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Humans should be able to move into the future
LEGENDARY BOFFIN Stephen Hawking has claimed that humans might one day be able to use time travel to skip generations into the future.
While not mentioning the chance of travel to the past, the astrophysicist said it should be possible to travel into the future on a spaceship that travels close to the speed of light.
When you go at that speed time is slowed down for those on board. A similar effect can be seen when you wait for Windows to boot up.
Hawking admitted that he did not like talking about time travel previously "for fear of being labelled a crank". Of course talking about astral bodies that are so dense that they don't let light escape, except when they do, is normal conversation.
However building such a space ship would allow the crew to repopulate the Earth if they found our species had become extinct during their flight.
Stephen Hawking's Universe, in which he makes the comments, will be screened on the Discovery Channel next Sunday.
The documentary already has courted controversy by saying that alien life is likely to exist but that humans should avoid making contact with them because they might not like us very much.
A spaceship capable of travelling through time would take six years to reach its full speed of 98 per cent of the speed of light, and a day on board the ship would be equivalent to a year on Earth, he said, allowing those on board to reach the edge of the galaxy in just 80 years.
Hawking said travelling backwards through time would violate a fundamental rule that cause comes before effect and that such an act could allow people to make themselves impossible. But then we have been impossible since we were born so that is no problem for us. µ
Tags: Boffin watch
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Time travel to the past need not necessarily cause a paradox, depending on whether such things as multiple timelines exist and the multiverse theory are correct. Going back in time and altering stuff would just throw you into an alternate timeline.
Another theory suggests that the timeline is fixed, and if one were to travel back in time and make changes, then the timeline was always meant to include this event. In which case, the only time a paradox might happen is if you tried to do something that would directly result in you not being able to travel back in the first place (e.g. killing your grandfather before your father was conceived).
Interesting stuff to think about!
If your spaceship is travelling at speed of light, any particle you hit on the path will utterly destroy your spaceship with energy of atomic bombs.
So, it takes 6 years to speed up so that means it would take 6 years to slow down. So, you get supplies for 12 years and hope the thing doesn't fall apart and then throw away 12 years of your life so you can travel in time. Wow, that's dumb. Imagine showing up 100 years later and getting a parade and then getting into a job training program after the talk show offers dry up. Maybe you could be a 'consultant' or something, I mean, how would we react to someone who timetraveled for the past 100 years and showed up today? "Oh, you kept busy reading Mark Twain and watching silent movies? Now you're technologically illeterate, thanks, have a nice day".
Also, if you accelerate at 1G, shouldn't you hit the speed of light in a year? Maybe my math is off, but 299,792,458 m/sec divided by 9.81 m/sec^2 converts to about a year.
David - You're talking about if the Enterprise can travel faster than the speed of light, how come they can see other ships (and even start) when they look backwards? Relativity is a bit different.
No, time does not slow down for the people on the ship. Travelling at or near the speed of light would cause people on board such a ship to see Earth appear as it was going slower or having completely stopped, but time on the ship would continue to pass as normal.
However, as soon as that ship turns around and heads back to Earth, all of the light that they have been too far away from to catch up to them will be meeting them head on as they go straight towards it and time on Earth would then appear to be going in fast forward until they eventually arrive back again...
Time is relative to the observer because light and sound takes time to travel to a point, so nearby effects would still be almost instantaneous, but things further away appear to be delayed because the light and sound has further to travel before it can be observed.
And I'm sure people have seen enough time show stories in science fiction which are all so full of plot holes and contradictions that time travel BACK in time would be impossible is it could cause a paradox that would start a chain reaction that could detroy the universe...
Then he'd know that it's been proven that sometimes effect comes before cause, but so far only at the subatomic level, and it's only provable from a statistical sense rather than a case by case basis.
Although, I guess it technically doesn't help that sometimes photons reflect off glass at really high angles if they "know" they'll be observed later. Bunch of showoff photons, if you ask me.
the more I want time to STOP. The police state dystopia is already becoming daily routine. Just take a plane and you're at the mercy of epsilon minuses with full body scanners.
But anyway, the problems involved in staying in space for SIX MONTHS are currently insurmountable. Six YEARS is right out, let alone decades. You'd go stir crazy, something would break, even if one could store food, water, and air for that long.
Real starships -- if possible -- aren't going to be big and spacious and have holo decks for amusement. And I'm certain that they won't have "internal gravity" that ALWAYS works even during power losses. But they will have fuses and circuit breakers, so there won't be any spectacular fireworks.
Probably easier. I think they can do it with hamsters, it's scaling up that is tricky.
For instance you could have yourself revived after H.264 video patents expire - although in case some twit legislates for them to last forever, you had better have a clause to revive you after 100 years regardless, if medical science allows.