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Yeah I understand what you're saying from a practical approach. I'm looking at it more from a sci-fi (emphasis on FI) angle I guess. I don't really consider wha
by ryanelkins 16y ago
Yeah I understand what you're saying from a practical approach. I'm looking at it more from a sci-fi (emphasis on FI) angle I guess. I don't really consider what you're talking about as "time travel" any more than how I traveled a minute or so into the future sitting here typing this.
When I said "I've never really understood why we shouldn't be able to travel backwards in time." I was referring to the statement from the article: "Ultimately, scientists may find that only travel into the future is possible, as the laws of nature may make travel to the past impossible so the relationship between cause and effect is maintained." particularly the part about cause and effect.
- lmkg 16y agoTraveling backwards in time is functionally equivalent to exceeding the speed of light; in fact, an object is traveling faster than the speed of light in one inertial frame of reference if and only if there is a second inertial frame of reference, with relative velocity to the first less than the speed of light, in which it is traveling backwards in time. Technical matters of relativity aside, consider that you can't actually change how fast you move through time. You can't make time move faster or slower, at least within your own frame of reference. Time doesn't just move in a fixed direction, it moves at a fixed rate. Note that this is pretty close to how special relativity actually works, modulo semantics of "rate" when dealing with time. There are also thermodynamic considerations. One direction of time does seem to be privileged in terms of entropy. This doesn't necessarily mean that time travel is impossible, as far as I'm aware, but it does mean that "forward" in time isn't completely arbitrary, and reversing that may be thermodynamically unfavored.