Hypothetical Time Travel Question

Keep in mind that this is all very hypothetical, given that man traveling through time is only (as of now) an idea of science fiction.

But my question is. If someday we are able to send a man back in time, would it be correct to believe that we could only send him as far back as when we were first able to time travel?I mean, you cant land a plane without an airport, and i have a hard time believing that people just appear out of nowhere like in the movies. Thoughts?

So you are saying that if we ever find a mean to travel in time we wouldn't be able to use it before a "x" period of time pass and we couldn't go back in time prior to "x" afterward?

I'm in no mean an expert, but I keep an interested eyes on all sciences (ok specially the wacky ones, lol) but I sure can prove you I can land a plane without an airport...it just might be rougher as in poping in dressed like today in 3000 BC.

i think you may be grasping what i am trying to say. say time travel is created at time ( X ). It would make sense that we would not be able to travel to anytime prior to ( X ), but would be able to travel freely anytime after ( X ). Although the airport analogy may not be the best to use in this situation, i think it gets the general idea across. how about, you cant listen to a cd without a cd player.

Yes I see your point, that is based on the "fact" that any matter can't travel faster than light. Approching that speed effectively slow down time hence allowing the "time" to go faster than us hence we travel in the future.

To do the opposite though you would need a way to travel faster than light which is according to what we know not possible...but advanced quantum physic has proven otherwise. Everything change when we get to the nanoscopic world, which is very hard to understand considering we can only see and experience (for the most part) the macroscopic part of our lifes...but we also know that all that is macroscopic is nanoscopic we just can't see it.

From there all hell break loose, lol.

[Cooker]

The current state of the art belief in physics is that it might be possible to create a wormhole and use it later to travel back to the original time of creation of the wormhole allowing time travel. Hawking doesn't think it is possible, because he believes that infinite energy is required to properly place the wormhole. Kip Thorne believes he has a proof that the energy is not infinite, but Hawking found mistake but he has no proof that the energy is infinite. Hawking will not take a bet on whether or not time travel is possible (Hawking and Thorne have engaged in a well known series of bets on questions in physics). This is all according to current theories of physics which are known to be incomplete.

Hehe, funniest is when Hawking said he wouldn't take a bet cause the other guy might be from the future and already know the answer.

[DeadRed]

Anybody catch the news story of the college student (MIT?) who held a widely-advertised party for all time travellers? I guess he thought that if time-travel were possible, people would've zapped back and shown up for some drinkin' and dancin'. I guess that since noone showed, that proves time-travel impossible.

You mean this?
http://web.mit.edu/adorai/timetraveler/

Now they assume it's possible to travel in the past though [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] which is a whole different ball game...going in the future is easy you just need to go really really fast. Astronauts coming back to earth are a little in the future by a couple of nanoseconds...not something that would save their life I guess.

Think about it though, you could possibly see someone showing is card in a show down in advance...you just need a lot of space trips. I predict that in 2020 the WSOP winner will be an astronauts.

[tessarji]

Well,

Scientists who have 'constructed' relativistic time machines (in a thought experiment sort of way) have indicated that they cannot be used to travel before the construction of the machine. This is basically because they are superimposing points in space-time from two different eras, therefore they do not have access to points that do not overlap with the time machine's own existence.

If you are making a machine that operates outside conventional relativistic theory, then of course anything could be possible depending on the structure of your physics.

[tessarji]

[ QUOTE ]
Hawking will not take a bet on whether or not time travel is possible (Hawking and Thorne have engaged in a well known series of bets on questions in physics).

[/ QUOTE ]

This is, of course, because he is waiting for it to be constructed so he can inform himself, in our past, to take the wager. Time machines are +EV.