oneatomatatime Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Hello, I'm new here and really enjoy reading these forums. Time travel has always been a fantasy of mine ever since I was a kid. Anyway, I have a couple of questions and would like to get some input on them. Assuming that time travel is possible to the past and the future one day. Wouldn't it be safe to assume that only your consious moves in time? If you shielded the earth and shot it near the speed of light. Would it turn into a black hole because of its mass building up? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TimeLord Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Hi, and welcome to the forum. Assuming that time travel is possible to the past and the future one day. Wouldn't it be safe to assume that only your consious moves in time? Until time travel is actually achieved, this is more of a philosophical problem. If you take a freshman philosophy course, you will learn about materialism (the idea that the mind is made of matter in the brain & doesn't exist apart from the body), dualism (the idea that mind & matter are distinctly different and independent substances), and a few others. To me, time travel seems to work best with materialism, but it's really something that has to be empirically proven one way or another. If you shielded the earth and shot it near the speed of light. Would it turn into a black hole because of its mass building up? Probably, though I haven't previously considered it. Also considering the length contraction which takes place at relativistic speeds, that should increase the density of the earth even faster. I wouldn't want to be around in such a scenario in either case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darby Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 If you shielded the earth and shot it near the speed of light. Would it turn into a black hole because of its mass building up? I don't know what you mean by "shielded" here. However, no - the Earth would not form a black hole. There would be weird gravitational events while the object was accelerating (planar gravitational shock waves resulting from relativistic length contraction) but consider a real black hole and an accelerated object: If you slowly approach a black hole ("slowly" meaning a velocity much, much less that the speed of light) you would still have an event horizon surrounding the hole. Now consider your object traveling at near the speed of light. If you're standing on it there is no event horizon. If another observer accelerates to the same velocity as the object s/he won't see any event horizon surrounding your object and there would be no gravitational weirdness associated with it - it would just be another object moving at about the same speed as the second observer. If you slow the object back down to a velocity that is, again, much, much less than the speed of light there will still be no event horizon, no gravitational weirdness or any other black hole like behavior. If you had a real black hole that was also zipping across space at some ultrarelativistic velocity and slowed it down to "normal" velocity it would still be a black hole. All of the real events associated with accelerating to near the speed of light are complex. The weirdness is associated with the period that the object is actually accelerating. But in the end you have the principle of relativity that states that the laws of physics are the same in all inertial frames (frames where objects are moving at a constant velocity - no longer accelerating, even if the velocity is near to the speed of light). If it isn't a black hole as seen by an observer traveling at about the same velocity then it isn't a black hole no matter what relative velocity it is traveling at with respect to any other observer. I tried to find you a pop-sci article to review but I wasn't successful. There are a few peer reviewed but highly technical articles on the Net that explain this in terms that physicists well versed in special and general relativity can easily understand - but not so easily understandable by we amateurs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darby Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 All of the above being said, consider what the universe would look like to the observer riding on the object that has been accelerated to near the speed of light. I'll leave that question open for now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darby Posted February 15, 2011 Share Posted February 15, 2011 Assuming that time travel is possible to the past and the future one day. Wouldn't it be safe to assume that only your consious moves in time? Probably not. As it is, we're already moving forward in time. From our observations it does appear that our matter moves along with our consciousness. If we consider the meaning of space-time in general relativity we find that mass tells space-time how to warp and space-time tells mass how to move. Space and time, in general relativity, are much like electricity and magnetism, and mass and energy - different aspects of the same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oneatomatatime Posted March 23, 2011 Author Share Posted March 23, 2011 Thanks for the replies.. While I can grasp our consious is just our brains reactions to the bits of matter & energy moving normally through time I find it a bit wierd. I suppose it's because I'm thinking of our brain registering things in a linear fashion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paladius Posted April 22, 2011 Share Posted April 22, 2011 1atom, Stephen hawkin (sp?) suggested there where 3 arrows of time. Psychological, Cosmological, and Thermodynamic. Although his explanations for each are a little off, he is on the right track. To time travel the way you see it done hollywood style, you'd need to take into consideration the physical location of the planet AND carry a homing beacon of your consciousness. Without the beacon, you are traveling without a compass. This separation of mind and matter is what makes teleporting an inanimate object and mental time travel two independent events. Currently, even elite technology does have the capability of linking mind and matter, as current research is heading in the wrong direction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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