Time Travel

Anything that you look at is something that happened in the past. Anything you see is the product of either emitted photons or reflected photons from another source. However, looking across the street you see what happened a few nanoseconds ago. Looking across the galaxy you are peering as much as 100,000 years back into the past.

If one had an infinitely powerful telescope located far enough from Earth you could see what happened in the past, so to speak. However, the photons that were emitted 100,000 years ago are now crossing into intergalactic space at the speed of light.

Since we know we can't travel faster than light, it is a hopeless race to try to catch those photons.

Our best hope at seeing into the past probably lies on Public Television. So if your curiosity compels you, tune into Nova or maybe the History Channel. Don't forget the popcorn, too!

I read a tabloid headline "You Can Travel Through Time". After thinking about it, I realized it's true, you can travel through time. I'm traveling through time right now, at the rate of one minute per minute.

It is said that the years fly by as one gets older. Is this an indication of time dilation?

Hello, in order to time travel all you have to do is go and watch an old film.

If you wanted to see how the Earth was created you would have to find a place in the universe where you could look at the Earth as you now look at the stars.

Of course you would have to travel at several thousand times the speed of light so as not to get there just as our sun swallows up this planet. Time is a linear function that describes the interval between any two or more events. On this particular planet we arte governed by our orbit about the sun and the fact that this planed also rotates about is own axis. Without these two things there could be no time as we now know it. Watches and clocks would have no meaning, we would have no day or night, and no seasons. Life would freeze on one side and burn up on the other. If there were to be no moon we would have no tides. If our distance from the sun was less we would die of the heat, if farther away we would all freeze. It is a good thing we are just where we are, life could have never got started if things had been slightly different.

I hope this will stir up further debate, but I think star trek is still going to remain wishful thinking.

OK, I'll bite. What makes you think a few orbits closer or farther would make a difference. Just for the sake of the argument, what is to say we (if the earth still contained say water and air) that we wouldn't evolve to the point where for example, 150F would be our normal avg. temp here on earth? or what about say, 42F??

We would need to say within the range where water is a liquid, as an average yearly temp. I think, and the earth would have to spin, but did we evolve to this temp? or do we require it for life?

Although it may not be possible to travel back in time, it may be relatively easy to go into the future. Just travel toward the center of our galaxy at 1 G (32 ft / second). Forget about the math that says you will sooner or later exceed the speed of light, you will actually be slowing down in time. Turn around and head back to Earth after a couple of months. When you get back to Earth, you will be two months older, but those you left behind may be two years or more older. Be sure to go toward the galaxy center instead of the opposite direction. Otherwise, you will be two months older while they may be only two days older than they were when you left.

How you can make money this way: (1) Invest a large sum of money and travel toward the galaxy center for two years. Your investments will have earned ten years of appreciation. (2) Promise your publisher that you will have a new book for him in two days, then travel to the outer galaxy for two years. Return to Earth two of his days later with the book you have been working on for two years.

Ignore my math in these examples. I don't know what the actual time shifts will be. I suspect that we will see examples of time shift in our lifetimes as we move large distances and spend lengthly times in outer planetary space.