[thedoc (OP)]

Aman Sharma  asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Is the invention of a time machine possible? I read somewhere that the invention of time machine is possible only if the time is real. Is the time real? I assume that if the time was real then somewhere in the future the time machine would had been invented and someone from future would had come in our present with there time machine. Please tell me, is my assumption right?

Aman Sharma

What do you think?

[damocles]

Asking whether time is real is really a philosophical question, and it hinges very much on what you mean by real.

But I suspect that what you really read somewhere works a little bit differently. If we consider the equations of special relativity, they can be given a symmetry in terms of a four-dimensional space -- spatial length dimensions x, y, and z, and the fourth dimension, which incorporates time, has to be given the form ict .

So the first three co-ordinates are presented as real numbers in the space we are familiar with, but the time that we are familiar with must be incorporated not as a real number but as an imaginary number in the fourth dimension. I think that what the article that you "read somewhere" might have been saying was that if that fourth dimension had time in it as a real number, then it should be possible to build a time machine. But that is mere speculation on my part.

Otherwise, what is real, and whether time is real, has been debated endlessly by professional philosophers and amateur philosophers (i.e. physicists), and any connection with a time machine is mere speculation.

When I first came here I was charged with keeping my mission quite secret, and I had to send my time machine back. If all is well, it will return to collect me at a pre-programmed time and place. []

[bizerl]

Time travel has always been possible. I myself am currently travelling into the future at approximately sixty seconds per minute.  []

Personally I don't think that time travel in the true "Back to the Future" way will be possible without introducing zero mass and infinite energies, which is unhelpful for us fleshy beings.

[Don_1]

Time travel has always been possible. I myself am currently travelling into the future at approximately sixty seconds per minute.  []

I can only manage 59 seconds per minute these days; I'm gettin' old

Personally I don't think that time travel in the true "Back to the Future" way will be possible without introducing zero mass and infinite energies, which is unhelpful for us fleshy beings.

Not to mention environmentally unfriendly.

I don't think the passage of time can be altered in any way. That which has gone, has gone and can never be revisited, while that which has yet to come cannot be visited until it is here. Time travel is locked firmly into science fiction.

But, to those who say that if it were to be possible in the future, we would have people from the future coming back to visit us now, I say, no, not true. If at some time in the future a time machine were to be built, then we cannot know about it now, since it has not yet been invented. We are in real time, a visitor from the future would come back and change the history we are now making.

[Kryptid]

If the Novikov Self-consistency Principle holds true, time travel into the past could be possible without causing paradoxes (only if such travel fulfills the past as opposed to changing it; Novikov's Self-consistency Principle holds that the probability of any event occurring that could alter the past is exactly 0%). If this is true, and you can only travel to points in time where a time machine already exists, then that would explain both why we haven't seen any time travelers from the future (because no time machines yet exist to act as "gateways" for them to travel through) and how time travel into the past could occur without paradoxes (any series of events that lead to a change in history are simply "forbidden").

[old guy]

I agree wth Don_1:

I don't think the passage of time can be altered in any way. That which has gone, has gone and can never be revisited, while that which has yet to come cannot be visited until it is here. Time travel is locked firmly into science fiction.

What could "time" be anyway besides the *concept* of 'that which elapses' as things move, whether it be the "ticker" in a clock or the movement of natural bodies and forces through space. Clocks run slower at higher velocities and in higher gravity environments. They call it "time dilation" but we do not empirically observe "time dilating." We only observe 'clocks slowing down as they speed up', so to speak. Time is not an entity. There is no "timescape" to travel through, as in sci-fi.

If general relativity for instance insists that "mass curves spacetime" does it not behoove those theorists to explain exactly what is being curved, including both components. Saying that physics doesn't do ontology is a major cop out. How can they dicuss time inteligently without defining what it IS?
(Saying "Time is that which clocks measure" is a meaningless tautology, not a definition.)

[narasimman]

Indian Scientist has invend new theory wich can amplifiy the energy up to 2.7 times and is capable of making a great change in the world of physics.
newbielink:http://www.narasimmanlaw.com/ [nonactive]

[RD]

... amplifiy the energy up to 2.7 times

Your apparatus is certainly losing energy via sound ...

[ and may lose money via medical-bills & funeral-costs if someone steps into the circle ]

Your device is analogous to a photo-flash where a small battery charges a capacitor over a period of several of seconds, which then can release the stored energy in less than a millisecond. When the capacitor is discharged it releases more energy-per-second (=power) than the battery, but only for a tiny fraction of the time it took to charge it. Energy has not been multiplied / amplified / created. A store of energy has been built up over several seconds and spent in a fraction of a second. e.g. ...

An 85 joule, 3.5 microsecond flash. While the energy level is moderately low, electrical power at such a short duration is 24 million watts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashtube#Intensity_and_duration_of_flash

The battery which powered that “24 million watts” photo-flash is only capable of tens of watts output.


You are storing energy in the angular momentum of your (dangerous) heavy rotating arm over a  few seconds, and spending some of it in a fraction of a second when the cams press on the hydraulic rams.
Like the photo-flash example above, you are momentarily obtaining more power output from your apparatus than the device constantly powering it, but energy is not being "amplified". 

[Europan Ocean]

Hi, I touched on this in two threads;

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=46925.0 

http://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=47127.0

Data time travel and safe prototyping.