Time Travel Revisited: What kind of effects?

[Doc Dan]

I think space-time has "holes" in it and I think we might be able to see into the past, but not go there (I think that sometimes people do see through these holes and think they are seeing ghosts). I think what is past is gone. Think about light coming from another star. Millions of years have gone by and we see that light, but that does not take us to the actual event itself.

I think moving faster forward in time may be achievable in some limited sense. We can already do this in a jet moving around the earth where we move ahead in time, or in outer space where watches set at the same time show one watch went forward in time just a bit. But, that is more of moving faster in time and not actually going into the future, which has not happened as of yet. We will not be able to do that.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

Doc, those are very fascinating points you bring up, which I, too, and others I have spoken with over the years have considered. "Great minds think alike" lol :)

There is a controversial claim, I do not know how true it is or if it is just another urban legend as they say, but, allegedly there was a Roman Catholic priest named "Father Ernetti" who had a scientific mind and was working with the Vatican and made the "chronovisor", a device that was able not to see the future but to somehow tap into space-time and the "ether" of space and view recorded events that took place in the past. I will post website links where you and others can read about this, below.

Some of the images they picked up were of Jesus Christ on the cross, and ancient theatrical performances, and other things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronovisor

This would not be time travel but time viewing, like you mentioned above.

http://www.unmuseum.org/chronovisor.htm

The problem is, how would we verify that this is real?

Could independent projects make a more modern version of it if that is possible?

What this assumes is that every event is somehow recorded into spacetime itself and thus can be viewed. Imagine the implications if chronovisors were produced and what this could do for everything from finding out who committed various crimes to the historical and archaeological implications, and even for families to get records of their past experiences that have been lost to time and were not recorded on more conventional means such as film strips and video recordings.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

By the way, to add to the above, there is a field of archaeology called archaeoaccoustics and also a more "fringe" area of this field is the idea that certain types of stone, minerals, rocks and clay can somehow record the audio (not visual as far as I know)/sounds of past events, both natural and human.

I have watched videos and programs where they interview people who live in certain places where the Roman Empire had control such as in Britain and there are claims that certain stones in the pavement that goes back that far recorded the sounds of marching Roman soldiers.

https://www.cheshire-live.co.uk/news/ch ... e-13777666

What some think are the sounds of ghosts could, if this is possible, be the recorded audio sounds of ancient Roman soldiers.

[Doc Dan]

I do not believe this visor ever happened. Nor, do I believe it would ever be accepted in academia, at least not in this generation. Too many careers could be on the line if we could prove they were wrong in their historical assertions.

I do think, along with scientists, that time and space are one and may be porous. I do not think cathode ray tube technology is capable of tapping into this. It would take quantum science or beyond to be able to look into the past, if indeed, it is ever possible.

[demoncase]

Time Travel is a classic trope of Sci-fi because it's always good fun- with lots of good and bad outcomes to get your teeth into
Plus you get to re-use the costumes from the last Julius Caesar play Wardrobe had gathering dust

My thinking is that if anyone could cheat entropy and the laws of thermodynamics- thus going back in time, you immediately drop into a universe that is now on a divergent path to the one you left.
<SNIPPED FOR BREVITY>
Think "Butterfly Effect" or "Predestination" for movies that grab the concept for me.
Plenty of stories- but obviously "Night Watch" by Terry Pratchett is always going to place first for me (RIP STP GNU )

This is very heavy and fascinating, thank you!

One important point you mention is that by the mere act of carrying one's energy and matter back in time, not even considering any information or personal interactions you have with people in the past, could potentially alter the future and change things beyond our ability to pre-determine what effect it would have. In a crude sense, would the following be an example of this idea?:

A man travels to 1119 AD London. He walks down a road, and happens to see a substantially-sized wooden log in the way of the road. Deciding to be helpful, he takes out his trusty personal phaser pistol that he picked up in the year 2219 and proceeds to disintegrate that pesky log, thus getting it out of the way of himself, and everyone else. Our time traveller hangs around a bit, and travels back home to the year 2519 AD.

What he did not think about, is that that wooden log was originally in the "right place and right time" or wrong place and wrong time, looked at another way, and, in the original time line, a man was riding a horse down that same road, and his horse struck that wooden log, and the rider proceeded to fall off the horse, break his neck, and die.

However, in the new time line, the log is gone, so the horse-rider does not fall off the horse, and he lives. The problem: He marries and has children, and one of his descendants in the future, through various circumstances, becomes one of the world's most vile and vicious global dictators and starts a world wide war, leading to the deaths of millions of people. And all of that could have been prevented had our time traveller not disintegrated the log.

That's but one example where you do something with unknown consequences- but ANYTHING you do in the past has some consequence in the future:

Let's run a scenario:

Me, a mild mannered Head Of Quality & EHS in 2019, spills my Monster Low Carb on that weird experiment in the science lab and end up suddenly back in 1019AD

Big issues to consider (If we use my hometown as an example):
Society in 1019AD is not today- People are mostly subsistence living and extremely fearful of outsiders to the point of being insular
People do not move much from their home town unless on a pilgrimage for religous reasons, mustered to war by the local lord or turned out by famine.
The Vikings are still rampaging around the country, beheading, extorting and generally having a right jolly old time from York down to the Midlands- making anyone with blonde hair and blue eyes (me!) instantly of suspicion.
I am over a foot taller than the average man of the period
My chest is nearly a foot broader than that same average 1019AD man.....To them I would look like a Halo Spartan or Warhammer Space Marine would look to us.

I can't speak Saxon or Norse.
I know enough Latin to read the few printed books of the time.
I don't know the social mores and ettiquette
I have no valid currency from the time.
The first friction match for firelighting is 800 years away- as is the first antibiotic.
I can do few of the subsistence tasks that are a requisite of dark ages life.....
I don't know when to plant, what to plant or what to do with it to store it
Worst part is that coffee is at least 700 years away..... :eek:

If I try to fit into society we have myriad tiny impacts on the world around me

Even my consuming resources to the tune of 1 extra head results in a measurable impact
Today I am 1 in 250,000 (As that's my home town's population)- I therefore consume around 0.000004% of the local food, clean water and resources
in 1019, I would be 1 in 75 (the local Abbey had been open 20 years)- I therefore would be consuming 0.75% of the same
Me appearing in 1019 is the same impact on local resource is the same as adding 19,000 people to my town overnight.....and that's an impact any of us would notice!

And those are the terms to think in- You just being there changes the future.....and that's before you accidentally end up being your own great-X-25-grandad or similar shenanigans.

[demoncase]

Oh- and finally- that's if you find away of suddenly having a persons-worth of atoms suddenly co-existing with the atoms that make up the air when you snap into existence.....as Sci-fi likes to gloss over that bit

For reference, the theoretical result that happening is a sudden, violent, fusion explosion equivalent to your own mass doing an E=Mc^2 thing.

Congratulations- you just nuked your hometown in the past......I reckon that's going to change the future a bit- not that you'll be around to see it :D

[SpyderEdgeForever]

demoncase, if man can ever somehow harness faster than light waves or particles, could that allow some form of "time viewer" even if the physical person could not travel there?

[demoncase]

demoncase, if man can ever somehow harness faster than light waves or particles, could that allow some form of "time viewer" even if the physical person could not travel there?

No, for a whole series of complicated quantum mechanical reasons......to create a window to "back there" you need to impinge in some-way on there: all the information you take from there to here is the form of particles and waves that are now being routed out of the "then" universe to your future "viewscreen".....again, you are changing the past as much as turning up in person to start bagging dinosaurs for the rumpus room trophy case.

Yes, the classic 60s show "The Time Tunnel" lied to us all.
I'll be getting a class action suit against the creators in the near future.

[The Mastiff]

Demoncase, if you ever write a book let us know. I'm going to buy one. :)

Joe

[demoncase]

Demoncase, if you ever write a book let us know. I'm going to buy one. :)

Joe

Funnily enough I'm about 75,000 words into the 120,000 words needed to tout the thing for publication- yeah, it's sci-fi

[SpyderEdgeForever]

demoncase, you have made some great points my friend. Here is a related question about the actual physics of time itself: I have read statements and papers written by various physicists over the years and the two main differing views about time seem to be this:

On one hand we have those who follow in the footsteps of Einstein and say that time and space are fundamentally joined together, and time is an actual "thing", it can be sped up and slowed down; and since space can be manipulated, time can, also. Now, within that "camp", there are those who think technology can effect it, and those who believe technology cannot effect it. The most extreme views in this camp are those, such as the famous Russian scientist, Nicolai Kozyrev, who went so far as to claim that time is as objective a substance as energy and matter, and with the right equipment, time can be increased or decreased, thickened and thinned, like a material, in some areas. You can read about him (I do not endorse nor know if what he claimed is even true) here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_A ... ch_Kozyrev
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozyrev_mirror

https://divinecosmos.com/books-free-onl ... a-kozyrev/

Again, I do not endorse Kozyrev, nor that of his followers. It makes for interesting reading, to be sure. The more extreme ideas that come out of his work claim that time can be manipulated like matter is through chemistry, and time can be slowed down and sped up.

On the other hand, there are those who claim time as we know it is purely a human-construct, and has no actual objective existence, unlike, say, atoms, or electromagnetic waves. Those in this group claim human beings created these artificial dates, hours, minutes, etc, in order to make greater sense of how we live and function in the world, and there is no actual "past" nor "future", only today, the present, aside from our human-constructed calendars.

Of the two above stated groups, which do you think is more credibly correct, based on what we can experimentally detect and see?

[demoncase]

Time is not a thing you can independently manipulate without doing some major manipulation to space.
Hence why black holes are considered to result in a slowing of time due to their massive gravity well.

Nor is it a thing you can "pick up a lump of and shape"- it's a component of the material universe that allows energy to flow and thus matter to exist.

Consider it this way:
time and space is a length of 2x4 timber.
Space is the mass of the 2x4
Time is the length of the 2x4.
Increasing or decreasing the length results in a direct change in mass.
You cant remove the quantity of length from the quantity of mass: they are intrinsic components of each other.

Time is not a human construct, nor is the past and future.
It's merely the entropy in polite clothes.
The past is where entropy was lower, the future where it is higher

[SpyderEdgeForever]

If you were to speculate, as realistically as possible, about what human life would be like, not a "mere" 1000 or even 10 000 years from now, but, a million or a billion years in the future, what would you guess, based on what we see?

[demoncase]

I doubt we will make it that far as a species.

We're way too squishy and far too wasteful.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

demoncase, while we are on that topic, what do you think of this idea? Some have speculated about the possibility that human and even animal consciousness can somehow be "imprinted" on space itself, because we know space is not empty, it is a thing, with properties. If that were possible, because space itself is the densest and most durable thing, far greater so than matter, does that mean this could lead to a form of immortality?

[demoncase]

demoncase, while we are on that topic, what do you think of this idea? Some have speculated about the possibility that human and even animal consciousness can somehow be "imprinted" on space itself, because we know space is not empty, it is a thing, with properties. If that were possible, because space itself is the densest and most durable thing, far greater so than matter, does that mean this could lead to a form of immortality?

You're into the realms of science-fantasy not science-fiction.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

demoncase, while we are on that topic, what do you think of this idea? Some have speculated about the possibility that human and even animal consciousness can somehow be "imprinted" on space itself, because we know space is not empty, it is a thing, with properties. If that were possible, because space itself is the densest and most durable thing, far greater so than matter, does that mean this could lead to a form of immortality?

You're into the realms of science-fantasy not science-fiction.

That's a good point.

Back to time travel: People often bring up the idea of paradoxes when it comes to time travel, such as the famous Grandfather Problem.

But, often the idea of alternative universes is brought up. Do you think it is possible that there exist countless parallel Earths, with a counterpart of each of us, who live out different lives, or that does not make logical or rational sense? I know some speculate about that.

Alternate dimensions is different. That would be higher and lower dimensions in space.

IF parallel Earths existed, what would be needed for us to travel there?

[Bloke]

the famous Grandfather Problem.

[SpyderEdgeForever]

demoncase, then here is a project that the human race needs to undertake. If I had the money and power I would put you as one of the people in charge along with other super scientists and engineers, and we would figure out a way to artificially make people less wasteful and less squishy. Perhaps by placing the human brain within a body casing that is elastic and flexible but also harder and tougher than VG10 steel and as rust proof as H1.