Star Trek Voyager -- Time Travel

[TwoRails]

For the very first time I saw most of the show where the Voyager's crew made it back "home." This is where Captain Janeway goes back to the past and aides the lost crew back home with future technology that came about because of her past battles with the Borg.

This allowed the crew to get home 16 years earlier. That's all great and well, but that also means they never had the battles with the Borg, which in turn means that the weapons were never developed to go back into the past to free them to begin with since they were not discovered due to the lack of the battles.

That means they could never have gone forward because the future is now changed to not include the required weapons.

Do you think about it all? By that I mean that particular episode in general, and that sort of thing concerning time travel in general.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by TwoRails For the very first time I saw most of the show where the Voyager's crew made it back "home." This is where Captain Janeway goes back to the past and aides the lost crew back home with future technology that came about because of her past battles with the Borg. This allowed the crew to get home 16 years earlier. That's all great and well, but that also means they never had the battles with the Borg, which in turn means that the weapons were never developed to go back into the past to free them to begin with since they were not discovered due to the lack of the battles. That means they could never have gone forward because the future is now changed to not include the required weapons. Do you think about it all? By that I mean that particular episode in general, and that sort of thing concerning time travel in general.

Anything is possible in Science Fiction.

Cricket

[David M]

I remember that episode. I enjoyed the whole Voyager series. Who knows if time travel is possible...I hope it is possible one day. I would like to go back in time to see how historical events actually were. Seeing where the human race will be 1000 years from now would be fantastic. It would be fun to wear the same clothes and blend into the culture of the time and be an observer.

[XenaWP]

Yep, I think Cricket nailed it.

You can make your brain explode if you try to reason through time travel conundrums. I think Einstein's work postulates that it is theoretically possible to time travel into the past, but not the future.

As for Voyager, loved the series. I even picked up the 7-season DVD set when Deep Discount DVD had one of their sales a couple of years ago. Only other Trek set I have is TOS.

[catacon]

I'm not sure time travel is really possible. If you think about all the weird paradoxes (sp?) (like if you kill you parents in the past, then how are you born), then it seems very unlikely. I think the multiverse theory from Timeline by Michael Crichton is more likely. Where you don't go back in time, but rather you just go to a universe where a particular point in time is still existing because an outcome of an event was changed and thus time wasn't allowed to progress as we know it. Or something like that, I haven't read the book in a while.

[sdkfz]

Time travel is very possible- I'll prove it as soon as I fix my darned machine... I tried to over clock it and now it only runs at 1x forward.....

[Force Flow]

There are two schools of thought that I've seen.

The first is that you go back in time and fiddle with things, the future changes resulting in alternate timelines from the moment when you fiddled with things.

The second is that you go back in time, go through the motions and think that you're changing things around, but really, you're setting the stage for what you already know to be your actual present time. So in effect, you're ensuring that status quo. Since you went back in time, whatever you did already happened in the past, right?

[Cricket]

Time Travels fans should watch the "Donnie Darko Director's Cut" DVD.

Cricket

[TwoRails]

Agreed, Voyager is a very good series. I never really got to see it when in first came out but have been able to watch the reruns for about the last month or so. A very intriguing show. I don't actually "watch" much TV, even though it (the TV) is on a lot, but I have been watching Voyager. I never knew what I was missing

How is "Donnie Darko Director's Cut" ??

[glfredrick]

Lots of reasons why time travel is a great plot for a movie, but not such a good idea in the real world, first, that there seems to actually be no way to manipulate a dimension like time, which is progressive only.

While we can dream up scenarios that depict time travel, they are easy compared to actually doing it. It sort of ends up like this:

http://www.explorerforum.com/photopo...4funnypic7.jpg

Same goes for the multi-verse theory... That is a non-player right out of the box, for there is no way to EVER know that there is another universe outside of our own. Any speculation in that regard is akin to faith in religious belief, for it is a meta-physical belief that absolutely cannot be tested, observed, proven, or falsified.

Good try (creative at least) for the naturalists that insists that the universe somehow started itself, but in actuality, an improbability of the highest order, and even if possible and measurable somehow, it only pushes back the issue of the beginning of the universe to a place where any testing is impossible, but at the same time, does not solve any of the problems of how the universe came to be on its own. A mere mental illusion.

[SonicVanguard]

The Rodenberry (or StarTrekian) answer is Quantum 'or Spacial' Mechanics. Basically once the tech was brought back from the future it was in the present and thereby not effected by future events.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by TwoRails How is "Donnie Darko Director's Cut" ??

The Director's Cut version goes into more detail regarding Grandma Death/Roberta Sparrow's theories of time travel.

Donnie Darko is one of my favorite movies so of course I think the Director's Cut version is excellent .

Cricket

[Smidget]

Originally Posted by XenaWP Yep, I think Cricket nailed it. You can make your brain explode if you try to reason through time travel conundrums. I think Einstein's work postulates that it is theoretically possible to time travel into the past, but not the future. As for Voyager, loved the series. I even picked up the 7-season DVD set when Deep Discount DVD had one of their sales a couple of years ago. Only other Trek set I have is TOS.

What the deuce????

No, it's actually possible to travell into the future but not the past. It's only a 1-way street.

In fact, you do it everytime if you hop into a plane and travel to another destination, but the time is so small it's unnoticable.

If you were to magnify that (lets say travelling at light speed), a couple hundred years would have passed.

But you can't go back into the past.

[glfredrick]

Originally Posted by Smidget What the deuce???? No, it's actually possible to travell into the future but not the past. It's only a 1-way street. In fact, you do it everytime if you hop into a plane and travel to another destination, but the time is so small it's unnoticable. If you were to magnify that (lets say travelling at light speed), a couple hundred years would have passed. But you can't go back into the past.

True that, we're all actually traveling into the future, one second at a time, every second of every day. We just don't think of it that way.

(I know that you're talking about Einstein's theory of relativity, which suggests that approaching the speed of light would make the traveler move through time much quicker than at regular time.)

[Smidget]

Originally Posted by glfredrick True that, we're all actually traveling into the future, one second at a time, every second of every day. We just don't think of it that way. (I know that you're talking about Einstein's theory of relativity, which suggests that approaching the speed of light would make the traveler move through time much quicker than at regular time.)

No, it happens in everyday life, it applies to everything but 'becomes more noticible' when approaching the speed of light.

If you got on a plane in LA, fly to Hong Kong, you would have lost about .00000000000000000000000000000004th of a milli-second.

Also when anything is moving it's actually shorter (in the direction it is going) as well. Even the plane, everyting loses it's lenght when in motion (that's called Lorentz contraction). And again it is more noticible at speeds of light.

[XenaWP]

Originally Posted by Smidget What the deuce???? No, it's actually possible to travell into the future but not the past. It's only a 1-way street. In fact, you do it everytime if you hop into a plane and travel to another destination, but the time is so small it's unnoticable. ...

Ah. Noted.

As for travelling into the past, I'd like to try it to recover my lost memory

[Stuey]

hehe - I watched it too (Endgame). And the next day, the first two episodes (Caretaker) were aired.

I gave up trying to rationale paradoxes (paradoxi?) a while ago - they're nothing but frustrating headaches.

If she did go back in time, then the present Janeway would live a different life and eventually not go back into time. BUT if she never goes back in time in the future, then nobody ever went back to change the timeline, and so she does eventually end up going back in time, and so the headache loop begins!

[jimmyrules712]

i've heard decent arguments that VIEWING past and future events might be possible, but not actually traveling there.

[Smidget]

Originally Posted by jimmyrules712 i've heard decent arguments that VIEWING past and future events might be possible, but not actually traveling there.

I have an example for each. When you look at other stars and galaxies, you are not seeing them now but how they were a long (in our mindset) time ago. If you looke at stars in our Milky Way, they are images up to 100,000 years ago. our galaxy cluster from 700,000 years to several billion. And viewing other galaxy clusters are in the billions. That is looking into the past.


As for the future, the thing that comes immediately to mind are black holes. You are seeing the future (as we know it) if you could look directly at a blackhole, iin where light has finally reached the surface but has long faded away and devoid of color, therefore black.

Time is not as straight forward as we experiance; It is warped in various parts of the universe.

[Stuey]

I'm under the impression that time is indeed linear and constant in each and every frame of reference. Via time dilation, twins can in theory age differently, but they're the same age in their respective frames of reference.

Philosophically, yes, looking at a star is like looking back in time. But realistically, the light that you're seeing is in the here and now. The star may have since died out and went nova, but we won't know until the photons reach us. Similarly, we hear thunder long after its static discharge origins. But you cannot say that thunder is from the past.

Another argument against seeing past events - the other day my lady was following my car in hers. We were talking via cell phone and I could see her lips move before I heard her voice. Does that mean that when I heard her voice it was from the past? No. It was captured and transmitted via the system and was slowed by the resulting lag.

As for black holes - they're not black because the light has faded away and became devoid of color; they're "black" holes because their gravitational forces are so strong that even light photons are drawn in and cannot escape. If a black hole drew in light from 10 light years away, it would still take 10 years before we saw the light being engulfed by the black hole.

[David M]

Einstein proved that time is not linear but as far as our existence here on Earth goes...it essentially is.

GPS satellites orbiting the earth each have an atomic clock on board which have to be corrected (slowed down) by 7200 nanoseconds per day to compensate for special relativity (speed).

GPS satellites clocks are also affected by the Earths gravitational field (general relativity) and must be slowed down even more to compensate for the difference between the weaker gravitational field for clocks in space versus clocks on Earth which are in a greater gravitational field. The difference is 45900 nanoseconds per day.

I like this stuff because it proves Einstein's Special and General theories of relativity are correct. I have heard some say that Einstein is wrong?...huh?!

The proof is correct is in how accurate the lines of position generated by each satellite are. (Each satellite generates one line of position and where they all intersect is where you're GPS antenna is located). Survey grade Trimble GPS units have sub one inch accuracy. I have seen it in person from equipment brought on board. This is totally mind blowing considering how far away and how fast these satellites are traveling.

Given there is a necessity to slow down the clocks on GPS satellites in order to produce accurate lines of position then what other reason could there be for this other than relativity? The proof that Einstein is correct is right there..in our own GPS system.

If someone leaves Earth and travels through space at higher speeds and then comes back to Earth...they will have aged slower than if they had stayed on Earth. Is this time travel?...well in a sense yeah because from the space travelers perspective they will have returned to an Earth that is a little older than what the clock in their spacecraft says the Earth is supposed to be. So the space travelers effectively went into the future...by a few seconds perhaps...but isn't that the definition of time travel?

[12twelve12]

Mankind will be extinguish long before the technology for time travel is ever gained. I really don't believe it's possible anyhow. I do love the movies that focus on this subject though.

[Stuey]

I just watched a Voyager episode I caught off of SpikeTV the other day.

They find a devestated planet. They explore that planet. The captain and pilot get caught in a space-time rift and go back in time a day. The crew tries to rescue them. The crew tries again by opening a rift in a location where the power plant was. The captain fires her weapon at the rift that they try to open. It turns out that their rescuing her would cause the worldwide devestation. She foils their plans and this time the planet appears normal to them with lifesigns.

Soooo they came across a lifeless planet. It was lifeless because they were trapped back in time due to rifts in space time that a worldwide catastrophe caused, after they crew caused the catastrophe from the future. lol.

[kev7555]

Welcome to the term "paradox", one of the stumbling blocks when considering the feasability of time travel. Not that it isn't possible, but it brings up a whole new group of undetermined variables.

The classic story is:

You go back in time and kill your father before you are born. If you weren't born, how can you go back and kill your father? And if you did exist and then killed him, will you now cease to exist, or are you now in an alternative time line that allows you to exist even though you (theoretically) never should have?. The original Terminator movie has a similar theme. The guy comes from the future in order to impregnate a woman who then has a child who grows up and is the one to send the guy from the future back to find her?!?!?

Greater minds then ours have tried to solve this angle. Dwelling in this vein is more likely to create insanity then an answer.


-Kev

[yoloksky]

nice topic i have read in one article of scientific american that if you enter a "space wormhole" and come out on the other end, you would see yourself "the moment entering into it". And would you believe that a telescope is an example of time machine?

wbr,

[Stuey]

Originally Posted by yoloksky And would you believe that a telescope is an example of time machine?

Nope, I don't believe that it is - I ranted about that earlier.

[kflip445]

Hasn't anyone watched "Back to the Future"? lol

So if you did alter the past and create an "alternate timeline", would it be safe to call the time machine a "gate to another dimension"?

[TwoRails]

Part of the perplexity is that time is an intangible thing. I just read an article in Discovery magazine titled "In No Time" that was short but quite interesting. I didn't look, but it might be on their website seeing as it came from the June 07 issue. Here's a few excerpts to ponder:

"... the renowned physicist John Wheeler, then at Princeton, in the late Bryce DeWitt, then at the University of North Carolina, developed an extraordinary equation that provides a possible framework for unifying relativity and quantum mechanics. But the Wheeler DeWitt equation has been controversial in part because it has yet another, even more baffling twist or understanding of time." ... "One finds the time it just disappears from the Wheeler DeWitt equation..." "it is an issue that many terrorists have puzzled about. It may be that the best way to think about quantum reality is to give up the notion of time-- that the fundamental description of the universe must be timeless"

"... nevertheless, a sizable majority of physicists, Roselli included, believe that any successful merger of the two great masterpieces of the 21st-century physics will inevitably describe a universe in which ultimately, there is no time."

"The possibility that time may not exist is no among physicists as the "problem with time."

"... the laws of physics don't explain why a time always points to the future. All the laws -- whether Newton's, Einstein's, or the quirky quantum rules -- would work equally well if time ran backwards. As far as we can tell, though, time is a one-way process; it never reverses even though no law restricts it."

[yoloksky]

But have it occured to you to predict the future once in your life? Some 'weird' experiences (dreams,dejavu..) going towards paranormal. I know we have our own limitation but sometimes this kind of feature gets 'Enabled'. Someday, psychic and science might meet on and set new understanding on this. If you watch discovery channel 'psychic witness', some people do have this ability to see events that happened (to a dead person) and also those which will happen in the near future (like killer getting captured). Its seems so unbelievable...

btw, i have this funny dream that i got to play with a small scorpion. Two days after, my brother found a scorpion inside our bedroom and managed to capture it. it lived for a month after feeding it with mosquitos and small insects. It would have been painful if it has bitten anyone of us there. 2 years have passed since then.

i believe that physically we cannot go into the future, but OOBE (out of body exp.), dreams and other weird stuff, we can hopefully see the future... and change the present.

wbr,

[Markoman01027]

You guys should read this book:

"On the Plurality of Worlds" by 20th Century American Philosopher David Lewis.

Its Metaphysics, Analytical Philosophy.

HTH,
Matt