As a layperson, time travel seems impossible to me. Prove me wrong!

There is only now. It doesn't travel, it just changes. Changing is not forward or backwards.

But, you can call it forward, but if you are suggesting movement in space, no. You can move, but the 'now' just changes.

It's not really contradicting your point of view, it's just a different way of looking at it.

 

Well, when "now" changes, it changes in a forward direction. It NEVER changes in the other direction. In fact, it has only ONE rate of change - one second per second. That is the direction and rate of change experienced by every individual throughout the universe.

I think one can get confused about the real world by coming up with a "different way of looking at it" without examining how it compares to what is really going on.

 

The changing now is not linear movement, so it's not forward.

You move, but 'now' does not. In fact, 'now' exists, but it cannot be contained or captured or even looked at, Trying to capture it can be liked to a dog chasing it's tail. It's impossible to catch.

The 'now' is beyond time and physics. I can postulate it's existence because the 'I' (the essence which is you, beyond your eyes) can sense it via the juxtaposition of memory and predictive imagination to the present. I am conscious, I am aware, so the 'now' must exist, though I cannot capture it in the physical realm.

The only way you can experience it is via decades of meditation, and even then, it's not gauranteed.

IN fact, Lao Tzu wrote a book about it, it's called the 'Tao Te Ching'. The 'now' is the 'Tao'.

Funny, though, they rhyme.

I do, understand, however, for most people, this is esoteric crazy talk.

 

I prefer physics over religion.

And, that's especially true when they don't even slightly agree.

 

Yeah, I getcha, it's a bit out there, but zen/taoism are not considered religions, but 'eastern philosophy' will work.

Hal Puthof is a physicist, and he gets into some real esoteric stuff, and he's no dummy. Check out this video between a lay guy (the host, Jesse Michels) , a physicist (Eric Weinstein) and Hal Puthoff, a physicist who gets into more esoteric stuff, it's a very interesting conversation, but you gotta listen to the whole thing because it's the exchanging of views of two different types of phsycists, one more material, the other more esoteric, that I find interesting.


The title mentions UFOs, but they touch base on many subjects, keeping in mind that Weinstein is more in line with your thinking.

 

You can find all kinds of crazy stuff in theoretical physics.

The beauty of the field is that nobody can test it.

So, we see someone sitting there in REAL LIFE suggesting that the reason that we have so few and such crappy UFO pics is that the aliens used future technology to muddle the pictures being taken of themselves!!

Absolutely anyone can make up logic like that.

 

You implication that aliens are not real life is based entirely on anthropomorphic reasoning and limitations of human imagination.

Yes, and I doubt any competent scientist would apply anthropomorphic reasoning to aliens, which is precisely what you have just done. Not only that, in addition to the fact that you have made the mistake of anthropomorphic reasoning to aliens, your second mistake as you have framed your statement in emotional language, unbefitting of science.

Thus, I can only conclude you are not a scientist. Am I correct?

I believe I am correct on that point.

Question:

IF there were aliens visiting earth, and IF aliens have a mission here of some kind, that, in order not to provoke earthlings, given their propensity towards violence, would it be logical that to achieve that mission requires operating in a clandestine fashion?

Answer

Yes, given those facts, it would be logical.

Question

If they are visiting earth, it is logical they possess the technology to conquer the vast distances of interstellar travel?

Answer,

yes.


Question:

And, given their level of technological achievement, given that they could be operating clandestinely, is it logical they would not want earthlings having proof or knowledge of their existence, their agenda, mission, etc?

Answer,

Yes.

Question

Given that they have the technology to conquer vast distances, given they are operating clandestinely, is it logical they possess the technology to prevent earthlings from acquiring hard evidence of their existence, agenda, mission, etc?

Yes.


What was it you said about 'logic' ?

And, if you say the above is not likely, ask yourself this question:

What do you know, in point of fact, about alien motives, technology?

Answer:

nothing.

So, whatever assumptions you make are merely that.

I am not assuming anything, I'm just pointing out that your assumption is based on anthropomorphic reasoning, which cannot be applied to anything to do with aliens, their motives, their technologies.

And, your usual counter argument is that 'we have no evidence', but the above explains why we have no evidence, or rather, it is a plausible explanation of why yet you refuse to acknowledge it.

You remind me of the famous quote from Hamlet:

There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy

 

No, it's based on the lack of convincing evidence that there are aliens on Earth.

That's not "anthropomorphic reasoning". But, yes, it does mean that I don't depend on imagination when determining whether a proposed phenomenon exists.

Nothing I said is based on or contains "emotion".

YOU are taking an anthropomorphic point of view, not me.

Proposing capabilities, objectives and reasoning on aliens (for which there is no evidence, let alone evidence of these features) is just plain ludicrous.

If there is life in this universe beyond that on Earth, we have NO evidence of it.

"They"??? There isn't any "they" that we even know exist, let alone know their thoughts and capabilities."

This is more of YOUR anthropomorphism.

Once again, you propose premises for which we have no evidence, applied to beings for which we have not evidence, using anthropomorphic logic.

Why would I think there is a rational answer to THAT?

This is more ridiculousness. Yes, YOU can guess the aliens are GODS!!

And, that would make more sense than what you are presenting here.

I don't say it is "unlikely". I say it is preposterous levels of imagination.

It's like you read a sci fi book and decided that it's real.

Nobody knows ANYTHING about aliens. You can come up with more things that motives and technology that we don't know about aliens. For example, if we were ever visited, why would anyone think that the visitation included a life form of ANY definition?

Nothing I've said has anything to do with anthropomorphic reasoning.

That's just you failing at literature!

That quote does NOT give you (or Horatio) justification for conjuring up stuff like aliens flying around Earth and then projecting that as fact without the evidence that such a claim demands.

All scientists READILY admit that we don't know all the answers.

 

In science, you can come up with ANY proposed solution to ANY problem.

The catch is that one can not ignore what must follow. In the vid you posted, you see a lot of imagination - people proposing possible solutions. Then, when an objection is raised, one gets more imagination in creating possible solutions. But, there is no real indication that the result of that is "reality". Other imagination could go down other paths, for example.

So, I would guess the most that can lead to is a possibly improved understanding of what must actually be investigated in order to find an actual working answer to some question.


If you want to venture outside of science, there ARE people who like discussing philosophical topics like "are aliens likely to be dangerous?" They can then talk about how aliens work on Earth - like Joshua (an alien to the region) slaughtering Jericho due to property acquisition.

So, what is it about Earth that aliens might not be able to find in abundance somewhere else?

Also, what are the chances that aliens don't even recognize us as life forms? We kill life as we walk down the sidewalk. We and other life forms kill and eat life forms for food. Etc.

Also, what are the issues related to how ethics and morality progress? If some civilization somewhere figures out how to live without slaughtering each other and manages to work together to solve problems, maybe their ethics/morality concepts will not be ours.

But, that is all done in a context where the question of the actual existence of aliens is an unrelated question.

 

Common sense says you can't go to a time that no longer exists or hasn't existed yet. It would take a lot of science to convince me otherwise.

 

You stated 'all we have are crappy photos'.

'Crappy' belies emotion, However, I'll accept it --- it's not a far cry from 'inadequate' the better term. The point is, I gave a plausible reason as to why that might be true.

And, as such, it means that the fact that all we have are inadequate photos doesn't necessarily prove they haven't visited.

Therefore, you can't use that as a counter argument.

We do, however, have a preponderance of circumstantial evidence. and when I say 'preponderance' I mean tons of it If the scenario I posited as to why we have no hard proof, is true, it means we will probably never have proof --- we will never have it as long as the aliens do not want us to have it, and if that is true and it very well could be, that means that all we will ever have is the preponderance of circumstantial evidence, the only kind of evidence over which aliens cannot control.

Therefore, I'll take that as enough to form an opinion. I certainly am not going to wait until an alien lands on the white house lawn, which is probably never going to happen, insofar as having an opinion.

 

Or, maybe 'here' is that 'somewhere else'.

You have projected anthropomorphic (by that I mean 'human') reasoning to aliens, and you really can't do that. No one knows how aliens think, or what motivates them.

 

Common sense has never led to real answers. That is why we invented the scientific method.

For an observer in a fixed frame of reference, your time slows down as you approach the speed of light. How do you get that from "common sense"?

We know you can travel backwards in time when circumnavigating a black hole at the proper distance. How does that come from common sense?

 

It's kinda like the frame rate slowing in a camera.

However, whatever the 'frame rate' (in this analogy) is, it's happening in the now.

The point of the OP hasn't been changed by 'time dilation'.

Can you point to a paper on that one?

 

No reason to confuse science and common sense. The things you mention aren't handled by common sense. The existence of the past and future in the present certainly fits the frame of common sense. Science doesn't support time travel, as you certainly know.

 

When people are talking about the impossibility of time travel why is it always in reference in traveling into the past?

 

False. That is arbitrary and circular logic.

Look up closed time-like curves. That is the physics of time travel.

Being a physicist I know these things.

 

The Deutsch model
While there has been some recent success on alternative models of CTCs [Closed Time-Like Curves] based on post-selection23,24,25, we focus on the most prominent model for describing quantum mechanics in the presence of CTCs, introduced by Deutsch6. Here a quantum state |ψ〉 interacts unitarily with an older version of itself (Fig. 1). With the inclusion of an additional swap gate, this can equivalently be treated as a two-qubit system, where a chronology-respecting qubit interacts with a qubit ρCTC trapped in a CTC. The quantum state of ρCTC in this picture is determined by Deutsch’s consistency relation:
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5145

"Here a quantum state |ψ〉 interacts unitarily with an older version of itself"

That is saying the past and present physically interact.

 

We know how to travel to the future. Just travel at near the speed of light as compared to observers on earth. You can return as far into the future as you want. You just have to go fast enough.

 

But it's not, I've seen future mentioned.

 

If you traveled at 99.99% the speed of light for 14 years your time, about 1000 years will have passed on earth.

If you traveled at 99.9999% the speed of light for 14 years your time, about 10,000 years will have passed on earth.

 

This is all over my head.

 

At this point it is all over my head too. LOL! Heavy stuff. That's why I posted the brief summary - the calculation involves the present physically interacting with the past. This is real physics. This is in response to those who don't know that time travel calculations involving the past are a part of real physics. The language used is "Close Time-Like Curves" or CTCs.

We don't know what is and is not possible yet.

 

I will try to find something. As for proving you wrong, you just posted random nonsense. What is there to prove. I am telling you what we know. I also said we don't know what is and is not possible. Do you even bother to read the responses? You don't seem to learn.

I know the black hole issue is correct because I saw the calculation back in college.

 

Time travel may be the craziest idea in Scifi.

The Earth travels a wobbly (the Moon) corkscrew pattern through the Universe at many thousands of mph.

So to travel a year into the past, you would need something like the Star Trek transporter (a gimmick to eliminate most shuttle travel) that could send you to a precise spot millions of miles away, while piercing time.

It's the piercing time bit... assuming it's even possible, which I severely doubt, we're centuries from that level of technology.