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No Time Travel, Sorry 888

MOBE2001 writes "The bad news is that time does not change. Spatial velocity is given as dx/dt. Velocity in time(dt/dt) is nonsensical. As simple as that. In other words, no time travel to the past or the future, no motion in space-time, no wormholes and no hanky-panky with your great, great grandmother. There is only the changing present, aka the NOW. The good news is that distance is an illusion and we'll be able to travel instantly from anywhere to anywhere."
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No Time Travel, Sorry

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  • by SeanTobin ( 138474 ) <byrdhuntr@hotma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:38PM (#14680413)
    How else could people post articles in The Mysterious Future?
    • by smittyoneeach ( 243267 ) * on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:47PM (#14680539) Homepage Journal
      Trivially, as when a politician vows to curb inflation, buys a dog, names it "Inflation", and curbs it daily.
      Read that in Mad Magazine about 20 years ago.
      Only change: Alfred E. Neuman has been elected. Twice.
      • Only change: Alfred E. Neuman has been elected. Twice.

        No, only once. And there's some doubt about that one. ;)
        • by msauve ( 701917 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @04:43PM (#14681880)
          I just flip the page. Same with Newsweek.
    • by Elad Alon ( 835764 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:57PM (#14680685)
      I didn't want to say I'll have told you so...
  • by Mrs. Grundy ( 680212 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:38PM (#14680415) Homepage
    Nothing Can Move in Spacetime! By Definition!

    That's weird because I could have sworn when I went to bed last night it was yesterday and now its today.

    Nevertheless...this is fun. Looking at the equation from which all his arguments flow, it seems he is only demonstrating that it doesn't make sense to talk about one's velocity through time. I would agree. If I hop in my time machine and zip off to tomorrow, it doesn't make much sense for you to ask how long it took to get there. Or if you and I both have time machines and we decided to race to 1:00 pm tomorrow it would be always be a tie. But this is a far stretch from demonstrating that it is impossible. By this same logic we could define slope as the change in x over y or s = dx/dy. Does this definition make it impossible to move along the y axis because then the slope of our movement would be dy/dy? No. but it does say that if you move along the y axis your slope will be a constant.

    • by lawpoop ( 604919 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:45PM (#14680512) Homepage Journal
      "That's weird because I could have sworn when I went to bed last night it was yesterday and now its today."

      Not really. Now it's now, and that's all that is. You remember yesterday, but that is a memory occuring now. The past doesn't physically exist. Nor does the future. The only real (i.e. existing physically) part of our time perception is now.
    • A link to "www.rebelscience.org/crackpots" is considered science news on Slashdot these days? Is this story supposed to be a joke? What's up with this?
      • Idiotic (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zeinfeld ( 263942 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:08PM (#14680803) Homepage
        The guy who wrote the article simply does not understand the question that is being debated by the likes of Feynman et. al.

        Everyone agrees that practical time travel is at the very least exceptionally unlikely. But whether our model of the universe excludes the posibility of time travel is another matter entirely.

        Note that even if our model of the universe allows for time travel it does not mean that time travel is possible. Not least because we know that our model of the universe cannot possibly be completely right. Quantum physics provides an excelent model of the universe at a large scale, relativity provides a good model at the cosmological scale. The problem is that the two models are incompatible. At leas one of our models must be wrong. Most likely they are both approximations.

        The other issue that the writer does not seem to grasp is that the ability for matter to travel through time and the ability of information to travel through time are very different issues. For meaningful time travel it has to be possible for information to move backwards in time and not just matter. Otherwise what would come out the other end would be a random soup of quantum particles, not the time traveller. This is the problem with black hole time travel, the most that can come out the other side is a random soup.

        The 'proof' provided by the author only demonstrates that he does not have the slightest understanding of the subject he is pontificating on. dt/dt = 0??? No, all that shows is that the dimensions of the two quantities are the same. Besides x/x = 1 in most algebras.

        • Re:Idiotic (Score:5, Funny)

          by lbrandy ( 923907 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:38PM (#14681121)
          This reminds me of the great crackpot index [ucr.edu].

          This dude's score is off the charts. I highlighted some of the good ones:

                  1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.

                  2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.

                  3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.

                10 points for each favorable comparison of yourself to Einstein, or claim that special or general relativity are fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).

                10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a "paradigm shift".

                30 points for suggesting that a famous figure secretly disbelieved in a theory which he or she publicly supported. (E.g., that Feynman was a closet opponent of special relativity, as deduced by reading between the lines in his freshman physics textbooks.)

                30 points for suggesting that Einstein, in his later years, was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.

                40 points for claiming that the "scientific establishment" is engaged in a "conspiracy" to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike.

                40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated, present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will be forced to recant.)
        • by Quadraginta ( 902985 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:51PM (#14681286)
          If "time travel" just means the usual physics definition of "tracing a trajectory backward" then of course you can regard it as happening all the time. Positrons (anti-electrons) can easily be regarded as electrons traveling "backwards" in time, so that a positron-electron annihilation event is nothing more than an electron traveling "forward" in time, then reversing itself and traveling "backward" in time. Obviously we (traveling steadily forward in time) see two particles with opposite properties converge and disappear. Whoopee.

          However, I think what most people mean by "time travel" is something different, a causality loop. That is, they mean you do something (which they call "time travel") and this something lets you become your own grandpa, or influence the outcome of the Civil War, and so forth. Since, of course, those things influence the you that's influencing them (otherwise the story is not interesting), this makes a nice little loop of cause and effect: you influence x which influences you who influences x, and around and around.

          Whether or not the physics of the universe allows such a thing, I can't see any obvious reason why it would cause big problems -- or even be interesting. Certainly it could not manifest itself the way it's shown in the movies, in which you see the loop first one way (Marty McFly's parents marry and produce him), and then another way (Marty's parents fail to marry, because McFly travels back in time and interferes with their meeting). That's logically impossible. If the loop exists at all, it must have one unchanging form.

          That is, if Marty McFly does go "back in time" he obviously can't (or rather doesn't) prevent his parents from marrying and having him, because they actually did. Whatever he does "back in time" is already part of history. His "changes" already exist, and have always existed. Indeed, they can't even logically be regarded as "changes" because nothing really changed. Although...it's possible McFly, with his imperfect knowledge of the past, could have assumed something about the past was different than it actually was (e.g. he thought his parents met at the dance, instead of afterward, when some strangely-dressed clown introduced them). Therefore, when he "changes" history (by interfering with his parents meeting during the dance, and then "fixing" things up by introducing them afterward), he might be under the illusion that he is really "changing" history instead of simply causing it to happen as it actually did.

          I suppose we could now argue about whether Marty's sense of free will (as well as our own) is therefore just a big fat self-delusion, but, ugh, not before a pint or two.
          • by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <{ten.tsacmoc} {ta} {relyo.nhoj}> on Thursday February 09, 2006 @04:35PM (#14681777) Journal
            And what if these events occur, but aren't time travel at all? For the sake of the argument, assume you have the powers of a god, and sit outside the universe. As it plays out, you take a snapshot of the universe as it is in 1955. You save this. You let it play forward til 1985... then, you pause the VCR.

            You do your little god thing, rearranging everything in the universe as it should be according to your snapshot, with a few exceptions... Marty and the Delorean. He didn't travel back in time, though, to him it can look like nothing else. But by the metatime clock that you the god uses, time has rolled on as it always has, only the universe was partially reset once or twice. I like this interpretation better, because you don't have to play mindfuck games with it.
            • Fair enough, but I prefer to believe that energy et cetera is conserved, and your interpretation wildly violates conservation laws. I'd rather preserve conservation of energy than forbid closed loops in world-lines.
              • by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <{ten.tsacmoc} {ta} {relyo.nhoj}> on Thursday February 09, 2006 @05:07PM (#14682113) Journal
                Just a thought exercise. I dislike having to always regurgitate everyone else's ideas, like to think of my own sometime, even if they are pretty dumb.

                I'm not sure conversation of energy is my first worry though, not in the strictest sense. Mass worries me more. Does the god fill in the missing particles that was Marty with something that won't be missed from some far corner of the universe? Now, I know that mass and energy are convertible to each other, especially in something as outlandish as all of this, so it's kind of a nitpick on my part. I wonder just how much energy (besides the mass of Marty/Delorean) would be needed to roll the clock back 30 years, if it's calculable.

                The real killer is probably information entropy though. The "snapshot" itself isn't allowed, even if you postulate a god sitting in a metaverse/metatime playing with the Universe on his VCR.
          • Whether or not the physics of the universe allows such a thing, I can't see any obvious reason why it would cause big problems -- or even be interesting. Certainly it could not manifest itself the way it's shown in the movies, in which you see the loop first one way (Marty McFly's parents marry and produce him), and then another way (Marty's parents fail to marry, because McFly travels back in time and interferes with their meeting). That's logically impossible. If the loop exists at all, it must have one

      • See Monty Python [pythonline.com] for a definition of that foot icon you see next to the posting....

        tm

    • If I hop in my time machine and zip off to tomorrow, it doesn't make much sense for you to ask how long it took to get there.

      It will take you about 24 hours. :)

    • Time travel does exist, in one direction and at one velocity.

      The funny thing about the time travel theories is that, they are all based on a specific "definition" of time, when time by itself does not exist, it is just another metric that we mere mortals created (no I do not believe in god :) ). We continue to crash our heads trying to decipher *how* to travel across some theoretic "travelable" metric we created. Say can we travel across "Watts"? can we go "3 watts ahead" or "3 watts below"? or "r watts to
      • "...they are all based on a specific "definition" of time,..."

        Very true yet hard to convince folks that our perception of "time" is just and only that, our perception, filtered through sensory organs, language and symbols, thought and then socially acceptable explanations.

        I suspect that time will show (heh) that our perception of our Universe and it's actions and what's really going on are very different -- we are severely limited by our perceptions and so see the Universe in a very specific way which isn't
    • Re: Really? A tie? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dfn5 ( 524972 )

      Or if you and I both have time machines and we decided to race to 1:00 pm tomorrow it would be always be a tie.

      OK, let's say that you and I race to 1:00pm tomorrow. You decide to stay right where you are and wait for 1pm to arrive. I, however, jump in my ship for a trip around the solar system at relativistic speeds and meet you there. When 1pm comes around we are both there, but you've aged like 24 hours while I've only aged a couple of minutes. I would say I have won because it took me less time t

      • It took less time as you observe it. To use one of the standard ways of explaining relativity: there are two astronauts. One stays on Earth to train, while the other goes on a mission, zipping around the solar system near the speed of light. When he returns, he aged 1 month, while the astronaut on Earth aged 1 year. What gives? Well, the same amount of time "happened." Both spent one year on their individual tasks. The one that went on the space missions feels like one month passed, but that's just because

        • Re: Really? A tie? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by MSBob ( 307239 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:31PM (#14681062)
          You're wrong. For the guy who travelled at the speed close to C time did slow down. Let's say that at the onset of the journey both planted a bonsai tree that grows at 1 inch per month. Upon the reunion, the earthbound astronaut's plant would be 12 inches tall while the traveller's plant would be only 1 inch high.
          • That's not my point. I'm saying that while time appears to go slower, it didn't actually speed down. Sure, the tree grew more slowly, but that doesn't change the fact that time itself did not.

            • Re: Really? A tie? (Score:3, Interesting)

              by MSBob ( 307239 )
              But the whole point is that time did move slower for the guy in the spacecraft. The two reference systems are not symmetrical (you seem to be confused by this fallacy). The time flowed 12x slower for the guy in the spacecraft. Read up on the "twin paradox" and why it's not a paradox at all.
    • by deblau ( 68023 ) <slashdot.25.flickboy@spamgourmet.com> on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:13PM (#14680856) Journal
      it doesn't make sense to talk about one's velocity through time

      All well and good, except that we've already proved in practice [metaresearch.org] that time has a different rate of passage for different people. Quote: "For GPS satellites, General Relativity predicts that the atomic clocks at GPS orbital altitudes will tick faster by about 45,900 ns/day because they are in a weaker gravitational field than atomic clocks on Earth's surface. Special Relativity predicts that atomic clocks moving at GPS orbital speeds will tick slower by about 7,200 ns/day than stationary ground clocks."

      The difference is about 38,000 ns/day. Since the speed of light is about one foot per ns, if relativity were wrong (because time passed at the same rate for everyone), GPS would accumulate an error of about 7 miles per day. Such an error would be blindingly obvious to everyone using the system, and wouldn't require any fancy equipment to measure.

      I'm interested to hear Mr Savain give an alternate explanation for how GPS works.

    • if you and I both have time machines and we decided to race to 1:00 pm tomorrow it would be always be a tie.

      True, but according to the Lorentz Transformation, the one who goes the fastest gets there the youngest! So there is a winner.

    • by kesuki ( 321456 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @04:46PM (#14681902) Journal
      time dilation [wikipedia.org] can be reproducably created, and in fact occurs on a daily basis, to a slight extent every time someone flies an airplane, or is launched into orbit aboard a space vehicle. technically just 'walking' will create a small bit of 'time dilation' it might be impossibly small to try and detect, or course.

      Nasa has done a lot of research on this. if you accelerate a physical object to the 'speed of light' it's 'relative' time stops in comparison to that of the universe, while time continues to flow for the rest of the universe, until that object is decelerated to normal velocity.

      So if 'time' can't be traveled through, then what exactly is 'time dilation?' Also, black holes are only useful for traveling 'forward' in time, the 'intense gravity' within a black hole 'simulates' traveling forward at the speed of light, the closer you are the greater the gravity, and thus the greater the time dilation. no one has formulated or demonstrated the possibly to go 'to the past' although if 'gravity' and 'light speed travel' can decelerate ones own flow of time so the future can be reached, then 'anti-gravity' or some form of 'reverse momentum' might perhaps allow one to experience a pocket of time where as one progresses through it the entire universe grows 'younger' the problem with this is gravity and acceleration seem to both follow temeperature and have a common starting point or 'absolute zero' below which it is impossible to go.

      appologies to all the great science fiction, but traveling back in time just isn't possible.* (unless of course one travels forward through time throught the end of the universe as we know it, until a new universe is created from the ashes of the old one, assuming that that Does in fact happen, and given the nature of atomic mass to develop in a consistant patter, one travels to the 'future' of a new 'third world inhabited by the evolutionary decendants of apes' before they manage to create time travel, and knowing exactly how the universe unfolds (because of a massive quantum computer and impressive algrythm that can determine the exact course of events Before they happen, again, based on the data it recieved while you were traveling 'forward' in time...) and thus influence the development of a primative world that the locals call 'earth' because everything formed along the same 'predestined' pattern based on the arrangment of molecules in the universe when it collapsed... only you went and went Forward in time, causing the end of the universe to happen differently than when it ended last time, so now you're ona world inhabited by 27 foot tall sentient lizards who think mamals are a tasty snack.

      oops. well, you shouldn't have tried to avoid the big crunch to see how the universe would unfold the next time around ;)
  • by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) * on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:38PM (#14680418) Homepage
    Yes, yes, but where do Einstein, Jesus, Socrates and the Clinton's [timecube.com] live in this theory?

    (Seriously. It's like he read Zeno's Paradoxes and it blew his mind, man.)

  • There is no spooky action at a distance because there is no distance between particles. This is not the same as saying that the distance is zero; distance simply does not exist: it is abstract.

    Ah ha! So that is how to Tolan's were able to communicate so quickly with the Knocks from Earth after thier world had been destroyed!
  • I'm no physicist (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Crowhead ( 577505 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:38PM (#14680424)
    But in all my readings, I have learned one thing about physics. Nothing is "as simple as that".
  • by davecb ( 6526 ) * <davecb@spamcop.net> on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:39PM (#14680431) Homepage Journal
    One second per second, so that dt/dt = 1.

    --dave

  • by Cujo ( 19106 ) * on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:39PM (#14680432) Homepage Journal

    This guy is a pseudo-scientific moonbat. Please don't waste your time with the not-so-FA.

  • by zardo ( 829127 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:39PM (#14680433)
    ... because we already know everything there is to know about the universe
  • by Jim in Buffalo ( 939861 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:39PM (#14680434)
    As Ford Prefect put it, "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."
  • by OctoberSky ( 888619 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:40PM (#14680438)
    Do they use the Back to the Future method or the Bill and Teds method of time travel?

    Also, did they attempt to spin the Earth backwards on its axis? I heard that works if there is a lady in distress.
  • by gevmage ( 213603 ) * on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:42PM (#14680456) Homepage
    Um, no.

    I'm sorry, but if you're going to put up a web page in which you call all the foremost theoretical physicsts in the world frauds, then you'd better have more evidence than some undergraduate-level pseudo-calculus and verbal smoke screens.

    The t-axis or time-axis velocity component is 1, a dimensionless number. Now there are relativists who will insist that it is perfectly acceptable to express velocity in time with a dimensionless number but the rest of us with our head on our shoulders, know that it is not true. We know that a dimensionless number such as 1 has absolutely no meaning in as far as expressing velocity.
    Not true. Normalized velocities are perfectly reasonable things to express. Mach 1.25 is a perfectly well-defined speed that does not violate any laws of physics, and what do you know--it's a dimensionless number.

    I'm sorry, but this page is really quite embarassing for the author's parents and any physics teacher's they've ever had. This sort of reminds me of people that read things like A Brief History of Time, a perfectly excellent book, and then try to tell me that the physics is really great and it would be so much better unencumbered by the mathematics.

    I don't think real time travel, a-la Dr. Who is physically possible. But the "arguments" on this web page don't really make sense, much less prove all those physics wrong.

    Craig Steffen
    Ph.D. Physics, Indiana Unversity, 2001

    • Relax, it's a joke. Didn't you see the "It's funny. Laugh." foot icon?
    • but this page is really quite embarassing for the author's parents and any physics teacher's they've ever had

      This page is probably there because the author enjoys making people who know better and are uptight about it get hot under the collar. In other words, he's trolling. If that's the case, the author would have to have a pretty decent grasp of the concepts he is mocking in order to know exactly which buttons to push.
    • Mach 1.25 is a perfectly well-defined speed that does not violate any laws of physics, and what do you know--it's a dimensionless number.

      Mach is not a speed, it's a ratio of your speed (measured in distance per time) to the speed of sound in whatever medium you happen to be travelling in (also measured in distance per time). It's only used because it is very convenient to use such a proportion when making calculations about compressible fluid flow (shock waves and the like)--properties of the flow are ident
      • Mach is not a speed, it's a ratio of your speed (measured in distance per time) to the speed of sound in whatever medium you happen to be travelling in (also measured in distance per time).
        Hmmm...point taken. I think technically it's supposed to be "mach number", rather than what I said, which is that it's a speed.

        I don't know. Mach number is clearly dimensionless...but it gets larger in magnitude when you go faster, so it is a speed in a way. It's a dimensionless speed? That seems contradictory.

    • by psyklopz ( 412711 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:15PM (#14680883)
      Ph.D. Physics, Indiana Unversity, 2001

      And this guy should know what he's talking about-- somehow he's managed to make his post travel 5 years into the future.
  • Ha! (Score:5, Funny)

    by acherrington ( 465776 ) <acherrington.gmail@com> on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:42PM (#14680460)
    distance is an illusion and we'll be able to travel instantly from anywhere to anywhere.


    HA! Take this from a person who has been in a long distance relationship... The distance is a reality, the relationship is the illusion.

    We really outa get these theoretical scientist types out of a lab for a beer.
    • Obviously Slashdot has jumped the shark.

      We're getting more and more pseudoscience garbage.

      If i see incredible claims on slashdot now i just check the posts first to see if its worth reading.

      Slashdot is fading into uselessness for me.

      Digg is just so much more useful.
  • by elcheesmo ( 646907 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:42PM (#14680465)
    That's it. I'm going to write a letter of complaint to Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd to express my disgust at being deceived for the past 20 years.
  • by WCMI92 ( 592436 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:42PM (#14680476) Homepage
    A Deloreon, a flux capacitor, 1.21 gigawatts of power, and enough road to get up to 88 miles per hour.
  • The bad news is that time does not change. In other words, no time travel to the past or the future, no motion in space-time, no wormholes and no hanky-panky with your great, great grandmother. There is only the changing present, aka the NOW. The good news is that distance is an illusion and we'll be able to travel instantly from anywhere to anywhere."

    Those are contradictory statements. If you can travel from anywhere to anywhere instantly, then you can also travel from any point to any point in time instan
  • by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:43PM (#14680485) Journal
    Going forward is easy. The hard part is not dying.
  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:43PM (#14680494)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • That is, if you define "time travel" as "moving at some velocity significantly different from one second per second through time", rather than "instantly POOFing from one time to another", "time travel" forwards is as simple as traveling at high relativistic speeds.
      Would _accelerating_ through time be measured in seconds per second per second ?
  • From Mr. I'm-my-own-grandfather.

    I'll keep dreaming, if you don't mind.
  • by precize ( 83096 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:44PM (#14680498) Homepage
    -1, Nutjob
  • by JoeShmoe950 ( 605274 ) <CrazyNorman@gmail.com> on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:44PM (#14680502) Homepage
    I'm from the year 3042. We have found that time travel is real, and would have discovered the time machine in 2048, but scientists were detered by this article.
    Dan Church is Wicked Ill [danchurch.tk]
    • by NoseBag ( 243097 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:03PM (#14680756)
      Uh...yeah...but I'm from the year 802701 (AD) and we planted that article in 2006 to delay you folks in 3042 from discovering temporal warp and then running into the hidious and irresistable...well...you'll find out.
      • Re:Actually, ... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )
        As much as the recursive time traveler is fun, isn't that a good argument that the timeline doesn't contain time travel? I mean, I'm certain that someone, somwhere in the infinity of time would go back and screw up the invention of time travel. Thus, the only stable solution is one where time travel is never invented.
  • "Kurt Gödel (how could I forget him?) is one of the gods of the voodoo science pantheon. Gödel is certainly the most often quoted yet inconsequential mathematician of the world. He is known for his incompleteness theorem, the most non-scientific, chicken-feather-voodoo nonsense ever penned by a member of the human species."

    Exactly how was this accepted for submission, especially in the "Science" category? This would be more appropriate under "kooky humor", at best.

  • by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:44PM (#14680505)
    Does this mean then that there is no waiting till tomorrow to see what karma your Slashdot post generates, then zipping back to yesterday to fix it, before returning to today to relax knowing what karma your Slashdot post will have generated by tomorrow?
  • The Vulcan Science Directorate has already determined that time travel is impossible, according to Subcommander T'Phol in the last Season One episode of Star Trek: Enterprise [wikipedia.org].
  • by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:45PM (#14680519)
    Spatial velocity is given as dx/dt. Velocity in time(dt/dt) is nonsensical.

    That would be a lovely argument if changes in position were measured in velocity.

    You describe spacial travel as the dx, not the dx/dt. It stands to reason that you would describe time travel with the dt, not as some rate of travel we haven't come up with yet.
    • I'd put "Mod Parent Up" if it weren't already a 5. This takes the cake. It's the most succinct presentation of why all that guy's mumbo-jumbo boils down to nothing.

      Just to add what doesn't really need to be added, to really spell things out in case anyone isn't following this:

      The guy's saying that velocity in space is measured in such-and-such a way (dx/dt, or change in position relative to change in time) and so velocity in time is impossible because it would be dt/dt, or change in time divided by change

  • by GodWasAnAlien ( 206300 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:46PM (#14680531)
    Go into your closet, and bring enough food and water for 5 years.
    Now wait...and eat sometimes.
    5 years later, exit the closet.
    You will find that time of the world has advanced from when last remembered by 5 years.

    PS. don't forget to setup an auto-pay for your residential rent/payment. Otherwise your travel may be interrupted, and you will not be able to travel the full 5 years.
  • The people who wrote this article also wrote this... " I will argue that the messages to the seven churches of Asia are a metaphorical description of the organization and operation of the brain. I will further argue that the golden lampstand (Jewish menorah) symbolizes a seven-node sequence in brain memory." Hmm, it certainly is curious that the author of the article is not revealed. Probably some first year calculus student who was like "Holy guacamole! dt/dt = 1, Einstein and Hawking are crackpots! I mu
  • this is because we live in a harmonic simultaneous 4-day time cube [timecube.com]

    it's really quite simple:

    Religious Singularity is evil,
    Academic Singularity is evil.
    Singularity is damnable lie,
    Educators altered your mind,
    You cannot think opposite of
    what you were taught to think.
    You have a cyclop perspective
    and taught android mentality =
    lobotomized analytical ability.
    Educated singularity stupid -
    You can't think 4 corner days.
  • At least that is what his guy says...

    I don't know about the rest of the Slashdot crowd, but I'll tend to side with Einstein here say "probably not"

    Talking about time and how you can move through time doesn't make sense because time is part of spacetime and it is one entity. (Yes, that is exactly why it is spelled together as one word.) So one cannot travel in time if he is not traveling in space and vice-versa. I know, it is simple to say that but perhaps hard to understand, and that why there are people

  • by Otto ( 17870 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:50PM (#14680586) Homepage Journal
    This guy is good, but he's not nearly as entertaining or mind-warping as the TimeCube [timecube.com] guy. Four days in one!!!
  • by Paladine97 ( 467512 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:56PM (#14680672) Homepage
    This guy is clearly an Evil Ass Educator aiming to suppress Time Cube,
    and only dumb ass students condone such evil. Cubeless institutions are spreaders of evil, and students lack mentality to challenge it.
  • by hta ( 7593 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @02:58PM (#14680696) Homepage Journal
    "Joke" foot on article: check.
    Suspicious URLs:
    http://www.rebelscience.org/Crackpots/notorious.ht m [rebelscience.org]
    http://www.rebelscience.org/Crackpots/nasty.htm#Sp ace [rebelscience.org]
    Check.
    Comments taking the article 100% seriously: check.

    This must be Slashdot.
  • by Phase Shifter ( 70817 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @03:17PM (#14680899) Homepage
    Ahh, but now we're on to something.

    We can take the differences between this guy and the time cube guy as one vector, and the differences between this guy and Archimedes Plutonium as another.

    Now that we have two basis vectors, we can define a two-dimensional phase space for crackpottery instead of relying on scalars.

    Now that we can apply some basic vector and tensor operations to the field of psychoceramics, think of the new discoveries to be made!

  • by Theovon ( 109752 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @04:36PM (#14681795)
    One thing I think I should point out about how spacetime doesn't fit the general model of a 4-space, and it's simple:

    Object do not pop in and out of existence as time progresses.

    If time were simply a velocity in a dimension in a 4-space, that could happen. Instead, we see a continuity in 3-space, where an object might move, but there is a relationship between where it "is" and where it "was" and where it "will be".

    So, it makes sense to model spacetime as a 4-space, but not as a general one.
  • by ebcdic ( 39948 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @06:06PM (#14682625)
    Try a Google search for "nothing moves in spacetime".
  • by DiamondGeezer ( 872237 ) on Thursday February 09, 2006 @06:44PM (#14682931) Homepage
    Dear Rob

    I'm sorry to have to tell you but you've been scammed by a well-known internet kook called Louis Savain into slashdotting his junk

    If you google for "nothing moves in spacetime" and "rebelscience.org" you'll find lots of references to this particular paranoid schizophrenic (no, I'm not kidding)

    He likes to spam sci.physics and sci.physics.relativity with his junk. One of his recent postings [google.co.uk] is fairly typical:

    On Sun, 22 Jan 2006 16:59:17 +0000 (UTC),
    glhan ...@steel.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory L. Hansen) wrote:
    >In article ,
    >Traveler wrote:
    >>On 22 Jan 2006 07:55:33 -0800, glhan ...@indiana.edu wrote:

    >>Repeat after me: NOTHING MOVES IN SPACETIME.

    >World lines don't move in spacetime. When people talk about the motion of
    >a particle they refer to a succession of points on the worldline, not the
    >worldline in its entirety.

    Repeat after me: ABSOLUTELY NOTHING MOVES IN SPACETIME!
    NOTTHIINGGG!!!!

    What this means is that there is NO CHANGE in spacetime (that's why it
    was called Einstein's block universe by Karl Popper) and spacetime is
    a fictitious math construct with no counterpart in reality. Now, isn't
    it a tad weird that your idol Einstein agreed with his friend Kurt
    "lunatic" Godel when he announced in 1949 that the spacetime of GR
    allows time travel to the past via time-like loops?

    Now hold on a southern cotton picking second! Aren't Kurt Godel and
    Albert Einstein revered by physicists as two of the smartest men that
    ever lived? Yep. ahahaha... One then wonders how they can be so stupid
    as to believe in motion in spacetime. ahahaha...

    http://www./ [www.] rebelscience.org/Crackpots/notorious.htm#Einstein

    ahahaha...
    >>> Or that your alien-induced lattice that exists nowhere is
    >>>also an abstract model of your invention?

    >>Nope. My lattice is not made of abstract crap but of real particles.
    >>You crackpots call them virtual photons. ahahaha...

    >You have a model that describes a lattice that is not made of abstract
    >crap. You're like the screen writer who writes a line like "This isn't a
    >movie, you know."

    Maybe in your imagination but I know one thing: I am not an ass
    kisser. I do my own thinking, than you very much. ahahaha... And
    that's the way I like it. ahahaha... AHAHAHA... ahahaha...

    Physics is so much phucking phun! ahahaha...

    Louis Savain
    Why Software Is Bad and What We Can Do to Fix It:
    http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm [rebelscience.org]

    I would suggest you remove the story

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