Is it posible

[diggers15]

Will we ever be able to go back in time

[naz_nomad]

no

[diggers15]

y

[gen2]

You will know when it is possible because you will have visitors from the future.

[naz_nomad]

answered your own question? ...

[joko]

they would already be here, and have been here from the dawn of time, as they could travel back to any point in the past.


so, unless they walk among us already (and they may well do - who'd believe them?) then it never happens.

[Loosehead]

Bookmakers exist therefore time travel is impossible.

[stevie21]

I don't think so. Not ever.

[boink]

Joko not to blow your bubble but as you would need a vessle to time travel in, you could only travel back to a time when the vessle was built, unless of course you plan on randomly appearing, or taking your vessle with you, Doctor Who style which is probably very impractical and un-efficient.

But for the question i would say no.

[joko]

boink - are you suggesting a stationary vessEL that stands in one place undisturbed for centuries or millenia?
rather more impractical and ineffecient than a tardis style machine, i think!
- and also makes no sense, as once it was built you would then have to wait an amount of time in order to test it to see if it even works, and if it did, the people who built would hardly get chance to use it in their lifetime

sorry to burst your bubble

[rojash]

Can't follow your reasoning at all, boink. If time travel was vessel-based then the vessel would travel back with you, and if not, then you could travel back to any time (or so it seems to me).
But as joko says, if time travel became possible in the future, given that the future is effectively infinite, we then have the possibility of an infinite number of time travellers travelling back to every possible time, and we wouldn't be able to move without tripping over them!

[jake-the-peg]

Have you guys considered that time travel might only be possible back to a point where time travel was discoverred.

For example I create a time travel "receiver" and then I can travel back to when I creted the receiver but not before.

This would explain Bookmakers and the lack of visitors.

In reality and given some of the stuff in Relativity I think it unlikely that you or I could ever travel back in time. Slightly more interesting is the possibility of sending a signal back in time - could you have a telephone conversation with your previous/future self?

[mibn2cweus]

See, I told you it could be done.

[mibn2cweus]

What's the big deal. It's easy to go back in time. Watch this . . .

[jake-the-peg]

:c)

Image now you've invented a time-telephone.

How long will you sit by it waiting for a call?

If that doesn't mess with your head nothing will!

[boink]

yes joko i was, take for example you travel back in time, and land in the middle of a wall? or even on another person, as the second point of the vessel is to have a controlled envirnment.

[boink]

also joko, you seem to be speaking from a fictional stand point, i know i mentioned Doctor Who but that was just to relate an object. Waiting around in science is a fact of life. it might be no fun to only travel back to when the machine was invented and also for the poor chaps who spend years inventing it, but thats the way things are

[elevenses]

Taken logically we all travel back in time all the time, but not physically. As light has a finite speed and therefore takes time to travel from one place to another, all the things you see have already happened as the light has to reflect off objects in order for you to see them. As the light originates from the Sun, and takes roughly 8 minutes to reach us, sunlight is already 8 minutes old and in the past!
Look to the stars to see even further back in time.
Sadly we can't change anything about it.

[dawkins]

There's a difference between looking back in time and going back in time Elevenses. Relativity allows for time travel into the future - you go on a fast journey away from earth and when you get back everyone has aged more than you - but this doesn't allow time travel into the past. There is no evidence that backwards time travel is possible.

[joko]

what other way is there to speak about time travel at this stage in time?

you are speaking as though you know how time travel is done

you don't - it's fiction

[elevenses]

Hi Dawkins - you're right. Still, fun to conjecture.