Time Travel? Scientific breakthrough in quantum mechanics rolls back time

This perspective indicates an observation limitation for us, not a limitation of reality (in this case, a potential/hypothetical existence of reality). An entity that can observe a 4th dimension that we are not capable of observing would have the means (potentially) to simultaneously observe our past present and future.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

It could simply be that time is real, but it is experienced differently per observer and certainly not universal.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Understanding your response was tongue in cheek, I’ve given this some thought. I’m not sure how one person could have stopped 9/11, but one person with the right plan could probably have stopped the highjacking of one of the flights, say, Flight 93.

 

Stopped how? Anyone approaching the powers that be in advance of the attack probably would have been detained and sent for a mental status evaluation.

 

Correct. That’s why I don’t see any way to stop all of 9/11. But could one person stop one of the four aircraft highjackings by being there on the plane. I think so.

 

Here is your answer. The fact is your not going to exceed the speed light.
Do Photons Have Mass?

When you first hear it, the idea that light could have mass might seem ridiculous, but if it doesn’t have mass, why is light affected by gravity? How could something without mass be said to have momentum? These two facts about light and the “particles of light” called photons might make you think twice. It is true that photons don’t have inertial mass or relativistic mass, but there is more to the story than just that basic answer.​

 

Another bake your noodle experiment showing energy teleported into a vacuum.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/phys...20230222/?mc_cid=539e4e1a35&mc_eid=acc5dc5ae2

Lots going on in the quantum world that we are just peeking into.

 

At least not without extra-dimensional assistance.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

I am hoping something in this information will enable me to get out of my speeding ticket. Could be a boon to an enterprising attorney.

 

This is the most fascinating field of science, IMHO. Thank you for posting the link/story. I now wonder if subatomic partials contain our memories. I also wonder if dreams are related to Quantum entanglement.

 

Fascinating thread. Here are my somewhat long-winded thoughts. The thread title is not quite accurate. The article states it is not about time travel. It is about reversing processes. The reversal, however, would take place in the forward time direction. Making someone 20 years younger would take 20 years to accomplish.

The second article referenced (twice) lays out the two main views of the nature of time, although the article writer seems to solidly promote one view over the other, perhaps for shock value. The two main views are referred to in philosophical circles by the very imaginative names "A-theory" and "B-theory," after the designations of the 20th century philosopher John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart.

The A-theory refers to tensed, dynamic time. Temporal becoming is real. The present is real, the past is gone, and the future is yet to be. This is watching a football game in live. The B-theory of time is tenseless, static. All points of time are equally real, a "block." Nothing is becoming; there is only before, at, or after the time point of the observer. This is watching a recorded game. All plays exist, it's just that you haven't watched them yet. But someone who started watching the recording an hour ago has seen some of those plays that you haven't watched yet. Most philosophers agree that, even if they do not hold to the A-theory, they acknowledge that is how we perceive the world.

I see several problems with block time:
Who are we really?
In many ways the idea of block time is very bizarre. Our consciousness would not endure through time. We would be a collection of infinitesimal points of ourselves that all exist equally. These points perdure along our timeline. Our 5 minutes ago would be just as real as our now and our 5 minutes from now. Every moment always exists.

Big Bang, Big Dud, or Big Both
One aspect of block time I haven't seen addressed is that while on the A-theory space and time began with the big bang and the universe has been expanding as time progresses, on the B-theory, with all points in time being equally real, the universe is not expanding. The big bang would have had to create all points in time, which means it created the expanded universe together with every stage of expansion.

Also, the "block" implies an end. Because the block would contain finite moments of time, the big bang would have had to create the last moment of universe even as it created the first moment. If today came into existence together with the first moment in time then, on a secular view, the heat death of the universe also occurred at the same instant as its beginning.

I'm guilty your Honor, but I'm totally innocent
If time is static, then there exists no chronological priority, because all moments exist together. One moment does not proceed from the previous moment because all moments in time are created together. An action does not result from a cause, because all moments have equal priority, coming into existence together.

A crime cannot result from a desire or thought, because both the desire and the act would come into existence equally together at the Big Bang (or would exist equally together forever, but an infinite past is logically incoherent). The cause and the result would be related merely by their relative positions on a static timeline. The defendant could claim that the Big Bang created the criminal act.

It was that other me that did it
On block time all slices of our life would have equal standing, meaning that the points in our lives representing us not committing an act would exist equally with the points having committed the act. There would be no chronological priority to any slices of our lives because priority does not exist in block time. We could not resort to the “arrow of time” because the passage of time would be merely an illusion. The question would become on which slices would we be judged if all have no priority?

How does the block-time party get its beer?
Those who hold to block time believe that every moment of time came into existence together with the origin of the universe. General internet searches, as well as literature searches, yield numerous explanations of the time block. But how was the block populated? How did the contents of each moment of time come to be if all points of time came into existence together? I have yet to find anyone explaining how the contents of each moment of the block appeared at the Big Bang.

The Big Bang would have had to create not just this moment now but also the world, me, the house I'm sitting in, the computer where I sit, the fingers ham-fistedly thumping the keys, and the very thoughts in my head. All of this would have had to come into existence with the moment in time they occupy.

On the other hand, if all points of block time were created empty only to be later filled with content as time progressed, then the notion of a spacetime continuum as something real becomes hollow. It becomes just a mathematical representation of the special theory of relativity, and nothing more.

I cannot find any physicist, cosmologist, philosopher, or theologian who addresses this problem.

Finally, I don’t see how the block time or the B-theory of time can be falsified. The A-theory, on the other hand, can be falsified by building a time machine and travelling to another time other than the next moment into the future (we all travel through time, just one moment "at a time").

So, while I hold to the A-theory of time and do not believe time travel is possible, I still love time-travel movies!

 

I question the idea that they must be in competition with one another. I suppose it is possible for our 3D/4D(w/time) universe that is observable to us to exist as a B-theory of time where everything exists all at once, but only to an extra-dimensional observer who exists in, perhaps, an A-theory of time in extra dimensions. This observer would, again, perhaps, have the recording of our movie, but also with the ability (potentially) to make edits to the movie at any given point.

So how does that mesh with the idea of free will? Suppose that our free will itself is manipulated by ourselves as extra-dimensional entities participating in this 3D/4D observable world. We don't truly understand the nature of consciousness, but it is possible that our souls could merely be a 3D/4D interpretation of whomever we are as extradimensional beings. This would address the nature of how our consciousness in our observable universe could "endure through time" as you put it.

Possibly: the big bang to us is the way that we observe however our 3D/4D observable universe came into existence, but it would be in keeping that the whole thing (from beginning to end) was created all at the same time (where time for us is different than it would be for an extra-dimensional observer).

Extra dimensions resolves this issue, as a 3D/4D participant, we observe actions/reactions and cause/effect within our observable world. If we are merely avatars in a 3D/4D observable universe controlled by our extra-dimensional selves, then we would be able to resolve both existence all at once with our roles in said existence.

The passage of time is potentially both observable and an illusion. Observable to us as 3D/4D minds, but an illusion to any observer that exists beyond our limited dimensions. There is no necessary contradiction here when you add additional dimensions.

It may not be a scientific theory, it may be a scientific law...we just don't have the scientific capabilities to know it.

Go GATORS!
,WESGATORS

 

Or... it's the bridge between the continuum and infinity.

 

Imagine our past like a deck of cards in a set-in-motion reality... Could we jump back into a place where that time is locked in space-time and then run interjected into it? The past might not be as "over" as we think it is.

What if all space-time is that way?

I have much more plausible theories that I have posted. But I am covering the seemingly less probable first.

I believe we exist in a continuum, and that we have unleashed a time "bomb" that gives us the illusion of space-time in a linear existence with an infinitely vast space to go along with our infinitely vast time.

That linear time/bomb was what we know as the big-bang. But that is not a one off event... it's continual and happening at an infinite rate as we speak times per second... lost in our same space... invisible us, we can't see it. It's "out of tune" in another frequency unlike our own universe, we can't see them. Yet they exist in this same space.

Like a four dimensional frequency... all matter in our visible universe is really just an arrangement pure energy much like a frequency you tune into on the radio, only in four dimensions.

If you can hack that frequency then you can literately jump into an infinity of other realities right here in our same space... with the right "channel" changer.

The theory of everything is a relationship between the continuum (a non-corporeal existence) and infinity (a linear life existing in spacetime).

 

Yes, A-theory is life in a incorporeal continuum existence, where everything there is NO TIME-SPACE, and B-theory is spacetime, living in a linear time based existence where you're born you age and then you die..

 

Entropy is real, and that's what we measure. It's also why returning even a millisecond back to the past is impossible. It exists only in our memory of it.

As for the present, even if you bat your eyelashes as fast as you can, that won't capture its duration. The present is immediately the past.

What about the future? Our experience - indeed, the history of this universe - teaches there has been one. But we can't travel there because it is instantaneously determined by the present which has just as instantaneously become the past.

I don't know where that leaves us after this thought experiment. Perhaps Shakespeare has it right:
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."