3am paradox question.

Phil-X-

Active member
Ok so im about to pass out and then I thought of this and now its bothering me..

the year is 2014 and the first time machine is invented, I go x years in the future and hand a man a guide to roman numerals. He then goes in his time machine, goes back to the days of ancient rome and gives a man the guide to create roman numerals, thus creating the concept.

So in this case, who established the roman numeral system?
 
I'd have to say the original creator still.

Since you derived YOUR information from their findings, and the time traveler then gave them to the original creator, the original creator is still accredited with creation, and is still the actual creator.

 
i would think time travel into the future would be easier.......
to travel into the future you just need to go faster then light, what do you need to do to go back in time?
 
This is a paradox, hence no solution.

Where does the first instance of roman numerals derive from? You got your knowledge from people learning from the romans, who apparently got their knowledge from the guy who travelled back in time to tell them, who got it from you, who got it from the romans...

Another famous instance of this paradox is similar, but revolves around getting blueprints for a time machine...

Because of these paradoxes, many believe time travel to the past is impossible, at least along our same timeline. Perhaps travel into the past to a parallel universe with an identical timeline? Or travel across universes with a timeline that is slightly behind our own.
 
so based on that stephen hawking video

time = the speed of light

you travel faster than the speed of light, you travel forward in time. if you travel forward in time then, and then open the train doors, would the world even exist? i mean you've just travelled faster than the speed of light so technically speaking wouldn't the whole world at least be in darkness?
 
you misinterpreted the whole concept of time travel my friend=) you cant go faster than the speed of light, thats a law of nature. so when in a cabin that is going the speed of light time is slowed dramatically, such as the train. so you can go, say 100 years. but on the inside it only feels like 1 week since time is slowed. time is slowed on the inside due to laws of nature. nothing can go faster than the speed of light. so time must be slowed on the inside so nothing can break that speed. nature is marvelous, i hope i understood that correctly
 
You got it backwards bro, they have sent particles nanoseconds into the future, but it is impossible to send something to the past.
 
I think you interpreted that correctly but let me say that new discoveries in quantum entanglement proves communication can occur extremely faster than light, almost instantaneously over millions of miles.
 
this is basically the grandfather paradox without possibly killing yourself and its a paradox for a reason, we dont have the answer because we dont know enough about time travel
 
I believe this is all correct except that the cabin only needs to go close to the speed of light. The faster it is, the slower time appears to pass. This is described by the Lorentz factor (look it up if you're interested). Nothing but light can travel the speed of light.
 
Those "new discoveries" are still up for debate though I believe, like the lab that claimed to move particles faster than light last year. The experiments' margin of error ranged from plausible to impossible.
 
Aren't there certain quantum particles that have been observed going faster than the speed of light? I forget what they were called though.
 
Yeah that's what I was referring to in my last post. They're called neutrinos, but the scientists aren't positive that they actually went faster than the speed of light.
 
Why would nothing be able to travel faster than light? Maybe I'm underthinking it but if you put enough force on something wouldn't it be traveling faster than light eventually?
 
they found an error in the experiment and the updated results showed that the speed was consistent with the speed of light
 
obviously the individual that had first invented the numerical system. time doesn't get erased when you travel back in time, instead new paralleled alternative realities comes into existence, with the old path of things still there.

 
you have no idea what you are getting into...

Don't feel bad though. That's what the smartest people on earth thought until 1905.
 
Haha yeah I have no doubt there's some reason that it can't happen since it seems to be generally accepted, I'm just kind of curious what it is. Unless it really is some next level shit, in which case I'll just take your word for it.
 
Nothing with mass can travel the speed of light (or faster) because it would take infinite energy to propel a mass-having object the speed of light. As you increase speed closer to C (speed of light), the energy required to move you fast increases exponentially.

Perhaps someone could explain why this is.
 
No according to some of the formulas that E=MC^2 sums up. It takes energy to accelerate an object. The closer to the speed of light you get the more mass an object gets. If the object were to reach the speed of light the object would have infinite mass. Infinite mass means it would have infinite resistance to force. Also you could never reach the Infinite mass because it would take infinite energy to make an object reach infinite mass.
 
i cant stand when people say so difinatevely that nothig moves faster than fight and never will. whos to say that, I bet in time well be leaving light in the dust
 
Also it is possible to travel into the future. Actualy all astronauts or anything moving have slightly done this because if time dilation. If were to travel for two hours, an hour away from the earth and an hour back, at 2/3 the speed of light, you would have traveled 30 minutes into the future. Don't ask me to explain why, I'm still confused by it. Look it up if you want to try to figure that out.
 
I hope so. That'd be so cool, but people are saying that that isn't true because that is what the latest science and technology tells us... we have much greater evidence that it is true than not.

Most scientists that try to prove a "known" fact wrong are thought to be crazy. That's just how people work. So if you truly think that things can go faster than light, people will think you're crazy or wrong until you prove them wrong.
 
well if you are traveling in a vacuum at half the speed of light, and you shine a light in front of you, how fast will the light appear to move away from you?
 
haha. I guess "in time" we do kinda leave light in the dust because photons don't travel through time.

p.s. why can't you stand when people say that? Do you know much physics? No one can say anything definitively about anything though.
 
People, we have digressed from the topic at hand. The man can't sleep over the paradoxical situation he has created, not the possibility of time travel.

My guess would be that the entire universe would end. Or Mr. Rogers would save it, and would also be considered the original creator of the roman numeral system.
 
are you saying you think it would be half the speed of light?

then what would happen if you have two identical fixed charges in the spaceship? if you were sitting inside the spaceship you would see them stationary right? but if you were outside the spaceship you would them moving.

also if there is nothing around you there is no way to judge who is moving. the guy in the spaceship feels like he is stationary, and the guy outside feels that as well. I think that's pretty basic. all that is for sure is the relative motion between them.

so one guy is going to see two stationary charges. He would then simply see the charges exerting a repulsive electric force on each other.

but the guy outside the spaceship is going to see two MOVING charges. and we know that two moving charges create a magnetic field. so the total force between them would be less for the guy outside the ship right?
 
to the original guy that quoted me

nah, i understood all of what you said. but if the cabin of the train WAS able to travel faster than the speed of light, then what would the future even be like? would it exist? would it be dark? would time be stopped in the moment you travel to until the real time (the time you left from) reaches it? would nothing exist until the moment when real time reaches the time you are in?
 
My question is why does time travel necessarily have to do with traveling faster than the speed of light? Physics and Quantum Mechanics are relatively new sciences and we have just barley reached the tip of the iceberg of the information and new discoveries found within them. To just say time travel is impossible seems kind of narrow minded, unless you are specifically referring to the popular modern theories of Stephen Hawking.

 
Physics is the oldest science...

Time travel into the past is considered impossible due to the paradoxes that would arise. Grandfather killing etc.

Time travel into the future is possible in a sense, and happens all the time. Travelling faster than someone else will make time run slower for you. Gravity also makes time run slower. Get in a spaceship, travel really fast for a while, then come back to earth. You will have aged 5 years, everyone else 20 (arbitrary year selection).
 
I'm just gunna say that I love this stuff. Imagine being the person who finds a new discovery related to this. That'd be so awesome. /nerd
 
post-10420-Thanks-Obama-0vuO.gif


Thanks, Obama.
 
i am pretty sure "they" have neither discarded any possibility of future and/or time travels.

there could be a dozen "solutions" to these paradoxes. there could be an infinite amount of parallel universes and you just jump into one where you do have the knowledge and shoot your grandfather who isnt your grandfather in that other universe. or it could be straight up impossible to "change" history. what if you were restricted to an observer role and you just could watch history through some kind of virtual window? obviously, its very unlikely that someone will actually invent a time machine to go back and forth in time. but its conceivable that given certain conditions (wormholes, exotic matter, dark matter, infinite amounts of energy/mass or whatever), it could be possible, regardless of whether those conditions ever existed, will ever exist or can be created artificially.

when you guys say past and future, i am not sure its in a straight physics kind of way. like it seems that most of you say its "easier" to go like into the year 3000 and back than back to 1000 and back. but from the year 3000 to 2013, you still go back in time, so past and future are subjective.
 
how do you know who is traveling "faster"? both people will experience normal time, and it will look like time has slowed down for the other person. This is only for inertial frames of reference though. you need general relativity to explain things like the twin paradox. I don't know GR that well yet.

 
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