Originally posted by Dean Roddey
This is why I tend to concentrate on more fundamental and important issues, like how I might manage to get laid before I die.

Buy some cool clothes, get a bike. If that doesn't do it for you nothing will!

Gus

Dean's romantic life not withstanding, and in the words of Strother Martin,
"what we have he-uh is fail-yuh to communicate"

A writer for Scientific American has proposed a paradox and done such a sloppy job of it that this has resulted in two completely different interpretations of exactly what it is that he said.

1. Either the theorum sprang from a mind other than that of the student or the time traveler, in which case it did not in fact come from "nothing".

Or 2. the theorum did not come from a mind, which is a contradiction in terms and not rational.

Either interpretation takes this supposed "paradox" and puts it in the crapper where it belongs.

That is unless Moore comes along and tells us differently which I do not rule out. :)

Throw us another one, Larry. We're on a roll here. :)

Buy some cool clothes, get a bike. If that doesn't do it for you nothing will!


I think what happened was that myself in the future was mad at me for some reason, so he came back in time and to try to find the women who had slept with me, and convince them that I'm a huge loser. But he wasn't able to find any, and therefore wasn't able to change the future, and civilization as we know it was saved.

Originally posted by RobertWood
Either interpretation takes this supposed "paradox" and puts it in the crapper where it belongs.

That is unless Moore comes along and tells us differently which I do not rule out. :)

Well, I do agree that it is BS, but I think that's actually sort of the point. It's a paradox, it's supposed to be BS. It's a red flag. Here's a different analogy: you go 20 years into the future, go to a bookstore, and find a bestseller by a young author (say 30). Take it back to the past, and give the copy to the ten-year-old before they could possibly have written it. What would happen? Would some cosmic force make them refuse? Or would they 'plagarize' their own work, even in some small way? If so, where did those ideas come from?

I think you were onto something with the conservation thing, Bob. There's actually quite a developed theory on information. Info can be treated like energy in a way, and the laws of thermodynamics seem to work with it. Thermo tells us that energy is conserved. So, you shouldn't be able to pull information (ideas) out of thin air like this. Maybe there's a 'proof' against time travel to the past in there.

M

P.S. And I'm just not into the parallel universes deal. I can't say why, it just seems like PhD to me (Piled higher and Deeper). I'll stick with the BS.

It's a paradox, it's supposed to be BS

Point well taken, LM. You never let me down. :)

Actually it didn't escape me alltogether. When I decided this paradox was not really very rational I got to thinking to myself "what exactly is a paradox?". Can it be that, by it's definition, it does exhibit irrationality?
To be frank, I had only a vague idea of what the accepted definition of the word actually is. So I immediately went to my Bible (my beloved dictionary.com) to take a look. Learned it's defined as...

1. A seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true
2. An assertion that is essentially self-contradictory, though based on a valid deduction from acceptable premises.
3. A statement contrary to received opinion.

Actually, I think we can make a case that "BS" and "irrational" are to be found somewhere in all that even though Mr. Webster chose not to include it. So I'm on the same page with you when you say "a paradox is supposed to be BS".

I revere language much in the way I think you have such a deep respect
for science.

Originally posted by RobertWood
Throw us another one, Larry. We're on a roll here. :)

I'd like to post another mind blowing link, but I don't have any handy. Check out these books by Dr. Michio Kaku:

Beyond Einstein: The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe

and

Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension

Bob, I know you are the sultan of cheap, but these books are only about ten bucks each at amazon.com. I highly recommend them. Dr. Kaku is NOT a quack. He is a theoretical physicist and has had his work published in peer reviewed journals. His books are written for the average (intelligent) person. You don't need to be a math wiz to understand the concepts.

I would also recommend The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes-And Its Implications by David Deutsch. It is without a doubt a mind blower - and that's before you get to the chapter on The Omega Point (even in the face of the apparent heat death of the universe. Deutsch is not afraid to think big). Don't be intimidated by these subjects. If David Deutsch is right, some Bob Wood's in some universes will take my advice, read the book and be launched into a deep, fulfilling journey into physics. Other Bob Wood's will say thanks but, if it aint free it aint for me. Still other Bob Wood's in other universes never joined this forum...

Thanks, Larry. Ten bucks is doable even for me I think.

But I probably should explain a little about this cheap thing and why I wear it as a badge of honor. Two examples come to mind.

About a month ago I bought four suits in a garage sale. I'm talking about $300 suits that are as stylish as anything you'll find on the rack right now in a good men's clothing store. Jackets, pants and matching dress shirts. They are all pristine. You would not be able to tell them from unworn clothing. What still amazes me is that the woman's deceased husband who owned them before me had to be exactly my size in height, build, waist, length etc. Admittedly I felt a little silly trying on these suits in this woman's laundry room but that's how I knew before I bought them that they could have been tailored for me instead of him.
The asking price for each suit was $5. I negotiated and paid $15 for all four (Dean give me your shipping address and I'll send one on up to you).

The 2nd example is this contraption hanging over my head. It's a video projector which someone paid $22,000 for in 1998. When I obtained it in June it had been used 1000 hours and like those suits was in like new pristine condition and performs as well as any 8" CRT projector anyone on this forum owns. I won't even say how much I have invested in this purchase because it's almost to the point of being obscene and since I'm about to sell two others it would also not be very smart.

I could bore you with a hundred other examples (such as the like brand new $20 sofa I'm sitting on now) but won't. America is a land of opportunity for the Sultan and I have no shame. :)

Bob,

I know of and salute your ability to find incredible bargains. Sometimes, it's like finding money in the street (by the way, I used to find money in the street all the time when I was a kid, I even found a diamond ring once, but I never find money anymore. Strange huh? Maybe it's those time travelers picking it up ;)). I didn't mean to imply that finding cheap bargains made you cheap. :) Good luck on your hunt, Sultan...

I didn't mean to imply that finding cheap bargains made you cheap.

Don't worry, it does. :) No implications were taken. :)

but I never find money anymore.

Have you ever considered moving out of Big Tuna? I understand there might be some opportunities in the Big Apple. :D

Well I am thinking of moving into the Fat Trout Trailer Park, though I still prefer Fhloston Paradise. ;)

"Orion Telescopes & Binoculars and Bookshop Santa Cruz are hosting a book signing and slide show presentation by renowned science writer, Timothy Ferris. The event begins at 7:30 pm Monday evening, September 9th at Bookshop Santa Cruz."


In case you want to get him to autograph your copy that you found for $1.98 :-)

Is Santa Cruz anywhere near the Redneck Riviera?
If not then I will have to spend several hundred dollars for an airplane ticket.
For that amount I can refurnish my whole house, buy another wardrobe and buy a year's supply of groceries at Big Lots. And still have enough left over for another hundred supermarket DVD rentals (at a buck a pop). :)

Hey guys,

I was trying to distract myself from a complicated problem at work today, so I asked an engineer from another department what I thought was a clever trick question.

I asked: How much time will it take a pulse of light to travel from Earth to the sun.
To this, he quickly replied: That's easy, about 8 minutes.

I said: No, actually, the answer is zero time. Then I proceeded to explain to him that the question would have to be answered from the point of view of the pulse of light, and since light does not experience time, the right answer was zero time.

He looked at me as if I had twelve heads and said: That's bull ****, Einstein was full of it. I went back to work shaking my head.

Is it very common for educated people to think this way? He deffinitely has the mental wherewithal to comprehend relativity.

Gus

Very few people drink enough coffee such that relativity would have to be factored into their daily lives. I come close sometimes. Actually, local law enforcement agencies have asked me to register my pee as a lethal weapon, due to dangerously high levels of caffeine.

To your question though, Einstein would have said that you are both right. One of the foundations of relativity is that there is no privileged point of reference. So he can live in reference frame A if he wants I guess.

Here's a different analogy: you go 20 years into the future, go to a bookstore, and find a bestseller by a young author (say 30). Take it back to the past, and give the copy to the ten-year-old before they could possibly have written it. What would happen? Would some cosmic force make them refuse? Or would they 'plagarize' their own work, even in some small way? If so, where did those ideas come from?

Well, as you've proposed this one, any and all ideas would be coming from the same "author".
But it does leave us with the question of how time travel could influence the past so that an entirely different future would then develop. Which truly would present a paradox.

However, I'm beginning to think it's all pretty simple. The past exists only as a memory. In other words, it no longer exists. Not in the way some are trying to conceptualize. I now don't think it's even logical to suggest that we could ever "visit" the past. That is no more grounded in logic than "a guy gaining spider-like characteristics by being bitten by a radioactive spider" (Dean Roddey).
And I see nothing in Einstein's discoveries which would refute this.

Bob

Bob,

I was wandering when this post would pop back up ( I was hoping it wouldn't die as it's just too mentally arousing ( No Dean, not THAT kind of arousing)).

I completely agree with you.

I too think the past no longer exists.

Dean,

The problem wasn't whether he had the right answer or not, the problem I had was that he said ALL THIS ABOUT TIME BEING RELATIVE TO SPEED IS A LOAD OF HORSE SHIIT. I would have thought it would be unusual for an engineer to think this way.

Gus

Well, yeh, he does seems to have missed out on the last century of scientific thought. Actually, you know it will be 100 years in 2005 since the publishing of the initial special theory. I assume that there will be a big to-do in the various scientific magazines and circles and whatnot.

Its pretty amazing that in 1905, Einstein, this unknown guy who had so-so grades and couldn't even get a job as a professor's assistant, working as a junior patent clerk, published three papers in that one year, each of which practically either created a whole new field of science, or made a massive contribution to an existing one: relativity, quantum theory, and thermodynamics.

"General relativity may be the biggest leap of the scientific imagination in history. Unlike many previous scientific breakthroughs, such as the principle of natural selection, or the discovery of the physical existence of atoms, General Relativity had little foundation upon the theories or experiments of the time. No one except Einstein was thinking of gravity as equivalent to acceleration, as a geometrical phenomenon, as a bending of time and space."

Alan Lightman (MIT)

Originally posted by RobertWood

The past exists only as a memory. In other words, it no longer exists.

I like this idea. Well said.

I wonder if 50 or 100 years from now, people will see time travel movies and stories as 'quaint', like us going back to stories about walking on the moon/mars without a space suit and seeing little green men.

M

The special theory of relativity, though pretty revolutionary, was more of a straightening out and refocusing of a lot of ideas that had been around. Of course, Einstein seemed to be the only one who could see the big picture and put all of those pieces together, so that doesn't minimize his huge contribution. Once he put it forward, it was taken up very quickly actually, considering it came from an unknown and had little basis in physical evidence. This kind of shows that it wasn't some kind of revolutionary idea, way beyond the current thinking. It was based only on simple math.

The general theory though, was a big step out forward, was very complex mathematically, and encountered a lot less enthusiasm. It really represented a big jump forward, that was harder for folks to make with him. The same can be said for the quantum ideas put forward in one of his first papers. Only a few folks really picked up quantum theory until the early 20s after WWI.

One thing I notice about Einstein is that he is one of the few great figures of science history that I could have easily enjoyed hanging out with. He was funny, and had the same kind of light hearted cynicism that I have. So many of the things I find myself saying, which I would think of as purely products of a modern, humorous intellectual cyncism born of modern casual vulgarity and mistrust of authority bread in Vietnam and Watergate et al, I read him having used in many of his letters.

Your last paragraph there is like a "big bang". It could have the effect of suddenly sending this discussion out into the far reaching universe of the off topicum. Speaking as a long time devotee of talk radio, I like it. But then again I hold the distinction of being banned from more talk radio venues than probably any other living person. :)

Bob

Originally posted by Dean Roddey
...authority bread in Vietnam...

I never tried it but I heard it can get you high. Watch out for the moldy parts.


And a friendly reminder :) don't talk politics.

Oops, who decided that we should have more than one word that sounds the same? My CPU doesn't have sufficient bandwidth to search the alternatives, so the most recently cached version gets used, irregardless of context.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language...
"IRREGARDLESS - Coined in the United States in the early 20th century, it has met with a blizzard of condemnation for being an improper yoking of irrespective and regardless and for the logical absurdity of combining the negative ir- prefix and -less suffix in a single term. Although one might reasonably argue that it is no different from words with redundant affixes like debone and unravel, it has been considered a blunder for decades and will probably continue to be so."

Irregardless, your reply was very well stated. :)

Bob

If it weren't for logical absudity, I wouldn't have much to say.

I wonder if 50 or 100 years from now, people will see time travel movies and stories as 'quaint', like us going back to stories about walking on the moon/mars without a space suit and seeing little green men.

If there's one thing about human behaviour which has been consistent from it's beginning, you just pointed to it.

It seems to be fundamental and can be described with two principles...

1. Every living generation sees the generations before it as being "quaint".

2. But every living generation fails to recognize that it too will be deemed "quaint" by future generations.

Everywhere we turn we see this behaviour at work. It can be the latest hair style. Or it can be the latest form of dress. Or it can be the latest of a million other things. And invariably, it's practitioners are oblivious to the second principle.

More importantly, and relevant to our discussion, it can also be the latest ideas. A recognition of this brings us full circle back to where this discussion began.
In a manner of speaking, Dean maintained (and you agreed) that some of today's ideas will never become "quaint".
I'm not sure I could ever be convinced of that.

Bob

Ever since the big bang, hydrogen and oxygen have mixed together to create water. This will continue to be the case forever. Its based on fundamental concepts of physics related to the configuration of the positive and negative charges in atoms, wwhich will be the case forever.

There are many things that we know well enough at this point to know tha they are fundamental. I don't think that anyone will ever consider this understanding of the fundamental basis of what is probably the most important aspect of the physical world we live in as 'quaint'. A thousand years from now, our understanding of the fundamental processes that underlie the architecture of the atom, but it won't change these fundamental facts of the atom and how they combine to create everything in our universe.

Part of the problem is that our understanding of the physical world was so primitive (and the scientific process so badly understood and implemented and the social structure structured such that influential rich idiots could say what the truth was) for so long, that it has become a cliche that everything that was known will be completely overturned. But, the faster our understanding ramps up, the less and less likely this becomes.

It is just as naive to believe that all knowledge is provisional as it is to believe that all any knowledge is absolutely final. Its just a matter of odds at this point, and the odds are likely to be moving towards the other end of the range on certain fundamental questions.

The word "naive" has many definitions. While most are pejorative in nature, this one is not...

"Untutored in the perversities of some particular program or system"

That one has a nice ring to it. I'm just "naive" enough to think it's the one you had in mind. :)

What Dean said.

Newton's ideas definitely aren't quaint. The much older Erastothanes isn't quaint. They were dead-on right, like many others. It's just that thier ideas weren't as universal as they might have been.

It's a whole spectrum I guess. Da Vinci had some brilliant ideas, but then those drawings of flight machines are quaint.

M

I guess I tried to sneak that all back in while thinking the two of you weren't looking. Hoping that I could trick you into accepting it. But when it comes to this you all are incorrigible.

Then again maybe I'm still just smarting from the discovery that something I've believed for so long may not be the case after all. Strong beliefs are not easily abandoned.

If they were, then they couldn't have been too strong to begin with I guess, right?

If Einstein tree yellow born system favorite. Field shown Newton have minimum. And Erastothanes include everywhere of change certain.

Bob

Ok, its a coded message. I will apply my superb pattern matching and decryption skills.... It says: "Tony Olando and Dawn shall gnaw the fire hydrant of eternity. Philistine toadstool, though morbid halitosis". Is that right?

I'm feeling a "Beautiful Mind" moment coming on...

This thread has become too much for me. It's now stripped me of all coherency. I'm reduced to a pile of blathering gibberish.

And the sun set slowly in the west, cruelly burning all those who lived there...

I just spent about the last hour reading up to page 10 and I just want to say something (although it's probably been said) before I read anymore.

If there is one thing that I have learned about physics it's that there are few if any constants and while they may appear that there are constants on the surface, as humans progress we find this is not the case. I try to apply this little facet of knowledge to anything that I read or listen to including our current state of "knowledge" (making reference to the 80/20 discussion). It would not suprise me one bit if 500 years from now (just bear with me) the "facts" as we think we know them now are something entirely different. But then again, it wouldn't suprise me if we knew just about the same as we know today. The point is, I think it's a futile (albeit fun) discussion to speculate on what we may or may not know in the future.

Furthermore, I just think we are pretty insignificant compared to the 'rest' of what's out there and we are kidding ourselves if we think we know 1/10th of 1% of anything. (Yes I get the point about physics in general but this is exactly the point I am trying to make). If you simply consider the timeline of the earth and humans existence from the anthropological record it is just a pathetic little dot on the scale!

FWIW while I'm typing all of this the "God factor" is in the back of my mind, AND I can say this much, while I do not consider myself a religious person, I'm certainly not an aetheist either. (But we will leave that to the Contact discussion).

Now back to the reading...

edit: BTW I watched the movie last night and I thought it was entertaining --but that's about it.

The discussion that wouldn't die... Well, I'll wait until you read the rest before replying, since much of what you mention was gotten into in the subsequent pages.

Excellent! another helping of "The Never-ending Thread"!!!

I LOVE it.

Gus

Looks like Carpe has arrived just in the nick of time. I was almost ready to wave the white flag. Let er rip, Carpe.

Bob

This thread has consumed the better part of my afternoon, so I hope you are all happy ;)

There seems to be a turn towards a more philosphical side of things and in that spirit...

This is what bugs me most when discussions like this come up: "If you don't know where you came from how do you know where you are going?" (I guess the flip side of that is, wherever you go there you are) Anyway, we can make conjectures about the origin of the universe all day but it's just that... speculation. AND that is just origin (if you subscribe to such a view) take it a step further and talk about what came before our universe? Perhaps our creation was the spin-off of another universe, but then what came before that? The point is we don't know and until you have your foundation is set you really cannot say with much certainy (relatively speaking of course).

To go back to around page 7, Dean speaks about fudamentals and how there is a tendency towards a reduction in laws. I would argue that this is more a byproduct of human desire for classification and simplification than science progressing in a manner that is beneficial. Humans tend toward simplification. This is partly why racism is such a problem. People do not want to take the time to consider each person that they cross paths with on an individual basis, nor does our biology tend toward it (survival instincts), but I digress... The point is I believe that on some level humans desire simplification and this unconsciously finds its way into science.

Another little thought from page 9-- I have to quote Dean because I just love the way he puts it, "The one reason that science dominates dogma today is that science never believed it had all the answers, and dogma did". The words "Science kills God" kept coming to mind around that page. Back in high school I used to date this girl that was a borderline fundamentalist christian. Basically we could never see eye to eye and split up (imagine that!). Anyhow, the theory that she inspired during many of our talks was that science will effectively kill off God and religion as we know it. My favorite discussion was proving the existence of God. Well, as any college graduate that has taken philosophy 101 knows there is more scientific proof that God does not exist than the contrary. BUT I always come back to what was before the big bang? AND trying to deny the existence of God is like saying a stiff wind could blow through a junkyard and make a 747 (the 747 being the equivalent to all that makes our unierse). OK all ready make a point! Well my point is this... I think that society tends to write off things that science cannot currently explain to the divine.

Robert said something along the lines of, maybe we could find an entirely new set of fundamentals. He was speaking of the universe expanding, matter & anti-matter. Well I say you don't need to travel to another universe to find that because if you don't know where you came from then how can you know where you are going? The big point is (is a theme occuring here? ;) ) our fundamentals have essentially evolved from what we have established since that man was a slave since he saw the space shuttle lift off (thanks Dean) and to conclude that these fundamentals represent the 80% of physics is down right, well (pun intended), short sighted

As usual my random ramblings kill the conversation ;)

Don't worry. It's not that. Some of the contributors look at the thread infrequently is all. As Gus mentioned, this thread is like a cat with 9 lives.

Bob

I just got home and saw your response DRS, welcome to the thread.

Gus

BUT I always come back to what was before the big bang? AND trying to deny the existence of God is like saying a stiff wind could blow through a junkyard and make a 747 (the 747 being the equivalent to all that makes our unierse). OK all ready make a point! Well my point is this... I think that society tends to write off things that science cannot currently explain to the divine.


But, as I pointed out somewhere back there in one of those many pages, if its unlikely that everything out there came from nothing, its an order of magnitude more unlikely that something that could create everything out there came from nothing.

Continuing with the philosophy class... for a God to exist by definition s/he ;) has to be omnipotent, omniscent, and omnipresent (or infinite, i.e. there was no beginning therefore there has always been something). I suppose this sort of throws a monkey wrench into the whole big bang theory unless you subscribe to the multiverse theory (?) (The analogy might be God with a jar full of marbles that represent different universes and our particular universe was just waiting amongst the others that have always existed too).

But then again a God by definition would not be subject to the laws of physics so who really knows ;)

Originally posted by DRS
Continuing with the philosophy class... for a God to exist by definition s/he ;) has to be omnipotent, omniscent, and omnipresent (or infinite, i.e. there was no beginning therefore there has always been something).
Actually not all believers think this way. But to make a complex issue ridiculously simple, I agree that if God isn't omnipotent and omniscient what's the point?
I suppose this sort of throws a monkey wrench into the whole big bang theory unless you subscribe to the multiverse theory
Why? Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism teach that the universe eternally goes through a process of being created and ultimately dissolved...and that the process goes on forever.
But then again a God by definition would not be subject to the laws of physics so who really knows ;)
Not true. The above statement is based on many assumptions that are typical of Western philosophy and religion. It thinks of omniscience and omnipotence in human terms. It separates God from the universe instead of thinking that the universe came from and is an INTRINSIC part of God. And that the laws that govern the universe are an intrinsic part of God and visa versa so to speak, not something arbitrary like the laws that man creates. In other words, God can be omnipotent in the sense that the universe forms out of his being. But God and universes always have been and will be and God can be omnipotent but we need not make that omnipotence conflict with or be different from the laws of the universe.

p.s. Dean, I wish when you quoted people you would indicate who you are quoting :). It makes it a lot easier to find the original quote.

p.s. Dean, I wish when you quoted people you would indicate who you are
quoting . It makes it a lot easier to find the original quote


I try to spare them the embarrassment of being named when I flay them with my scalpel sharp logic :-)


Continuing with the philosophy class... for a God to exist by definition s/he has to be omnipotent, omniscent, and omnipresent (or infinite, i.e. there was no beginning therefore there has always been something)


But, if you argue that one very complex thing can exist without prior cause, then you cannot reasonably argue that something far less complex can exist without prior cause. Arbitrarily claiming a priori (doesn't it make me sound a lot smarter when I use Latin terms like that?) that one of them is free of all logical consequences as we understand them, while the other is not, is not a defensable argument, its just an arbitrary exception made to free you from having to apply the same logic to one as to the other.

Physics and Time Travel are directly related. That's why the physics discussion wasn't off topic and was allowed. Discussing the existence of god has nothing to do with Time Travel - in the movie and it's just not a good idea to go down this path. Let's get back on topic, thanks!

Originally posted by Dean Roddey


its just an arbitrary exception made to free you from having to apply the same logic to one as to the other.

Dean, the fact is I have agreed with pretty much everything you have said in this thread (edit: at least the physics). The only thing is, I say _consider_ the possibilities even if they don't fit our current accepted logic.

One example of consider the possibilities....

Perhaps the way we currently view physics is determined by the human body itself. Perhaps there is a spectrum of "things" going on that neither our perception or technology can currently sense.

On the extreme: some of the genetically incompatible others that are most probably out there experience, and in fact are not subject to, the same physics as we are simply because of the the elements that make up their body etc.

Ok so maybe it's a bit on the x-files side, or maybe I just got too much sleep ;)

We are animals. No more, no less.
So is a dog. Like us, the dog understands his physical environment with a level of understanding that he's capable of. But have you ever tried to explain Einstein's General Theory of Relativity to your dog?
Why is it so difficult to accept that there might exist ways of understanding things which, like the dog, we are not privy to (at least for now)?

We have not yet seen "THE END" of this movie. It could be that that we're barely beyond the opening credits. I sincerely don't understand why so many need to believe that either present day science, or present day religion or present day philosophy or present day anything is the do all and end all.

As for me, you can occasionally find me out on the beach at the Gulf Islands National Seashore in the evening. There is a spot which is about ten miles from any artificial light in either direction. At that spot when you look out you can clearly see the Milky Way and millions of other little points of light in the sky. And you will see the evening ocean which is breathtaking. And since you're only about 15 miles from Gulf Breeze you might even see a UFO or two.
You stand there and contemplate and try to take it all in. And there are no words which can even begin to do it justice. And your lack of any real understanding of it all becomes itself a beautiful thing.
Intellectual hallucinogens? Who needs em.

Bob

Guys,

Have you considered the time travel fund? (http://www.timetravelfund.com/) Sounds like a great investment. :D

I consider everything. As I said many times, its all about statistics. At this point, it is rapidly becoming statistically less and less likely that there is goin to be a 5th fundamental force or that atoms are made up of anything besides quarks and so forth. And, as I also said many times, we were talking about fundamental physics, not the glorious, combinatorial consequences of those fundamental rules. We may find a planet where everything is salmon and teal, and all of the inhabitants worhip disco music. That'll be kind of disturbing, but it won't require any new physics to exist (other than really, really bad taste.)

As to the larger metaphysical questions about "what's outside of outside", its so unknowable at this point, and possible for all 'time', that putting that forward as an example of the fact that all that we know about this universe might all be wrong... I don't think that's very scientific. Whatever is outside, inside here there seem to be fundamental physical processes that are universal. If there is an out there out there, but we can never get there or prove/disprove its existence, in scientific terms, its completely irrelevant. If it cannot be measured, or have any discernable outcome, then for all practical intents and purposes, it doesn't exist. Its nice to think about, and I do it a lot; but, in the end, for us, the discovery of a practically inexhaustible, clean energy source would be infinitely more important a discovery, because it would mean no more starving babies or polluted skies.

It is the one technological goal which has no equal in it's importance. It probably could be made to happen soon. With a full court press similiar to that which developed the atomic bomb. It would revolutionize human life in every way. It would end our dependancy on Middle Eastern oil. It would be the biggest step ever taken to turn around our negligence and abuse of the environment. It would provide the biggest boon to the American economy than anything we've ever experienced. And would just plain provide a better life for most all of us.
But sadly, it's not likely to happen as soon as it might simply because of the power and influence of those who make money from fossil fuels.

Bob

Fussion has turned out to be a lot harder than anyone ever thought. A lot of bucks have been put into basic research already, but its been a tough nut to crack. Progress has definitely been made, but its been very slow compared to other areas where that kind of effort and potential payoff have been.

I just read the Time Travel Fund page, Larry. What a hoot. They even take Paypal. :D

Dean,

Why only nuclear fusion? Are we never going to have efficient photovoltaics?

Bob

Sure, anything would help. But if you want to power world wide industrial level processes, fussion is really the thing to have. Definitely we should take advantage of solar in those places where its available consistently, and wind power and whatever else. But to really replace coal and fission and hydro, fussion would probably be the only way.

The nice thing about fussion is that it wouldn't be one of those "reduce your lifestyle and live on renewables" deals, which are so hard to sell to people. It would be "let's party" and without having a big radioactive mess afterards to clean up.

It was 1933 when it occurred to Leo Szilard "that a chain reaction might be set up if an element could be found that would emit two neutrons when it swallowed one neutron."
Then in 1939 Einstein told Szilard and Edward Teller (and it was relayed to FDR) that a weapon was indeed possible.
We detonated a uranium fission bomb six years later.

How much more difficult is it than that?

CLICK HERE (http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/jukeboxjohny/) TO SEE A SHORT 'TIME TRAVEL THREAD' COMMERCIAL MESSAGE

Bob

I think I heard an anecdote that the idea occurred to him while watching street lights in London. I wonder if it ever really occurred to these guys that they may have murdered the world. Oh well.

Regarding energy, check this out: http://www.wentworth.nsw.gov.au/solartower/
...the tower will be one kilometre high - the tallest man-made structure on Earth and incorporate 700,000 cubic metres of concrete; the accompanying 'green house' will have a radius of 3.5 kilometres...

Its infinitely more difficult. Uranium and plutonium *want* to blow, and you have to restrain it. Uranium, or more precisely a particular rare isotope of uranium, and plutonium are very large nuclei. They are large enough that the repulsive forces between their protons is close to overwhelming the strong nuclear force that holds them together (ever wonder why the table of elements doesn't go on and on, that's why.) So it doesn't take much to piss them off. And when they go, they release on average more than one neutron each time an atom splits, which sets off more and more.

With fusion, its the other way around. You are taking very small, very stable atoms, and trying to push them together under immense pressure and temperatures, to make them fuse together. They don't want to do it, you have to make them. So, unlike fission, which is a bomb waiting to happen and if you don't watch it carefully, you are screwed, fussion is like the fire you are trying to light with your last match in the wilderness or you are going to die. You have to work hard to keep it going and it wants to go out.

The big problem with fussion is that the temperatures and pressures required mean that the plasma (the super-heated gas used for fuel) cannot touch anything. So they have to try to restrain it in a magnetic bottle. Ever try to do that? I haven't but I could imagine how hard it is. You are trying to keep this super-heated plasma inside an invisible bottle made of magnetic lines of force.

Originally posted by RobertWood
We have not yet seen "THE END" of this movie. It could be that that we're barely beyond the opening credits. I sincerely don't understand why so many need to believe that either present day science .... is the do all and end all.


Bob,

You never responded to my world or anatomy analogies above. Another one is palientology (sp?). Are we likely to discover some whole new era of fossils with bizzare creatures beyond our imaginings? No. We just keep digging up the same bones, and we learn a bit here and there, but there's no Atlantis awaiting. So is it fair to say the bonediggers movie has maybe one more wrap-up scene and then the end credits?

If you can buy that, then why is it hard to believe that the physics movie is at least half over?

And really, I don't "need to believe" it. If it seemed that we were at 5% I'd be fine with that. I might even be able to make my name in a bigger way.

M

Larry,

The time travel fund was awesome. I notice that they don't explain why you have to be pulled out at the moment of your death. Couldn't they do one trial case where someone is pulled out tomorrow to validate the whole thing? They do claim you can request already deceased family to be pulled at some point in their lives. Hmmm..... Pascal's Wager is alive and well.

M

Originally posted by RobertWood
Then in 1939 Einstein told Szilard and Edward Teller (and it was relayed to FDR) that a weapon was indeed possible.
We detonated a uranium fission bomb six years later.


Bob,

Just a fixit: Szilard and Teller had the science of an atomic bomb down, wrote the letter, and asked Einstein to sign it. E didn't contribute much directly to the a-bomb effort, but he was a luminary at the time and the other two guys' letters wouldn't have made it to the prez.


I wonder if it ever really occurred to these guys that they may have murdered the world.


No politics, eh, Larry? Well, since you breached it, Szilard and Teller were near polar opposites politically. Szilard petitioned Truman in 1945 begging that the first bombs not be used on a city (and got some 60 fellow project scientists to sign on). Teller on the other hand is the template for Dr. Strangelove. He pushed hard for fusion bombs after WWII and has advocated using bombs for landscaping the earth, among other things. Teller was also the main driving force behind Reagan's Star Wars, which was a complete joke technologically (x-ray lasers still don't work 20 years later).

In any case, the discovery of atomic weapons was inevitable. It's just as well for us that it wasn't Heisenberg.

M

I think I heard an anecdote that the idea occurred to him while watching street lights in London.

Larry,

The most fascinating history of all is how these ideas popped into their minds.

To me one of the most incredible examples of this was how Philo Farnsworth conceived television. While working on his father's farm in Idaho he spent the summer of 1921 crisscrossing the fields harvesting line after line of crops. Seeing the lines in the field got him to wondering if it might be possible to "trap light in an empty jar and transmit it one-line-at-a-time on a magnetically deflected beam of electrons." He was 13 years old.

Then late one afternoon in March of 1922, Justin Tolman (Farnsworth's public school teacher) was startled to see a complicated array of electrical diagrams scattered across the blackboard in his classroom. At the front of the room stood 14 year old Philo.
"What has this got to do with Chemistry?" Tolman asked.
"I've got this idea," Farnsworth calmly replied. "I've got to tell you about it because you're the only person I know who can understand it." The boy paused and took a deep breath. "This is my idea for electronic television."

This is one of the illustrations the teacher saw on the blackboard...
http://members.cox.net/xanadu/philo02.gif

This principle still forms the heart of what I have in my home theater today. Though the essence of the idea is extraordinarily simple, it eluded the most prominent scientists of the day. And instead crystallized in the mind of a 13 year old boy while chained to a horse-drawn harvesting machine.

Bob

Moore,

Oops. Thanks for correcting me. But I think you'll still agree that they made it all happen in a remarkably short period of time.

p.s. no one has made any mention of my little "commercial". I guess I'm a failure as an entrepreneur. :(

Bob

I don't have much to add except that I loved this movie! :D

Originally posted by RobertWood
It would end our dependancy on Middle Eastern oil. It would be the biggest step ever taken to turn around our negligence and abuse of the environment.

Not that I am into conspiracy theories but I have heard, and would imagine, that the likes of the "Big Three" and oil producers have been responsible for buying up technology that could have done this or something similar in the past.

I'll try and dig some stuff up later...

You never responded to my world or anatomy analogies above. Another one is palientology (sp?). Are we likely to discover some whole new era of fossils with bizzare creatures beyond our imaginings? No. We just keep digging up the same bones, and we learn a bit here and there, but there's no Atlantis awaiting. So is it fair to say the bonediggers movie has maybe one more wrap-up scene and then the end credits? If you can buy that, then why is it hard to believe that the physics movie is at least half over? And really, I don't "need to believe" it. If it seemed that we were at 5% I'd be fine with that. I might even be able to make my name in a bigger way.

Damn. Why do you have to make so much sense. :)

Your points are excellent as always. But you're thinking in terms of what we do know. And what is known now. What I've been trying to do is to get you to entertain the possibility that there might be fundamental things which we have not yet discovered. Things which could even turn what we know now on it's ear. I know this flies in the face of what we know now. Of course it does. That is often the nature of what we "don't know". History is replete with the egg on the faces of those who failed to recognize this. Nothing has been said to this point which convinces me that 2002 will be any different.

Bob

Bob,

But my point, which I think I'm not making very well, and it's only by analogy because I haven't thought of a better way, is that we do have some idea of where we are in our understanding of our universe (physics at least). It's more than just a wild hunch or my opinion. We're not at 0.05% of our understanding of human anatomy, are we?

And the point Dean has made is that the universe can still be a fantastically mind-boggling place even if we don't have a lot of new physics to learn. Even the scale of our galaxy is just phenomenal, and there are billyuns and billyuns of galaxies in the universe. Anyone who is blase about that is pretending.

About egg-on-face and turning ideas on their ear: now is just a little different than the vast history of mankind. Why? Well, it was around 1900 that people really started to catch on that science might be useful for something, after radio, telephone, and light bulbs had come about (through rather painful ad hoc means). Companies started employing them, and funding universities to do research. The pace accelerated until WWII, where it just exploded, as you point out six years for the atomic bomb was just astounding, with radar, cryptography, jet engines, etc. all in the same time period. Vast vast sums in many governments poured into science. The number of scientists grew by more than an order of magnitude, and the money per scientist (for salary, equipment, travel, etc.) grew even more. There have been some great things done in this time, both in physics (QED, cosmology) and practical applications (Apollo, lasers, solid-state devices). But not much 'fundamental' since the sixties, despite all the money and intense competition and really smart people. Did we hit an impasse? Or are we reaching the point where it takes more and more to learn less and less?

M

Originally posted by RobertWood
To me one of the most incredible examples of this was how Philo Farnsworth conceived television. While working on his father's farm in Idaho he spent the summer of 1921 crisscrossing the fields harvesting line after line of crops. Seeing the lines in the field got him to wondering if it might be possible to "trap light in an empty jar and transmit it one-line-at-a-time on a magnetically deflected beam of electrons." He was 13 years old.

Bob,

That is an astounding story. I only knew that he basically got ripped off by RCA later on; didn't know he was that young.

M

Just a fixit: Szilard and Teller had the science of an atomic bomb down, wrote the letter, and asked Einstein to sign it. E didn't contribute much directly to the a-bomb effort, but he was a luminary at the time and the other two guys' letters wouldn't have made it to the prez.


He set the basis for the bomb with his discovery of the equivalence of mass and energy. And he mentioned a few times very early on that it might be possible to take advantage of that, but he never really followed up on it or thought through what it was take to do it.

The real breakthroughs were when people started noticing that certain materials were radioactive, and started using the new mass spectrometer and other tools to look at those substances and figured out that they were transmuting down the periodic table. Lise Mitner (one of the great unsung female scientists, from Germany) finally made the last leap, when she discovered that what was happening in Uranium is that certain Uranium atoms were being broken apart, and that some of the flotsom of those breakups where hitting other Uranium atoms, and sticking. This was creating 'transuranic' elements, which are unstable and start to decay.

That was key to the whole thing. Slizard and others found out about this, and made the connection early, but they weren't the only ones. A number of people knew something was up and were working on the problem. Slizard was just the first one who well, "Holy shitakis, Batman. This could make that humongous bomb or power source that people have been hinting at a very real reality". And he was the first to really get upset about it and worry that the Germans might get their first, and therefore to try to push the US Govt into doing it first.

As usual, the Govt was completely clueless and really took a long time to get started, and in true form it basically turned on the people most responsible for making it happen (Slizard and Oppenheimer) because they had the audacity to actually think hard about the possible ramifications of these tools, those damn commies.

Anyway, if you really want to learn all about this, read Richard Rhodes: The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Its an excellent read, and really goes into not just the technical issues, but the whole environment in which it happened, and all of the many random scientific discoveries and failures that caused it to happen the way it did.

Oh, and some of the reasons that a lot of folks, including Einstein didn't think much of the possibilities is that everyone pretty much thought then that atoms were not splittable or transmutable, and didn't understand was that radioactivity was basically just that happening.

And, when they did figure out what was going on, they knew that the isotope of Uranium that was naturally radioactive is a piece of a percent of the isotopes that make up natural uranium. And, since they are chemically the same (isotopes have the same electron makeup, and therefore the same chemical properties) separating them would have to be based purely on their very slightly different weights. No one believed, pre-war, that anyone would spend the massive bucks required to do that on an industrial scale.

But, the war made it 'practical' do do it, and unbelieveable sums of money were spent, when you account for inflation I'd hate to know. It would probably be like us spending hundreds of billions today, and in a very short period of time. They built huge factories and had to do it redundantly because there were three possible ways to do it, and they didn't know which would work, so they did them all at once.

Today, we use Plutonium, which is a by-product of uranium reactors. This is the reason they did the original reactors, not to make energy but to make plutonium for the bomb. They first tested a Uranium bomb, and I think that the Hiroshima bomb was Uranium, and the Nagasaki bomb was Plutonium. Just a grapefruit sized chunk and a whole city gone.

Moore,

I didn't think my post was political. Do you know anyone on the right or left that is for the proliferation of nuclear weapons? I don't either. Maybe I was naive. A discussion about Edward Teller is going to get very political so I think I'll just stop right there, thank you very much. :D

Bob,

It's amazing how ideas pop into people's heads. That sounds like a great study for a psychology student. I wonder if these people are in a reverie or trance when they have these ideas. In any case, Farnsworth sounds like a genius. But all too often, genius in one area doesn't make a person immune from bad judgment in another.

I wonder if people actually donate money to that time travel fund? Probably. I think I'm going to write a book on how to get rich writing get rich quick books. That's the ticket. ;)

I can help you be rich in the future, just give me all of your money now!

Originally posted by Larry Davis
Do you know anyone on the right or left that is for the proliferation of nuclear weapons? I don't either. Maybe I was naive. A discussion about Edward Teller is going to get very political so I think I'll just stop right there, thank you very much. :D


Well, you didn't mention proliferation. I just didn't like the manhattan scientists = thoughtless murderers of the world linkage. Teller and his ilk are in a small minority, although he is one of the few left from that era still active in science.

Probably a good idea just to drop it. Unless you wanna step outside ...
:)


I wonder if people actually donate money to that time travel fund? Probably.

It's a lot less messy than dealing with frozen heads.

Hey! I just thought, they should give you the option of when you want to be transported to. I mean, the earliest date *after* time travel is invented. Like, if it happened in 20 years, well, that's not too exciting. But if it's too far in the future, you'd probably just die of culture shock. I'd put down 2112 and see if it's like that Rush album.

M

Hello Moore,

I didn't say that the physicists who created the atomic bomb were thoughtless murderers. Please give me some credit. My post was not political but clearly it struck a nerve with you. If I had a time machine, I would go back and not offend you with my comments.

Larry,

Fuggedaboutit. Obviously I read something you didn't mean into your post.

Without getting too political I hope, I'll mention a conversation I recently had with a couple of former Soviet guys. They said changing history under Stalin or Krushchev was easy. For example, if someone like Trotsky fell out of favor, all records of them would be purged, old newspapers would be changed, textbooks, photos would be altered to remove them, etc. I had heard this before of course but it was interesting getting it from the horse's mouth. They knew they were being lied to but what could they do? Actually, they were kind of laughing which I guess is one way to deal with it.

Another form of 'time travel'?

Anyway, to get back to the thread topic it kind of made me think how ingrained lack of time travel to the past is in our thinking. Think of the phrases:

"What's done is done"
"You can't change the past"
"That's water under the bridge"
etc.

So does it mean that we have understood for a while something fundamental about the world, that time only goes one way?

I still like Bob's take on this: the past simply doesn't exist anymore.

M

So why do I constantly relive that disasterous guitar recital my first year at music school? :-)

Moore,

I've seen before and after photos of cosmonauts who were removed from photographs. I've also seen Gorby's blotch on his head go missing in official (Soviet) photos.

But my point, which I think I'm not making very well

If it could be made any better I cannot imagine how. :)

Bob

While I seem to be in the majority when it comes to liking the 1960 George Pal original, it appears that I am in the minority for my favorable reaction to the modern remake.

I like both films. Both have good special effects (for their respective times). Both have good performances. And I have found both to be enjoyable films, but for different reasons. While the modern remake starts off considerably more depressing, I feel this gives the film added emotional impact when the conclusion rolls around.

The one thing I think the remake could have used was Rod Taylor, who I felt gave a more powerful performance as male lead.

-Mark

If it seemed that we were at 5% I'd be fine with that.

How about a compromise? I'll go with the 5%. If you will tell me that the remaining 95% could be chock full of things which might be shocking to what you and Dean are aware of now.

Originally posted by johng
I'm glad someone else noticed Alan Young. That was a nice touch; that and the dress shop. Of course, only those who have a warm spot for the George Pal version have any idea what we're writing about :)
Good Viewing,
John G

John,

I'm a big fan of the original, which I have on widescreen LaserDisc (no, I won't part with my LDs. I love DVD, but have grown accustomed to my LDs). I digress. I missed Alan Young in the remake. I have only watched it once since purchasing the DVD, so I might have blinked. I take it from your comment that he was in the dress shop?

Mark

I just saw "Close Encounters Of The Third Kind" again today.
Isn't it funny that they developed the characters that had relationships with Richard Dreyfus and then never included them in his departure in the alien ship?

My point is, they made references to the fact that they were going to go some where "very fast" and then return, which would put them years ahead in the future. But they made no big deal of the fact that his kids and the woman he had just kissed passionately moments before, would be gone when he returns?

It's like when they wrote this they thought actual time travel too radical for the general public so they just glossed over it without going into detail.

Gus

Originally posted by RobertWood
How about a compromise? I'll go with the 5%. If you will tell me that the remaining 95% could be chock full of things which might be shocking to what you and Dean are aware of now.

Are you crazy? 5%?!?! That's not a compromise, that's an insult. You expect me to just give my position away? OK, tell you what I'm gonna do. You're killing me, but I'll knock it down to 65% and the remainder being 'somewhat suprising'. How's that sound to you? Final offer, friend price, just for you, today only. C'mon, this ain't a pawn shop. Take it or leave it.

Oh - and NO time travel to the past in the 35% remaining. Non-negotiable.

;)

M

Throw in a patch of Martian Moss, a psychic and a 100 mile per gallon carburetor (squelched by Detroit of course) and you've got a deal. :)

Bob

Bob,

I don't want to look like I'm "jumping the fence" here, but:

I see where Dean and Moore are coming from. It's not too different from our standpoint. They are talking about very broad, vague knowledge. We are talking about useful knowledge. In that regard, it would be fair for them to say we know 80% of physics. By the same token, it would also be fair to say that we are correct in that we don't even know 1% of all USEFUL knowledge.

So when dean says : We will not discover a new force,
he is probably correct.

When I say we haven't even scratched the surface of the knowledge required to make those forces work to solve problems for us ( such as travel into the future) I believe I'm correct.

So their 80% is probably equal to our 1%

Make sense??

Gus

I think you may have indeed jumped ship, Gus. :)
But don't feel bad. Many sailing with Chris Columbus wanted to turn back too. :)

I don't think you'll get any argument from Moore or Dean that we've barely scratched the surface of putting that "80%" into practice (except the Time Travel part).

But I think I'm going to have to remain the odd man out. It may be that we have 80% of physics (although I'm not even convinced of that). But I think there may be a whole heckuva lot more than physics awaiting us. Actually, I should say "them" because we aint gonna be around to witness it unless you hurry up and build that time travel machine. :)

Bob

No, no Bob,
I haven't jumped ship. As a matter of fact, I agree with your last post 100% ( except of course, the part about me jumping ship)

What i'm saying is:

Dean and Moore are claiming 80% of broad, vague, general knowledge of physics

The knowledge they are talking about is like saying "Electricity exists"
Of which it is conceivable that we may know 80% and which, by itself, doesn't do any thing for us.

The knowledge I'm ( and you) talking about is like saying: "We can use Ohm's law to make calculations that we will use for what-ever."

This type of specific, discrete, focused knowledge is what I reffer to as USEFUL knowledge, of which it is conceivable that we don't even know 0.1% yet and may never reach full knowledge.

Gus

Damm!

Now that I re-read your post, it seems I've just re-stated what you just said!

Gus

You are basically representing my point correctly I think. Basically it gets back to the reductionism. Each step we make, we get closer to a reasonably small set of rules that explains more than before. You can judge, to some degree, how close you are by how many phenomenon you can explain. We can currently explain the bulk of what we see out there using the rules we current have. Not all of it, but probably 80% is not unreasonable. We will definitely refine those rules more, and explain more phenomenon more accurately. But, just like relativity didn't really invalidate Newtonian gravity, it just encapsulated, those new rules will just encapsulate our existing rules and explain more things with fewer rules.

But, in terms of the various manifestations of what can happen given the rules we know, with sufficient time for them to evolve, we've barely scratched the surface.

Welcome back aboard, Gus.
Beam us up, Scotty. And give us more power. We want to go where no one has gone before. :)

I know it will sound trite but I would like to ask you all a question? Which science fiction movie(s) is at the top of your list?

I think for me it was probably "The Day the Earth Stood Still".

CLICK HERE (http://members.cox.net/xanadu/earth4.wav) to hear Klaatu speak.

http://members.cox.net/xanadu/earth2.jpg

Bob

Though it left alot unsaid, and was a bit too ambiguous for it's own good, I still love "Contact" above all others.

Gus

Though it left alot unsaid, and was a bit too ambiguous for it's own good, I still love "Contact" above all others.


My Short list: ( not necessarily in that order)

Close Encounters of the third kind
The day the earth stood still
2001: A space Odyssey
Star Wars Saga
AI: Artificial Intelligence
The twilight zone (TV series, Ok so it's not a movie, but it was great sci-fi)


Gus

Originally posted by Gus
Dean and Moore are claiming 80% of broad, vague, general knowledge of physics

The knowledge they are talking about is like saying "Electricity exists"
Of which it is conceivable that we may know 80% and which, by itself, doesn't do any thing for us.

The knowledge I'm ( and you) talking about is like saying: "We can use Ohm's law to make calculations that we will use for what-ever."

This type of specific, discrete, focused knowledge is what I reffer to as USEFUL knowledge, of which it is conceivable that we don't even know 0.1% yet and may never reach full knowledge.


Gus,

Well, no, I don't agree with that characterization of my position. Ohm's law for example is part of physics and many of the pieces of physics are very useful and not at all vague. E=IR is not vague, neither is F=ma or E=mc^2. They are very precise. And fundamental does not equal useless.

But I think what you might be getting at is that engineering based on all the fundamental physics has a lot to build on and a long way to go. And it could be that Sci-fi kind of things are possible without contradicting physics. I'll buy all that.

I maintain that 5000 years from now, even further if the historical records somehow make it that far, people will look back and think "that was when most of the discoveries in physics were made (1650-1970). We're still building from that same set of tinkertoys."

If it's true then it's both a little heady and a little depressing depending on how you look at it.

M

Which sci-fi flicks have you enjoyed, Moore?

I agree, Gus. I think some of the Twilight Zone episodes were every bit as entertaining as any sci-fi features. Same was true with The Outer Limits.

Bob

Originally posted by RobertWood
I know it will sound trite but I would like to ask you all a question? Which science fiction movie(s) is at the top of your list?


The Day the Earth Stood Still is a definite classic.

some I really like:
Blade Runner
The Matrix (with an interesting twist on 'time travel')
THX 1138
Clockwork Orange
Alien

But sci-fi is like pizza to me, even when it's bad I can enjoy it. And I know what you're thinking, Dean, yeah, that too.

M

I maintain that 5000 years from now, even further if the historical records somehow make it that far

What leads you to think we might not make it that far? Do you think it will be our own doing? Or natural circumstances beyond our control?

Bob

Bob,

I don't necessarily think we as a species will perish, but the rollercoaster ride of tomorrow might mean we lose track of history. It would be sad if we lost a lot of what we've learned (due to war, natural disaster, social collapse, etc.) and had to do it all again, but it wouldn't be without precedent. Even without all of that, there might be periods where keeping track of history falls out of fashion and it simply becomes forgotten. 5000 years is a long time, languages change, mistakes are made, etc.

That reminds me of one thing I found totally unbelievable in the Time Machine. He goes, what, 800,000 years in the future and the kids can still speak "the old language" - English. Puhlease.

For some recent science fact on the problem see below:

http://www.halcyon.com/blackbox/hw/wipp/wipp.html

M

I also would have to put Contact at or near the top of my list. I think its has great ambience, and is very well made, and is ambiguous enough to let you run with it in many different directions.

5000 years is a huge time given our current situation. There is no way that we can keep up our current consumption and population growth (much less increase those rates) and continue to live on this planet for that long. So something is going to have to give.

Speaking English 800,000 years in the future, hehe. I let that slip by me.
But by that time I may have been snoring. When I woke up I kept wondering about how he left that time machine parked on the city street with the keys in it, and it was still there when he returned.

For about ten or fifteen years now, I guess it's been, I've had an idea for a movie. Actually, rather than a whole movie, it's an idea to incorporate into a movie. Whenever I've mentioned it to friends I sort of get blank stares so it may be utter rubbish. But even still it continues to seem like a stroke of unbelievably brilliant creativity to me. :) And I don't understand why it hasn't been done yet. I would really like to bounce it off of you all if you would be so kind to allow me.

Bob

Bob,

well??...We are waiting.

:)

Gus

Well, it's such a simple concept. But why I think it would work is not so easily explained. I'll try though.

What I would like to see happen at the end of a movie is something which happens forty thousand times each year (in the US alone). I really haven't given much thought to what the plot of the movie would be but it would have loving characters. It will have reached it's climax and arrived at what appears to be a somewhat happy ending. But just before the ending credits roll the protagonists are seen in their moving car. And there is a collision. And one or more of them is killed.
There is absolutely no connection between the ending fatal car wreck and anything which preceded it in the movie. It just happens and happens without any warning. And once the wreck is depicted on the screen we see the ending credits.
Why? Because this horror occurs, as I mentioned, 40,000 times per year.
It happens to couples immediately after leaving their wedding reception.
It happens to pregnant mothers on the way to giving birth. It happens to 16 year old first time drivers. And when it happens it never has any relationship to anything in these peoples lives before the moment of impact. It comes straight out of left field like a bolt of lightning.
But just as quickly it alters the lives forever of those involved.

This horror so many experience has never been portrayed in a motion picture.

Bob

I like it Bob, But how well do you think this will go over?


"This movie cannot happen...because Hollywood likes happy endings" - FBI guy talking to a terrorist in "Swordfish"

Gus

Of course you are exactly right and so is the FBI guy. But Hollywood is moving into uncharted territory. Examples are two of this season's best picture nominees (Monsters Ball and In the Bedroom). While not as intense as what I have in mind, neither had an ending that anyone could ever think of as "happy". Each put a very dark side of life on the screen. And after seeing both I felt like going out and throwing up.

It's a very morbid thought but if this movie were allowed to be made I think the hook would make it a sensation. Just the fact that this has never been done would make audiences have to go see it. And would make the media types have to talk about it.

It might even get a few more people to buckling seat belts.

Bob

Correction. It has just been pointed out to me that Monsters Ball was not a best picture nominee.

Bob

Bob,

I like this idea very much. It is stunning that ten times more people die every year on U.S. roads than were killed in the 9/11 travesty. The only problem I see is word might get out - sort of a spoiler-killer. I think it has a chance as a sundance/foreign/indie film idea. In a way, the public might be primed for such a 'sucker-punch' ending, as you point out, it is reality in a sense.

The only films I can think that even come close are :

(mild spoilers follow)


'Crash' - but that had crashes throughout
'Thelma and Louise' - but that was a suicide
'Pollock' - but that really happened and had a lot of foreboding.


Maybe some new blood Tarantino needs to give it a try.

M

I think you may be psychic, Moore. I actually thought of putting the 9/11 death count comparison in my post. I didn't only because references to 9/11 can still be sort of distracting. But it is remarkable that the one receives so much attention (which of course it should), while the other is now sort of relegated to the mundane. Sort of accepted as a fact of life. At least for most of us. But certainly not for the many thousands who experience it. What is chilling about it all is the thought that you or I (or any of us) could easily be next on that list.

Think about the fact that in the aftermath of 9/11 so many of us no longer want to fly in commercial airliners. Instead we're piling our families into the family car and taking long vacation trips on the highway. Think about how many of us have died since 9/11 in airliners brought down by terrorists. And think about how many have died....

Bob

As for me, I like the movies with a good ending myself. Although I haven't crashed and died yet, I feel my life has already had enough crappy moments and I don't think watching more of the same has any entertaining value to me. I like to feel happy and good when I get up to go home or leave my theater.

By the way, I think I liked "War of the Worlds" just a little better than "The day the Earth Stood Still", although both were great films, but War of the World was in color though.

Of the more modern sci-fi films I liked both "Contact" and "1st Contact (Star Trek) the best. And both of these films had time displacement involved in the plot line.

I completely understand, Bob.
Don't worry. I don't know any filmmakers. And no filmmakers are taking cues from me. So neither one of us will have to suffer through a film like that. :) I like to feel happy and good too. That's enough downer stuff for one thread.

btw, I liked Contact and WOTW too. Looks like Contact was pretty well received.

Bob

Hey Bob,

What happened to your avatar? It's not displaying on my screen.

Gus


EDIT: Ok, it's back:)

If it disappeared, Gus, it's probably because those in charge of this show may have finally seen it and realized it was just too handsome for public consumption. :) Don't know why it came back though.

If after reading all that crazy stuff earlier you happen to see the replay of Phil Donahue's MSNBC show which aired here during the last half hour you will see a pretty amazing coincidence when the fireman is interviewed. Really gave me the creeps.

Bob

Appearances can be very deceiving.

In a past thread you expressed your awareness of something which is so very true, Dean.

Alright, Bob, fill us in, what happened on Donahue?

M

Hi Moore.

Hold the phone. This thread had died again. And then two more posts within two minutes. I think we're going to have to pick a spot for all of us to get together and have a drink. I suggest either Roswell, NM at the UFO Cafe. Or maybe down here in Gulf Breeze at UFO Motors (yes there is actually a used car lot down here with that name).

The Donahue thing. Well, the last time the thread died you and I were talking about 9/11 victims and car wreck victims. That evening Donahue interviewed the NYFD fireman who rescued many folks from the WTC including the NY Post photographer who took the best photos we have of ground zero during the attack. In the course of the interview that same fireman revealed that his 16 year old son was killed in a "random" car wreck in January.

Gus, maybe you should rethink riding that bike on the street. I know it's a hell of a lot of fun (I started with a Honda 50 when I was in high school}. But once it decides to put you on the pavement (or worse) it aint worth it.

Bob

I was able to find time to look for articles on BIG oil and car companies buying/preventing technology that would reduce our dependancy on oil. As always consider the source. (http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:mT1qcThyKMYC:isat.theogc.com/site/newsletter2.html+car+oil+buy+technology+prevent+patent&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)

Another one (http://www.get113to138mpg.com/) from that article. <--- this one seems to have the most info. Be sure to read the guys hardships (http://www.get113to138mpg.com/HardShips.html). Even if it's not true it's a funny read.

and here is a link (http://www.get113to138mpg.com/US05782225.pdf) to the patent app.

edit: and another (http://energy21.freeservers.com/newpogue.html) site on Pogue (more historical).

All this reeks of gimmicks but I would love to hear Dean & moores impressions on the physics of it all.

I believe there are two (actually three) more points I keep mulling over;

1. I wonder how much time will pass before our civilization is able to add more elements to the Periodic Table? This ofcourse ties into where future technologies may take us.

2. The development of North America. I would love to have a machine that shows a major course change in the way that this part of the world (de-)evolved. Specifically, what if the Native American cultures were always protected from outside intervention and were allowed to evolve on their own. What would the world be like today?

3. I would very much enjoy becoming the Over Lord for the proliferation of the proper use of languages in science fiction films. Language...especially English, is a terrible virus in many movies. If you can't explain it, and make it believable then don't do it!

Robert,

The Day the Earth Stood Still is probably my most anticipated release on dvd...I've never owned it in any previous format. The ability to stop time would be an incredible force. What a wonderful film.

Your idea about having the sudden death of characters after the resolution of a plot compares pretty evenly to the animated short Bambi meets Godzilla.

Ride your bike, don't ride your bike...death happens.

Howie

Guys,

Please keep this on topic. Stop laughing. No really, stop. Try and keep the topic on the movie review or on something raised in the movie (like time travel, doh). This thread has gone so far off topic that it is just chit chat. And no, before you ask, this is not the chit chat forum. :)

But don't you see Larry??? It's ALL related to time travel! ;)

edit: BTW where is the chit-chat forum?

I wonder how much time will pass before our civilization is able to add more elements to the Periodic Table? This ofcourse ties into where future technologies may take us.


Since this is off topic, I'll keep it short. We already can add them, and have been able to for a long time. The problem is that they all have such large nuclei that the strong force cannot hold them together against the powerful repulsive force of the positive protons and they disintegrate very quickly. This isn't something we can do anything about. They've created quite a number of new elements beyond the naturally stable (or semi-stable) ones, but some of them don't last for even milliseconds before decaying down the periodic table.

Larry,

My apologies to you and to everyone.
I'm the one responsible for the thread going way off course. It's sometimes just so tempting to let that happen. I got so carried away I must have even started to think I was Gus' mother. :)
So please ignore all that nonsense. Just chalk it up to the ramblings of a diseased mind. :)

Bob

I vote to move the thread so we can continue rambling :D

Larry,

I've actually tried to keep all my comments directly related to this film. Obviously, this tread has made its way through quite a bit of free form flow (myself included).

However, you should know that of all the alternate world's I've visited, this is the first time that any of the various Larry's objected to the comments on this thread.;)

Well, I'm off to the other Time Travel forum...wish me luck!:eek:

Howie

Hey Bob,

Thanks for caring man!:)

Gus

Hey Howie,

Did the alien stop time, or just the machines in The Day The Earth Stood Still?. I haven't seen this since high school ( circa 1985) so my memory is experiencing technical difficulties. As I remember it, the people were all still moving around, but all the cars and trains and planes were grounded.

Gus

Gus,

Klaatu stopped machines. But he thoughtfully did not include the machines which would pose a danger to human life. He was a good guy through and through.

Here's a website devoted to the movie (includes a commentary by Robert Wise the film's director)

http://www.dreamerwww.com/tdtess.htm

Bob

Oh, Hey!

I got one for you that IS related to time travel:

You know how the first thing that always comes out of one's mouth when talking about time travel is "I'll go back to yesterday and play the lottery because I already know the wining numbers"?

This is a TRUE STORY, honestly!

Well, check this out.

Last Friday, the wife and I went over to my mom's house for coffee and we got on the topic of 9/11. The wife said something like: "I'll bet the numbers 9-1-1 will show up on the lottery sometime soon"
Mom says: "I wouldn't be surprised if it happened on 9/11"
I added: "It'd be funny if it happened in NYC"

Ofcourse we didn't really BELIEVE it, since we were just musing, so we wouldn't have thought to play it.

But then we heard on the news that on 9/11, the NYC lottery wining numbers were indeed 9-1-1

For a minute there I thought, maybe I traveled through TIME and told me the numbers, then I remembered, Oh, yeah, I'm still POOR! damm those paradoxes!!!

Gus

P.S. Ok, so the end was a joke, but the conversation DID take place as described here, and 9-1-1 WERE INDEED the wining numbers in NYC on 9/11!

WOW, DVD in 2003! I hope they do it justice.

Thanks Bob.

Gus

HOLLY CRAP!!!

That was post number 9-1-1!!!!!! Oh Crap!!!

OK BOB, I know you have a time machine, stop screwing with my head and give me the MONEY NUMBERS ALREADY!!

Gus

Gus!

I think even more strange is that your previous comment about the winning lottery number is your 911th post....YIKES!

The most obvious thing this entire thread points out is how sadly lacking the new version of The Time Machine is. Although not really a time travel film,
The Day the Earth Stood Still provides a relative comparison...how easy good writing wity very minimal special effects can provide for much better film making.

I'll say it again...a quality time travel film is begging to be made.

Robert,

Thanks for the link...I think I visited that site previously in one of the other alternate places.

Howie

Originally posted by DRS
BTW where is the chit-chat forum?

Why, it's at www.chit-chat.com of course. :rolleyes: Sorry, I can't move the thread there. ;)

Bob,

There is no need to apologize to me. This isn't my thread. But how would any of you like it if people hijacked your thread? But that's different, right? ;) Take care... and get back on topic, thanks. :)

All this reeks of gimmicks but I would love to hear Dean & moores impressions on the physics of it all. [/B]

Very brief to duck under the off-topic radar: http://www.phact.org/e/dennis27.htm

Actually, it has a leetle relevance: we discussed several pages ago why time travel _might_ not work, but it's fairly hard to use the physics we know to make an absolute case against it, which is why Hawking is looking for some caulk to fill the causality hole. Things like the 'suppressed carb' are cake to debunk. Further discussion PM me.

M

Theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku is going to be a guest on Art Bell's radio show tonight (Bell's show is on now and runs until 5 AM EST). www.artbell.com You can listen to the show over the internet through http://www.wabcradio.com/ by selecting the Listen Live button at the top of the page on the website.

http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/09/17/black.holes/index.html

This thread will never die!!

check out this article:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20020916/antihydrogen.html?ct=578.423650740696



Gus

Yuk, that site has those floating ads that you can't get rid of.

Dean,

to get rid of them just click on them, then you can close them.

Gus

Gus,

I'm confused. The title says "Antihydrogen Challenges Physicists" but the article is about the 'tabletop' fusion from Oak Ridge which made the news months ago. If it's the latter, it turns out to be a lot less interesting than it seems at first. Tabletop (small, not needing accellerator or tokamak or whatnot) fusion has been around since the 60s. You can make fusion happen pretty easily by firing beams of deuterium at a proton-rich substance, for example. Trickier is to detect the neutrons given off, but it's still not news by any means. And I saw at least one report where one of the scientists involved was trying to downplay the 'free power' aspect that the media always latches onto.

People still don't believe the work because they don't believe the bubbles can get that hot.


Here's a site that's kind of interesting:

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/warp.htm

This slide always blows me away:

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/PAO/images/warp/warp06.gif

So even to do the kind of time travel that we know is possible (forward, by getting close to the speed of light), would take enormous energy. We need a breakthrough.

M

Hmmm... Obviously taking along a huge cache of pinto beans and a bunch of bic lighters isn't going to work :-)

Unless half of them are anti-pinto beans, but that could lead to some real indigestion. :)

M

Moore,

I was confused too when I read the article, I was looking forinfo about a challenge posed by antihydrogen. But I enjoyed the article anyway. It WAS news to me as I don't regularly follow these things.

Gus

PS Enjoyed your link very much as well.

I found the links from Moore very interesting to me as well.

Just about looks like you can forget about intersteller space travel I guess. It makes "Star Trek" look almost rediculous.

The technical challange of traveling to other stars looks simply mind blowing.

Well, the premise of Star Trek is of hyperspace. They finesse it by not traveling the linear distances, but jumping through a higher dimension to get where they want to go. In a higher dimensional space, in which our 3D space is wrapped up tightly, it can be a relatively short jump. The problem though is that this is even a harder problem than the linear travel at close to light speed.

Originally posted by Gus

I was confused too when I read the article, I was looking forinfo about a challenge posed by antihydrogen. But I enjoyed the article anyway.

Gus,

Maybe this is the story they meant to have:

http://www.academicpress.com/inscight/09182002/graphb.htm

I agree the original article you posted is kind of neat, reminds me of "Chain Reaction".

M

Originally posted by Dean Roddey
Well, the premise of Star Trek is of hyperspace. They finesse it by not traveling the linear distances, but jumping through a higher dimension to get where they want to go.

Yep, and from what I understand that Nasa office is a serious effort to fund ideas in that direction. It's funded at a relatively low level ($1-2 million/year), but still many scientists howl since the kind of things it's funding are so risky (in terms of ever working) as to be ridiculous. Personally, I think it's good to encourage a little of this crazy stuff, and what's 0.2% of the cost of a shuttle launch among taxpayers?

M

"... much like my L-band globular cluster study". Guess the movie the quote comes from and win a prize.

Simply put Time Machine is an awful movie.

Something I haven't heard mentioned on the time travel issue...

What if you could travel the speed of light and beyond? How about twice the speed of light? Isn't time viewed by our minds as light bouncing off objects? What if we travel faster than light...

would we begin to see the world played back like a recording, thus a "read only" form of time travel (to the past at least)?

minpin,

It's a huge _if_ you've got there. In principle, it might work the way you say, except that it wouldn't be a recording, it would be real (you would actually be going into the past). But will we ever know? So far, the only thing that can travel the speed of light is, well, light. Anything with mass seems to be doomed, it gets heavier and requires more energy the closer to light speed it is, zooming toward infinite mass and energy by the time it's as fast as light.

If you don't beleive that, think of this logical problem: you 'break through' and go faster than light, and as you say, things start to play backward. Wouldn't you hit yourself? Or be duplicated? Would you change direction and slow down in reverse? All of these questions about the answer suggest that maybe the answer is No, can't be done.

M

OK Guys,I haven't seen this movie yet,but will rent it in the near future,If you actually were able to reach the speed of light you would never know it as time stops at the speed of light.You could have your hand on the stop button forever and never hit it because from where your sitting not A moment has passed.Try 99.999999 percent of light speed.Now you have time to hit the stop button and still get there in a hurry !

That's not true. Time does not stop for you, your time slows down relative to others who are moving more slowly. Time to you will seem completely normal and all processes will work as they always have, as measured by you in your reference frame.

Dean,I believe you are incorrect.You would be in effect forever waiting for that first minute to elapse.Time stands still at the speed of light therefore You would find yourself well beyond the known universe before you even realized a second had passed.A very awkward position to be in !

Sorry Tom. Dean is indeed correct. Time does not change in your own frame of reference. If you travel for one second, it will take you exactly one second. It will take the people outside your reference frame a longer amount of time to watch you go for what to you is one second.

Gus

Tom and Dean,

I think you're both right. As you accelerate toward the speed of light, things in a 'stationary' reference frame (from your view), seem to speed up. So if you extrapolate to the speed of light, in principle you'd zoom right to the end of time or the universe or whatever. But in your reference frame, nothing slows down, so you can still push that button. But by the time you push it, blammo, it's all over. Seems more likely that your ray of light ship would hit something long before that, however. Assuming it could even be done.

In K-pax the Kevin Spacey character supposedly traveled to earth from many light years away on a beam of light. Such travel, if possible, would be instantaneous for the traveler, but there'd be this annoying jump forward in time, so you'd better be able to predict where your destination will be in spacetime.

Bah, I have a headache...

It would seem to an outside observer, stationary relative to you, that you take forever to do things. But you would still only be travelling the speed of light, and it would take years and years to even reach the nearest star, even if you aimed for it. If you are going in some random direction, you could go for thousands of years without hitting a star or planet. Even though a galaxy is the inner city of the universe, it is still extremely tenuous except in the very center, and even there it is very tenuous compared to the density of matter we are used to here on earth. When galaxies colide, its rare for any two stars or planets to hit each other, because they are almost completely open space filled with gas/dust.

But, just to sum up, for the observers in each reference frame, time is completely normal to them. The whole point of relativity is that the laws of science are the same regardless of your speed of travel. Your time will seem completely normal to you, and will be normal. Its only when you try to observe events happening in frames of reference moving at high speed relative to you that time issues come into play. It doesn't mean that either of you is experiencing 'real' time and the other some sort of fake or modified time. Its just a matter of measuring time between your two frames of reference due to your high relative speed to each other, and also you get the apparent foreshortening in the direction of travel that folks in one reference frame will see in the other reference frame.

Originally posted by Dean Roddey
If you are going in some random direction, you could go for thousands of years without hitting a star or planet.

Thousands, but maybe not billions. Also what would it take to destroy you at that speed? Dust particles could be enough. Even if you were made of light, which seems to me the only way, dust, gravitational fields, etc. could scatter you to the point of nonexistence.

M

Actually, if you didn't hit something on the way out of the Milky Way, and that would be fairly easy if you headed perpendicular to the galactic plane, you could easily go billions of years without hitting any star or planet, since intergalactic space is sparse beyond belief. All of the galaxies are spread out in thin threads and along thin membranes around huge voids of gas.

But, yes, if you were actually in a physical space ship, and could somehow go the speed of light, you would have to have a way of deflecting small particles and gas, or it would get ugly. But, since its completely theoretical to go the speed of light, I guess its legal to say that we could have such a mechanism.

The time- ratio relation,originated by H.A Lorentz and incorporated by Einstein as a cornerstone of his Special Theory Of Relativity,says to square the velocity ratio,subtract from one,and take the square root to obtain the ratio of on board time to the time for the stationary observer.The trip proceeds just as the stationary observer expects:observer time is distance divided by velocity.If the velocity is near light speed the time in years is slightly over the distance in light years to the observer.In other words if you are traveling at .999999 light speed you the traveler will have traveled one light year in distance in aprox .00141 years or in 12 hours and 35 mins.To the observer on Earth it will seem as though about one year has passed.At the theoretical limit of 1.0 light speed,or the speed of a photon,the graviton and the neutrinos,at that speed the ratio of on board time to Earth time is Zero,or time stands still.This gives rise to the "Photon ride" analogy.If we could ride on a photon any part of the universe could be crossed in no time at all !

Moore and Dean,

If what Tom has pointed out is true then why should it be so difficult to accept that some extraterrestrial intelligence has figured out how to do it? And that maybe they're piloting the "saucers"?

Bob

You are absolutely correct Bob.Visit the www.disclosureproject.org site It's already being done.

I think that Tom is still misinterpreting relativity. The reason it's called 'relativity' is that the effects are only relative. Time does not stand still for anyone, as I understand relativity. It only seems so to relative viewers of the reference frame. Photons do 'experience time', its just that, to us, it is slowed down infinitely. So the photon 'lives' exactly as long as a photon would normally live in its own reference frame. Its just that, to us very slow moving objects, that get's stretched out infinitely because they are moving at the speed of light.

I think that one thing that is confusing the issue is that they are not moving in 'space', they are moving in space-time. So the fact that it makes it all the way across the universe in its otherwise small lifetime doesn't mean that time doesn't run for it just like it does for us. Its just that, in its direction of travel, space is infinitely foreshortened in its space-time frame of reference. So, it doesn't 'think' it travels far at all. But, to us, moving slowly relative to it, we don't see the foreshortening in our space-time view, so it seems like it travels very far.

One important thing to remember is that the relativity theory says that there can be no experiment done by someone enclosed in an intertial (non-accellerating) reference frame that can determine whether that reference frame is moving along at the speed of light or sitting still. I think that all physical processes stopping (in the traveling reference frame), would violate that, would it not?

And Robert, the particles he mentions are massless particles, so they can travel the speed of light because they have no mass, and therefore their mass cannot be made to grow as the speed increases. Zero times any number is zero.

OK:

Dean, what Tom describes is accurate. A photon in spacetime, if it didn't hit anything, will span the history and length of the universe. The idea of physical processes stopping is where it becomes somewhat nebulous, because what is the meaning of such things at the speed of light?

Reading your last post again, I think this is just a semantic argument. It seems like we all agree with the reality of what will happen.

Bob, would it even be remotely possible to maintain the coherence of something like a person (or even a marble) when converted to light over such distances (even to the nearest star)? I doubt it. A wily physicist could probably show this conclusively, but I can only think how the best lasers we have are divergent and incoherent on much smaller length scales, and there are ultimately limiting quantum effects, so it's not just lack of technology. I give it a better chance than wormholes, though.

Tom W: The bits about neutrinos, which likely have mass, and gravitons, which have not been observed, may be off but aren't too important. But that link! Koo-koo for cocoa puffs! I hope you were joking.

Sorry if this post was confused. Dealing with insomnia.

M

It's semantic in a way. But the effects really are relative. Traveling at light speed is just the 0.000001 percent faster than traveling at 99.999999 percent of the speed of light. Time is still experienced as normal at the latter speed, and it will be at the former. Its just that to everyone else, it seems immensely to infinitely stretched out. To the extent that a photon experiences any internal change in configuration (and it might not even have that concept, as it is massless) it will continue to experience that at the same rate as normal, within its reference frame. To the photon, it is us that are running around like speed freaks, not him that is slowing down.

The problem is that Tom is interpreting things from our point of view, not from the photon's point of view. If you are on a ship traveling at the speed of light, you could continue to do experiments within your reference frame as usual.

The paradox, and I guess its yet another reason why travel at the speed of light is not possible, is that in the time it would take an atom in your body to change, all of time in the outside universe will have gone by. But, this assumes that time ever ends. If it did not, then you would continue to feel normal and time would seem normal to you. You can travel forever at infinite speed within an infinite medium. But, if there is an end of time, then you slam into it before you could get anything done.

So the only difference between almost the speed of light and the speed of light lies in whether there is an end to time or whether it is infinite. But the perceptions of the person on the ship would still be that of normal time.

Yep.

Very eloquently said Mr. Roddey.

Hey, Where the heck is Bob?

Gus

Hi Guys,I think maybe you are missing my point.The advantage to the traveler is, as you approach the speed of light time for you the traveler slows,when you hit the speed of light time stops.Not that you would ever notice it, but you are stuck waiting for the next second to happen.It never does until it is too late.God knows where you would end up.This is all only theory and physics.You can speculate as much as you would like.The speed of .9999999 light speed gets you there in a hurry without the worry of light speed.Fold space in front of you and you can get there even faster.Add to this a vehicle that can absorb all the Zero Point Energy in and around it thereby becoming a super conductor with limitless fuel and you have a spaceship That still gets you there in one hell of a hurry.Don't ask what Zero Point Energy is do a search.Seek and you shall find.It's all only speculation right ?

Tom - I get it, I just think you'd need a 'catcher' or receiver or something to end up at, otherwise, yeah, it would be a really long and yet really short trip.

Travel at c - no mass, no thrust or fuel required, blink of an eye transit.

Travel at .9999999c - you're heavy as a supertanker, takes a while to comfortably accelerate to that speed and then decelerate at the end, not to mention vast sums of fuel, or 'sailing time' or ramjetting.

We just have to figure out how to convert people into light.

Zero point energy? good luck.

If you can fold space, why even bother going so fast? You could just drive through the hole in a Buick.

Gus- either Bob got terminally bored with this or we blew his mind. I'm betting on the former.

M

Hi Guys,I think maybe you are missing my point.The advantage to the traveler is, as you approach the speed of light time for you the traveler slows,when you hit the speed of light time stops


It's relative. It could just as easily be said that time speeds up for everyone else. The point is that, to you the traveler, you notice nothing different. It's not that time slows for you. It's that your time moves slower than someone else is moving much more slowly relative to you. But your time is always your time and it never slows down in your reference frame, and in fact in your reference frame it never changes at all. If you do any experiment in your reference frame, it will show that time is passing normally for you.

It's important to make the distinction. The theory of relativity says that there is no privileged reference frame. So you cannot say that time stops for someone traveling at the speed of light, because that would make it a privileged frame. All you can say is that time is traveling at different rates between reference frames moving at different speeds. The fact that an infinite amount of time passes outside doesn't mean that time has stopped inside.

Here's another paradox for you. If time stops when you hit the speed of light, then you could never slow down or stop. In order to slow down or stop, you would have to make some change in the ship you travel in, to fire some rockets or some such thing. But if time has stopped for you, then you cannot, because you cannot do anything. Even an automatic timer would not work.

But I don't think that would be the case. In your reference frame, you can move perfectly well. And you can reach over and fire your rockets. The only reason you would not is the paradox mentioned above, which is that time is not infinite and therefore you 'hit the end' before you can do anything and everything ceases to exist. But if time is infinite, then you can perfectly well reach over and fire the rockets. Of course the universe will have suffered heat death by then, but you can do it.

"Gus- either Bob got terminally bored with this or we blew his mind. I'm betting on the former. "


I could never be bored by you guys. I've been a little preoccupied for the past few weeks. I would like to share with you all what I have experienced because I feel like I've come to know you.

Not long ago in this thread you made the comment to me, Moore, that "thinking about mortality is a bitch". Ironically, shortly after we had that conversation, my father began to
battle with his mortality. Yesterday afternoon Dad lost his battle.

He was 84 years old and he had lived a very good life. He was one of The Greatest Generation who helped save our way of life in World War 2. He was also one of the most decent and good hearted men to ever be put on this earth. He will be greatly missed by many. But we all are very grateful to have been able to share his life with him. And now we have all of our memories of him to sustain us.

Your friend,

Bob Wood


http://members.cox.net/xanadu/DAD.JPG

I'm sorry to hear about your loss.

Really sorry to hear that Bob. I lost my dad on October 30, 2001. My dad was 64 and presumably healthy. He had a massive coronary. So, I know what you are going through. The only conforting fact I can tell you: This too shall pass.

I'm sorry to hear your dad passed away, Bob. Sounds like he was a very good man. Take care, my friend.

Larry

Bob,

Thank you for sharing this tribute with us. I am also saddened to hear about your loss. Try not to let it overwhelm you.

All the best,

Jerry

Thanks all. It means a lot to me.

Now I want you to go back to talking about science fact and fiction. That's the way Robert Wood Sr. would have wanted it. And so do I.

Bob Jr.

Hi everyone,Just watched the Time Machine last night and I did enjoy the movie.Nice special effects.So sorry to hear about you father Bob.My father passed away last year.His funeral was held on Sept 10 and we all know what happened the next day ! I imagine,if you believe in life after death,without the physical body anymore travel at the speed of thought is possible.

Thanks, Tom. I will never be one to close the door to most any possibility. That point is what sparked my initial contribution to this thread. And it remains.

Bob

One of tonight's '60 Minutes' segments was devoted to the Hubble. Mention was made that with the Hubble we have recently discovered that the expansion of our Universe is accelerating rather than slowing down as we would have expected. The implication being that we may not understand gravity the way we thought we did. That there may be some force we don't yet understand which counteracts the force of gravity. One scientist interviewed went so far as to describe this to be one of the most important discoveries ever made.

Question for Moore and Dean? Will the answer to this be just another simple "reduction" of our current knowledge. I'm assuming it must be since we already know most every fundamental thing which can ever be known?

Bob

Hi Bob,

Dr. Kaku discussed this on Art Bell's show. The universe is expanding at an increasing rate and galaxies are moving away from each other. Eventually, galaxies will speed away from each other faster than the speed of light. Now, nothing can move faster than the speed of light. But in this case, it is exactly that, nothingness which is accelerating. That is, these expanding voids. When galaxies move away faster than light from our galaxy, their emitted light will begin to dim and eventually we won't see them anymore, since we will be moving away from them faster than the light from these galaxies can reach us. When that happens, all communication between us and these galaxies will cease. They will continue to exist, but they will be essentially sealed off from us (unless we can create and manipulate wormholes on a practial level). The universe will continue to expand and get colder as stars die. Eventually there will be nothing but cold darkness. I think Dr. Kaku said this could take trillions of years. He also said that at super high temperatures (I think) 100 trillion trillion degrees (again, I think a trillion times hotter than a supernova), a wormhole opens up into another universe. Perhaps life forms of the extremely distant future will be able to create or enter a new universe when this one is no longer hospitable, or at least that's what Dr. Kaku said might happen. I like the idea of a cosmic escape hatch. If I've made any mistakes, I appreciate any corrections to what I've written.

Bob,

Gravity, interestingly, is one of those things on the edge of physics which is only partially understood. Certainly the local effects are all well known, but a lot of gravity doesn't fit with the rest of the physics puzzle. For example, the other three 'fundamental' forces all have particles that carry them (photons for electromagnetism, interestingly enough). But whatever particle mitigates gravity hasn't been seen. IIRC, the Higgs boson that is being searched for at CERN and Fermilab is the main candidate for this particle causing mass to exist.

What's the relevance? Well, there are all of these ideas about cold dark matter, WIMPS = weakly interacting massive particles, black holes being far more abundant, etc to explain the structure of the universe based on what we think is its age, how it evolved, etc. If we understood how gravity really worked, it might tell us a lot about what we are seeing 'out there' and how valid a lot of this cosmology stuff really is (re: Larry's post on Kaku).

So it would be new, it wouldn't just be reducing old knowledge. It fits into that 20-30%, I think. But it wouldn't change anything we know about Newtonian mechanics, Einstein's relativity, etc. It would effect many hypothesis from the last 20 years on the nature of the universe, but none of that is really in the 'known' category.

M

It's been known for a long time that we didn't know exactly the rate of expansion of the universe. So this is not news. Not long after Einstein's general theory, in which he provided a 'cosmological constant' to keep the universe static because no one knew about the expansion at the time, other folks noted that his theory did not really allow for that, and that it must be expanding or contracting. And it was discovered to be not long after that. But it's been known since then that the actual rate of expansion was difficult to measure, and it's gone back and forth a number of times as different measurement techniques came along. So I wouldn't really depend on the latest increasing rate measurements to necessarily be the final word.

So it's certainly not like scientists have been sitting around all content that they understood this issue and now they've been proven wrong. Its been long known that this is an issue and that we didn't have the full answer. And most of the possible scenarios have long been discussed, so its been well considered the implications of any one scenario was proving finally to be the correct one.

Maybe I'm just failing to grasp what you're saying, Dean. But I was under the impression that gravity, as we thought we understand it, should dictate that the expansion of the universe would be decelerating. If indeed the opposite is true, then I'm not sure why that would not be fundamentally significant. And very significant.

Bob

Gravity is obviously important in the equation. But its never been assumed that it was it was the only issue involved. Keep in mind, the universe is expanded one way or another, whether its going faster or slower. In order to do that more 'space-time' is being created in the process. So its well understood that gravity isn't the whole picture. The two big questions wrt to the expansion is 1) whether the outward expansion is purely a remainder of the energy of the big bang, or whether there were other energies coming into play and 2) whether gravity was strong enough to overwhelm the outward expansion or not. The answer to 2 could have been yes or no regardless of what the answer to 1 is. But, recent thinking is that it will not because there seems to be some replusive force at work that is not understood (which may be tied up in the whole issue of 'dark matter', but no one is sure.)

But irregardless, though the answer will definitely be interesting, it doesn't change much in a practical way. The universe is expanding. There may be some large, diffuse repulsive force acting on it to speed it up, but the difference to beings like us is pretty non-existent, because the time scales we are talking about for heat death of the universe are monsterously large either way. It really doesn't change anything about the fundamental physics of the universe on time scales that we would worry about in our most generous estimates of the lifetimes of our species.

It might be something as prosaic (and I'm talking purely out of my butt here, just thinking out loud) as the the overall pressure exerted by each individual particle's random motion creating an overall slight outward pressure on space-time, and perhap the so-called dark matter does it more than regular matter. Or it might be the remnant of whatever force caused the inflationary pressues at the beginning of the big bang, widely believed to cause a rapid outward inflation at that time. It may have been winding down all this time, but still having an influence and would continue to be reduced in effect.

Figuring out what it is will certainly be cool, and might even have some important practical implications. But I'm figuring it will be along the lines of "Quasars exist". Ok, they exist and they are truely amazing, but they are billions of light years away, so they aren't going to make a lot of immediate difference to our lives or the basic physical laws of the universe, they are just a natural expression of those laws.

And, it's completely possible that we never figure out why it happens, in any way that can be proven or disproven.

Any ideas as to why the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate.I have not heard this before.

Oh, and just as an aside, in case we haven't covered it before. Gravity is woefully weak. It is, by many, many orders of magnitude (somelike like 12 right?) weaker than the strong force and electromagetism. So it was never a given that gravity would have been strong enough to overcome the outward pressure of the big bang. Long before people starting be suspicious that there might be some repulsive force, they were trying to figure out if gravity would be sufficient to overcome the expansion, and it was never clear, and by many measures was close to being close to being evenly matched with the expansive force.

In fact, some folks have said that the fact that gravity (an attractive/negative force) seemed to be possibly exactly balanced with the output/positive pressure of the expansion, is possible proof that we are just part of a very large (but legal in quantum mechanics) 'virtual particle'. Virtual particles are always boiling out of the 'quantum foam' that is thought to make up space at a very small scale. They borrow energy from the foam, and then sink back into it, giving the energy back. There is no theoretical (only statistical) limits on how large they can be, and how long they can last, as long as the energy is given back eventually. So perhaps we are just living in a huge virtual particle, and the eventual big crunch will just be giving back the energy to the quantum foam.

Of course, this begs the question of where that original quantum foam came from, but we've already beaten that one to death I think.

Of course I would agree that an understanding of this has no "practical" value when it comes to the "heat death of the universe". But furthering our understand of gravity and yet to be explained forces may have very practical value in relation to propulsion and transportation.

p.s. While it has little in the way of thugs and crude repulsive behavior, I think you might find Odyssey 5 to be entertaining episodic television. I do.

Bob

I'm still not clear on this concept of how the universe is "expanding" although apparently it's not expanding into anything and not displacing anything. That still seems like a contradiction in terms to me. Can you all try to help me understand that?

Bob

Well, we don't know that its not displacing anything really. The point that is usually being tried to make is that there is not already all this infinite empty space out there and that the matter of the universe is just rushing out into it, its the space itself that is expanding, carrying the space along with it. However, it could easily be displacing something outside of our space-time, for all we know.


But furthering our understand of gravity and yet to be explained forces may have very practical value in relation to propulsion and transportation.


It's possible of course. But one should have to be realistically pessimistic about it until proven otherwise, IMHO, particularly in time for any of us to be able to enjoy it.

To be honest, the older I get, the more I wish that bio would catch up with physics in terms of moving forward in our understanding, since that would be more immediately beneficial in helping me perhaps be around to celebrate the discovery of artificial gravity.

Universe...

1. n: all matter and energy, including the earth, the galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space, regarded as a whole.

2. n: everything that exists anywhere

3. n: the whole collection of existing things

4. n: everything stated or assumed in a given discussion
__________________________________________________________

its the space itself that is expanding, carrying the space along with it. However, it could easily be displacing something outside of our space-time, for all we know.

So let me get this straight and review what we think we now know. We live within a "thing" which is expanding. And how it is expanding is not known because there are fundamental forces at work which we have not even yet discovered.
I say thing because apparently we don't even yet have a valid term for it. We've been calling it "universe" but as you can see that is plainly a misnomer. "Universe" refers to everything. However, a little deductive reasoning indicates that this so-called universe is far from everything because it displaced (and is displacing) something else which is also inconceivable in size and scope and for which we also have no understanding whatsoever.

But with this in mind, simply because we've observed a few laws of nature, we are bold enough to think that we now know as much as 80% of everything fundamental there ever is to know? Hmmm.

Bob

Bob,

Back to square one, eh? You're tenacious, I'll give you that!

On the subject of displacement, the best we can do to pin it down is say 'observable universe'. There may be bits that are too far away or receding too quickly to be observed. So universe is shorthand for observable universe. And what it's expanding into, is maybe more of the same, or nothingness, or it's a nonsense question because it's the fabric of space expanding, but it's not 'bounded' by anything.

On expansion, it could be (1) an artifact of how the measurement is being done (2) one of these spin-off effects of gravity or negative energy that have been proposed (3) something totally new, like a new force. I, being a complete blowhard, lean toward 1 or 2. But even 2 would nail down a guess at this point and contribute say another 0.14% of the total, bring us to 80.14%. If it's 3 it might bring us to 81.3%. :)

This whole discussion is enlightening. I keep digging for information to support this 80/20 contention, or at least some other guess, but there's not much out there that's been written down. I would have expected much more.

M

However, a little deductive reasoning indicates that this so-called universe is far from everything because it displaced (and is displacing) something else which is also inconceivable in size and scope and for which we also have no understanding whatsoever.


That's not provable. The definition of Universe, for all practical purposes, is correct. As we've discussed many times, even if there are a billion other universes, there's a high likelihood that we will never be able to see them, sense them, go there, etc..., in which case, in any practical or provable way, our Universe is all that there is. Just because it's expanding, doesn't necessarily mean its expanding into something else, though it may be. But that 'something else' might be (probably is) a medium so inaccessible to us that it will never be proven or disproven. The laws that control us are part and parcel of the expanding space time we are in.

a medium so inaccessible to us that it will never be proven or disproven

That is a dangerous position for any scientist to hold. Just because we think we know there are physical laws that says we can't go to these outer reaches, should not preclude possibilities that we might learn what is really there. It is always good to have an open mind in order to lead us to the new discoveries IMO.

I didn't preclude it. I said it might be/probably is beyond our reach. That does not preclude it, it just recognizes that it might be impossible for us to even find an edge to our universe, and if we do, to go beyond it, and if we did, survive it. Let's face it, the odds are not good that this will happen. It could, but the odds are just against it.

And I'm not a scientist either, so there is no danger involved. I'm a software engineer. And I do have an open mind. I've thought more about this than probably anyone here, and I read about physics and cosmology all the time, and find it extraordinarily interesting. But one has to realistically look at the odds. And, in these areas, the fact that this involves escaping our current universe that we can't even see the edges of makes it less likely, not more or equally likely to happen.

If it does. No one will be happier than me. But the fact of the matter is that the old saying "anything is possible" is really not true. Many things will not be possible, but that's cool. There's plenty of stuff that is possible and it'll keep us busy for 10,000 generations easily.

Bob VS,

Open your mind to the possibility that there's nothing out there, that we've seen most of what we're going to see. And dean did say 'maybe' which kind of takes the danger out of his position. IMO.

M

---
Dang, simultaneously posted again. What are the chances?

You guys are incorrigible. :) :)

I try to be whenever possible.

Originally posted by Dean Roddey
I've thought more about this than probably anyone here...
What an unscientific supposition :)!

Well, anyone who doesn't think about it for a living anyway, and according to how many drinks they have with lunch, I might beat a few of those also :-)

Anyone having read the book will be thoroughly disappointed in either The Time Machine movie. They're not true to Wells at all, it's quite sad.

I'm really getting addicted to 'Odyssey 5'. I'm becoming very fond of the characters (and the actors who portray them). I'm equally entertained by the overall story and the weekly plotlines. I think I like this thing a lot.

I think you'll enjoy it but it's probably mandatory to begin with the first episode in which the basic premise is revealed.
I mention this series because time travel is integral to the story.

Bob

Since this thread has gone everywhere already, I thought you might find this interesting
Last week I sold an arcade machine on eBay called "The Mask". Many arcade machines have adopted movie themes and THIS (http://members.cox.net/xanadu/MASK.JPG) one was made when the Jim Carrey movie was released.

Today I received an email reply from the winning bidder...

_________________________________________________________
> From: Mike Werb (maksor)
>
> Thanks for your email answering my questions. I am especially glad to
have this particular arcade machine because I wrote the screenplay for "The Mask" and this will be a great thing to have at home. The only time I ever saw one was at the NY-NY hotel in Vegas and I have wanted one ever since.

Mike Werb
__________________________________________________________

After receiving his email I found THIS (http://us.imdb.com/Name?Werb,+Mike) . It appears he wrote not only "The Mask" but also "Laura Croft: Tomb Raider" and "Face/Off" (which he co-produced) among others. This is probably the only opportunity I will ever have to get the ear of a Hollywood screenwriter. So of course I'm tempted to email him and tell him about my car wreck movie idea as goofy as it is.

Bob

Wow Bob! Does this make you a hollywood insider?

Gus

Slightly on topic, this month's Scientific American is themed on the current state of the state of cosmology, which gets into a lot of the thing's we've discussed here.

Gus,

There's a Hollywood Avenue here in Pensacola. I can tell you the name of a couple of streets which intersect with it. That's about as close as I'll ever get to being a "Hollywood insider". :)

Bob

Go for it Bob. All three of the movies he's written were goofy.

Is there a Time Machine pinball game?

M

On Laura Croft, ask him how do you indicate in a script: "lots of bountiful bouncy action here", because I'm going to use that a lot in my movie when I write it.

http://www.lysator.liu.se/pinball/IPD/image.cgi?id=2565&if=backglass.jpg&fm=table

http://www.lysator.liu.se/pinball/IPD/image.cgi?id=3494&if=3494.jpg&fm=table

" "Our experiment shows that the generally held notion that nothing can move faster than the speed of light is wrong," he said."


Hey guys, here we go again!!
This is from an article in Popular Mechanics. I will post the link shortly.

Gus

...And here it is.
http://popularmechanics.com/science/research/2000/10/unsolved_mysteries/index2.phtml

Look at the part about travelling faster than light.



Gus

Hmm. This 'group velocity' thing is a tricky business. A couple of these results have come out in the last few years. They're more honestly accounted for than Enron futures, but only just.

see:

http://www.photonics.com/Spectra/Tech/Oct00/techFaster.html

"Some members of the popular press have reported that we are rebels tearing down relativity, but this is not the case. The results are consistent with relativity." -Dr. Wang

It boils down to the wave changing shape as it moves through the medium, so the front of the wave seems to exit the tube way faster than you'd expect from the wave packet's initial velocity. No one has found a way to transmit information faster than c this way, unfortunately.

No idea about the Belgian guy. Seems like I've read about negative energy somewhere connected with perpetual motion machines, though, not a good sign...

M

Did you read the bit about immortality? DANG. Now I'll be up all night digging into that. Thanks a lot Gus!

:)

M

:D

Gus

The business about telomeres is really interesting, I think there could be something there. Hey, if you can live forever who needs time travel? To the future anyway.

Actually, I did want to share a time travel experience I had last week. Has anybody ever had surgery where they used the amnesia type drugs? I had a couple of teeth extracted last week and the surgeon used that stuff. One minute, the nurse gave me a test dose to make sure I didn't have a reaction. I remember her saying she'd wait a few minutes to give me the rest then *snap* people were cleaning up, the doc came in and said "how's he doing"? and it was clear that it had all been over. I had been transported forward nearly 2 hours. I just wish there had been a clock on that wall so I could have seen it move instantly. Weird. No sensation of sleep, drifting off, just bang, that time never happened.

It reminded me of the flash pens from Men in Black.
Or the implanted vacation memories from Total Recall.
Or the new-memory-amnesia from Memento.
There were a couple of other movie tie-ins, but I forgot them.

M

Moore,

I recently had exactly the same experience as you. I had minor surgery, but elected to be knocked out for it. They put in an IV, I said a couple of words to the nurse and then I woke up and it was all over. Absolutely no sense of elapsed time from pre to post surgery.
Pretty weird.

Gus

Very disappointing, I was all set to hit on that nurse too.

Wait! Maybe I DID .. ....

Hmmmm....

M

From THIS (http://popularmechanics.com/science/research/2000/10/unsolved_mysteries/index3.phtml) page that Gus provided...
____________________________________
"As discussion of time travel becomes less of a scientific taboo, the chances of building a time machine improve. It isn't beyond the realm of reason that by the end of the 21st century we could be entertaining guests from the 22nd."
____________________________________

I figure if I'm not killed in a car wreck (and of course I don't rule that out) and I stay healthy (need to quit smoking again), then I probably have another 25 or 30 years. Human cloning will probably be perfected by that time. In the meantime if I can sell enough DSS boxes on eBay then I can use that money to get someone to clone me. And as Gus' article points out we might by then be able to download our souls. So I get a clone made and upload my soul into it. Voila! I may actually be around in 2099 to witness the discovery of time travel. I hope Lance Bass doesn't beat me to it.

Bob

It isn't beyond the realm of reason that by the end of the 21st century we could be entertaining guests from the 22nd.


The problem of course is that they only think in terms of what they hope to accomplish. They never seem to consider the things that we've discussed to death in this thread, i.e. all of the philosophical issues of why it probably can't be done because we'd already know if it ever had, and that even if it did, it would likely destroy us all due to the massive feedback loop it would cause.

You know there are now people reading this who joined us after the two forums combined. They must be wondering what planet (or mental institution) we're from. :)

BUT this paragraph can be found immediately above the one I quoted...

"The theoretical possibility of traveling back in time begs the practical question: Why haven't we seen time travelers at major events, like New Year's Eve 1999? Again, Einstein offers the solution. While relativity theories don't rule out traveling backward in time, they do place limits on when you can travel. Nature won't let you travel to a date before the first time machine was built."

So they are considering what you've pointed out to some degree.

Bob

That's IT! I did hit on the nurse. I said "Hey, do you wanna upload your soul into a couple of clones with me?" :)

On a more serious note, so this last bit implies that when the first time machine is created, the universe from that point on becomes a psychotic blur of time travelers (and wormholes?). Not good.

M

But, if you cannot travel backwards before the time machine was built, that must be because they assume that you need that time machine to be there to get back to, i.e. you need a machine on the 'receiving end'. But, that means that you cannot travel forward either, because you cannot ever know how long the machine you build will have lasted in working order. So you'd never just be able to dial a number forward in time and go for it, because you'd have to know if the machine exists at that time, i.e. the machine obviously doesn't go with you in their scheme of things.

And, of course the same old contradictions still occur. If the past is still back there for you to go back to, where you left your machine sitting, then the past must be fixed in order to exist beyond the moment, otherwise you couldn't go back to it. This means you can never go back without changing it, so you either cannot do it at all, or you force a split and you don't really change your time, you enter a new future with all of the insane silliness that that implies which we've already discussed.

"But, if you cannot travel backwards before the time machine was built, that must be because they assume that you need that time machine to be there to get back to, i.e. you need a machine on the 'receiving end'."

Are you sure that's what they mean here? Wasn't this concept touched on earlier in the thread? I thought it was something else that leads "them" to believe this. Something about relativity maybe or something else we assume from our current knowledge of physical "laws".

One question, Dean. If it's an obvious foregone mortal lock conclusion that time travel can never exist... then why do you think it is that brainy physicists (Einstein and Hawking to name two) have expressed their concerns about the possibility of it happening?

Bob

Everyone thinks about it who gets into physics at all. And one reason that people 'worry' about it, is because of the very problems we raise. Time itself freaks out physicists, because its so out of the norm as a physical concept, its tied up in some strange way with causality and thermodynamics, and they don't know why, or whether it even is a thing and not just a side effect.

So of course they all think about it a lot. So many important concepts are tied up in it. And most of them also, I'm sure, understand perfectly well how dangerous it would be if it could be done.

I agree the 1960 version can't be beat by this new one. :)

I concur, Hob. The original film was a better one.

I enjoyed reading your Halloween link. Brings back some memories for me.

Bob

All,

I would be remiss if I don't correct something. I've twice now made a reference to Stephen Hawking.

Way back in the thread, Larry posted a link. At the time I was a little careless and thought I had read that Hawking leaves the door open for the possibility of time travel.

After I repeated this in my last post and Dean replied, I went back to find that link again to refresh my memory of exactly what Hawking was reported to have said.
Actually Hawking did not say that.
Instead, it appears Hawking's thinking is more in the line of what Dean has been saying (I think)...

"The bizarre consequences of time travel have led some scientists to reject the notion outright. Stephen W. Hawking of the University of Cambridge has proposed a "chronology protection conjecture," which would outlaw causal loops. Because the theory of relativity is known to permit causal loops, chronology protection would require some other factor to intercede to prevent travel into the past. What might this factor be? One suggestion is that quantum processes will come to the rescue. The existence of a time machine would allow particles to loop into their own past. Calculations hint that the ensuing disturbance would become self-reinforcing, creating a runaway surge of energy that would wreck the wormhole."

Bob

I taught him everything he knows <Nose in the air>

Scientists make mistakes and revise their opinions. Sometimes they do a 180 degree turn. Here's a story from today at the BBC: Universe is 'doomed to collapse' (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/2346907.stm) Maybe we won't know if time travel to the past is possible until we try it.

By definition I think :-)

science, despite Robert's criticism is, compromised mostly of facts

That's probably still true for the most part, Dean. But to understand the point I was trying to make let's take the issue of global warming for example. How in blazes can I (or anyone) ever hope to get a handle on this? Do I accept Democratic Science or do I accept Republican science? Both are in total conflict and each has it's own set of "facts". Of course neither has any relationship to true science. But true science has been pushed so far into the background that it's not even a player anymore. It's been replaced with this bs.
I would like to know what the facts are. What the truth is. Not a lot of worthless opinion.

Bob

If I may jump in here . . .

Put as delicately and non-politically as possible, the science on global warming is clear. There is no question that it is happening. Whether it is caused by human development is still open, but the evidence is strongly in favor of yes. I think the reason you're confused Bob is that 5 or 7 years ago it was less clear and very politicized. The latest word hasn't gotten very far in the media.

The ozone hole is a previous example of a slam dunk for science. It was noticed (mid-70s), it's effects were predicted, it grew, the link to the cause was established, a solution was found (banning certain CFCs), and now it's shrinking. A nobel prize was given a few years ago to the chemist who worked out the kinetics of ozone depletion.

Now, politicians on both sides of the aisle have chosen to ignore blatant things like global warming, it's just the Elephant's turn this time. Why the Donkey isn't using it to kick the Elephant is anybody's guess.

The question of what will happen and how bad it will be is really another issue. Projections range from Waterworld scenarios to a triggering of an ice age, paradoxically. Personally, I think regardless of the politics or party affiliations we should learn more about this phenomenon and take more charge of our environment. It's a no brainer.

M

Bob,

This seems to be a good source of info, very apolitical and as trustworthy as anything you'll find:

http://yosemite.epa.gov/oar/globalwarming.nsf/content/index.html

unless you don't trust anything gubbment related, then I can't help. :)

M

Thanks, Moore. If the information available on that EPA website is actually information which has not been infected with either Donkeys or Elephants then it's something I've been looking for.
I find both Donkeys and Elephants to be equally hideous creatures.

Bob

The thing is though, for every result up for interpretation, there are hundreds of well proven facts that provide the basis of science. No one has to guess whether a given bridge design will meet it's rated capacity, because a huge body of known facts allow them to completely simulate it on a computer. They don't have to guess to get a probe to Saturn. They can put it right on the money. So there is a huge body of proven science out there, and it is the foundation of our society, because everything that we depend upon in the way of infrastructure is provided by that science, down to simulating the most efficient way to time the lights at an intersection, or estimating flow through a pipe at certain speeds, or the drag and downforce on a car at certain speeds, or how well a packet forwarding system like the internet can handle a particular level of traffic with a given configuration.

Dean,

At some point 'proven science' becomes 'engineering'. Which is not to denigrate the latter. Engineering can be very hard and very interesting. But that gets back to the original point that I think you and I agree on, which is that even if the physics is nearly done, there's a huge amount of engineering and technology that can come out of that science.

Bob,

In my experience, the bureaucrats and politicians don't mix very well, which is fortunate, since the bureau. have lifetime jobs and can formulate things like the web pages above. The scientists at the bottom are, corny as it sounds, on a quest for truth and the numbers they generate are usually OK. The bureau. don't have much policy control, but it gives them less incentive to cook the numbers. The politicians/appointees then edit and pick the numbers they want to quote to form policy on.

I agree with you about the animals. Why can't there be a party based in spirit on a worthy animal like a Lion or Eagle?

M

How about the Fluffy Bunny Party?

If you didn't have your head in the sand about time travel, Dean, you'd know that the Fluffy Bunnies take power over the world council in a bloody coup in 2468 and hold dominion over the Solomani empire for nearly 300 years before being betrayed from within by the one known as the "Grey Squirrel", giving an opening for the fragmentation of the empire into the chickadee clans, the lambs, and the kitty hegemony.

At least in one of those parallel universes.

M

I guess that was always a problem with the Fluffy Bunny Party. They were always soft on squirrels.

If he's telling the truth, then it's by far and away the most exciting, most wondrous, most awesome and bizarre thing I have ever heard.

If he's lying, then it's by far and away, hands down, the best job of lying I have ever heard. That anyone could make up a story like that in such detail is so remarkable that I'm not sure I could ever believe he's lying. But if it is all a lie, no work of fiction in any movie I have ever seen gets anywhere near to being equal to it.

Those are my reactions to listening to Lazar last night, Larry. I hope you got to hear it.

Bob

Wow! I wish I'd seen this thread back when it was still a heated discussion about the actual possibility of time travel. I've always found that idea fascinating. Some interesting ideas presented here. I don't mean to open up the discussion again since I'm sure you're all tired of it by now, but I would like to give a belated view on the subject. There was an interesting experminent that I saw some time ago on a science program (Nova maybe?) that centered on the study of time travel and parallel universes. I'll get to the experiment in a bit. I know this post will be a long one so I'll just apologize in advance for it's length. Sorry. :)

My feeling is that if in fact time travel were possible, it would be along the lines of the infinite parallel universes theory. In other words, I could invent a time machine and travel back in time and kill myself (never mind my parents) before I even invented the time machine and yet there would be no paradox. This is because in at least one other parallel universe, I have already done so. All I'm really doing is fulfilling my role in that universe. My "time travel" would involve slipping out of this universe and inserting myself into that other universe and making my own death happen even before I can invent the time machine. It has no effect on this universe because the other universe is so far removed from it that events there have no direct impact on events here. In this universe it would seem as though I simply got into my machine, disappeared briefly, and then reappeared. No events of the past would have been altered in any way. In the other universe, I would be sitting there minding my own business dreaming about some day building a time machine when suddenly another "me" would appear in the room, rudely take my life, and then disappear back to his own "time" without so much as a how-do-you-do.

There may in fact be parallel universes that might be in some way "entangled" with each other at the quantum level. In other words events in this universe may in fact have an impact (an immeasurably small one) on the universes that are right "next" to it at the quantum level, but no real impact on universes that are "very far away" from it. Entanglement between very near universes may seem impossible because that would mean that if something catastrophic happened in the universe right next to this one (a massive comet cracks the Earth in half) then it would affect this one in some catastrophic way due to their close proximity and entanglement. I think the theory is that in fact many thousands, millions, or even billions of universes are in such close "proximity" to each other that an outside observer looking at them all would see what would appear to be the same events happening in all of them. Only on very close study would he notice the subtle differences. For example, let's imagine that in this universe a comet hits and the earth cracked in half and the two pieces sped apart from each other at exactly 1200 mph, but in that other universe (some thousands of universes removed from this one) the two pieces sped apart at 1206 mph.

If the observer looked at universes far enough apart he would see bigger differences. Maybe in this universe one of the halves of the earth impacted the moon, but in another universe very far removed the pieces were traveling at sufficiently different speeds that they missed the moon altogether. If the observer checked a universe that was extremely far removed from this one he may actually see the comet have a near miss but not actually strike the earth. It may seem mind boggling to think of how many parallel universes would have to exist to account for almost immeasurably minute differences in each, as well as accounting for every possible series of events that could ever exist, all existing at once. That's what the word "infinite" is for. There might be an infinite number of universes in existence. Who knows?

Now on to the experiment. For time travel to be possible using the parallel universe theory, parallel universes would have to exist. Proving the existence of parallel universes would be a good first step. How could their existence be proved? One of the young scientists in the program I was watching thought that if they existed and were in some way affecting each other at the quantum level, he might be able to find a way to make their effects apparant. He used a modified form of the diffraction grating experiment to do so. For those who don't know about the diffraction grating, it's one of the experiments that proves the wave nature of light by shining a light beam through a very narrow slit. The edges of the slit cause the light to "bend" and the wave propagates out in the form of "ripples" from each edge of the slit. When the ripples from the two sides cross over each other on the other side of the slit at various points along the waves they interfere with each other constructively, or destructively. When the light hits a white sheet beyond the slit, the pattern you see projected is an alternating series of very bright bands and black bands. For this effect to happen you need a very large number of photons acting as waves to interfere with each other.

This man set up the same experiment but instead of using a beam of light, he used a source of decaying material that would randomly emit a photon every second or so, and he "shone" them onto a super sensitive photographic plate on the other side of the slit instead of a white sheet. The entire experiment was encased inside a thick sealed box made of lead or some such material that would ensure there could be no other sources of photons or magnetic radiation. The fact that only a photon here and there was emitted was measurable and confirmed.

His results proved interesting. After leaving the experiment running for sufficient time for enough photons to hit the photographic plate to "expose" it, he saw the same series of alternating bright and dark bands on the plate as though he had shone a beam of light at it instead of single photons. How is this possible? How can a single photon act as though it is being interfered with by other photons when clearly no other photons exist? He thinks it's possible that there were millions of versions of himself in millions of "very near by" parallel universes doing the same experiment which created millions of random photons that due to the entanglement between universes affected each other as though they were all part of one stream in one universe. Interesting.

The experiment doesn't prove beyond doubt that there are parallel universes, but that's definitely one of the possible conclusions that can be drawn from it. In fact, it's much more difficult to come up with any other possible explanation. If it does prove the existence of parallel universes, then it could mean that there is a universe out there where Hitler died of influenza as a child (or was killed by a "time traveler"), or the comet/meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs actually missed the earth (maybe because it was pushed out of the way by a "time traveler"), etc. The possibilities would be infinite. An incredible play ground for a "time traveler" who could do anything he wanted without fear of paradox because he's really only playing his part in multiple events that have already happened.

Jack

Originally posted by RobertWood
If he's telling the truth, then it's by far and away the most exciting, most wondrous, most awesome and bizarre thing I have ever heard.

If he's lying, then it's by far and away, hands down, the best job of lying I have ever heard. That anyone could make up a story like that in such detail is so remarkable that I'm not sure I could ever believe he's lying. But if it is all a lie, no work of fiction in any movie I have ever seen gets anywhere near to being equal to it.

Those are my reactions to listening to Lazar last night, Larry. I hope you got to hear it.

Bob

Lazar was on last night?

Bob, there are a couple of things that don't fit here:

1. Why would the government deny that Lazar worked for them only to have Lazar produce a W-2? Couldn't they just say "Yeah, he worked here as a janitor, here are the employment records."

2. Why did NOBODY question Lazar's credentials back in 1981(?) when he claimed to be a PhD from Los Alamos ( In the Jet car article)

3. Why is it so hard to prove Lazar never went to Cal Tech or MIT? the only evidence that he didn't go is the lack of records. Why can't someone come out and say "Look, in May of 1975 when you said you were at MIT, you were actually working full time at a7-11 in LA, here is the W-2 to prove it.

4. The main points made by scientists to debunk his technical claims is the fact that his claims don't match with relativity, when in fact even quantum mechanics don't jive with relativity.

I'm not offering this as prove that Lazar is correct, he may indeed be a loony. I'm just saying the arguments presented are flawed.

Any thoughts?

Gus

I missed Lazar, Bob. I'm not sure who he is?

Firstly, we need to welcome Jack to the Thread That Wouldn't Die. Hi Jack.

I'm so glad you're familiar with Lazar, Gus. I want to respond but before I do I need to know if you have had the opportunity to hear him tell his story in his own voice?

Bob

Larry,

It's one of those things which has to be heard. I don't think I could ever convey why I was so blown away by it. It really is something that you will have to hear with your own ears.
I'm in the process of getting a tape of last night's show for a couple of friends. I would like to make copies for you and for Gus if he has not heard Lazar talk. So please humor me, guys, and PM me addresses I can mail the tapes to. Trust me. This is something you will want to hear.

Bob

Hey all!

I'm just getting to this party myself. I'm fascinated by the infinite parallel universes idea. Assuming that that is so, and IF time travel was really just a doorway to insert one's self into one of these worlds, what would the moral ramifications be? It would seem in theory that for every one of us an "ideal" universe exists already, where we are rich and famous and king of the world, or what-have you. All one would have to do is use the time machine to cause these results because we would really just be joining the universe with said results already in progress. So we could all have our own Utopian existence. Except, maybe we currently live in Bill Gates' universe. And all our screwing around with time/dimensional travel in this reality- does it effect him and throw him into another subjective reality? Or do events in this reality continue outside of people jumping back and forth through these other realities, trying to make events perfect for themselves?? What happens to the "me" in another subjective reality if I jump into that reality? Do I bring my subjective memories, or do I become that "me", in which case from outside the system nothing would really have appeared to have changed at all? The mind reels...

Fred

PS you better all watch out when I get to MY universe :D