Would you go back in time to prevent your own birth for $1b?

Well, would you?


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GPS relies very much on relativistic (space=time) calculations to be accurate.
I don't think anyone seriously doubts Special Relativity (with the exception of superluminal neutrinos :)) nowadays. Pretty much all of electrodynamics and particle physics quantum field theory doesn't make any sense without it.
 
GPS relies very much on relativistic (space=time) calculations to be accurate.
I don't think anyone seriously doubts Special Relativity (with the exception of superluminal neutrinos :)) nowadays. Pretty much all of electrodynamics and particle physics quantum field theory doesn't make any sense without it.

Well, classical mechanics worked very accurately for some centuries too, but it was still proved 'wrong' and replaced by quantum mechanics for more accurate estimations. So technically it's possible a theory can replace Special Relativity, but that's no reason to completely disregard it, of course.
 
It is very unlikely that such a new theory would decouple time and space again though, as he suggested, new theories tend to unionise.
 
The theory of General Relativity is in no way proven by observing its calculations. Let us remember the out-of-this-realm thoughts that Newton had about gravity while his calculations were as correct as these.

We have merely stated that there exist such nonsense as the bending of space, bending of time (through the bending of space), theoretical ability to travel in the time by traveling faster than the speed of light and so on to explain calculations that we do not understand.

We have NO, I repeat no credible proof that I know of that proves the theory. We only have quasi-correct calculations that we have elaborated on using our fantasy. It is a modern god myth and it tells much of the pathetic state we as beings still are in.


Teslas quoted statement on the Wikipedia rings true enough even today and should dispell the myth for any reasonable individual not yet coerced into believing it:

"I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.[200]"


Obviously something can effect the atoms in the clocks. But not nothing. It is far more reasonable to claim that gravity or the density of dark matter or anything else is what is causing the discrepancies. Frankly no answer is better than this answer.
 
What does the GPS have to do with anything?

It calculates your position in four-dimensional spacetime (and that's why you need the information from at least 4 satellites for it to work accurately).

You might not believe in time as the fourth dimension, but your GPS receiver has to rely on that fourth dimension in order to have a chance at accuracy. So if you use GPS you rely on something you do not believe to exist.
 
My GPS does not rely on a fourth dimension. It relies on calculations drawn from observations on which the likes of you have sprinkled fantasies.
 
The theory of General Relativity
I was talking about the theory of Special relativity, not General relativity. This makes the rest of your post rather irrelevant.
 
Same , differen't name. The later actually has a little more merit in it since it uses some actually provable things.
Isn't special relativity a fundamental part of general and why are you trying to be a besserweisser?


Also I assume you know a case of when an atomic clock has been put under tremendous gravitational pressure or lack of thereof? Would be interesting to just read about it for fun although it proves nothing in either direction.


After some simple googling I found that the father of the atomic clock agrees especially on the point we are discussing here.
A book I am going to try and read: The Special Theory of Relativity: A Critical Analysis by Louis Essen.

If anyone has any non-google/wikipedia tips on books or authors critical of this, especially writings by Tesla please PM me.
 
Also I assume you know a case of when an atomic clock has been put under tremendous gravitational pressure or lack of thereof? Would be interesting to just read about it for fun although it proves nothing in either direction.

Optical clocks (standard atomic clocks are becoming outdated) are precise enough that the difference in gravity caused by 1m of change in elevation suffices to measure the effect on time as predicted by General Relativity. (And of course there are many other experiments at higher speed or more elevation difference that also confirm GR)

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5999/1630.abstract
Observers in relative motion or at different gravitational potentials measure disparate clock rates. These predictions of relativity have previously been observed with atomic clocks at high velocities and with large changes in elevation. We observed time dilation from relative speeds of less than 10 meters per second by comparing two optical atomic clocks connected by a 75-meter length of optical fiber. We can now also detect time dilation due to a change in height near Earth’s surface of less than 1 meter. This technique may be extended to the field of geodesy, with applications in geophysics and hydrology as well as in space-based tests of fundamental physics.

Anyway, in the time of Tesla Relativity was mostly a hypothesis. But since then it has been tested so many times and no deviation has been found. Unless we have any observable evidence that Relativity is not correct (and we have no other theory explaining the effects) the scientific method requires us to keep it.

Otherwise we would be doing fairy tales instead of science.
 
We have NO, I repeat no credible proof that I know of that proves the theory. We only have quasi-correct calculations that we have elaborated on using our fantasy. It is a modern god myth and it tells much of the pathetic state we as beings still are in.

The only reason your GPS works is because of special relativity. Please read a goddamn book before you continue to spew your vacuous mendacity all over this thread.
 
Money is not important enough to put my existence in jeopardy.

This.

The "Deaths" of all of those people are a serious ethical dilemma and I don't want to live without those people. But even if that weren't a problem, I still might not exist. And I want to exist. I want my future reward in Heaven;)

So I wouldn't do it:p
 
The only reason your GPS works is because of special relativity. Please read a goddamn book before you continue to spew your vacuous mendacity all over this thread.


Wrong. Refute my points or shut the hell up.
If I said that God was influencing time and space according to those calculations then that would be just as credible as the theory itself. We DO NOT KNOW what is infulencing them.

Time is just an attribute we set to measure the speed of things.
That an atomic clock or even light is affected by gravitational forces and movement is not something unusual.
You have a mass, an atom, and you are putting it through in "relative" measure such substantial changes of environment that something must happen with it and thus "time" appears to change. But it is not time, it is the the nature of the mass that has changed.
We know much to little about the dark energy and dark matter that surrounds the planet and everything else and how it affects what ever passes through or near it.


The problem with measuring time with light is obvious. The basic fallacy of the theory lies in the concept that the fastest thing in the world equals time. This is so banal and stupid that I lack words for it. So if we were to discover something faster, suddenly time itself would change? What a load of horsehockey. This is the problem. This affects not only light experiments but all other experiments because for example just like with the atom clock you are changing the environment of your test object and then claiming you have changed time, just because its speed has changed. It is quite clear that light is bent by gravity and what ever is between the two points of reference. This is why the nordic people could discover Iceland.

This does not mean that TIME is being bent.
 
Technically, you don't kill them, you just prevent their birth.
The way I see it "prevent their birth" is just the how. I kill my parents in a hilariously convoluted way. But that I kill them still is not very hilarious. What difference does it to them make if they die without realizing that they die while ling asleep or while being erased from the time line? And if they knew - being erased from the time line seems like the worse aftermath of being killed than merely being dead.
 
Wrong. Refute my points or shut the hell up.

Make points worth refuting.

If I said that God was influencing time and space according to those calculations then that would be just as credible as the theory itself. We DO NOT KNOW what is infulencing them.

Two hydrogens and one oxygen don't make water! For all we know it's twenty uraniums that are invisible, unseeable, and break down without cost to energy into a water molecule spontaneously!

Just because you can toss out unsubstantiated bad claims doesn't mean that the best theory is wrong. No scientific assertion presumes 100% correctness anyway so your appeal to THE GREAT UNKNOWN is rather off the mark.

Time is just an attribute we set to measure the speed of things.
That an atomic clock or even light is affected by gravitational forces and movement is not something unusual.
You have a mass, an atom, and you are putting it through in "relative" measure such substantial changes of environment that something must happen with it and thus "time" appears to change. But it is not time, it is the the nature of the mass that has changed.
We know much to little about the dark energy and dark matter that surrounds the planet and everything else and how it affects what ever passes through or near it.

The problem with measuring time with light is obvious. The basic fallacy of the theory lies in the concept that the fastest thing in the world equals time. This is so banal and stupid that I lack words for it. So if we were to discover something faster, suddenly time itself would change? What a load of horsehockey. This is the problem. This affects not only light experiments but all other experiments because for example just like with the atom clock you are changing the environment of your test object and then claiming you have changed time, just because its speed has changed. It is quite clear that light is bent by gravity and what ever is between the two points of reference. This is why the nordic people could discover Iceland.

This does not mean that TIME is being bent.

I see, you know nothing about it and still presume like you can talk about it. God, but there are too many of your kind on these forums.

I mean, look at this crap: "The basic fallacy of the theory lies in the concept that the fastest thing in the world equals time." Somebody slept through high school physics, I see! And probably more than just that.

You're blasting theoretical physicists for their bad sense and invoking dark matter? Geez you're out of touch. Your assertions - well, what I assume must be your assertions since honestly I can barely make heads or tails of this word jambalaya - relies on all the bad faith you accuse theoretical physicists of having and then some. Also a hefty dose of ignorance, which I hear is useful when trying to talk about stuff way and far above your own comprehension.

I'll break down the essential takeaway of the spacetime theory for you: Light doesn't have mass. So when gravity influences it - a phenomenon we have measured countless times - we infer that what it's doing is warping spacetime. Why it's spacetime and not just space I couldn't tell you, but what I can tell you is it's a tried and tested notion and the combination of space and time into a single manifold has represented such an acute insight into the world of physics that it launched our understanding forward on innumerable fronts.

I have a feeling you've encountered this argument and what I can sort of glean from your post is some flailing in the contrary direction, but all of your points are incoherent or poorly reasoned and hardly demonstrate a qualitative refutation of general relativity. Admittedly I'm cheating a bit by having the entire body of knowledge acquired thus far at my beck and call, and surprisingly enough it corroborates my point (or I may have that backwards), but this is only because I don't have whatever peculiar disorder has deluded you into believing that theoretical physics is wrong because reasons (reasons here being that it's the conceit of authority figures, and I'll go out on a limb here and guess that you also think Johnson killed JFK and we didn't really land on the moon). I guess I shouldn't worry for I'm sure you'll settle on some trite epistemology to argue that we can't know anything for sure and so your jumbled out-of-left-field explanation for the relativity phenomenon must be correct.

Seriously, take your amazing findings before the faculty of physics at MIT, or better yet those banal and stupid eggheads at CERN and let them know they're doing it all wrong. I'm sure you'll have a freaking blast when they laugh you out of the room because somehow those elitist scientists just couldn't accept the remarkable insight of an uneducated nobody who talks before he thinks.

Or, more likely, when they humor your assertion and respond with an earnest attempt at conversation and explanation, you are humbled by their generosity in dealing with stubborn jackasses.
 
So many words so little substance.

Let's break it down boy. You will have to answer all these questions to pass your exam and prove you're not pulling stuff out of the blue (ah-ha).

Where did I say that light has mass? I know nothing of this.
Photons are a type of particle though and it can accelerate and - god, oh! Decelerate.
Photons are manipulated in Fiber Optics Cables and new research reveals they can be used in creating quantum computers. Do you understand what this means? I'm not sure I do, for sure. But I'm quite sure it doesn't mean we are messing with the very fabric of space itself.

Do you actually suggest that if I were to fly through the sun, make a hole through it, and at the same time project light around it that if I was flying at near light speed I could actually travel in time?

Do you actually claim that the absence of light is the absence of time?
Because that is what relativity theory is all about, speed is not defined by time. Speed defines time. Please, bring us uninvented into this universe of nonsense. What observations have been proven?

I also never said that space could be bent. Heck that's worse than time.
Please point where I said that.
You're actually standing and saying that the lack of anything, empty space, can be manipulated into something. Your claim is backed by nothing. No evidence exists of this.

Let me ask you a question. Is the theory of relativity creating more problems today than it is solving? This almost terrifying obsession Einstein had with finding the unifying theory in the last years of his life lead him to calculating (approximately) a semi-unifying theory. But he had no, I repeat no evidence or proof of what was influencing it. It was so easy to use the fastest thing in the world, light, because any experiment on earth could rely on it. The minute difference between the speed of light and the unlimited "speed" of time in relative terms to our lives here was minimal.

Please, do you even understand what an atomic clock is?
It measures the fluctuation of atoms. These fluctuations are constant at one speed and change at an other or depending on gravity and other factors can also change.
But because you are so embedded into your stubborn way of thinking you do not even comprehend that it is your manipulation of the mass that is creating the changes the readings of your device. You believe that you are manipulating the very fabric of time while in fact you are merely manipulating just your little atoms and your clock.

Do you know that string theory today has a major obstacle: This foolish notion of space-time and especially the notion of speed defining time. Heck they are running into such bizarre questions as "Can photons travel at the speed of light if their energy is used up in more dimensions" to put it at a very simple level.


Can you understand that theorists, both string theorists and physicians and others that came before the theory who tried to challenge Einsteins theory were silenced, even threatened or simply ignored - even if they just wanted to modify it? This is not out of some huge conspiracy, it is simply so much that is on stake on this theory, so many who have bet their entire careers on it that it is near impossible to dislodge.

As such todays string theorists, to be accepted in the mainstream club have finally given up and conceded to the theory and are now trying to formulate it around his calculations. Just as Quantum Physicians are. Well it could be argued that String Theorists are Quantum Physicians who've taken a step towards the unsubstantiated but at least they are attempting to prove their statements and not take them for granted.
But indeed, the theory today is creating more problems than it is solving and you should NOT be so judgemental to new propositions.

Also, no I am not a proponent of the string theory neither.
A supporter of natural, empirically provable science. That I am.
Theories are fine but when one unproven theory takes over an entire field, then we have a problem.
 
It is quite clear that light is bent by gravity and what ever is between the two points of reference. This is why the nordic people could discover Iceland.

lolwhat?

And that was the only part of your post even worth replying to. Luckily Crezth has already cleared up most of it.
 
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