Time Travellers Invited Back From the Future

GameMaster · 05-06-2005, 03:48 PM

http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...476556,00.html

Quote:

One of the strongest arguments against time travel is that we are not overrun with curious tourists from the future. A university student in Boston plans to change that, by inviting budding Doctor Whos to the world's first time traveller convention this weekend.

The organiser, Amal Dorai - a masters student in electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - aims to test the theory of time travel by inviting people from the future to the event.

"We are doing this as a very low-risk, low-cost way to investigate the possibility of time travel," he said. "I think the probability they will come is very low, but if it does happen it will one of the biggest events in human history.

"Of course, no time travellers doesn't rule out the possibility of time travel, they could have just decided not to come to our convention."

Physicists believe some kind of time travel is theoretically possible, but it will take hundreds or even thousands of years to work out the technical details.

Concerned that people will have forgotten his convention by then, Mr Dorai is urging volunteers to publicise the event to future generations by carving the details into clay tablets and burying notices in time capsules. He has slipped invitations on long-lasting paper inside dozens of obscure books in the MIT and Harvard University libraries.

"If we put them inside books that are only touched every 50 years or so then they'll stay there and people in the future might learn of the convention. The big danger is that it's forgotten. Once that happens then it doesn't matter if someone invents time travel, we won't be able to see it."

The invitations ask visitors to turn up on the MIT campus at 8pm on Saturday and include precise latitude and longitude coordinates. "Time travel is a hard problem and may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion," they note.

Visitors from the future are advised to bring proof of advanced technology, such as a cure for cancer or a working nuclear fusion reactor. Sonic screwdrivers are optional.

"Because of the small chance of time travel I think people will be sceptical," Mr Dorai admits. "But I hope time travellers won't take that as an insult. If what they bring as proof doesn't satisfy us then they could always go back into their future and grab something else."

Professor Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Oxford, said Mr Dorai may not be wasting his time. The weird world of quantum mechanics suggests time travel could one day be possible through tiny holes, loops and channels in the fabric of spacetime.

"We're talking a long, long time in the future to be able to do this but it's not impossible," Prof Johnson said. "It would be very hard to send through something that weighed anything, like machines and people, but you could conceivably send messages through light and radiowaves. The chances of somebody from the future turning up on Saturday night are pretty remote, but they could get a phone call."

Hope to see you all your descendants there.

Some day...many years from now...

Solid Snake · 05-06-2005, 04:58 PM

Thats very interesting, I doubt anybody from the future will show up to the confrence, there is probably a lot more porblems than just the time travel part of it. For example even if the smallest of changes were to occur if somone travels back in time it could change his future, like the "butterfly effect". He may get back to the future just to discover that because he travelled back in time we ended up discovering time travel much quicker and his laboratory doesn't exist anymore. Sorta of like that one Simpsons episode.

Teuthida · 05-06-2005, 06:01 PM

Pretty interesting idea. But if they don't open up a wormhole at the time of the convention and keep it open until the time in the future when they want those people to come then I don't see this working.

Su-Yin · 05-06-2005, 07:24 PM

i dont think this is possible...if it is, we should hav seen people from the future testing thier gadgets out already

Typhoid · 05-06-2005, 07:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Danchastu

But if they don't open up a wormhole at the time of the convention and keep it open until the time in the future when they want those people to come then I don't see this working.

And thats the only problem you see with this? Hahaha.

Happydude · 05-06-2005, 08:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Solid Snake

Thats very interesting, I doubt anybody from the future will show up to the confrence, there is probably a lot more porblems than just the time travel part of it. For example even if the smallest of changes were to occur if somone travels back in time it could change his future, like the "butterfly effect". He may get back to the future just to discover that because he travelled back in time we ended up discovering time travel much quicker and his laboratory doesn't exist anymore. Sorta of like that one Simpsons episode.

actually that is not 100% true...

there are two posibilities:

1. the future is allready pre-written and has allready happened in the past, and therefore everything we are doing and are going to do technically allready happened.
for example: if i (A) ate an apple, then after i (A) was done eating my apple, i (A) went 5 minutes back in time to see me (B) eating the apple. I (B) would also see myself travel back in time over and over again...in other words, the fact that i was able to go back in time and watch me eat my apple, proves that it has happened allready and i am just repeating my actions that had occured in the future.

i think that even confused me a bit.\

easier example: if i were to travel back in time and destroyed my time machine before using it; i wouldn't be able to travel back in time to destroy my time machine before using it, right?...but since i was able to travel back in time, then there is nothing that can change that. since i am there allready, i will be there no matter what.

if you don't get what im saying, then forget it...it's hard to explain.

anyway, the second option is that SS said...that the smallest change can change everything like the butterfly effect.

Teuthida · 05-06-2005, 08:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Typhoid

And thats the only problem you see with this? Hahaha.

Pretty much. Yeah. That's the reason we could probably never go back in time beyond the point that a wormhole had been opened.

ZebraRampage · 05-06-2005, 09:14 PM

If nobody shows up at the convention, then there is no hope for time travel, unless nobody saw the notes, because the people from the future, not matter what time they're from, will come to the same day and time. It doesn't matter if they're from 100 years from now, or 1000 years from now. They would all still end up here on the day of the convention. So if nobody comes, then there is no time travel at all. But once again, that is only if nobody found the notes. I hope that what I said seems right.

Canyarion · 05-07-2005, 06:32 AM

What if in the future, we turned in to inhuman killing beasts? Do we want them to come here?

Stray_Bullet · 05-07-2005, 06:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Canyarion

What if in the future, we turned in to inhuman killing beasts? Do we want them to come here?

Sure. I mean... if they did end up killing us, they'd just be hurting themselves. Right?

P.S. I don't believe in the ability to travel back in time. Forward? Maybe.

dropCGCF · 05-08-2005, 03:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stray_Bullet

Sure. I mean... if they did end up killing us, they'd just be hurting themselves. Right?

P.S. I don't believe in the ability to travel back in time. Forward? Maybe.

I can travel forward in time.

DeathsHand · 05-08-2005, 04:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dropCGCF

I can travel forward in time.

I get it, because we're all currently doing so just by being alive and letting the seconds tick by!

You slay me!

DimHalo · 05-08-2005, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stray_Bullet

Sure. I mean... if they did end up killing us, they'd just be hurting themselves. Right?

P.S. I don't believe in the ability to travel back in time. Forward? Maybe.

So if people travel forward in time, but it is not possible to travel back in time, they can't get back to their own time, right?

Vampyr · 05-08-2005, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeepnut's slave

So if people travel forward in time, but it is not possible to travel back in time, they can't get back to their own time, right?

That would make sense.

And if you were to travel at the speed of light, or near the speed of light, you would travel forward in time. This is so because speed and gravity and time are all related. It was one of Einsteins theories, I believe.

It has been proven. They took two atomic clocks, put one in a jet and one on the earth, and had the jet fly as fast as possible. When it came back, the atomic clock on the jet was a fraction of a second ahead of the one on earth. Of course we don't have anything that can fly fast enough to travel a significant distance forward in time, because like I said, you would need to go at the speed of light.

Going backward in time is a different story. You can't slow down enough to start moving backwards. However, I do believe that anything is possible, and in the future we may find a way to travel backwards.

Swan · 05-08-2005, 06:59 PM

If something or someone did show up at this convention from the future, couldn't they then teach us how to build a time machine of our own and then we would have a time machine as well. BUt then wouldn't us having time machines now make it so there is no reason to prove time travel in the future... This always confuses me.