this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
253 points (91.2% liked)
Showerthoughts
29723 readers
624 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct-----
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've begun thinking that time travel can only be possible if all of time were to exist simultaneously. Like a singularity. Then with complete knowledge and ability to influence matter you can rewrite time anyway you would like.
Like spreading the frames of a film out and altering them as you see fit.
Yeah but is there evidence to suggest that this is not the case? My understanding is that we don't really understand time.
I think, lots of people these days have an inflated understanding of time, because of the time travel trope in pop culture, as well as videos and simulations with time sliders being readily available.
Without getting into Einstein's theories for a moment, time is something we measure, we never modify time in reality.
In particular, we measure the progression of causality. Say, you kick a ball, then the atoms in your foot push the atoms in the ball, the whole ball rapidly accelerates and then takes 0.6 seconds to hit a wall.
You can't just set the whole process to -1x speed and expect it to happen in reverse. That breaks causality. The ball would need to fly towards your foot without anything giving it a push.
With our time sliders, this may seem like a small difference, but it's just completely different from anything we've ever observed in the universe.
Now, about Einstein's theories, all of the above is still true. However, Einstein has discovered that travelling through time is possible, but only going forward in time, at a different speed than everything else.
Basically, causality has a speed limit, which happens to be the speed of light. (We believe photons to be massless, so with our usual acceleration formula, any acceleration would make them go at literally infinite speed. They don't, which is why a speed limit for causality is assumed.)
Gravity and your own speed can influence this speed of causality for you, meaning at a lower speed of causality, things happen less quickly for you and you'd age more slowly.
So, theoretically¹, you can get into an extremely fast spaceship, spend 5 years-as-perceived-by-you in there and then land on an Earth that's in the year 3000.
That is a one-way trip, though, because going backwards is not a thing.
¹) In practice, you need to go at speeds for this, that are magnitudes higher than anything humanity has ever achieved.
I don't know. I'm just some guy.
fair enough haha
you do definitely have a point though