My Time Travel Theory

[Masterigor]

I personally didn't do a a lot of research on the topic but I thought about it and I concluded that it's impossible to travel to travel in time...at least in my opinion right now. What I mean by this is that it's already been proven that it's possible to travel into the future with atomic clocks. However in order to travel into the future you have to find a way to travel at the speed of light. And even if you did find the required energy to do so once you stepped inside the capsule your perception of time would changing therefor looking down at the people on Earth they would be moving fast and years would be flying while people on Earth looking up at you would think that your moving super slow. But even if someone could travel the speed of light and do that wouldn't that ultimately be the same thing as freezing yourself and then unfreezing yourself in the near future. In both cases you aren't really traveling into the future you simply slowed down your aging process.For example if you wanted to find out whether or not your going to have a successful career you would get into the time machine which would travel at the speed of light so that years on Earth would pass faster, at a young age and travel into the future however since you removed yourself from the world to travel so fast you would come back to Earth and realize that yes everything and everyone has aged but there is no future you because you were in your time machine.
So the only way I think it's possible to travel in either direction(future or past) there would have to be two or more of you. Why? Because I think that if you want to travel in the future for example then you would have to make sure that your still two of you so that one of you is living on Earth(I don't know if that makes sense but I did my best to explain it). Also if someone did have a time machine wouldn't they want to travel into the future? Lets say it's the year 3140 someone made a time machine. Then they would go into the future to lets say the year 4000 and obtain all the technology and bring it back to 3140. So now you have the technology in the year 3140 that they have had in the year 4000. But then of course you can keep getting new technology that way and there would be no limit. So the only way That I would think time travel is possible is that if every possible scenario was already played out. Hmmm, I don't know if that makes much sense but thats what I came up with.

 

[KoopaCooper]

Let me see if I understand you correctly....

So, what you're saying basically, is that putting yourself into some form of stasis, or travelling near lightspeed to make use of time-dilation effects, isn't really time travel?

Well no, I would have to disagree with you there. You see, it all depends on the definition you decide to use for the term "time travel". I take it you're thinking of time travel as made possible in sci-fi stories, using something like the TARDIS or H.G.Well's time machine? But we're all travelling through time right now, at a rate of 1 (that is, at a rate of 1 sec per sec).

And even if you put yourself into stasis, or travelled in a spacecraft at near-light velocities, you could still come back to regular time in the future and find out if you had a successful career - so long as, after travelling into the future, you then travel back to the present again, to live through the intervening years.

A hypothetical example for you:
I want to find out what my life is going to be like in the future. So I put myself into stasis for 100 years. When I get out of stasis, I am greeted by myself, at the ripe old age of 124 (it could happen), plus maybe a wife, some kids, grandkids, great-grandkids, etc;....and find out that I most definitely lived a long and very happy life. Then, satisfied with what I've found, I get in a time machine (like a TARDIS for instance), and travel back 100 years to the present. Once I arrive back, I go on with my life as normal, living for the next 100 years, working, raising a family, and all that, until in exactly 100 years time, I go and meet my young self coming out of that stasis chamber. Simple, eh? /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

This example is entirely logical and self-consistent, though not necessarily right. It rests on a single massive - and totally unprovable by current science - assumption that our universe's timeline is fixed, and events (both in the past and future) can't be altered. If events CAN be altered, however, then I could travel forward 100 years, meet myself at the age of 124 years old, and then upon returning to the present, get run over and killed the moment I cross a road.