Time as a transmission medium

ddsilver

ddsilver

Chrono Cadet
I'm still wading through years of old posts here, and to be honest, I'm skipping a lot of it. But, here's a question I have:

Sending physical material back in time (or forward in time) creates series paradoxes and problems and has been pretty much dismissed. But, a lot of these paradox issues could be eliminated if you could open a hole in time and modulate some sort of carrier frequency to send a message.

So, let's say that in the future, I am capable of opening a "hole in time" to look back and strictly observe what is occuring. From there, I may be able to fire a -10/2600Hz tone into my time hole and then modulate it to send a message.

At first, you would be limited to sending messages back to a time when the receiver was already invented. But, after doing some work, you could use it to interface with radio, television, or even telegraph equipment.

So, you wouldn't have these time travellers coming to the past to "observe and report" or anything like that. The closest you would have would be some loyal agents who were receiving your future messages and believing it. Of course, to the rest of us, they'd seem like total loons. Then again, 75% of all lottery winners may have come by their luck via the D. D. Silver Chronal Messenging System.
 
Sounds pretty much like the plot of the movie Frequency with Dennis Quaid. Although the "hole" you speak of was a fluke of the atmosphere.

RMT
 
Let's extrapolate. Assuming someone in the future was attempting to contact the past, we would have to figure out how they were going about it, and set about monitoring for it.

You'd want to pick a method with the widest possible dissemination in order to get your message across. To contact 2010, I'd be using radio or television. It would be too much of a pain in the butt to emulate a network interface using long-dead protocols.

As far as atmospheric "flukes" go, atmospheric skip is what makes DX broadcasting possible. One way to send a message to the far flung future would be echoing a signal off of a distant galactic body. If you sent a message aimed at say, Neptune, and it was able to be reflected back and re-intercept your receiver, you could send a message approx. 30 years into the future. This isn't exactly "time travel", but you could send the coordinates and contact information for whatever receiver you're using, and a party with sufficently advanced technology could receive that information in the "future" and attempt to contact you.

Anyone wanna go out and yell at Neptune? See what we hear from 2040?
 
If you sent a message aimed at say, Neptune, and it was able to be reflected back and re-intercept your receiver, you could send a message approx. 30 years into the future.
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I don't think neptune is 30 light years from earth.
 
If you sent a message aimed at say, Neptune, and it was able to be reflected back and re-intercept your receiver, you could send a message approx. 30 years into the future. This isn't exactly "time travel",
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No, it isn't. There are numerous ways relative to recording information and having that information surivive into the future, seems to fall short of time travel from a classical perspective.

The one thing that I sort of figure could be likened to time traveling, is if cryogenics works. Someone frozen is revived at some point in the future...could you say that person really traveled in time or no ?

As far as listening for signals from the future, we have "celestial" listening stations located around the globe. It would seem to me that IF anyone would want to send a signal back in time, the project would be aimed at using the already existing stations now, as receivers of the signal(s).

Interesting to consider, is if time has an absolute definition, or fluctuates. As an example, in the world of arbitrage, which is taking advantage of a price difference between two or more markets, is a high speed process of computers detecting the differences between a stock price within an East Coast Market verses the same stock listed within a West Coast Market.

For a mere fraction of a second, in the time it takes the two different markets to become balanced, the arbitrage programs use the "gap" in time to execute high speed transactions.

What I sometimes wonder, that if time does not have a constant, but indeed does fluctuate, is it possible to customize an arbitrage type program to detect these fluctuations, and maybe receive a signal that happens to be traveling, so to speak, before it's time ?

Although, it may be merely fractions of a second, still could be very useful to be able to receive such information anomalies.
 
Sound doesn't travel at the speed of light. I was anticipating a 15 year trip to Neptune for the signal, and a 15 year return trip. I didn't do any actual math, just used Voyager IIs trip times.
 
Sound doesn't travel at the speed of light. I was anticipating a 15 year trip to Neptune for the signal, and a 15 year return trip. I didn't do any actual math, just used Voyager IIs trip times.
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You didn't say sound. Unless you have some information that the rest of us are lacking, it seems that sound can't travel in space since it's a vacuum.
 
ddsilver,

If you sent a message aimed at say, Neptune, and it was able to be reflected back and re-intercept your receiver, you could send a message approx. 30 years into the future. This isn't exactly "time travel", but you could send the coordinates and contact information for whatever receiver you're using, and a party with sufficently advanced technology could receive that information in the "future" and attempt to contact you.
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There's absolutely nothing wrong with this analysis other than bouncing a signal off of Neptune to receive it 30 years later. The math is a bit wrong but the idea is correct: Special Relativity.

In fact this is precisely how we receive any and all information - from the past - irrespective of the distance between the transmitter and receiver. The local speed limit is c therefore the maximum speed of transmission of information is the speed of light. Looking at yourself in a mirror .5 meters away is viewing yourself 3.3 nanoseconds in the past.
 
ddsilver,

However, sending messages into the past does not eliminate paradoxes. The biggest paradox is the case where you send the plans to build your D. D. Silver transmitter/receiver system into the past. If you send that information into the past to a spacetime coordinate prior to the time that you invented the system the obvious paradox becomes the question of why invent it in the first place or even who invented it and when? If the plans exist in your past lightcone at a time before you invent the gadget why would you cogitate on the issue? It already exists. In theory, at least, it has always existed because there is no reason to assume that someone (or many "someones") at some time(s) has sent the plans even farther into the past. So the paradox is the issue of technology virtually inventing itself and effect preceding cause in the most irrational manner possible in the sense that it is never invented at all - it simply 'is'.

I do understand that you placed a limit on the theory to an era where telegraphy had been invented. But if you can send electromagnetic energy into the past you can expand the theory to include, for example, laser light. Given sufficient engineering skills you can lase the schematics into whatever medium that you can find - it doesn't necessarily have to be a telegraph line. Stone, paper, the side of a boxcar, whatever. If you're creative enough you can find a non-technical medium to be your receiver.
 
If you sent a message aimed at say, Neptune, and it was able to be reflected back and re-intercept your receiver, you could send a message approx. 30 years into the future. This isn't exactly "time travel", but you could send the coordinates and contact information for whatever receiver you're using, and a party with sufficently advanced technology could receive that information in the "future" and attempt to contact you.
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On earth timeline transmission:
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You don't need space travel to Neptune in order to transmit data into the future. Use the LHC or any other proton or electron accelerators to push protons/electrons in circle (donut shape) in near speed of light. Embed data in the portons or electons (1 and 0s for binary) and receive it inside the same machine on earth. In those experiments the electrons or protons are not "lost" but go to other time/space in theory. (However things on earth changes, never know if there is an earthquake or machine shut down in between receiving time and transmitting time etc other possible errors. Idea good for short timeline distance transmissions.

Space timeline transmission:
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However if you have any access to satellites which can intercept far away like Neptune, try using laser beams for optical data transfer to send message to future. Recommend using Infra Red optical laser transfer instead of normal light colour, too shiny can blind people's eye. (Similar to your infra red Wii or TV remote control, but in laser light form so it doesn't spread the light and be more precise)

The far way satellite receiver from other planet shall receive data and repeat it /reflect it back to space station / transmitter satellite near earth and send data back to earth station.

The laser beams will travel in the speed of light. Transmitter shall be located from international space station or close to earth satellites rather than earth stations, so no bending of light from atmosphere/gas.

This type of transmission can extend the length of travel to centuries (hundreds of years).

To those TT believers - result: You friends in the other time traveler claim board. /ttiforum/images/graemlins/smile.gif

However, how do they transfer data back in time, then you have to ask the future people with future technology.

God bless you all. TT fans.
 
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