A tough puzzle for everyone to discuss

[Python14]

Okay, I came up with this a year or two ago as something to confused my physical science teacher. It worked to say the least, but it also gave me a pounding headache as I pondered
it. So here it is...


In a hundred years time travel has been mastered and do-it-youself Time travel kits have littered the earth. Well, on afternoon, Jim builds his Time machine and to test it, he is gonna send a rubber ball back in time. Now, Jim isnt what you call intelligent, even in the most inclusive of ideas. He decides well, I'm gonna send the ball three minutes back in time and he'll do it at noon. Well, at 11:57am, a ball appears on his desk. Well, now he has two rubber balls in his possestion. According to the laws of matter, it cannot be destroyed or created, correct? Well, where did the ball come from? Think about it. Couldn't this suggest a multiple Universe theory?

[Tunaman]

Must be some good stuff you are smoking. Got more?:D :D :D :D

[Python14]

hahaha,naw, I'm not a smoker of anything, I'm just wierd.

[oldsoldier]

Cant coexist. same matter, same ball. One of them cant exist. Uh, just a guess, I guess.

[hubadlatimmy]

past, present, and the future. Thats how I would explain it, it sounds simple enough but if there is a future for everything you do there has to be a past and he sent the ball back to in time 3 mins in the future then it appeared in the present. I hope that makes sence, it does in my head but not everything I write makes sence to the other people that read it.

[-Jôker-]

well it wasnt created because they are dif in some way... one is 3 min. older :p

[J]

If it was a multiple universe, wouldn't some other Jim be missing 1 to 2 balls? That wouldn't make any sense for him...


And time only goes foward so it couldn't work because 12:00 wasn't there yet, or something like that...

[marley618]

Hey, Jim is supposed to have 2 balls, leave him alone.

[J]

wait wait wait, Jimmy had to go back in time to get his balls back? Ok, that makes sense now...:D

[Gotenks]

I'm pretty sure it's been proven that you can't travel to the past, but it is possible to travel to the future.

Theres the solution.

[TransMan]

ok lets see here ok say you could send stuff back in time no matter would have been created at 11:57 because its the same matter and then at 12:00 Jimmy would only have one ball again

[dansim]

but why would he have one ball again at 12? if he has in possesion 2 at 1157 perhaps this throws off his plans for the time machine in the afternoon? or will he put two balls in teh machine and then at 1157 hell have 3 balls? continuing on a vicious cycle, simply put if it wasnt there before and its there now then it must be MAGIC HES A WITCH BURN HIM!!!!

[FutureMagOwner]

it would only be a vicous cycle if bill did it 936987589 times than the would would explode because of balls!

now i have thought of travel in the past and i always came to the conclusion as soon as something goes back the universe would colapse

and isnt proven you cant travel in the past

worm holes.

if you are able to create a wormhole thats stable the other end of it can be almost anywhere at any time.
basically to travel in the past you enter a wormhole thats know the goto the past(maybe from sensors or very VERY brave or pychopathic people) and it craps you out 49267847 years earlier or however far it is. lets just say by the time we could do that humankind would no longer exist as we know it, or we all died from idiocy(most likely), or the earth would have colapsed into the sun already. sure it could be possible tommorow heck godzilla could fart on someones head and i would say i told you that was gunna happen because pretty much ANYTHING can happen.

this sounds too star treky to me maybe your shatner spys :p

[land hurricane]

Tell Jim to put on some glasses

[ThePatriot]

Actually, perhaps its not impossible. There is matter all around us we cannot see, light for instance(maybe) Since none of us know thats much about time travel, maybe the ball appears from some other matter in the air?

Also...it would balance out, in 3 more minutes he will only have 1 ball again. The main question here is, what happens if Jimmy at 11:58 decides hes not going to send his ball back in time??? This is the same theory in the movie "The Time Machine" The 2nd ball was a process of him sending the ball back in time, so no matter what he does, it will happen. He locked the events into the timeline. In the movie the same thing happens, He makes the time machine as a result of his girlfriend's death. Well, because of this he cannot save her using the time machine. Because if he did save her, then the time machine would have NEVER existed later on in the time line, so he could never have saved her.

[Python14]

Okay for the sake of current knowlegde. Lets assume he sends said ball 3 minutes into the future. For three minutes though, said ball matter does not exsist, or atlease not here. The ball goes into a fifth dimension(Hyperspace)so actually it still exsists, but not in this world, which would shatter the laws of matter, because the ball is leaving our four dimensional universe, and becoming part of a five dimensional universe hidden within our own three dimensions. Does that make any sense?

[animal]

If any of you guys would pay attention to movie science, you'd know that the ball would just start to fade into 100% translucency.... just like Michael J Fox did :D

[Kaiser Bob]

if you could really do that it would be insane because you could just think you are going to send yourself something in the future and it would just happen. IE im going to send myself all the stock reports, and results of sporting events from 2002-2012 in 2013. :D

[Python14]

No, because we don't live in movies. In order for reverse time travel to be remotely possible, we'd hafta have an infinite number of parallel universes, each one a standard unit of time behind the other. If Kaiser Bob v.1.0(ie: You), recieves stock reports from a time machine, then that means Kaiser Bob v.1.1(Your parrallel universe counterpart buddy) had possestion of said stock reports, But since you never had the stock reports, and KBv1.1 is you parallel universe counterpart buddy, he doesn't either, so therefore he could not send stock reports back in time, and you(Kaiser Bob v.1.0)will sell your entire portfolio of Frozen Concentrated Orange juice a few minutes too early. Sorry, you will always be one step behind ;)

[MagmanLee]

how bout if there was multipul universes, like one for each moment of time or more. Matter and energy can't be destroyed or created under normal conditions, wasn't that the law? or w/o the under normal conditions part? If matter and energy can't be created or destroyed, then couldn't the ball shift to an energy state and pass to the diff universe? that way matter is not destoryed or created, simply moved, once there it could be converted to the matter state again....wow...how the f did i come up with that
:eek:...wtf did i just say?:confused:

[Python14]

yes magmamanlee, thats exactly what I'm talking about.

[alkafluence]

Originally posted by Python14
According to the laws of matter, it cannot be destroyed or created, correct? Well, where did the ball come from? Think about it. Couldn't this suggest a multiple Universe theory?

First of all we're not living in a Newtonian universe anymore. But to correct you here, it actually states that the total amount of matter and energy in the universe is constant.

Second I will recommend reading Einstein's 2 major postulates (http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Special_relativity.html) of relativity.

Further, relative to the ball in the "original" [which shall be denoted A] time frame nothing has been created. Its just that a ball from a different frame has been introduced to the system relative to the first.

To explain, the "transported" ball has then been removed from its frame of reference [denoted B] and placed in A. Nothing has been created or destroyed. Put simply, frame B is now devoid of its ball, but it has not been destroyed; it is simply in frame A. This also explains why nothing has been created in A, it has just been moved from B.



Just make sure that after reading this, take some aspirin.

[FatMan]

OK, I think the matter/energy and frame of reference arguments, working together obviate the need for a parallel universe.

But think of this: Supposed Jim decided to GET a ball, and send it back in time - but at the moment he doesn't have one. Then at 11:57 a ball appears. Three minutes later he sends THAT ball back in time.

Did the ball ever actually exist?

FatMan

[Jonno06]

lol.....python isnt smoking....Jim is:)

actually....your right,they cant coexist,therfor he only has 1 ball....the first ball left his posession and then returned 3 minutes....but THEN...if it goes BACK in time,he wouldnt even have the single ball to do the experiment with....since he did it at noon....

ok ok,he has 2 balls,but dont tell the government that:)

[Python14]

Alkafluence, yea, basically thats what I was hitting on. The ball is from somewhere else. And somewhere else is missing a ball.

fatman, How would it start, or end? Or more importantly, where?

[ZSigErik]

One of the most interesting posts on AO(*next to the Lucid Dreaming post*), keep it going, i LOVE reading this stuff...

[FatMan]

Originally posted by Python14
Alkafluence, yea, basically thats what I was hitting on. The ball is from somewhere else. And somewhere else is missing a ball.

fatman, How would it start, or end? Or more importantly, where?

It wouldn't start or end anywhere, its a simple causal loop: ball appears at time X and so that at time X+n it can go back in time n units. Simple! What's the problem?

The ball isn't missing, and it isn't from somewhere else - it simply exists during the time between when it appears from the future and the time when it disappears to the past.

Its kindof like those movies where a guy goes back in time, meets a girl and becomes his own father (or grandfather). No problem. Happens around here all the time! I live in South Carolina - we have a name for it here: inbreeding!

LOL!

Anyway it does seem kindof spooky until you realize that country folk in the deep South have been on top of this for generations!

Think about it!

FatMan

[Python14]

Haha great, Could this mean new golden age of AO posts?

Anyway, Has anyone read "Hyperspace:A Scientific odyssey through Parallel universes, time warps, and the Tenth Dimension" by Michio Kaku? I haven't yet but I've heard it is good. Anyone?

[Aranarth]

All you gotta do is get these basic concepts:
1) Time is not not linear on a past to present axis
2) If something happened, it happened.
3) Each object experiences time independent of all other objects

Thus you will see that, in the first scenario, at 1157, as tom was setting up for his experiment, the 'older' ball actually appeared. And at 1200 he sent the 'newer' ball back to become the 'older' ball. Thus, poor tom only had balls for three minutes of his life.
As to the old grandfather act. . . It didn't happen, did it? Well, guess its not going to, because it already did.
Follow?
-AranarthX

[paintballrulzs]

well to send it in the past it would be there the first time he went through correct. So in actuallity the two balls would have been there the whole time. I can't explain what i am trying to say very well.

[ThePatriot]

Originally posted by Aranarth
And at 1200 he sent the 'newer' ball back to become the 'older' ball. Thus, poor tom only had balls for three minutes of his life.
As to the old grandfather act. . . It didn't happen, did it? Well, guess its not going to, because it already did.
Follow?
-AranarthX

Actually, Tom always Had a ball, think he had to have a ball to send off back in time, in the first place. So, he gets a ball, getting ready to send it, but at 11:57 another ball(the one he sent) appears on his desk, he then proceeds to send his actual one away, and he has the one he received from the future, which he doesnt send. Therefor he still has 1 ball.

[magking1971]

The paradox of it all....:(
Take this, say you go back in time, now for some reason you kill the you in the past, now if you are dead you couldn't have gone back in time, and if you didn't go back in time you are alive, if your alive you went back in time and you killed your past self.. and on and on and on.

[ThePatriot]

Theoretically speaking, if you did go back and kill yourself in the past, you actually would never be alive to do it. The timeline is a continous thing, i think all events are happening all the time, it just depends where you are on it. Alright, lets say you do go back in time, and you do kill yourself, well if you died in the past, all the timeline changes and you never existed in the future. If you never existed in the future, how could you come back and kill yourself? So is it impossible to kill yourself in the past?

For those of you who saw the series finale of Voyager, it didnt make sense. The future Janeway, went back into time, and got Voyager home earlier than the older Janeway got back. The only problem i see with that is, if Voyager got back earlier all along, how did the older Janeway ever exist to save them?? She could not have existed, ever, the older janeway was a product of coming home late, you cannot use her to change the past, because she is a product of something, she cannot be used to change the past, because she wouldnt exist.

The timeline is a very confusing thing, however i have thought about this ever since i was little, in my family, and amongst most my friends im the only one who can grasp my own concepts, maybe im just crazy.

[rightsidefight]

acctually...jimmy has no balls...hahahah...but really...he is sitting there and all of a sudden a ball is on his desk...he says o ill send it back in time to test this thing..but that already happened...he sent the first ball back 3 min which means the the ball he threw in was the ball from 3 min.early that he threw in the machine...which means he never had any balls to begin with therefore there is no balls....

[oldsoldier]

Jonno06, actually, when I think about it, the ball isnt the same. It has aged 3 minutes. So, at least in this case, it isnt the same ball. So i guess even my post was wrong.
Anyway, we cant do it. to go back in time, you need some external force to stop the acceleration. Cryogenics is currently our only "time machine", and it hasnt worked yet. But, I am dumb, and thats my opinion.:cool:

[alkafluence]

Originally posted by Aranarth
All you gotta do is get these basic concepts:
1) Time is not not linear on a past to present axis


Actually, I would tend to argue that time doesn't exist PER SE. Since time is really only a human invention to allow us to quantify something that we cannot really explain.

For the sake of example, let us use time as an invention. Instead of looking at tomorrow as 24 hours away, look at it from a "wider" perspective - say from the perspective of 20,000 years. In looking at it this way, those 24 hours are but a simultaneous pin prick in the wider period of 20,000 years.

How would you explain this without some quantified invention like time? You most likely can't unless you just accept the fact that things simply "exist."


Now on another topic, all this argument about parallel universes and shifting quantum states reminds me of Sliders (http://www.scifi.com/sliders/).


EDIT: After reading the patriot's last post- Only if you held to theory that once you went back into time, you separated yourself from the normal continuity of events would you be able to explain your Voyager reference.

OTOH- you do seem to agree with me that in a wider perspective events are occurring simultaneously

[Krazy Ivan]

I have always been interested in the concept of time, and the paradox which it entails, ever since I was a kid and thought about going back in time to do my homework, or clean..etc.

Now I think about it, with a tweaked experiment A. Let's say johnny is a homocidal maniac, and he buys a ball at 12pm. Now he has a time machine and uses it at 12:30pm to send the ball an hour back in time to 11:30am. Now when 12pm comes around for him, he will have bought a new ball, then a old ball would have already been there. He now has 2 balls.
Now two problems arise, at 12:30pm he would have to send the ball back in time, or else one of the balls would no longer be able to exist. (The older ball)
Also, if he decides at 11:30 that he now has a ball and won't need to buy one, then therefore the ball will never have come into his possession and the ball will not be able to exist in his timeframe.

From this you can derive that if you send a ball back in time, you will be mandated and forced to send it back in time when you can. Otherwise the ball will never exist and your memory will reflect that. If you decide not to send the ball, technically it was never sent, and you would have no recollection of it being sent.

[Krazy Ivan]

For clarity I broke this into 2 posts. I know, I know, post whore, but still it adds to clarify the 2 different things, so you won't get them mixed up.

Scenario B: We have Johnny who is a homocidal maniac now coming in and figuring out a much more useful way to use his time machine. So Johnny goes back in time at 12pm, to 11am. At 11am he finds himself lying in his bed, and he decides to kill himself. Now having maimed his own body from 11am, he can no longer exist because he was going to send himself back in time in 1 hour. Since he is dead reality cannot fix itself, and a paradox ensues. In theory, Johnny would then, for lack of better way to put it, blink from existence due to realities inablity to deal with said paradox.

On a lighter note, if Johnny was so suicidal why didn't he just kill himself now, instead of projecting it on his hour younger self?

[SqueegeeKid]

I think that nothing has been proven about time travel and such because noone has ever done it. So saying you can't travel back in time but forward is silly. Noone's done either! It's all theories and guesses.

I think that if you did something in the past it would greatly affect the future. If the kid sent the ball back in time, when he got the ball he might be too surprised to put the original ball into the machine (wehre the heck did this ball come from???) and when he doesn't send it, the "future" ball disapears cause it was "never sent"

If you killed someone in the past, they wouldn't show up in the future cause they'd be dead. If you killed your past self, your future self would die too.

These are just my guesses, i didn't read some of the posts before mine (a little too much to read at once) so if any of this was mentioned before, sorry.

[Minimag4me]

If he doesnt then send the ball back at 1200 the entire universe ends and were all blinked out of existance. Then we can all thank Jimmy for killing us all or wait no we cant. We can just be pissed at him for not allowing us to be. Would that make Jimmy the "God" of that singular universe? Whoever holds the machine has way too much power and we should as a society kill him and destroy the machine before it erases our existance. AHHHHHHHHH and have a good day...or just having a day is all we need, huh.

[Krazy Ivan]

Originally posted by Minimag4me
Jimmy for killing us all


Originally posted by Krazy Ivan
We have Johnny

For clarity, we could keep one name, maybe Johnny? :D



Originally posted by SqueegeeKid
I think that nothing has been proven about time travel and such because noone has ever done it. So saying you can't travel back in time but forward is silly. Noone's done either!

Umm, I'm traveling forward in time constantly, don't know about you, but I'm willing to bet $1,000,000,000,000 that you are too.. While it's not a jump it's still moving forward. :D

[ThePatriot]

He got you there, I will bet any of you anything you like, that given 12 minutes preparation, i can travel 12 minutes into the future during those 12 preparation minutes, anyone wanna take me up on the offer?

[Jonno06]

lol....its impossible to know the future......

by me writing this post i changed the future....may not be a big change.....maybe it will...who knows.....

and there is the law...."what happens,happens"..that means i dun care...

[SqueegeeKid]

OK, sure you got me there but that's a given we're always traveling forward in time. Lame response.

I'm talking about jumping forward instantly. But i bet you knew that, you were just being a meathead :p

[epterry]

And for the answer we turn to DR. WHO :D

[oldsoldier]

Hey, take the whole ball equation one step further; every time he hits noon, he sends it back 3 mins. It would be like a bad movie constantly looped. Kinda like Groundhog day, right? So, if there do exist parallel universes, by sending something back once (you will never know where it went, actually, seeing as you exist now), and that cycle continuing on ad infinitum, you have effectively disrupted the whole universe in a domino effect, all for the sake of a piece of rubber. Given a theoretically infinite number of parallel universes, you kinda thread them together by doing this. Ok, I got a whole different theory going now...
anyway, Dr Who is awesome! Only Tom Baker though...all the other ones went downhill from there.

[epterry]

yep he was the best but some of the ones before him were cool:D

[Krazy Ivan]

Originally posted by SqueegeeKid
I'm talking about jumping forward instantly. But i bet you knew that, you were just being a meathead :p

Well I wouldn't say meathead....but yeah, I'm a meathead.

[Minimag4me]

ok, what if you slashed the ball right before you sent it. When you recieve the ball in the past you will have one inflated and one deflated ball. The inflated ball wouldn't be the same ball until you kill it, then your back to one empty ball that is useless. So it would be exactly the same as if you never sent the ball back(why time travel should work). But what does that teach us? Time travel only allows us not to play ball anymore.