SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
After some serious number crunching, a University of British Columbia (Okanagan Campus) researcher has come up with a mathematical model for a viable time machine.
Ben Tippett, a mathematics and physics instructor at University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus, recently published a study about the feasibility of time travel. Tippett, whose field of expertise is Einstein's theory of general relativity, studies black holes and science fiction when he's not teaching. Using math and physics, he has created a formula that describes a method for time travel.
"People think of time travel as something as fiction," says Tippett. "And we tend to think it's not possible because we don't actually do it. But, mathematically, it is possible."
"The time direction of the space-time surface also shows curvature. There is evidence showing the closer to a black hole we get, time moves slower," says Tippett. "My model of a time machine uses the curved space-time -- to bend time into a circle for the passengers, not in a straight line. That circle takes us back in time."
The division of space into three dimensions, with time in a separate dimension by itself, is incorrect, says Tippett. The four dimensions should be imagined simultaneously, where different directions are connected, as a space-time continuum. Using Einstein's theory, Tippett says that the curvature of space-time accounts for the curved orbits of the planets.
[...] "While is it mathematically feasible, it is not yet possible to build a space-time machine because we need materials--which we call exotic matter--to bend space-time in these impossible ways, but they have yet to be discovered."
[...] For his research, Tippett created a mathematical model of a Traversable Acausal Retrograde Domain in Space-time (TARDIS). He describes it as a bubble of space-time geometry which carries its contents backward and forwards through space and time as it tours a large circular path. The bubble moves through space-time at speeds greater than the speed of light at times, allowing it to move backward in time.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170427091717.htm
[Abstract] Traversable acausal retrograde domains in spacetime
What do you think ?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 28 2017, @09:50AM (21 children)
Or the nature will allow time travel but no change whatsoever. The past will be "read only".
(Score: 2, Interesting) by anubi on Friday April 28 2017, @10:43AM (19 children)
I believe even to read the past is verboten... as even intercepting one photon ( observation ) will have a "butterfly effect".
I guess maybe what I am trying to say is even if you could go back, you could not interact/sense *anything*.... sound, light, EM waves, anything.
But I do believe travel into the future is possible, maybe even likely. I see nothing in physics that forbids it. Einstein/Lorentz seemed to verify the possibility of it.
More subjective, the way I interpret the Bible ( hearsay to a lot of people, but I take the words seriously ) imply to me time travel. Too many passages around Ezekiel, things like "a thousand years of Man is like a day unto God.." And this uncanny thing about significant interactions with The Almighty on roughly 2000 year intervals. Makes me think God may live 1000 light years away, but can travel at light speed. Maybe we were "seeded" a la VanDaniken? ( Albeit I believe he spoiled his credibility by deliberately stretching the truth... a LOT! Even if one is onto something big, a blatant overexaggeration will spoil your presentation - and he has some whoppers. ). Beyond that, I do consider we may well have been "planted" here by another spacefaring race. With the Bible, some ancient accounts ( Annunaki/sumerians ) and a few archaeological mysteries being about all that remain to this day bearing witness to what really happened.
Is it likely that, say, should we develop a speed of light technology ( aka StarTrek Warp drive ), we would use it to explore worlds thousands of light years from our own, knowing full good and well that if we departed for a planetary system 1000 light years away, we would arrive almost instantaneously by our clock, but even if we turned around that day and came right back, two thousand years would have elapsed on Earth. What if we decided to seed promising planets with life, like a bee visiting flowers, then leave, returning thousands - even millions of years later ( planetary time, that is ) to make corrections, leave again, having thousands of planets we are visiting. When we've terraformed one to make it sufficient for habitation, colonize it. Genesis all over again. In the same order as described in Genesis.
I don't know. I am wildly speculating here. If you are unfamiliar with the book of Ezekiel in the Bible, it sure seems to describe a flying saucer. Revelation also describes our Maker returning "in the clouds". Geez, I sure have to pull a lot of rabbits out of hats to try to remain my sanity as I seek explanations to a lot of questions and am told mostly stuff I cannot even come close to actually believing.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 28 2017, @11:21AM (5 children)
Have you read Ystoria Mongalorum? It is amazing what used to go on only 800 years ago. The book describes a people in the north consisting of human women, but all the males had the appearance of dogs. When the mongols attacked them, they jumped in the water and rolled around until covered with ice, which became a natural armor that deflected all arrows and darts. The males (dogs-men) were then able to charge and drive them back.
It also discusses a land where the sunrise made such an awful sound that the people all moved underground and played cymbols and drums to mask it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ystoria_Mongalorum [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 28 2017, @03:56PM (2 children)
Do you have any decent links about that? The Wikipedia article fails to mention the dog-people thing at all and a cursory googling isn't turning up much.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 28 2017, @07:26PM (1 child)
Check the external links where you can find the text: https://archive.org/details/textsversionsofj00hakluoft [archive.org] (it starts on page 107)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 28 2017, @08:12PM
But returning through the deserts, they came into a certaine countrey, wherin (as it was reported vnto vs in the Emperours
court, by certaine clergie men of Russia, and others, who
30 were long time among them, and that by strong and stedfast affirmation) they found certaine monsters resembling women : a strange who being asked by many interpreters, where the men of that certain land were, they answered, that whatsoeuer women were borne women'^d
there, were indued with the shape of mankinde, but the males ^°^^-
35 were like vnto dogges. And delaying the time, in that countrey
they met with the said dogges on the other side of the riuer. And in the midst of sharpe winter, they cast themselues into the water : Afterward they wallowed in the dust vpon the maine land,
and so the dust being mingled with water, was frozen to their 40 backes, and hauing often times so done, the ice being strongly
ii8 THE ENGLISH VOYAGES,
frozen vpon them, with great fury they came to fight against the
Tartars. And when the Tartars threwe their dartes, or shot their
[p- 59] arrowes among them, they rebounded backe againe, | as if they had
lighted vpon stones. And the rest of their weapons coulde by no
meanes hurt them. Howbeit, the Dogges made an assault vpon 5 the Tartars, and wounding some of them with their teeth, and
slaying others, at length they draue them out of their countries. And thereupon they haue a Prouerbe of the same matter, as yet
rife among them, which they sf)eake in iesting sorte one to another;
My father or my brother was slaine of Dogges.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday April 28 2017, @06:50PM (1 child)
Wait, so Rick Sanchez wasn't the first person to discover the Screaming Sun Plant?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 28 2017, @07:52PM
Wow, that is exactly it. I wonder if they read it or came up with the idea independently.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Friday April 28 2017, @11:39AM (5 children)
Heh. I was waiting for someone to post something like that... did you notice the "dept" line for this story?
=)
On a separate note, you piqued my curiosity with this statement:
I'm genuinely curious what chapter(s)/verse(s) suggest that? A quick search suggests you may be referring to Ez 1:4?
I wonder if this is a one-off, or if there are other similar references in other books of the bible?
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Friday April 28 2017, @12:49PM (3 children)
The Ezekiel thing is from Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods. An analysis of it:
https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/337-does-the-bible-refer-to-ufos [christiancourier.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 28 2017, @03:45PM (2 children)
Rather hard to read with a straight face as nearly the entire article sounds like the author wildly pulling stuff out of their ass, and barely-relevant quotations from elsewhere in the Bible. "This is true because I say so" :P
But I mean, we're arguing between Biblical literality and ancient astronauts so what does one really expect, lol. The idea that Ezekiel saw a flying saucer but couldn't describe it properly is that preposterous?
16 As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction: their appearance was like the gleaming of beryl; and the four had the same form, their construction being something like a wheel within a wheel. 17 When they moved, they moved in any of the four directions without veering as they moved. 18 Their rims were tall and awesome, for the rims of all four were full of eyes all around.
Ball bearings? Can't say "eyes" would be the first word I would reach for, but hey.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Friday April 28 2017, @04:44PM (1 child)
I remember reading (long ago) something about Ezekiel in Chariots of the Gods; I didn't read much of the essay that I linked. I expect that there exists other commentary about von Daniken's book that may make more sense. I'm sorry that that essay does not.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 28 2017, @05:12PM
The chapter in question is pretty trippy. I'd recommend a read :)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Touché) by stormreaver on Friday April 28 2017, @07:02PM
Using the Bible as evidence of the possibility of time travel is like using Star Wars to violently defend your theory of the evolution of the Wookie: It takes someone's drunken fantasy way too seriously.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 28 2017, @12:34PM (1 child)
Nope.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday April 29 2017, @05:11AM
I definitely screwed up there. I should have added "the possibility of" before the words "time travel".
My thoughts often run faster then my fingers and this happens to me all too often.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday April 28 2017, @01:03PM (1 child)
Before I start on this, I'd note that in general I have a lot more respect for religious folks than many people around here. I don't think religion is the source of all evil in the world or whatever critics often want to say. BUT I think one has to be careful about ascribing interpretations to bizarre biblical passages, because there's generally a lot of confirmation bias involved -- pick out the few bits that "make sense" across multiple passages and ignore the context of each.
More subjective, the way I interpret the Bible ( hearsay to a lot of people, but I take the words seriously ) imply to me time travel. Too many passages around Ezekiel, things like "a thousand years of Man is like a day unto God.."
That's not from Ezekiel. It's from 2 Peter 3:8, itself perhaps a reference to Psalm 90. Ezekiel does mention a thousand-year span (particularly among the whole Gog-Magog thing), which is one of sources of so-called Millennialist Christian beliefs (along with a bunch of stuff from Revelation), but that sort of doctrine does a lot of "mix and match" from various sources of the Bible, which tend to have a lot of inconsistencies.
And this uncanny thing about significant interactions with The Almighty on roughly 2000 year intervals. Makes me think God may live 1000 light years away, but can travel at light speed.
What's "uncanny" again? What evidence is there for 2000-year intervals to interactions?
Maybe we were "seeded" a la VanDaniken? [...] With the Bible, some ancient accounts ( Annunaki/sumerians ) and a few archaeological mysteries being about all that remain to this day bearing witness to what really happened.
The thing about the panspermia hypothesis is it seems to frequently be appealed to by what I think of as "reluctant evolutionists," i.e., religious folks who like science generally, and basically are OK with evolution, but somehow just can't fathom that it ALL happened through random natural selection. So, instead you postpone the problem by imagining "aliens did it!" Of course, somehow the aliens had to evolve. It's kind of like the "prime mover" argument for God -- there has to be a "cause" for everything, so God is it. Except the obvious objection to the logic of that argument is: what "caused" God? It just adds another layer to the problem without actually resolving it.
I'm not saying that's what you're arguing here -- but we have precious little actual evidence for panspermia. So-called archaeological "mysteries" from the ancient world are often based on misconceptions about the technical level of the ancients (which were a lot more advanced in many ways than we'd like to think) coupled with insufficient imagination about how much people can actually accomplish when you have thousands of slaves at your disposal.
That isn't to say that panspermia is impossible or there aren't still some technological mysteries about ancient societies we haven't figured out. But it's important to remember the ancients had hundreds or even thousands of years to work on some of these problems of creating technology -- and humans back then were likely about as ingenious and creative as we are today, just with less knowledge. Modern archaeologists often have been working on these problems for a few years or decades.
If you are unfamiliar with the book of Ezekiel in the Bible, it sure seems to describe a flying saucer.
Yeah, except for all the bits about four living creatures [biblegateway.com] in the description. People who adopt the "flying saucer" interpretation generally ignore all that stuff or explain it away as descriptions of machines or something -- except the descriptions are pretty specific and about living creatures (with various faces of specific animals, etc.). Maybe this could be a description of a flying saucer for someone who was dropping acid at the time, I suppose....
Revelation also describes our Maker returning "in the clouds".
Primitive cultures frequently assume deities have a close connection to the sky, because weather is so important to primitive societies but is also so unpredictable. Also, the sky is inaccessible, unlike land or water, so it makes sense to speculate that beings "different from us" may reside there.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday April 29 2017, @06:28AM
I had a helluva time separating "spirituality" from "religion" for the longest time ( both my Grandparents were Southern-Baptist preachers ).
I have finally reached the belief that spirituality is my relation to the factions which I believe are responsible for my existence, while "religion" is a fabrication of some men having leadership skills to monetize other people's spiritual quest.
While I do not consider religion to be the sole source of the grief on this planet ( I award that one to the human attribute of greed / capitalism ), religions often supply the "authority" to behave in some really hurtful ways... ( remembering "Obedience to Authority" by Stanley Milgram. A "believer" is now agentic to anyone telling him he's executing the Will of God. Its really hard to argue with a man believing he is an agent working for God Almighty! ). Its like arguing with a policeman, agentic to those who ordered him to enforce someone else's wishlist. ( usually a law, but not always ).
I stand corrected on the 2 Peter 3:8 thing.
2,000 year intervals ( according to some Biblical timelines my preacher friends tell me about )... Genesis: Adam and Eve. ~2000 years later, Noah's Ark / Flood. ~2000 years later, Jesus, and the current beliefs about the completion number 7. This combined with things I am seeing about the hockey-stick exponential growth of not only our population, but our destructive tendencies on our own planet. From oil depletion, global warming, resource depletion, and scriptural foretelling, I get the idea things are coming to a head pretty soon.
My own belief is Genesis chronicles a particular pair of humans set aside as "God's purebred special little snowflake" humans, as other humans seemed to be present on the Earth as well ( Or where would Cain and Abel get wives? ). Looks to me like a genetic experiment fouled up by Nephilim. Like a mutt humping God's Prize Poodle. I believe that was the "snake" in the Garden of Eden. A tryst. Sexual contamination. But we can't say that in church. In front of the kids. So we blame it on an apple.
But Adam and Eve know what they did. Shame. Fig leaves. Those were God's special little snowflakes and He told them not to do that. They did anyway. Sound like any kids even today's parents have to put up with?
The flood thing puzzles me. Just where did all the water come from? The Law seems to forbid things like a thousand cubic miles of water coming out of nowhere, and going back into nowhere when the 40 days were up.
Yes, evidence of water being all over what is now deserts abounds. Pangea. This is not ringing 4,000 years ago. This is more like millions of years ago. The laws of physics are going to change to accommodate the anomalous testimony? Ummm. That breaks the Law. I'll revisit this in a little bit.
You bring up the thing that concerns me a lot... just how much can one trust the accounting of their vision, knowing full good and well even today, religious leaders under the influence of peyote document their interaction with The Great Spirit? Trying to get the base data back out of this seems akin to trying to recover data out of a terribly noisy stream, with intelligent attempts to obfuscate, no less. I take it a lot of stuff had been so monkeyed with by the time I get it. It was monkeyed with by those trying to get people to see things as the monkey sees it.
I take John 1:1 to explain where God came from... "In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God. The Word was God.". I take the Word is the Law. This was here before the Big Bang. And will be here after everything plays out.
Luke 16:17 "But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void. " Who can alter the Law. I was told these were the Laws of Physics. To me, they are the Mighty Hand of God himself. Those laws are relentlessly enforced. And they govern the operation of the entire Universe. My take is they were always here, and will always be here. The Word. Now how much we anthropomorphize this law into our own realm seems to be the basis of theology.
All I can really say is there seems to me to be a lot more to this than it first appears. But I've seen so little of it so far that I hardly feel qualified to witness without guilt that I am merely spinning wild gossip.
What I type here is only my take on it - with a low confidence that I have it correct.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 28 2017, @04:30PM
Nope.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Koen on Friday April 28 2017, @06:21PM
But I do believe travel into the future is possible, maybe even likely. I see nothing in physics that forbids it.
Don't we do it all the time: traveling into the future with a speed of one second per second?
/. refugees on Usenet: comp.misc [comp.misc]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday April 28 2017, @06:44PM
Since you're mentioning the Bible, let me bring up a reference that sounds like a four dimensional measurement of something.
Ephesians 3:17-19 (NIV) [biblegateway.com]
17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday April 28 2017, @04:31PM
Or Rority and Gumal go back and fix it [mcgrewbooks.com] after you go back in time and screw up the future.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org