Hawking Says Time Travel Possible

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World reknowned astrophysicist Steven Hawking said time travel is possible (only going forward in time) if we had a spaceship fast enough and was capable of carrying enough fuel. Pfft. That's all? What are we waiting for?

Having taken six years to reach its full speed of 98 per cent of the speed of light (650million miles per hour), a day on board the ship would be equivalent to a year on Earth, he said, allowing those on board to reach the edge of the galaxy in just 80 years. But the ship required for the journey would have to be massive to allow for the required fuel.
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Every time his name is mentioned I think of Family Guy
 
See the only problem with this proposed time travel is there would be no way of knowing. If you only travel to the end of galaxy, it will look all the same. You would have to travel so far away and then back to be able to notice this.

This is all only based off of Einstiens theory that if you travel at or faster than the speed of light you can travel through time. There isn't any actual evidence that this is true.

Astronauts that have gone into space go into the future a few nanoseconds.

Hawking seems to be wanting a lot of attention lately.
 
King Icewind said:
This is all only based off of Einstiens theory that if you travel at or faster than the speed of light you can travel through time. There isn't any actual evidence that this is true.
.
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Did you glance over the part about particles aging slower in the particle accelerators?
 
King Icewind said:
See the only problem with this proposed time travel is there would be no way of knowing. If you only travel to the end of galaxy, it will look all the same. You would have to travel so far away and then back to be able to notice this.

This is all only based off of Einstiens theory that if you travel at or faster than the speed of light you can travel through time. There isn't any actual evidence that this is true.

Astronauts that have gone into space go into the future a few nanoseconds.

Hawking seems to be wanting a lot of attention lately.
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Or how about the part where clocks on satellites have to be continually adjusted at a constant rate? There's plenty of evidence that this is true.
 
King Icewind said:
See the only problem with this proposed time travel is there would be no way of knowing. If you only travel to the end of galaxy, it will look all the same. You would have to travel so far away and then back to be able to notice this.

This is all only based off of Einstiens theory that if you travel at or faster than the speed of light you can travel through time. There isn't any actual evidence that this is true.

Astronauts that have gone into space go into the future a few nanoseconds.

Hawking seems to be wanting a lot of attention lately.
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What about those ~100 atomic clocks carried by GPS satellites that lose time precisely as predicted by relativity?

I love when people who clearly know jack-shit beyond their grade-12 physics try to correct someone who is far more brilliant then they could ever hope to be.
 
Is this related to the time dilation experienced by satellites orbiting the earth (or is that the effect related to distance from a gravitational force--I forget.)
 
I listened to a Discovery Channel show on black holes and how we might be able to travel through time via them. I can't name a person from that show. Would anyone be able to name Stephen Hawking is he was not disabled?

Don't get me wrong, he is one smart person. But would he be as renown if he was not disabled?
 
I would be interested to know how a ship traveling at 98% (or even 50%) of the speed of light could navigate. Traveling so fast, all the unforeseen obstacles are, for all practical purposes, invisible to the ship, so chances are those travelers would never wake up, as they would happily plow into an asteroid or black hole at some point. Not to mention adjustments in course required due to changes in gravitational pull - those may be hard to plot out from the Earth ahead of time as well...
We would also need to have access to output from a small star to accelerate a ship to 98% of the speed of light. Solar sails would work, I don't think they could give us 98%c (maybe 1%c ?), but the problem is stopping - yes, reuse the sails at the destination, but that is a perilous proposition at best...
There has to be another way...
 
He dismissed the idea of travelling backwards through time, saying doing so would violate a fundamental rule that cause comes before effect and that such an act could allow people to make themselves impossible, such as if a person travelled back in time and shot thir former self.
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I don't get it, how can you travel back in time (Technically reversing time to a point, while keeping yourself from being reversed.) then shoot another you? You would just shoot yourself, like not a younger version of yourself, just you. You wouldn't leave a copy to reverse in your place.
 
Can I just say, "No kidding?!?!"
Just because Hawkings made the big news (and good for him - much much better then Oprah! ) . . But, Now anything he says is new and ground braking to the backward news ORGs?? Are they that clueless, did they fire ALL of there science reporters??
WTF! This is OLD OLD OLD hat . . time dilation is not new, quite understood, tested (at least in a small scale - but quite consistent with theory), and even used in day to day life (GPS etc).

The OMGs!! this is new is just lame to anyone with 1/2 a clue. And I think the manor reporting does Hawkings a disservice.
 
The way I thought it was is that satellites are less effected by the earth's gravity so they travel through time faster (more normal) than we do on earth. I haven't heard/read anything about being able to measure the age of a particle in a particle accelerator, but interesting point.

Don't criticize Icewind because he has a different take on it, or because he criticized Hawking. (Hell, I think Carl Sagan was huge douche, so there :) ) The truth is we really don't understand any of this fully. There may not be a "cosmic speed limit" as we currently believe. I think it's critical to spend the resources to find the answers if we ever hope to survive this rock we're on.
 
This is news?

This is a well known effect of Special Relativity proposed by Einstein over 100 years ago and continuously verified since.

Slow news day.
 
eggrock said:
Is this related to the time dilation experienced by satellites orbiting the earth (or is that the effect related to distance from a gravitational force--I forget.)
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Time travels faster for them because of the decreased gravity.
Time travels slower for them because of the increased rate of travel.

I believe in geosynchronous orbit the effect of the decreased gravity wins out.
 
ta_erog said:
Can I just say, "No kidding?!?!"
Just because Hawkings made the big news (and good for him - much much better then Oprah! ) . . But, Now anything he says is new and ground braking to the backward news ORGs?? Are they that clueless, did they fire ALL of there science reporters??
WTF! This is OLD OLD OLD hat . . time dilation is not new, quite understood, tested (at least in a small scale - but quite consistent with theory), and even used in day to day life (GPS etc).

The OMGs!! this is new is just lame to anyone with 1/2 a clue. And I think the manor reporting does Hawkings a disservice.
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I think this is more driven by his new DC show. Might just be hyping that up a bit. Hawking personally has been talking about all this for decades now.
 
Yup this is old hat. I believe in '71 on one of the space shuttle missions they had 2 synchronized atomic clocks on board and on earth, when the astronauts got back their clocks were 15 mins behind. That's just a lil more than a few nanoseconds I believe.
 
I can see space-time travel as potentially being possible, but flat out time travel, nope, ain't happening.
 
Bahamut said:
I can see space-time travel as potentially being possible, but flat out time travel, nope, ain't happening.
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Two objects sitting stationary in gravitational wells of different magnitudes will travel through time at different speeds.

Moreso, anyone who is not moving is traveling through time without traveling through space.
 
Snowdog said:
This is news?

This is a well known effect of Special Relativity proposed by Einstein over 100 years ago and continuously verified since.

Slow news day.
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Steve posted this news 5 years ago. It only just showed up for us. ;)
 
I don't care that this is well known already in the scientific community. The fact that a scientist can get into the news with something about Relativity instead of the latest going ons of a reality television personality is a huge breath of fresh air, no matter how old hat the information might be to those of us who follow this sort of thing.
 
For me the whole traveling at the speed of light thing and time traveling things has always been a funky subject, namely because photons traveling from the subjects traveling at or near the speed of light would be like a slide show. Say a baseball pitcher can throw a baseball at 101mph and picture he is traveling at 101mph and throws the ball out of the back of the car, how fast is the ball traveling? To me, this is all relative, pun intended.
 
His definition of time travel makes me a time traveler right now because I'm heading into the future. It isn't really time travel unless you can get back to where you started and it happens instantly.
 
Ualdayan said:
His definition of time travel makes me a time traveler right now because I'm heading into the future. It isn't really time travel unless you can get back to where you started and it happens instantly.
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The difference between his definition and yours is that his is right.

"Traveling" has precisely nothing to do with the ability to return to your starting point.
 
Well then technically speaking, space exploration at great distances would be rather useless since it would require the people exploring to travel at the speed of light to even make any useful distances around even just within the galaxy. Then having them travel at that speed to return home to deliver the data, too much time would have gone by for the people at home.
 
Samson4EiT said:
Yup this is old hat. I believe in '71 on one of the space shuttle missions they had 2 synchronized atomic clocks on board and on earth, when the astronauts got back their clocks were 15 mins behind. That's just a lil more than a few nanoseconds I believe.
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Either the year you state is off, or the vehicle type/mission is wrong. The space shuttles didn't start initial flights till 1981 (test flights). They didn't physically exist in 1971 in any functional form.
 
toy4x4 said:
I listened to a Discovery Channel show on black holes and how we might be able to travel through time via them. I can't name a person from that show. Would anyone be able to name Stephen Hawking is he was not disabled?

Don't get me wrong, he is one smart person. But would he be as renown if he was not disabled?
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Michio Kaku - he's quite famous, funny, I even have several of his books. He's a player on all these History and Discovery channel physics and astronomy shows.

Seems like you are the only one fixated on his disability. I know he's brilliant, and handicapped... I've heard things though about how he's kind of an ass once you get to know him. *shrugs*
 
JL6speed said:
Well then technically speaking, space exploration at great distances would be rather useless since it would require the people exploring to travel at the speed of light to even make any useful distances around even just within the galaxy. Then having them travel at that speed to return home to deliver the data, too much time would have gone by for the people at home.
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Not to mention the psychological impact to the astronaut. Explore space and comeback everyone you know is dead or really old, or the country you went into space for doesn't exist anymore or fundamental philosophies have changed so much that you couldn't recognize it. Their was a great quote in Casino Royal (the novel) about how if it had been 20 years earlier then Bond and his colleagues would of been tried and executed as communists, look at us from the 80's to now politically; now imagine 100 years or more.
 
I swear, I'm getting sick and tired of all the Hawking stories coming out... I mean jesus christ people, this is shit from Einstein days, just because Discovery made it into a TV show and these editors of newspapers are idiots who don't know anything about science it's all of a sudden a flashy news moment!
 
collegeboy69us said:
Michio Kaku - he's quite famous, funny, I even have several of his books. He's a player on all these History and Discovery channel physics and astronomy shows.
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Yeah he's got charisma, however his whole sci-fi "futurist" persona is getting a bit old... oooh geeze this is how the future is going to look... possibly! IMO there's a fine line between science and science fiction and way too many of these people are crossing that line (mostly because it's more exciting I agree).


Also in that show was Dr Phil Platt, otherwise known by badastronomy.com which used to be the best site on smashing movie/tv astronomy gaffs, however like others he's become too famous now, has his own discovery page which shows him off, etc.

Other people mentioned in that show you really have to be an astronomy or in the field to know who they are and what they do, I knew them by name because it's my field/what I do. I really don't know why the OP was surprised he didn't know any of the names, scientists aren't quite rockstars yet.
 
King Icewind said:
This is all only based off of Einstiens theory that if you travel at or faster than the speed of light you can travel through time. There isn't any actual evidence that this is true.
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Actually, it was proven true a long time ago (no pun intended).

eggrock said:
Is this related to the time dilation experienced by satellites orbiting the earth (or is that the effect related to distance from a gravitational force--I forget.)
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As bizarre as it sounds, according to general relativity, those two (time dilation due to travel and time compression due to gravity) are actually the exact same phenomenon.

Bobthecoolguy said:
I don't get it, how can you travel back in time (Technically reversing time to a point, while keeping yourself from being reversed.) then shoot another you? You would just shoot yourself, like not a younger version of yourself, just you. You wouldn't leave a copy to reverse in your place.
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You literally can't go back in time and kill yourself. At least, not without ending up in a different universe than the one you started in. It's like trying to construct an impossible triangle: you traveling back in time an killing yourself is a four-dimensional "shape" that cannot physically exist in spacetime.

On the other hand, you could theoretically go back in time and save yourself from being killed. That's a perfectly legal "sequence" of events. You went back in time because you saved yourself, and you saved yourself because you went back in time. That sounds like circular logic to us, because it doesn't have a starting point, but when dealing with time travel the concept of a "starting point" is meaningless, anyway.

RangerXML said:
For me the whole traveling at the speed of light thing and time traveling things has always been a funky subject, namely because photons traveling from the subjects traveling at or near the speed of light would be like a slide show. Say a baseball pitcher can throw a baseball at 101mph and picture he is traveling at 101mph and throws the ball out of the back of the car, how fast is the ball traveling? To me, this is all relative, pun intended.
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It is all relative...mostly. That ball would be moving at 101 mph relative to the pitcher, and 0 mph relative to someone standing on the side of the road. Each observer is equally "correct."

The speed of light, on the other hand, is absolute. If you were traveling in that spaceship going 98% the speed of light, and a beam of light streamed past you, you would see it go by at the same 186,000 miles per second as always. There are only two possible explanations for that: the light is going faster, or time is passing slower. Einstein proved (and experiments have confirmed) that the second theory is actually true. When you approach the speed of light, time (in your frame of reference) will slow down just enough to make the speed of light seem constant to you.

Steve posted this news 5 years ago. It only just showed up for us.
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/thread
 
toy4x4 said:
Would anyone be able to name Stephen Hawking is he was not disabled?

Don't get me wrong, he is one smart person. But would he be as renown if he was not disabled?
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Ever hear of Carl Sagan?

Anyone who popularizes Science and Reason in this nutbag world is a bonus to me.
 
King Icewind said:
This is all only based off of Einstiens theory that if you travel at or faster than the speed of light you can travel through time. There isn't any actual evidence that this is true.
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Nothing in special relativity about faster than light travel, you are mixing up Science and Science Fiction.

This is all based on Special Relativity proposed over 100 years ago and verified repeatedly since, there is pretty much complete and conclusive evidence of the time dilation effect at this point.
 
Samson4EiT said:
Yup this is old hat. I believe in '71 on one of the space shuttle missions they had 2 synchronized atomic clocks on board and on earth, when the astronauts got back their clocks were 15 mins behind. That's just a lil more than a few nanoseconds I believe.
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They've done it even using normal jets. The entire thing was known to be possible for the past century, the only problem being you need a hell of a lot of energy to do it, and of course, causality says there's no way back.
 
Parmenides said:
Hey, question, how do we know that the speed of light is constant?
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Instead of explaining it from the ground up, it's easier to think of it this way: Because everything else is defined using it, including time and space. Physicists slow and speed up time itself and add more dimensions to space to fit c, not the other way.
 
Nemesis999 said:
The difference between his definition and yours is that his is right.

"Traveling" has precisely nothing to do with the ability to return to your starting point.
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To me, "time travel" would mean leaving one time and instantaneously arriving at another time (e.g. I go, instantly, from 2010 to 2210 without aging at all). What Hawking is talking about is someone aging more slowly because of their speed of travel. They're still aging along the way, albeit very slowly.
 
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