the universe

[chopin2015]

So, I am reading about spacetime and stuff in my free time...and I want to write dome questions out for ya.

If someone was to travel at the speed of light, between two points, each with different gravitational characteristics(maybe even stored as potential energy). Would you not time travel? ( when speed of light is a constant, but is it?)
Yet, even then...you would only travel forward in time, unless one direction was forward in time, and the other direction was back in time, and that's it.  But, I just don't see how you can travel further in time without moving. Furthermore, when moving, a shift happens. When an object is getting closer, it is also leaving a point. So, speed of light is constant. Also, if speed if light is constant even though vacuum of space is a given, then an observation can be made...do objects increase or decrease in size or mass(maybe decrease in size and increase in mass or opposite, even?) as time speeds up or slows down? If they do not, then speed of light is constant, based on the distance between pluto, the sun, and other stars.

I am not saying time travel is real. I am simply trying to say time is an energy too. An energy that is not constant. Not even space is constant. Now speed of light is not either?

I will add to this later...

[hfmadopter]

Basically you have to correlate time into this as well. You now enter the realm of quantum physics where more bazaar existences are trying to be proven as we speak.. Beyond this, it's fairly scientifically proven that all things in the universe are or possess energy. Someday we may make the connection between it all but people a lot smarter than I work hard every day to try and discover how ! We know there is a hz energy signal coming from all objects for instance ( your car, your piano, a rock, a stick etc etc.). We know about tests in accelerated light signals and sound. It appears that sound generated today will travel through space in the form of vibration for possibly eternity, like a wave in the ocean. Light is less clear, Quantum may prove otherwise to the constant speed theory of light some day..

It's interesting stuff but don't drive yourself crazy. In the end it's enough for now for me at least to understand that we as humans are connected with the energy of the universe, it's as much as I can understand about it. It's how the martial arts experts can drive a single blow to the chest of another human and perhaps kill them if not just plain knock the wind out of them with their thumb tip. Or how certain individuals can seemingly attract wild life through what appears to be mind connection but probably is more along the lines of an energy connection.. It's all connected is all I know about it, I'm not scientifically educated enough to know more.

Then enters the concept of a God, another energy form basically ( the light of light etc.) or possibly ? Again connected, to light , speed, time, energy and dare I say vibration. Many believe the hub of it all and yet others believe there is no God. We know so so little, even our brains are only 1/10 used, it's impossible to consider there isn't so much more to life and the universe than our simple existence indicates at face value.

So there is my washed out take on your subject today. That stuff all seems on a totally different plane than our routine lives indicate. In fact it is on another plane as we know about it, even though we live in it every day. That's why I often say here in the forums that something is one persons reality. In the end maybe there is more than one truth or do we just not understand.

[chopin2015]

If speed of light is not constant, then looking into space at pluto is like looking into a warped mirror. For all we know, it could be a giant planet...if only space vacuum was dependent on distance!

[Bob]

Or is it the speed is constant, but space-time around it is relative?

I think if someone were travelling at the speed of light, everyone would experience time the same.  The light travelers would just spend something like a minute travelling while the non-travelers would experience a year.  Maybe not that much, but something like that.

I've read gravity affects it. Airplanes are a billionth-billionth-billionth slower (?) because they're farther away from Earth's gravity.  And I remember something about measuring it with Jupiter a few years ago.  Jupiter's gravity bending space-time.  Even then, it wasn't that much. 

All the GPS stuff around the world has to take it into account or it will be off just a bit.

[chopin2015]

Or is it the speed is constant, but space-time around it is relative?

I think if someone were travelling at the speed of light, everyone would experience time the same.  The light travelers would just spend something like a minute travelling while the non-travelers would experience a year.  Maybe not that much, but something like that.

I've read gravity affects it. Airplanes are a billionth-billionth-billionth slower (?) because they're farther away from Earth's gravity.  And I remember something about measuring it with Jupiter a few years ago.  Jupiter's gravity bending space-time.  Even then, it wasn't that much. 

All the GPS stuff around the world has to take it into account or it will be off just a bit.

I think there is a way to cancel all the time differences out right now, like a fifth dimension...but oh, wait. Aliens are coming to eat my brain if I say much more.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

I am not saying time travel is real.

Well time travel is a proven fact. 

Forward time travel is, not backward though.

[hfmadopter]

If speed of light is not constant, then looking into space at pluto is like looking into a warped mirror. For all we know, it could be a giant planet...if only space vacuum was dependent on distance!

Ya as we know it, in our current dimension. I watched a show on Quantum Physics where they were exploring the concept of parallel dimensions and thus the universe. As I said we know so little. It's vague now, I saw the show maybe two years ago but basically it shifts reality, possibly time related and so enters a parallel reality. So ya I guess it would be possible if light is not constant speed, then things would appear different than they do now. But are they appearing different or is the effect showing another reality ?

This tied in with the possibility of a fourth dimension already existing, where we now know things to be two and three dimensional, as I recall. Understand, they didn't say this existed but were working to find out if it was possible. If they could prove it then now what could that lead to ? If nothing else, then our two and three dimensional world that we are so secure feeling about wouldn't be so at all. And so we are living a false reality. It just goes on and on but nothing is proven yet except that there are a bunch of smart people working on it. If they find there is a fourth dimension does it end there or are there more to be discovered ? ANd how will all that change what we know now or think we know to be true ?

Quantum Mechanics is another thing, something more interesting since they are on the edge of understanding antimatter. Or they think they are. So what seemed so whacky to some folks a decade ago may not be so whacky after all. A couple of centuries ago you might be locked away for even thinking about this stuff. Now we have scientists working on it every day of the week.

[Bob]

I think there is a way to cancel all the time differences out right now, like a fifth dimension...but oh, wait. Aliens are coming to eat my brain if I say much more.

Just step outside into that 'other' dimension where time doesn't exist.  Then step back here anywhere you want.  It all looks the same from the outside.

[starlady]

The official professional astrophysicist "We do the equations so you don't have to" answer is:

If you travel at the speed of light, time does not pass for you.   Technically, the elapsed time you will measure in your reference frame is always 0.  There is no 'now' and 'later'.  Really.

Also, things with mass---any mass at all-- can never travel at the speed of light. Only massless things like photons can reach that speed, and they don't have the brains to worry about these things.   

I hope that helps.  I can make it cruftier if you like.... -s.

[Bob]

Just move space itself or teleport.  Simple as that.

[ted]

I have increasingly wondered if the time is not drawing ripe for a quantum leap in the abstract means we use to describe these things, that is to say mathematics. The act of proving things is embedded in time, the continuous is, at core, described by the discrete. What if an abstract mapping were found which placed linear reasoning in space rather than time ? What if truths and falsehoods were thus apparent in space, rather than by the laborious grinding of temporal reason ? So many of the great abstract discoveries of recent times are self-limiting in nature, for example Godel and Turing, and they all concern the limitations of linear thought. Why does something as simple as the Fermat conjecture require a Wiles to spend seven years and hundreds of pages of proof ? In fact we needn't even go that deep. Showing the truth of the intuitively obvious difference between a left and right handed knot needs a quite astonishing peroration of reason. Does some higher spatial way of perceiving these thing really not exist ?

In short, do the seemingly intractable obstacles to understanding the universe and ourselves stem in part from the limitations of the only descriptive tool we have thus far - mathematics ? Does reason have another form altogether, which includes but far extends discrete logic ?

[j_menz]

Well time travel is a proven fact. 

Forward time travel is, not backward though.

Indeed. We are all travelling forward in time, or at least have the illusion of so doing. I personally like to stop every now and then for a break.

[chopin2015]

I guess since we all take up space, gravity makes it that time does have information "embedded" in it. As in, if one ws to travel in time, would your memory lapse along with your body's development, locked to begin in one point and end in another, but never really move? If you are here and I am there, we cannot be in the same spot, exactly, ever....I forget what I was going for with that...

[hfmadopter]

I forget what I was going for with that...

That's just because we need to get our other 90% of our brains working !! With that working we might not forget where we are going with things.

[hfmadopter]

I have increasingly wondered if the time is not drawing ripe for a quantum leap in the abstract means we use to describe these things, that is to say mathematics. The act of proving things is embedded in time, the continuous is, at core, described by the discrete. What if an abstract mapping were found which placed linear reasoning in space rather than time ? What if truths and falsehoods were thus apparent in space, rather than by the laborious grinding of temporal reason ? So many of the great abstract discoveries of recent times are self-limiting in nature, for example Godel and Turing, and they all concern the limitations of linear thought. Why does something as simple as the Fermat conjecture require a Wiles to spend seven years and hundreds of pages of proof ? In fact we needn't even go that deep. Showing the truth of the intuitively obvious difference between a left and right handed knot needs a quite astonishing peroration of reason. Does some higher spatial way of perceiving these thing really not exist ?

In short, do the seemingly intractable obstacles to understanding the universe and ourselves stem in part from the limitations of the only descriptive tool we have thus far - mathematics ? Does reason have another form altogether, which includes but far extends discrete logic ?

Without a spec of evidence to prove it yet, I suspect you are correct at least to some degree. It wasn't so long ago ( maybe 50 some odd years) I remember my father telling me that mathematically it was impossible for a naturally aspirated automobile engine to produce as much or more horsepower than it's own cubic inch displacement. And then they did it, plus exceeded it . So the math he knew before that happening failed and he sat in our living room completely stunned by the news.

My father spoke of space travel in the mid 1950s, almost a taboo. My aunts and uncles told him that was stuff from comic books and impossible to actually do. They thought him a bit daffy Then we put men on the moon. Today going up there and working say, on satellites, is common place.

There are many things we don't know yet and we work and live in a rather locked limited fashion..

[ted]

Yes, and I rather think the initial impetus will emerge outside orthodox paths of learning. One story which has always amazed me was how the discovery of chaos (not a good name for it but it is entrenched now) took place because some college students with nothing to do fiddled with recursive procedures on hand calculators. For two centuries we thought we knew all about solving differential equations and then suddenly we realised most of them cannot be solved at all, at least not in the sense previously imagined. Suddenly it dawned that beyond the extremely simple, a set of initial conditions and a rule such as a differential equation could end up doing almost anything. There must have been some quite delicious moments in the minds of academia when the truth dawned.

I still love those little chaotic multiple pendulums you used to see in the shops. An infinite, unpredictable series of movements from one simple equation. Rather like improvisation, I've always thought. Interchangeability of data and instruction, conscious and unconscious, producing a feedback loop. And once even simple feedback exists you have chaos. I wonder if the evolution of life is a huge chaotic feedback loop in matter.

If so, the pessimist would probably say there are Godelian reasons we can never understand ourselves, understand what consciousness is, for example. On the other hand, optimists such as Hofstadter, in "I am a Strange Loop", suggest the very same limitations of mathematics in fact contain the key to the nature of being. I have never been a "nothing but" man, rightly, I think, vilified by Priestley, so I lean towards Hofstadter, although I still cannot grasp his book.