Awesome Stuff: Time Travel
from the 1.21-gigawatts dept
For this week’s awesome stuff post of interesting crowdfunding projects, we decided to look at time travel. There are actually a bunch of crowdfunding projects for people writing (yet another) book about time travel, but here are three other types of interesting crowdfunding projects related (somehow) to time travel.
- A Brief History of Time Travel
- Save the Time Travel Institute
- Time Travel Experiment
That’s it for this week… unless you’ve figured out a way to travel back to the beginning of the week.
Filed Under: awesome stuff, time travel
Comments on “Awesome Stuff: Time Travel”
My theory
I call my own theory of time travel the “Big Bang Theory” – time travel is impossible. Why? Because particles moving backwards in time are indistinguishable from the corresponding anti-particles moving forward in time. That’s been a staple of physics for many decades and is well established. But people don’t consider what that means to time travel – the moment you try to travel backwards in time, all the particles composing your body become anti-particles and you go BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!!!! Hence, the Big Bang Theory: Time travel isn’t impossible, per se, but the moment you try to travel through time, you explode with a force greater than any atom bomb, thus making time travel impossible in practice.
Re: My theory
Time travel is impossible because time is nothing more than a concept created by humans to gauge change.
Time is no more real than math. Math is a logical construct we use to evaluate things, but just like time that evaluation exists separate of any known physical force.
In order for a force called time to exist then several things are required. Infinite matter and energy at every point in the universe and a mechanism to harness and control it.
Time travel is every bit a religion of pseudoscience and a religion with less foundation than any of the theological ones!
Re: Re: because time is nothing more than a concept created by humans
If humans created a concept, they can uncreate it.
The only way time travel would be impossible would be if time was not a concept created by humans.
Anyone with a spare IBM 5100 PC they might have laying around, PM plz.
patent minefield
I was thinking about giving my 297 IQ brain a brief workout by creating the world’s first time machine, only to discover that many other people already beat me to it. On second thought, maybe I’d better spend my brain-energy finding a good patent attorney to help navigate through this minefield of time travel patents (yes, even geniuses have their limits).
http://www.google.com/patents/US20090234788
Re: patent minefield
Wow. Somebody has too much time and money to waste on filing patents.
TTE
I’ll fund R. Bertematti’s Time Travel Experiment (“Build an experimental apparatus to test whether sending back information in time is possible,”) with the remaining $149,998 he needs…
On one condition. Bertematti sends me an email from the future with the message “Thanks, it worked!” and full design specs for his completed time travel mechanism.
The Nature Of Time
There is a paper by Lorenzo Maccone of the Quantum Information Theory Group that you will find online somewhere. His basic argument, as I understand it, is that the arrow of time is defined by memory, and the mechanism of memory is intimately tied up with the second law of thermodynamics.
In short, recording a memory in a physical system increases the entropy of the physical system. This is why it is impossible to remember time going backwards.
Another great Crowfunding Time Travel idea !!!
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/send-me-an-original-web-series-season-one/
SEND ME is a web series about Gwen (Tracie Thoms), a woman who has the power to send fellow African Americans back in time to slavery as a character building measure. The power has been passed down through her family. Her best friend and confidant Katherine (Gabrielle Carteris) is keeping her secret. Her husband, Peter (a role played by creator Steve Harper), thinks she shouldn’t do this anymore. They’ve sent two people back – one never returned. Over the course of the series we navigate the marital conflict and see the candidates. Secrets are revealed and betrayals take place. The drama plays out in the front and back rooms of the comic book store Gwen and Peter own – and in some flashbacks to the 1800s. Someone from present day gets chosen to take the journey by the end of the six-episode season.
Time travel story...
I once read an interesting time travel story, which I believe was by author Fredric Brown. I don’t remember what the title was, but it was only a couple pages long.
A scientist has developed a small, prototype time machine that can send small objects forward and backward in time. He first demonstrates it to his colleagues by placing something (maybe a coin?) on the platform and setting it for a couple minutes in the future. The object disappears and then re-appears at the set time.
He then tells his associates that ten minutes into the future, he will send the object back in time eight minutes. Two minutes later, the object appears on the platform. He says that now he just has to complete the operation by sending it back at the appointed time.
One of the other scientists asks what would happen if he decided not to send it back. Would it cause a paradox, considering that the object had already appeared in the past? The scientist thinks this is an interesting question and decides to test it by not sending the object back as he had originally intended.
There was no paradox, the entire universe simply blinked out of existence. 🙂
Re: Time travel story...
This is Fredric Brown’s “Experiment”, a one-page short-short. Project Gutenberg etext here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29948/29948-h/29948-h.htm.
Re: Re: Time travel story...
Thank you for the name and the link. 🙂
TTI isn't going away
Hey everyone!
Time Travel Institute isn’t going away – We scrounged up the money ourselves and we’ve been online for a few weeks now 🙂