MN Physicists and Philosophers, I have some questions about time travel.

[Slubberdegullion]

Watched Donnie Darko for the first time yesterday, which led to conversation with DH about the possibilities of time travel and alternate universes, which led to wakeful period at 3am with head full of questions.

Anyone here care to have a stab at answering (in a simplistic manner, I did not do very well at A-level physics) some of my questions?

hang on those are all time reference, so still existing within time I suppose. But I assume much of the data in our minds does NOT have a time tag (or is everything associated with its context in time and space? Hmm). Anyway, the mind is capable of mixing up these references, so could exist outside time. Which is my point. I think.

Perhaps we will evolve the ability, although evolution generally responds to a need, so I am not sure what would trigger that shift.

I really love the idea of just being too darn weird to exist

Effie, I need to think about your post for a while (and possibly consume a small biscuit to provide the necessary energy for those thoughts).

It's a brain, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, not as we know it; it's a brain, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it, Captain.
(taken and adapted from that great song Star Trekking).

Your post does make sense, Effie.

Dreams and memories are commonly ascribed to the fourth dimension.

just like to point out, from one of the links:

"In the 1970s, Stephen Hawking, one of the planet's biggest names in astrophysics, and one of the world's sharpest brains discovered that black holes slowly evaporate over time. Not sure how he worked that one out."

Not sure how he worked that one out.!!!

I got a third the way through a brief history of time and even with making notes still couldn't complete it..

[must try harder 3/10]

interesting theory that we have to transend to experience time travel - never thought of that before.

maybe we'll just stumble along the anwswer, same as those samll thingys (electrons?) that jump across the nucleus and reapear at random places. maybe we'll stumble on the answer and not have to work out the question?

Effie, I get what you say about how thoughts could exist out of time (I think), but I can't work out how a mind could. Something has to generate the thoughts, and the generating thing (brain, computer) has to has to be a physical entity, and therefore is subjugated to the effects (and exists within) time.

Or does it?

ah but is time an entity or a perception? (though that messes up my brain analogy a bit, doesn't it?)

I think we need Real Scientists here. MB is a biologist I know...

and if everything physical has to exist within time then wormholes or striongs or whatever could never work becasue they would have to have matter to work on.

I don't know. Isit an entity or a perception? I was going to say entity, definately entity, but then remembered trees falling in woods and no one hearing them thingmy.

Can it be both? Probably not......

Oh God, now I'm wondering if time exists in the vacuum of space.

Effie, I'm back to your cosmic strings. They are theoretical yes? A tunnel of gigantic gravitational force. So where has that come from? A black hole is a collapsing star (end of, I think) but a cosmic string????

Anyway can something that only consists of a wopping big blob of gravity exist in time? I mean does it age?

Take a victoria sponge cake, if that sits in my kitchen it has time acting upon it, and it exists within time, but if I shoot it into space, does it get older? It gets older for me, but does my cake age itself (if a cake were to have concerns about such matters). And then if it happens upon a cosmic string, what then?

This thread is increasing my thinking thoughts and not helping with the night time hmmm's

mmm cake

if you step out of time/space, where are you?

the cake wouldn't age because there would be no influences to make it age (water, heat, air, bacteria).

so would it 'be' in perpectua, until it hits something or influenced by something? and then time/space has it's effect?

going back to thoughts, isn't what we call the soul a manifestation of the fouth dimension? And don't we use a relatively small part of our brains, and no-one really knows what the rest of it is there for (other than filling up the skull) - perhaps that's where all the difficult time stuff is processed.

casbie, I'm really stuck now on whether time occurs in space. Impressive scientist types have given the universe an 'age' (since big bang), but that is in human time years, so we can (presumably) have a better understanding of how old the earth is compared with everything else, and get our heads around how things happened at the start of um......things.

But can the 4th dimension exist, without the other 3? In the great expanse of space nothingness does time occur at all?

I really don't have the suitable vocabulary availabe to say what I mean.

If you step out of space time are you in the 5th dimension? I have absolutely no idea what that could be. Maybe it's Desi's soaring bird thingmy.........

Fab thread, thanks guys.
Didn't Hawking say that time travel can't exist because we haven't met anyone from the future? Anyway, I don't know why I'm posting, I know nothing on the subject other than you mustn't mess with the space-time continuum, obviously - that's temporal physics 101

Www.

I've sort of enjoyed it too, it has at least prompted 2 dinner table and 1 late night in bed long conversations with DH. He loves this sort of thing. Mind you he did much better than me at A-level physics.

i like red dwarf - it explains this stuff easily...

time travel for dummies!