Just out of idle curiousity.....

“Could today possibly go any freaking slower????”

“well yes I could stop time for you, that would make things go much slower.




Of course I'd start time for you again at some point and you wouldn't even notice that it had stopped. So I'm not going to go to all that effort.”

“LMAO
good question!”

“"Today" is definied by precisely how fast it does go, so "no", today will only go exactly as fast as it is, and no other speed would change the speed of the day because that would be the same "speed". Another day, however could go slower than today.

If you mean could apparent rate of time change between any 2 given points in time later in the day go any slower than what we've previously experienced, then "yes" that is possible.”

“Well, sure, NC, if we put you into a spaceship and accelerated it to a significant fraction of the speed of light, to an outside observer, it would appear that your day was going very slow.

You, however, would not notice any difference.”

“Actually if the rotation of the Earth slowed down than a day would take longer to finish. And Bison, STOP MESSING WITH THE SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM! If you put a rift in it, I'm not going to be happy.
last edited: 6/21/05 12:46:18 PM”

“whoa, major dorkfest!
:-D”

“Even if the earth slowed down today would still be exactly as long as it was.”

“Well, the rotation of the Earth is slowing down some, because of the moon. Eventually, the Earth and the moon will end up rotationally locked, with each showing the other only one side. The moon's already there because of its smaller mass.

IIRC, this is millions, if not billions of years in the future, however.”

“LZ -

If I put a rift in it you aren't likely to be here to be unhappy :)”

“I've got a rift for you kid ... just try a little ... it won't hurt you ... you'll like it! Everybody's doing it.”

“I'm bored out of my mind today”

“let me guess its all because of the venusian mind borer worm - right???”

“TTers are developping a new algorithm for the space-time continuum.

It's about time.

Actually, it would be analagous (there, I typed it and I'm glad) to the monkeys in a room with typewriters. Something about Hamlet.

Sorry, I'm correcting government exams and you can beam me up any time.
last edited: 6/21/05 1:46:13 PM”

“(note to self: from now on squelch all idle curious thoughts.)”

“Why time travel is possible

John Gribbin

Physicists have found the law of nature which prevents time travel paradoxes, and thereby permits time travel. It turns out to be the same law that makes sure light travels in straight lines, and which underpins the most straightforward version of quantum theory, developed half a century ago by Richard Feynman.

Relativists have been trying to come to terms with time travel for the past seven years, since Kip Thorne and his colleagues at Caltech discovered -- much to their surprise -- that there is nothing in the laws of physics (specifically, the general theory of relativity) to forbid it. Among several different ways in which the laws allow a time machine to exist, the one that has been most intensively studied mathematically is the "wormhole". This is like a tunnel through space and time, connecting different regions of the Universe -- different spaces and different times. The two "mouths" of the wormhole could be next to each other in space, but separated in time, so that it could literally be used as a time tunnel.

Building such a device would be very difficult -- it would involve manipulating black holes, each with many times the mass of our Sun. But they could conceivably occur naturally, either on this scale or on a microscopic scale.

The worry for physicists is that this raises the possibility of paradoxes, familiar to science fiction fans. For example, a time traveller could go back in time and accidentally (or even deliberately) cause the death of her granny, so that neither the time traveller's mother nor herself was ever born. People are hard to describe mathematically, but the equivalent paradox in the relativists' calculations involves a billiard ball that goes in to one mouth of a wormhole, emerges in the past from the other mouth, and collides with its other self on the way in to the first mouth, so that it is knocked out of the way and never enters the time tunnel at all. But, of course, there are many possible "self consistent" journeys through the tunnel, in which the two versions of the billiard ball never disturb one another.

If time travel really is possible -- and after seven years' intensive study all the evidence says that it is -- there must, it seems, be a law of nature to prevent such paradoxes arising, while permitting the self- consistent journeys through time. Igor Novikov, who holds joint posts at the P. N. Lebedev Institute, in Moscow, and at NORDITA (the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics), in Copenhagen, first pointed out the need for a "Principle of Self-consistency" of this kind in 1989 (Soviet Physics JETP, vol 68 p 439). Now, working with a large group of colleagues in Denmark, Canada, Russia and Switzerland, he has found the physical basis for this principle.

It involves something known as the Principle of least action (or Principle of minimal action), and has been known, in one form or another, since the early seventeenth century. It describes the trajectories of things, such as the path of a light ray from A to B, or the flight of a ball tossed through an upper story window. And, it now seems, the trajectory of a billiard ball through a time tunnel. Action, in this sense, is a measure both of the energy involved in traversing the path and the time taken. For light (which is always a special case), this boils down to time alone, so that the principle of least action becomes the principle of least time, which is why light travels in straight lines.

You can see how the principle works when light from a source in air enters a block of glass, where it travels at a slower speed than in air. In order to get from the source A outside the glass to a point B inside the glass in the shortest possible time, the light has to travel in one straight line up to the edge of the glass, then turn through a certain angle and travel in another straight line (at the slower speed) on to point B. Travelling by any other route would take longer.

The action is a property of the whole path, and somehow the light (or "nature") always knows how to choose the cheapest or simplest path to its goal. In a similar fashion, the principle of least action can be used to describe the entire curved path of the ball thrown through a window, once the time taken for the journey is specified. Although the ball can be thrown at different speeds on different trajectories (higher and slower, or flatter and faster) and still go through the window, only trajectories which satisfy the Principle of least action are possible. Novikov and his colleagues have applied the same principle to the "trajectories" of billiard balls around time loops, both with and without the kind of "self collision" that leads to paradoxes. In a mathematical tour de force, they have shown that in both cases only self-consistent solutions to the equations satisfy the principle of least action -- or in their own words, "the whole set of classical trajectories which are globally self-consistent can be directly and simply recovered by imposing the principle of minimal action" (NORDITA Preprint, number 95/49A).

The word "classical" in this connection means that they have not yet tried to include the rules of quantum theory in their calculations. But there is no reason to think that this would alter their conclusions. Feynman, who was entranced by the principle of least action, formulated quantum physics entirely on the basis of it, using what is known as the "sum over histories" or "path integral" formulation, because, like a light ray seemingly sniffing out the best path from A to B, it takes account of all possible trajectories in selecting the most efficient.

So self-consistency is a consequence of the Principle of least action, and nature can be seen to abhor a time travel paradox. Which removes the last objection of physicists to time travel in principle -- and leaves it up to the engineers to get on with the job of building a time machine.

http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/John_Gribbin/timetrav.htm


so theoretically if we would all...or...well...yeah...hmm....
last edited: 6/21/05 2:05:07 PM”

“So if I go back in time and cause myself not to go back in time did I ever go back in time?”

“I think I'm passing a brain stone.”

“Why do I smell burnt rubber and why does my head hurt?”

“Try a lubricated rubber.”

“On the bright side, the work day is almost over.”

“there was an old twilight zone show where a guy had a watch that stopped time when he pushed the button-he would stop the time and then do all kinds of things like take money from the bank teller and then he would start time again -he had a lot of fun stopping time and doing whatever he wanted-a nice fantasy--well one day he stopped time,but then he dropped the watch and broke it-he was stuck in the world where time and for that matter no else moved-his fantasy turned into a nightmare--”

“"but then he dropped the watch and broke it-he was stuck in the world where time and for that matter no else moved-his fantasy turned into a nightmare--”



Much like mine did today after I started this thread, huh Finger?”

“It could be worse, you could be a myopic bookworm who breaks his only pair of glasses after a nuclear apocalypse.”

“So apparently I didn't miss much on TT today.”

“And if you had, you might be able to go back in time and check it out when it happened. Again.”

“Say good night, Gracie.”

“Damn it's still just today, I was hoping this was yesterday again.”

“no its still tomorrow-”

“For you maybe...”

“1) What’s the deal with you women and these shoes that go FLAP FLAP FLAP FLAP like a freaking clapping seal convention?

2) Why the need to walk past my desk 400 times per day while wearing said shoes?

3) Is it possible to go insane from hearing this flapping noise all day?”

“Earplugs? Why request earplugs when you could request an office with a door you can close. Tell'em you need an office for your mental health.”

“Another Y2. ;-)”

“I wear flip-flops to work all the time. I'm usually bare footed most of the time during the day though. Shorts, golf shirt, bare feet, the small office enviro works good.”

“

“Why the need to walk past my desk 400 times per day while wearing said shoes?”
Nonconformist

!. They're trying to get your attention.
2.They're having problems and have to visit the restroom often.
3. Maybe you need to move the water fountain closer to their work locations.
last edited: 7/26/05 10:06:23 AM”

“I'm more into man-clogs. I don't see how people walk around with the thing stuck between there toes. I'd be bleeding by lunch.”

“I am with you Nigel. I had a pair of those adn I could never keep them on my feet. I would get cramps when I worre them too!”

“So, thongs make Nigal bleed and give WK cramps...hmmmm....”

“I almost said that thongs give me crabs.”

“Why do I suddenly feel all bltchy and bloated?”

“Time for your monthly friend, Nigal? ;-)”

“grrrrrrrr”

“On that whole moon thing, any idea which part of our planet will get to look at the moon full time, and which will never see it?”

“LMAO @ Nigal..you really crack me up! ROTF”

“I've never read anything about which side will end up facing the moon. My guess is, whichever side has more mass. But that changes, so it's hard to say.

Of course, this is so far in the future that it's unlikely humans will be around to see it.”

“....can folks outside of Michigan buy Mackinac Island Fudge ice cream?

Do they sell Moose Tracks ice cream in Florida?

Can Texans get Caribou Caramel ice cream?”

“Mackiwha?

Yes.

Yes.”

“But most importantly can Tarabull get Eddy's dreamery ice cream in the UP?! =)”

“Tarabull has a new love: Jildert's Dairy "Amaretto Cherry Mackinac Island Fudge." Oh BABY!”