglasses. All devices for measuring time.

Well, to be fair, they're not so much measuring time as they are measuring the effect of time on other objects, such as the rotation of the Earth, the decay of matter, so on.