Is anything possible?

[Misc]

Without going too far into it, what makes people think that certain things are impossible?
We live on this tiny planet thinking we're perfect beings because we know how to build a skyscraper or a faster then sound jet. And yet anything seen as abnormal is illogical.

Humans don't hold an instruction manual to life, who are we to say if something can't happen just because it wouldn't fit into what we're used too or it can't be proven scientificity.

An example being that time travel is impossible because the laws of physics says so.
Who says the laws of physics won't change in the next hour or so to allow time travel?

Science could prove all it wants but at the end of the day, it can't answer some of the more important questions.

Obviously i don't word these kind of threads as well as some of the other members but i think you get the idea.

[Blue_SV650S]

sometimes, you just gotta say, the laws of time and space? Who gives a smeg!



____________________
The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

[Hetzer]

I believe this reality has been 'coded' in such a way as to allow our minds, as they are in these brains, to interface with it in a specific way. If "anything were possible" we'd be back in the real reality, and this illusory one wouldn't work anymore.

Which isn't to say that a lot of stuff we consider impossible now won't turn out to be possible in fact, it's just that we don't know how yet.

If we ever do discover how to thwart the code I reckon this reality will collapse and we'll have to make another one and start from scratch.
____________________
"There's the horizon! Ride hard, ride fast and cut down all who stand in your way!"

[Misc]

[MarJay]

Its called the weak or strong anthropic principle, I can't remember which but it basically goes like this:

If the Universe was any other way, we wouldn't be here to observe it.


____________________
British beauty: Triumph Street Triple R; Loony stroker: KR1S; Track fun: GSXR750 L1; Commuter Missile: GSX-S1000F
Remember kids, bikes aren't like lego. You can't easily take a part from one bike and then fit it to another.

[Hetzer]

[santa668]

Pretty sure its the weak anthropic - if the universe was slightly different in any way, then we wouldn't exist in the form we currently do, and so would not be observing it (in the same way).

The strong anthropic takes it from the other way round - the universe is the way it is so that we exist (or another similar form of life etc etc)

One implies that we're just lucky - got the right conditions for life, didn't get hit by too many planets early on etc, the other that we are righteous - this universe was created specially for us (awww).

Physics doesn't say that time-travel is impossible; our current knowledge of the physical universe seems to imply that if we ever travelled faster than light, we would also travel in time (subjectively). I think some of the arguments against 'real' time travel are to do with the second law of thermodynamics and conservation of energy - it would take an enormous amount of energy to affect our location in both time and space, so for now we settle for just moving around in space.
(Do we time travel just by existing = we travel forward in time second by second, without really going anywhere )

Prepost Edit: I orginally started writing about the implications of quantum entanglement for time travel, or at least FTL comms, but halfway through I went 'argh' rolled a sanity check and discovered I'd gone mad

Quote from original preview: "Measurements on one particle seem to define the other - if you measure one particle as having a type of spin along one axis, you can predict that the other particle will have the opposite type of spin around the same axis. The question then becomes: Whilst we did not know what type of spin particles A and B had, were they defined in any way; since the probability of all possible states was equal, were they all true, or did the observation merely measure something that had existed prior to observation?"

THE QUANTA ARE IN MY HEAD HELP....

So, I deleted that.

It seems that the only time travel our current knowledge of physics allows for is to travel faster or slower (subjectively) than the rest of the world.

But, if it did allow for time-travel (into the past for instance), we would then need to deal with things like chain of causality - what happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather? Do you cease to exist, does your grandfather in the present cease to exist, or change to another person? Is a new universe created wherein you had a totally different grandfather? Will Biff still rule the world in the future?

Hetzer's first post reminded me of a short story by Isaac Asimov 'The nine billion name of God' - a group of monks use a computer to work out and write down all the possible permutations of the name of God because:
'"Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names -- and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them -- God’s purpose will have been achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won’t be any point in carrying on."'

Then at the end....

'"Look," whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.'

see all of it here if you're interested https://lucis.net/stuff/clarke/9billion_clarke.html

Anyway, stick a quark in me honey, I'm done...

Nick

*saying nothing, but in a really profound way*

[Hetzer]

It kind of goes without saying that one couldn't go back in time and kill one's grandfather, the resulting paradox is an impossibility.

So if time-travel is possible it has to be on the basis of multiple time-lines (you go back and kill your grandfather, he's either a different grandfather to yours in a different time-line, or by killing him you create a different timeline in which his deadness exists, so it can't effect your existence).

But, if there are multiple time-lines, it begs the question of where do all the multiple souls come from? If there are an infinite number of time-lines...

The answer to that would be that if the source-consciouness, from which all other consciousnesses are drawn, is eternal and exists in a state where there is no time and space, there can be an infinite number of souls. There could be a million yous, all identical but all individual.

Quantum physics suggests this is possible, that there is a seperate time-line for each iteration of reality where there is one atom different in each one (and all combinations thereof). Which means there are trillions to the power of trillions to the power of gazillions unending of seperate realities. Which sounds impossible, until you remove time and space from consideration. And in that case it's no big deal at all. And, strangely enough, these researcher chappies, in their attempts to merge the two theories into the unified one, are finding that time and space are messing up their calculations, which start to work a lot better with time and space removed (so I've read).

They say the human brain can't comprehend such twisted gobbledegook, but I don't find it that difficult. It would probably be a very bad idea for me to drop acid right at this moment though.
____________________
"There's the horizon! Ride hard, ride fast and cut down all who stand in your way!"

[colin1]

[Hetzer]

[GhostRider]

[Hetzer]

[Paulington]

You may have seen this, no matter how many times I watch it, it still manages to open my mind.

There is a lot of stuff that currently exists that tells us we DON'T understand time and space as it is.

For example, thanks to general relativity and all it's splendour, it works perfect with black holes until you get to the centre at which point we have to divide by zero. This therefore forces us to conclude that there is infinite gravity in an infinitely small place with infinite density and as far as I'm concerned that strikes a bit odd to me.

Chances are we will never fully understand our surroundings, we will be swallowed by the sun, still wallowing in mystery. .
____________________
"Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul."
Current Vehicles: '89 Kawasaki KDX200, '99 Yamaha XV535, '00 Honda ST1100 Pan-European, '08 Suzuki GSX-R1000, '08 Mitsubishi Lancer GS4 2.0 TDCi, '15 BMW 1 Series 116d Sport Turbo.
CBT: 27/08/08. Theory: 04/09/09. Module 1: 16/09/09. Module 2: 01/10/09.

[Itchy]

I believe that possibilities are limited by technology in the state of the art, hence at current tech levels it is impossible for me to get from Manchester to London in less than 3 hours.

Build a TGV train and I get there in 1.5 hours,

Build a Maglev like in China I get there in 45 minutes.

Build a jump gate portal device I get there in 2 seconds, except that we do not have the tech and or understanding YET to build a jump portal device.
____________________
Spain 2008France 2007Big one 2009 We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will. In the end, your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.

[Hetzer]

[pablouk]

We are the tenth dimension.
Or rather, I am.
Watch your fecking P's and Q's or I'll blink you out of your faux exsistance.( of course your emotional reaction would mearly be my perception of what you would feel, so it doesn't really matter anyhoo)
*Strolls off to make a black hole just for giggles.....*
____________________
Keeping The Nation Pissed
Do not anticipate trouble or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight. ~Benjamin Franklin

[woodyfjr]

Time travel "whats the point"
We cant get anything right now, so why go back in time.
Unless to screw the planet up some more.
____________________
If you don't pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.

If you have to rev it! Don't Buy it!

[killa]

When the topic begins, 'is anything possible' i can see it has quickly turned into a "hey we think we're ace because we broken the sound barrier, but you wait until magnetic zero point anti ion invariable outer propulsion arrives!!"

They had tramps trying to drink sanitising liquid in hospitals to prevent swine flu spreading this year, a small insignificant event you may think but it gives you a peep through the looking glass into the kinda thing your average human being can do.
Give the general public something which allows them to travel the length of the country in a few seconds and you've got a fucking problem. We are a vile, multiplying, guffing, selfish specimen really and would greatly enjoy the new possibility of doing something very bad and getting far far away from it by stepping into a porthole.
If anything is possible, we will invariably fuck it, royally.

When i think of 'is anything possible', i tend to think, if we can think it, we've done it.
Over the time of our miserable existence on this planet, things we've imagined we can do, we've had a bloody good go at.
We've started wars, we've raped children, fucked animals, burned thousands of people alive to prove a point, made handbags and rugs from 'gods' creations and made videos of it on the internet. We've subjected people to torture in the name of science and still people try to remind themselves that the world is a beautiful 'god like' creation full of wonderment, butterflies, bunny rabbits, chocolate doves, swans, sun and laughter.

A scientist may keep soldiering on with his quest to find the answers to all this mess but he can't dance. At first, this may make as much sense as a cotton wool tiger riding a tractor through a tear drop but believe me this is us all over.
Give a man a combustion engine and he'll drive around his rock until it melts his own solar system killing everyone within it. Give a man a zero point energy engine and he'll go and fuck up someone else's rock because it's, possible.
I literally dread to think what we're going to do once we fully understand black holes, time/space and all that guff, but what i do know is that Einstein or not we're going to tie up the next civilisation we find, ask them what they know, burn several thousand of them, bukkake on the females faces and post it on the internet.

"It is curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want." Spock
____________________
Cleverly disguised as a responsible adult.
Bike:- Yamaha TRX850 | Killas Biking History | Killas Gaming History | Killas autmotive history

[Hetzer]

[killa]

[GhostRider]

[st3v3]

I only popped in here to humbly mention a phrase I heard a few years back - "Anything's as possible as you make it", now I don't think when the chap imparted this wisdom on me he expected me to take it literally and form it as part of a code of living but why not? Man had a point.

[Hetzer]