The Science of Intimidation

[Ecuador Jim]

I'm reading a fun novel called "The Proteus Operation" by James P Hogan. It involves time travel back to guess when? WW II. The explanations for how it works are really good first class techno fudge. I think most theories of time travel are fudge. But they're fun. Obviously, this gang wants time travel so we can go back and shop till we drop at Gimbel's circa 1939!

Imagine the possibilities for shopping. Remember to take cash though....no plastic back then!

 

[Diamondback]

Have to take vintage cash, though... or pack the DeLorean's trunk full of gold and Wall Street Journals: go back to the '20s and make a pile, then bail-out right before Black Thursday (the one that set the stage for Black Tuesday). Don't forget the extra plutonium, there is no "Cross-Time AAA" for a jumpstart...

 

[Gilbey]

I want to make it clear that whether or not people realize it, they're time traveling their whole lives . Did you not start at one moment in time? Are you in that same exact moment right now? No? You mean you're in a different time than you used to be? That's interesting.

Here is a classic example of a time traveller for 73 years

 

[Twitch]

Just remember the yahoo that ran the US Patent Office in 1900 decided that it should close because everything possible had already been invented!!!!:eusa_doh:

 

[scotrace]

My point (and I do have one) is not that any given science is bogus, but that much of what we get is oversold to the point where the average Joe questions what he is being told.

It would be better, I think, if the Scientific community would trust that their findings could be understood if the facts are presented in reasonable terms. It's a mistake of PR to instead say "we really need to make people understand the dangers presented by greenhouse gases. Let's tell them that 90% of all known species will be extinct by 2050. That'll get results." Because we've heard it before and have learned to distrust such statements. Then we have to "trot out" our examples of previous errors.

And I stand by my statement re: Y2k disaster. I am in the electric plant business, and the months of work we all had to do to "prepare" for 1/1/00 was a waste of time. We all knew it was a waste of time, yet the reasonable voices who were trying to be heard were shouted down. So we had to spend hundreds of man hours and millions of dollars complying with requirements and filing reports. I was chief of such a project and it *really* made me angry. There were "unpatched" systems in every industry spread around the globe. If the predictions had been even a fraction of a percent correct, it would have been obvious at midnight (which I spent surrounded by coal soot, watching machinery hum along as if to laugh in our Neanderthal faces). Russia alone, which was too broke to do much of anything but cross their fingers, would have sent the planet into a tailspin had any of the predictions been true.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm no scientist, but it seems to me that it would be impossible for a time traveler to have any impact on history -- because we already know how history came out. For example, it would be impossible to go back to 1933 and kill Hitler -- because we know that nobody killed Hitler in 1933. If someone went back and tried, they would have to fail -- because history can't be changed. Simple as that. Maybe a culture advanced enough to have mastered time travel understands it too, and that's why we don't have any record of their deeds.

Or maybe I just read too many comic books when I was little.

 

[dhermann1]

What if we could go back, but not be heard or seen? Be able to move around but not be able to touch things, like a ghost? We might be surrounded at this very moment with "time tourists" who are passively spectating at our world, and not even know it!

 

[scotrace]

Hasn't it been suggested that Thomas Edison was a time traveler? He wasn't of course, but if you've ever thought, "if I could just go back to around 1870 and take what I know with me, I'd "invent" the phonograph, the light bulb, the motion picture camera, the electric generation industry, portland cement, the stock ticker.... and make a MINT!"

 

[dhermann1]

Of course, the answer to that is, how many people of that era had great ideas, only to fail to implement them through bad business sense, bad luck or whatever? The guy who supposedly invented the telephone before Alexander Graham Bell, Antonio Meucci, had all sorst of problems like this. He failed to file a patent for his new device in 1871 because he didn't have the $10 needed (that's about $200 in today's money). Apparently he had a pretty good device before Bell, but who knows his name now?

 

[Twitch]

Scientists and researchers are not futurists. They have no business projecting what society will be like in the future. They should simply do what they do and allow their products and discoveries to be marketed and applied as necessary when and if they are profitable and economically feasible.

 

[Undertow]

Top Secret

In fact, Time Travel (going back into the past) DOES exist and has existed for some time!

“How? Impossible!” you might exclaim.

Simple. In 2072, Scientists gathered from across the world to discuss the real possibility of time travel using speed-of-light technology, multi-dimensional jumping, Einstein-Rosen bridges (wormholes) and various physical implications regarding the actual application of said travel.

Once the physics had been worked out through massive simulations (many thrill rides and home entertainment machines spawned commercially), in 2089, scientists sent a woman into the year 1986* to warn of impending disasters that may have saved many lives and would inevitably change the course of history for the better.

Unfortunately, the young woman was killed in an auto accident shortly after transporting. All data she possessed was recovered and eventually sent to scientists. It was a dark mystery for many years and many tragedies occurred in order for scientists to validate her data (Twin Towers, Stock Market Crashes, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis to name a few contemporaries).

Having agreed the data was “real” scientists decided to reveal their knowledge to the UN in order to halt future calamities. A power struggle quickly ensued in which countries began demanding full copies of the original data in order to protect themselves. The information was horded and offered at a price while bits and pieces were leaked through high-profile hacks into Western Government databases. Soon, world war ensued resulting in the evisceration of quite a few countries.

The scientists that propagated the entire debacle (in the future) decided their actions had horrendous reactions and decided to halt the entire thing altogether. Literally hours after having sent the young woman from 2089 to her doom, the scientists sent a young man back to 1986 warning the young lady of the impending complications.

As a result, all time travel research was banned, notes and machinery were destroyed, and even the murmur of resuming research quashed sometime around the turn of the century.

And that’s why we have no record of Time Travel and likely never will.

*Why 1986? The year was agreed upon by the scientists’ assumptions that popular culture had allowed for the acceptance of Time Travel based on a vintage movie titled Back to the Future.

 

[Story]

Back to the point of time travel being "impossible" from the viewpoint of a scientist: I still maintain that it is far too narrow a view for science. Look at all the things we discover from history that would have been thought outlandish or impossible if there had been no proof found. Things like the 2,000 year old Baghdad Battery (possibly used for electroplating) or the Antikythera mechanism found on a ancient Greek ship.
These things are marvels because they were made in ages that we assume couldn't have contained such knowledge.

Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow. - Agent K

Iranian student replicates ancient battery
http://www.haber27.com/news_detail.php?id=22274

Iran has rebuilt the world's oldest battery, dating back to the Parthian Dynasty, to explore theories about its usage 2,200 years ago.
10 Şubat 2009 Salı 11:42

The Parthian Battery is the name given to galvanic cells found in an ancient tomb near Khujut Rabu in 1936 just outside modern day Baghdad.

The battery consists of a 14-centimeter-high egg-shaped clay jar with an asphalt stopper. An iron rod protruding out of the asphalt is the anode, which is surrounded by a copper cylinder used as the cathode. Filled with vinegar as an electrolytic solution, the jar produces an electric current.

A Sharif University of Technology student has reproduced the battery in the exact measurements to test the three hypotheses he had on the applications of the battery.

His first theory is that the battery had been used for electroplating gold onto silver objects.

"The part to be plated is the cathode of the circuit while the anode is made of gold," Amin Taheri Najafabadi explained. "Both components are immersed in cyanide-gold salt."

He notes that cyanide-gold salt is not easily found in nature but can be found in animal bile or saltwater.

Taheri has already disproved his second hypothesis that the battery may have been invented for electricity production, as its electric potential is around 0.5V.

He assumed that the battery may have had medical applications considering the bronze and iron needles discovered next to the Parthian Battery.

"The device and its conductive needles may have been used for pain control. The use of electricity in medicine was seen in ancient Rome where electric fish were used for pain reduction," Taheri said in support of his hypothesis

 

[Lone_Ranger]

"Interestingly enough, Stephen Hawking once opposed the idea of time travel. He even claimed he had “empirical” evidence against it. If time travel existed, he said, then we would have been visited by tourists from the future. Since we see no tourists from the future, ergo: time travel is not possible. Because of the enormous amount of work done by theoretical physicists within the last 5 years or so, Hawking has since changed his mind, and now believes that time travel is possible (although not necessarily practical)."
~Dr. Michio Kaku, "The Physics of Time Travel"

http://mkaku.org/home/?page_id=252

 

[Miss_Bella_Hell]

Yes, I believe that the basis for the assertion that time travel is "impossible" (sorry, did we figure out if the scientists were saying that or the journalist?) is Einstein's theory of relativity. If we can create something that can withstand traveling so fast as to become incredibly dense and heavy, then maybe we can time travel. But it's highly improbable, at least with what we know now.

 

[Undertow]

Haha, considering how brilliant the scientific community is, I find it hard to believe anyone would actually support said article. As all have said here already, improbable, yes; impossible, no.

I have to agree with Starius about going backwards in time and I would like to add simply that we haven't even charged the depths of our own ocean, so what makes us think time travel, forward or backward, is impossible?

We're still finding creatures thought to be extinct swimming around the depths. Take for instance the Frilled Shark found recently (2007 I believe) in Japan. Hoax, misidentification, or fact, the scientific community does realize there are many aspects of our own planet that have yet to be discovered/explained.

To say that we would already know about reverse time travel is ludicrous. For all we know it has happened and continues to happen. And that's if you took the linear approach not believing that there are a plethora of issues like multiverse/parallel universes/parallel multiverses, etc.

Unfortunately, nothing is impossible.

 

[DBLIII]

Unfortunately, nothing is impossible.

Very well said.

 

[shortbow]

Worm holes. String theory. Time is a human construct.

 

[MagistrateChris]

One of the most interesting things about science is that what is possible is determined by what we know now. Once upon a time, traveling at or beyond the speed of sound was deemed impossible, as it was believed that there was a point near that speed of sound at which the accellerating object would simply be destroyed by the friction, the air, etc. Go back further, and science once said that circumnavigating the globe was impossible, for the world was flat. Science as we know it cannot consider what may be discovered, as there is no way of knowing what may be discovered.

Besides, I once has a physics professor conclusively prove that bumblebees cannot fly, as their wing dimensions are not large enough to support their body mass. As he said with a smile at the end of the lecture, go tell that to the bumblebees.

 

[scotrace]

I think it was Barney Oldfield who, after testing a prototype automobile that could achieve the unheard of speed of 60 MPH, pronounced that that was the top possible speed a human could go. "Any faster, and the body would break apart."

 

[Undertow]

I think it was Barney Oldfield who, after testing a prototype automobile that could achieve the unheard of speed of 60 MPH, pronounced that that was the top possible speed a human could go. "Any faster, and the body would break apart."

I remember reading this at some point when I was a youngster and it used to make me laugh all the time. I guess I have a morbid imagination.