Time traveling is just full of crap, innit?

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

How would that even work? Does the cell growth slow down or something when you travel at the speed of light?

[Tiberius]

It's called the theory of relativity. The faster you travel through space, the slower time travels for you compared to people traveling at slower speeds.

[Tiberius]

Or to put it another way, for the person on the space ship traveling close to the speed of light, only 5 years pass. For everyone who remained in Earth (traveling relatively much much slower) 50 years passed.

[Alex K]

Exactly, time itself runs slower in comparison for the accelerated observer, and with it all physical and biological processes. If your time runs slower, you don't notice a difference by yourself bc there is nothing to compare it to, only when you meet with another observer twice and compare clocks do you notice a discrepancy.

[KUSA]

How would that even work? Does the cell growth slow down or something when you travel at the speed of light?

Yes. Everything on the quantum level slows down. A photon which of course is traveling at the speed of light, doesn't even experience time passing at all.

[Alex K]

It's called the theory of relativity. The faster you travel through space, the slower time travels for you compared to people traveling at slower speeds.

There is another layer of subtlety to this that is barely ever discussed in popular treatments: travel speed itself is not an absolute observer-independent quantity in relativity, so there's no unique objective way to say who is faster and who is slower. This is why in two space ships passing each other, each could claim to be at rest while the other is fast, hence both could equally claim that their time runs faster. This seems paradoxical. The way the paradox is avoided in nature is very interesting: there is no way to compare the "time speed" of two observers unless 1. the two observers meet twice, or 2. if one observer prepares several synchronized clocks set up a distance apart, which are passed in succession by the other observer.

In the first case, the paradox is avoided bc one observer has to turn around and go back, breaking the symmetry of the situation. In the second case likewise, there is no paradox because the synchronicity of spatially separated clocks is not observer-independent either and the observer in the passing space ship will simply see the two clocks as not synchronous in the first place, explaining why they seemingly show more time passing even though they are the ones who are moving from his vantage point .

[Edwardo Piet]

How is time being defined here?

60 seconds is 60 seconds.

This is because a light year is related to light and the length of a year and rotation of the earth is also related to the sun (or other stars) and light, right?

I mean if we are defining 60 seconds as 60 seconds then... I mean.... any amount of time whatever that amount of time is is still that amount of time regardless of speed.

It seems to me that the theory of relativity only happens because light is being considered relevant to time right?

What is time? I personally think that the present is all that exists. The past is what existed and the future is what will exist. All that exists is the present. So time travel is logically impossible unless you're literally redefining time to fit your particular theory of physics. It's all very true and correct and the theory of relativity is indeed accurate... but I wouldn't call that time. To me time is just a concept and the past and future don't exist.

Before we can even get into the physics of time we have to ask what time is or if it's even real and there is also an A theory and a B theory of time.













For once I actually agree with Pool as much as he is an utter illogical fuckhead and I don't think time travel is nonsense for the same reason as him. I think time travel makes no sense unless we're talking about something that isn't actually time. It's like how science discovered the atom but only after redefining what "atom" means to mean something that turned out to be splitabble which is precisely what an atom isn't. And how Lawrence Krauss talks of a universe "from nothing" and then talks about empty space teeming with quantum activity that clearly isn't actually nothing. All the maths and the evidence is good, but science has to redefine things because its models are constantly changing to fit its accurate theories. Time travel may be possible but only when the concept of time changes so much to fit the facts that we aren't even talking about time anymore so no time travel isn't possible really. Space travel at the speed of life is possible and then we can redefine things to say that some parts of the universe have happened some are happening and some will happen all at the same time which is actually a logical contradiction so it can't actually be true if we're still actually talking about the normal basic definition of time. What doesn't exist yet doesn't exist yet. What's in the future hasn't happened yet and what is in the past has already happened and is not happening. Only what's happening is happening. Pretty basic stuff until we redefine it into something else entirely. Either we're talking about what happened what is happening and will happen or IOW what people usually mean by time and hence what people usually mean by time travel... or we're talking about the theory of relativity and an entirely different conceptualization of time that matches with that but certainly isn't time travel like someone in the past visits someone in the future or vice versa and time travel paradoxes and all that impossible, but fun, jazz and bunk.

[ignoramus]

Technical maths question.
What if I fart for 5 seconds doing warp 1 ( never try the replicated chili concarne) how far have I crop dusted relative to those on earth?

[The Valkyrie]

Technical maths question.
What if I fart for 5 seconds doing warp 1 ( never try the replicated chili concarne) how far have I crop dusted relative to those on earth?

931,200 miles, taking warp one to be the speed of light.

[Exian]

How many years is that fart?