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dahart: >> has been mistranslated in popular science culture as a thing that somehow opens up the option of time travel. Ah, time travel isn't science fiction.
by mbfg 11y ago
dahart: >> has been mistranslated in popular science culture as a thing that somehow opens up the option of time travel.
Ah, time travel isn't science fiction. Clearly we have concrete experiments that show this is common place, easy and done all the time.
The faster you go in the space dimension, the slow you move in the time dimension. Now certainly being able to go back in time is something of speculation, and more the realm of science fiction. but that you can jump into other people's future is fact.
- dahart 11y agoYou're right, and that's my understanding too. But I would say that relativistic perception of time does not classify as "time travel", unless mere existence classifies as time travel. Yes, time slows down or speeds up depending on velocity, but not in a way that you have any control over. Time is not a choice, its not an axis upon which you can choose your direction of travel, it is only something you are subjected to and can observe. Now, I guess this is a very subjective discussion, but saying you can "jump into other people's future" feels like a way to make it sound sexy while glossing over the boring detail that you have to sit through all the intervening time along the way, the "jump" isn't instantaneous, and once you "jump", there's no going back. In this sense, we're always jumping into the future each and every second, and it would be equally correct to state as fact that we can wait into other people's future.