Comments on: Practical way to time travel in past

By: d. sherman

d. sherman — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:34:56 +0000

i really feel light traveling in a ~wave~ is incorrect. like everything else light is 3 dimensional not 2. an energy wave travels in a swirl like water down a drain. the linier imagery of light would be a tube thats size would depend on the amount of particles doing the ole cohesive push-pull. i firmly feel that travel at light-speed is easiest to achieve if a method were developed to utilize the channel within this “tube”
the word ~wormhole~ comes to mind. figure this out, then you can do your telescope and mirror idea. (unless they would be serving a better purpose as focusing the direction of your voyage)

By: Brijesh

Brijesh — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:44:57 +0000

@Michael, great idea..!!

@Paulius1982, I agree with you

@Can Berkol, After getting all your thoughtful commends, I need to re-think about my time travel..!!

By: Can Berkol

Can Berkol — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 17:09:44 +0000

Hmm, this isn’t time travel. Yes, you may see what happened in the past but you will not travel through time. The light itself only caries imagery information; it is not the happening, it is just a record of what’s happening… So, what is time really; why do we absolutely connect it to light? Is it because we can only see things with the existence of light. Hmm, then what if I am blind. Does time depend on sound for blind people. What if I am also deaf? Am I timeless, then?

Yes, we can watch the past and even the future; but how are we going to shift our existence within time? I don’t think light speed alone is the answer.. Time is a relative concept and light is an absolute concept.. hmmmm…..

By: Paulius1981

Paulius1981 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:07:36 +0000

The biggest point everyone is missing is that in order to see events through this telescope that happened two years in the past from OUR perspecive, we would have to be able to send the telescope to it’s destination INSTANTLY.

If we assume that, like in your thought experiment, that it would take a year to travel a light year, we wouldn’t be able see any further into the past than the day we launched the telescope.

IE, if the telescope is launched in 2010, arrives in position 2 light years away in 2012, the ‘earliest’ that telescope will be able to see is 2010.

The only way to see the past from our perspective is if the telescope could break the speed of light.

For example, if we could launch a telescope on Jan 1st 2010 and have it arrive two light years away on Jan 2nd, then we would be able to see ‘back’ to 2008.

The whole ’seeing backwards in time’ depends on being able to get somewhere before the light reflecting of our planet does. If we could match the speed of light, we could certainly set up a telescope that would allow people in the future to see ‘now’ from our perspective, but as someone mentioned above, we might as well just use a regular old video camera…the picture quality would be much better for one.

By: Michael

Michael — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:24:44 +0000

Why don’t we just put up a giant mirror, that way the light we would see bouncing off the mirror would be an image of 2 years ago. Also, we wouldn’t have to worry about the whole wireless transmitting thing, we would just have to point our telescope at the mirror.

By: Arjav

Arjav — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 02:22:54 +0000

considering the delay only I am telling to keep the telescope 1 light year away. Lets take the current years example. If we place the satellite 1 light years away then in 2009 Light starts transmitting. reaches the telescope in the 2010 and reaches back in 2011. So we will be able to see todays world after two years and not one year. Now lets put the satellite 2 light years away. Then it will reach the earth in 2013 i.e. 4 yrs from now. Can you please explain if I am wrong.

Also I am telling this theory to be stupid because according to Bhavin and which I also believe we wont be able to see the things going on before the current time. It is only possible if there is already a satellite few light years far and it is already transmitting back the history. You only have written we wont be able to go in the past and we can just look back in the history then why not just use handycam today and view them after two years.

By: Brijesh

Brijesh — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:43:28 +0000

Arjav,

If we want to see 2 years back, we have to keep the telescope 2 light year away, because the time from telescope to earth does not count towards the transmission. It will only add delay.

Well, the approach is not stupid, you didn’t quite understood the concept. The whole theory is about seeing the video of ‘past’, and you can’t go there with your handycam. But as the great Bhavin pointed out, we have to wait some ‘more’ time until we can travel faster than speed of light

By: Brijesh

Brijesh — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:36:25 +0000

Bhavin, you are 100$ right, that was the answer I was looking for in my problem number 3.

By: Arjav

Arjav — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:46:24 +0000

Actually if you want to see 2 yrs back then you just need to keep the satellite 1 light year away. because it will take 2 yrs for the light to travel back to earth 1 light year for reaching the satellite and 1 light year for coming back… Wow a great improvment…

But this approach is completely stupid. If we are going to see just the video of the history and not going back then why dont we just record it in our handycam.???

By: Bhavin

Bhavin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:41:12 +0000

well, there’s a logical fallacy here.. say if you want to see the historic events from the telescope (provided that we have some technology that can give us clear pictures from the earth that far away), the telescope is never gonna catch the rays of light containing that imaginary..

in other words, even if we can travel at speed of light, at most we can be travelling with the current rays emitted (technically reflected!) from earth. may be i’ll put a note about it in my upcoming book.. “No F***ing way”