How To Build A Time Machine

[TomKalbfus]

Here is my "blueprint" for a Time Machine:

Unlike others, this one involves no space warps, intense gravity fields either positive or negative, neither does it involve going faster than the speed of light. The principle is that if we live in a multiverse, and that if every choice involves a probability and in another universe another choice is made, this solves the problem of time paradoxes. if someone goes back in time, his mere presence causes a change in the timeline which spawns another universe. My idea is that you could do this without bending or twisting space, what you do is build a giant disk-shaped computer in space, which harnesses 40% of the Sun's output to run a number of simulations of Earth's past, using all the information we know to run a model which is a perfectly consistent simulation of the Earth at some point in its past. We run this simulation complete with simulated people, some based on historic characters that we know about and with other random individuals that we just make up in a logically consistent way. the scale of this engineering is immense, and would probably involve some superhuman General Purpose Artificial Intelligence program to spawn all these simulations of plants, animals, weather and all sorts of other phenomina that is being simulated. Now if the multiverse is actually infinite in breath and duration, what's being simulated, if carried out faithfully with all the know laws of physics would actually be real somewhere else in the Universe or at some other time, the laws of probability carried out over infinity would make anything that is possible certain to happen and infinite number of times. For a person using this time machine, he would not be able to tell the difference of what is being simulated from actual time travel, since the simulation meticulously uses all the information that is available about the past, the user would be unable to spot an inconsistencies.

[DrKrettin]

The principle is that if we live in a multiverse.....

 

 

Do we?

[TomKalbfus]

Do we?

If we don't, then the Universe had a creator, and that creator must have had a frame of existence to exist in to create the Universe, therefore it must also be part of the Multiverse. Philosophically, I always found it easier to imagine a universe that is infinite than one that was finite but with no creator. A Multiverse is a universe of universes, each universe might have different laws, but the multiverse would have its own set of metalaws under which each universe' laws of physics and physical constants are created.

 

I think that if the Universe was truly infinite, then time could not really exist, everything that could happen is already happening in an infinite universe, time would be another dimension in that universe, our consciousnesses travel in the direction of time and thus we perceive change. The way we perceive the universe, we observe change, some things happen and other things do not. Under this theory the Universe is timeless, infinite and does not change, it cannot change because every possibility already expresses itself somewhere in time-space. Just like in our Solar System, our Universe also has a habitable zone. Life as we know it can't exist too early towards the big bang, or too late when all the stars have died out. The Big Bang might be considered one region of the Universe that we are traveling away from along the dimension of time. If we could go back in time, we'd be traveling towards the Big Bang or the apparent beginning of the Universe, our presence would cause different things to happen than what our information tells us happened. In an infinite universe where every probability is expressed as physical reality somewhere, then their are regions in the Universe that we could theoretically travel to that would resemble our own past. There are other versions of us thinking the same thoughts but with tiny variations which cause their actions in the next second to be different from the actions we would take. Can I prove it? No, but you also can't prove otherwise. I also can' tell which is more likely, a finite Universe that includes everything that exists or could exist, or an infinite universe. the expansion of the Universe in our region is what makes the sky appear black in between the stars and galaxies. So in order for us to exist, we have to be in a universe that appears finite and to be expanding. There are barriers that prevent us from seeing parts of the Universe beyond the Big Bang, the Cosmic Background radiation is one. We can't see past it, but that doesn't mean their is nothing beyond it, and think it is safer to assume that there is something beyond it until it can be proven otherwise, and I don't know how we can prove that there is nothing beyond the Big Bang or before it. We either discover something or we don't. If we discover something, then we know their is something, but if we discover nothing, that does not prove that there is nothing, only that we can't detect it.

[exchemist]

If we don't [live in a multiverse], then the Universe had a creator,

This remarkable assertion needs explanation. Why do you say this?

[DrKrettin]

. Can I prove it? No, but you also can't prove otherwise.

 

I don't have to prove anything - the onus is on you to argue a case. You can't just say that it is a fact that  there are invisible pink unicorns in your garden just because I can't prove there are none. Well, you could, but nobody would take you seriously.

[TomKalbfus]

I don't have to prove anything - the onus is on you to argue a case. You can't just say that it is a fact that  there are invisible pink unicorns in your garden just because I can't prove there are none. Well, you could, but nobody would take you seriously.

I just don't know what the base assumption would be, is it safe to assume that all you can see and detect is all there is? Is the Universe finite or infinite? Just because what we can see appears to be expanding, and at a certain point in time had an incredibly high density, this doesn't mean that is when the Universe began, nor does it mean all the universe began that way. If the Observable Universe began at an incredibly high density, that means if we look far enough and far enough back in time, the Observable universe loses its transparency and all we can see is the Cosmic Background radiation, this imposes a limit on how far we can see. if the Observable Universe had previous expansions and/or contractions, we can't see those, because the Cosmic Background radiation blocks our view. We can't prove it, we can simulate other regions of the Universe that we can never see or visit with a powerful enough computer. The laws of physics and the physical constants can be computed to simulate a portion of the Universe or of a Universe. If we can simulate the Universe to a high enough degree of fidelity, then within that simulation, we could theoretically simulate you, since you are made of atoms that obey the laws of physics that the computer would be simulating.

 

So if we could simulate a person with consciousness with all your memories, personality, and brain cells in simulated atoms, that simulated you would claim to be you, he would have all of your memories up to the point we took the information in your brain, and he would wonder how he got into the simulation. If we can do that to a large enough scale, we can simulate planets and stars. We only need to simulate the surfaces of those planets, as that would be where people live, we could use rough mathematical models to simulate those places that don't need the degree of exactitude that simulating a person would require. What does the Universe do besides compute? A powerful enough computer can simulate the past of say a local region such as the Earth, it can simulate the sunshine that falls on the Earth and the stars we see in the sky. With the information we have on the past we can reproduce that past within a computer, and though uploading, visit it. Would that be a worthwhile thing to do? Since it isn't really our own past, we can't change our own history, but we could cause the simulated history to deviate. Besides from that, we could simulate a whole bunch of other planets, we can simulate life on those planets. We could duplicate ourselves and have our duplicates visit those planets, those duplicates won't feel like duplicates, as far as they are concerned, they were transported there, they would have the same memories as the original. Could they legitimately claim to be equally you as you are? Is life information and a matrix within which to run it?

[TomKalbfus]

This remarkable assertion needs explanation. Why do you say this?

If we observe something called the Observable Universe, how do we know its everything? If the Universe is finite and has a beginning then what caused that beginning? Seems to violate causality same reason why most physicists say time travel would be impossible, because of the logical paradoxes that would create, but a Universe that began without a cause is also a logical paradox, don't you think? The Universe appears to have chains of cause and effect, except at the very beginning where we don't know what caused it, there must be a larger Universe that contained it, and something in that universe caused the Big Bang to happen. We can keep asking that question ad infinitum, and thus the implicit assumption would be that the Universe is infinite and eternal, the part we can see, doesn't appear to be, but that is just the part we can see. In any infinite universe there will always be a limit on our ability to observe it. If you travel a long enough distance in a straight line, you will eventually hit something. With the Universe expanding, beyond a certain distance, light gets red-shifted down to nothing and we see black. So it maybe that our barrier to observation is expanding space itself.

[DrKrettin]

I just don't know what the base assumption would be, is it safe to assume that all you can see and detect is all there is? Is the Universe finite or infinite? Just because what we can see appears to be expanding, and at a certain point in time had an incredibly high density, this doesn't mean that is when the Universe began, nor does it mean all the universe began that way. If the Observable Universe began at an incredibly high density, that means if we look far enough and far enough back in time, the Observable universe loses its transparency and all we can see is the Cosmic Background radiation, this imposes a limit on how far we can see. if the Observable Universe had previous expansions and/or contractions, we can't see those, because the Cosmic Background radiation blocks our view. We can't prove it, we can simulate other regions of the Universe that we can never see or visit with a powerful enough computer. The laws of physics and the physical constants can be computed to simulate a portion of the Universe or of a Universe. If we can simulate the Universe to a high enough degree of fidelity, then within that simulation, we could theoretically simulate you, since you are made of atoms that obey the laws of physics that the computer would be simulating.

 

So if we could simulate a person with consciousness with all your memories, personality, and brain cells in simulated atoms, that simulated you would claim to be you, he would have all of your memories up to the point we took the information in your brain, and he would wonder how he got into the simulation. If we can do that to a large enough scale, we can simulate planets and stars. We only need to simulate the surfaces of those planets, as that would be where people live, we could use rough mathematical models to simulate those places that don't need the degree of exactitude that simulating a person would require. What does the Universe do besides compute? A powerful enough computer can simulate the past of say a local region such as the Earth, it can simulate the sunshine that falls on the Earth and the stars we see in the sky. With the information we have on the past we can reproduce that past within a computer, and though uploading, visit it. Would that be a worthwhile thing to do? Since it isn't really our own past, we can't change our own history, but we could cause the simulated history to deviate. Besides from that, we could simulate a whole bunch of other planets, we can simulate life on those planets. We could duplicate ourselves and have our duplicates visit those planets, those duplicates won't feel like duplicates, as far as they are concerned, they were transported there, they would have the same memories as the original. Could they legitimately claim to be equally you as you are? Is life information and a matrix within which to run it?

 

If.... if..... if.... what is the point? If my uncle were built differently, he would be my aunt.

[exchemist]

If we observe something called the Observable Universe, how do we know its everything? If the Universe is finite and has a beginning then what caused that beginning? Seems to violate causality same reason why most physicists say time travel would be impossible, because of the logical paradoxes that would create, but a Universe that began without a cause is also a logical paradox, don't you think? The Universe appears to have chains of cause and effect, except at the very beginning where we don't know what caused it, there must be a larger Universe that contained it, and something in that universe caused the Big Bang to happen. We can keep asking that question ad infinitum, and thus the implicit assumption would be that the Universe is infinite and eternal, the part we can see, doesn't appear to be, but that is just the part we can see. In any infinite universe there will always be a limit on our ability to observe it. If you travel a long enough distance in a straight line, you will eventually hit something. With the Universe expanding, beyond a certain distance, light gets red-shifted down to nothing and we see black. So it maybe that our barrier to observation is expanding space itself.

Well that is one metaphysical point of view, I suppose, but I don't see any unarguable logic behind it. The scientist would simply say that the observed phenomena (red shift, CMBR) can be extrapolated back to just after what seems to have been a Big Bang. And there, the evidence stops, and so the theory stops as well. One can propose  hypotheses that go further back but they are untestable and thus not really scientific. 

[TomKalbfus]

Well that is one metaphysical point of view, I suppose, but I don't see any unarguable logic behind it. The scientist would simply say that the observed phenomena (red shift, CMBR) can be extrapolated back to just after what seems to have been a Big Bang. And there, the evidence stops, and so the theory stops as well. One can propose  hypotheses that go further back but they are untestable and thus not really scientific. 

Let me ask it in a different way. How big is Everything? Should the default assumption be, the Universe is finite or infinite. The Ancient Greeks thought the Universe was infinite, the Christians on the other hand propose a finite Universe created by God. I believe their is a Christian bias towards the Big Bang, because the book of Genesis says, "In the Beginning there was light." My main problem with Christianity is they believe in a very brief Universe, one that began about 6000 years ago, and one that might end long before the Sun exhausts its fuel supply and expands into a red giant. That is a lot of Universe to create centered on a tiny drama on Earth. the Christian Universe is quite claustrophobic and brief, less than an instant in geologic time and encompasses only one planet. The Moon landings were only a side show, as the World gets ready for "Judgment Day." In fact the "Christian Universe" sounds a lot like a computer simulation, it has fake stars to give Astronomers something to look at, the Universe appears old, but it isn't, or at least the simulation isn't, and how dare we believe our five senses and not have faith in what the Bible tells us!

 

The Greeks, before the Christians and the Jews came up with a Cosmos created by God with a beginning and an end, believed the Universe to be eternal and infinite, after all that was the rational default assumption. An Infinite Eternal Universe has a certain beauty to it, because we don't have to ask, "Who created it?" or "What created it?" Some physicists like to suggest, "How dare we ask that question! We're not supposed to, the Beginning of the Universe is the beginning of time! I just have trouble coming to grips with everything that exists being finite and assuming that nothing else can exist beyond that. You could never prove that the Universe is infinite, you can only prove that it may be larger than previously thought.

 

Default Assumption 1: The Universe is Infinite and eternal, prove that it is finite and ephemeral.

 

Default Assumption 2: The Universe is finite and ephemeral, prove that it is infinite and eternal.

 

I think either one is equally valid, we don't know from one to the other, Assumption 2 leaves a question hanging, what caused the Universe? Assumption 2 leaves no questions, the Universe just is and always was.

[TomKalbfus]

If.... if..... if.... what is the point? If my uncle were built differently, he would be my aunt.

Mustn't be overly curious must we? What do you think creates that "First Person" point of view? Why do we see through the eyes of these bipedal animals we call humans? After all, we are just a bunch of atoms arranged a certain way. When we eat and eliminate, we exchange some of the atoms that make up our bodies, but we maintain a continuity of consciousness. So are the atoms in our body doing anything that a computer cannot simulate, and if a computer can simulate it, can we create a person through simulation and if we can create a person, couldn't we also create a universe surrounding that person that seems just as real to him as our own universe does to us? Seems like a reductionist would argue that we could indeed create such simulated pocket universes within a computer, do you have any reason to think otherwise?

[exchemist]

Let me ask it in a different way. How big is Everything? Should the default assumption be, the Universe is finite or infinite. The Ancient Greeks thought the Universe was infinite, the Christians on the other hand propose a finite Universe created by God. I believe their is a Christian bias towards the Big Bang, because the book of Genesis says, "In the Beginning there was light." My main problem with Christianity is they believe in a very brief Universe, one that began about 6000 years ago, and one that might end long before the Sun exhausts its fuel supply and expands into a red giant. That is a lot of Universe to create centered on a tiny drama on Earth. the Christian Universe is quite claustrophobic and brief, less than an instant in geologic time and encompasses only one planet. The Moon landings were only a side show, as the World gets ready for "Judgment Day." In fact the "Christian Universe" sounds a lot like a computer simulation, it has fake stars to give Astronomers something to look at, the Universe appears old, but it isn't, or at least the simulation isn't, and how dare we believe our five senses and not have faith in what the Bible tells us!

 

The Greeks, before the Christians and the Jews came up with a Cosmos created by God with a beginning and an end, believed the Universe to be eternal and infinite, after all that was the rational default assumption. An Infinite Eternal Universe has a certain beauty to it, because we don't have to ask, "Who created it?" or "What created it?" Some physicists like to suggest, "How dare we ask that question! We're not supposed to, the Beginning of the Universe is the beginning of time! I just have trouble coming to grips with everything that exists being finite and assuming that nothing else can exist beyond that. You could never prove that the Universe is infinite, you can only prove that it may be larger than previously thought.

 

Default Assumption 1: The Universe is Infinite and eternal, prove that it is finite and ephemeral.

 

Default Assumption 2: The Universe is finite and ephemeral, prove that it is infinite and eternal.

 

I think either one is equally valid, we don't know from one to the other, Assumption 2 leaves a question hanging, what caused the Universe? Assumption 2 leaves no questions, the Universe just is and always was.

Well it seems to me that to "leave the question hanging" is the only rational thing to do, given the absence of evidence to make any determination. Science cannot go beyond the evidence. Anything more is mere metaphysical speculation and a matter of personal taste.

 

I was amused to read your idea that Christians might be biased towards Big Bang cosmologies. I recall reading that there was initially some consternation among cosmologists, when the evidence for it was discovered, for exactly that reason; that people would seize on it as proof of an act of creation (presumably by a creator, if one believes that all effects have a cause).

 

But on the detail, it is quite wrong to think that Christians believe the universe was created 6,000 years ago. That was Bishop Ussher's chronology, put forward in the c.17th century, which was always controversial and was abandoned by educated Christians when modern geology was developed (by clergymen, as it happens) in the c.19th. Today Ussher's chronology is believed today by only a handful of extreme Protestant sects. 

Edited September 29, 2017 by exchemist

[DrKrettin]

Mustn't be overly curious must we? 

 

I keep an open mind about the topics you discuss, but as they say, not so open that my brains fall out. I remind you of the alleged topic of this thread, a time machine, which with our present understanding is an impossibility. Then you let your imagination run riot and postulate various situations which are impossible to prove which would make a time machine a possibility. For me, this is science fiction.

[Vmedvil]

I do not think even that computer could handle the amount of data that it would be faced with. Yesterday, I was going to calculate the amount of processing power you would need to simulate the entire universe down to the plank level but then I found a much simpler way of explaining this, As long as your device exists within the universe it cannot process the entire universe. That computer would probably range in the Yottaflops, what if I told you that could not even process a single meter cubed for one second of space exactly being on to the detail of 10^-35 Meters and 10^-44 seconds Yotta only being 10^24, your design would have to be much more massive. You would need a Yotta-Yotta-Yotta flop to calculate just one meter of space for one second to exact precision with all of its fine details. The Universe is not that simple, which at those sizes this the level that strings exist and in the time frame strings split into parallel universes, which would require you add another Giga to that Yotta-Yotta-Yotta flop to calculate all possible outcomes or all possible movements on the Planck Scale. you are already at 10^81 flops, just with one meter for one second between the speed of light and zero in all directions, I think you need to keep thinking about this. The size of the Universe is around 10^26 meters cubed, so to process the entire universe and all possible outcomes would require around a Giga-Yotta-Yotta-Yotta-Yotta-Yotta-Yotta Flop and that is only for one second, which is in the area of 10^153th flops. Then you would need to calculate an equation to calculate expansion from Dark energy of the universe, which would continuously add more points to calculate, which would be Ultra Easy for this Hyper Godlike Intelligence Computer which may laugh at how simple this is compared to that.

 

 

 

You may say those are floating point calculations, well all the numbers would be used to predict the forces at the string level until the computer still probably stack overflows. Below is the equation for expansion rate due to dark energy in the form of the Hubble constant start with that being the easiest for us Non-Computer Gods. I do think that you would be unable to even understand the output screen being in some sort of 26 Dimensional Matrix code like in the movie the matrix as they cannot even understand the code of the matrix, which would be much less complex than this only being 3-D matrix code.

 

Edited September 29, 2017 by Vmedvil

[Maine farmer]

 

But on the detail, it is quite wrong to think that Christians believe the universe was created 6,000 years ago. That was Bishop Ussher's chronology, put forward in the c.17th century, which was always controversial and was abandoned by educated Christians when modern geology was developed (by clergymen, as it happens) in the c.19th. Today Ussher's chronology is believed today by only a handful of extreme Protestant sects. 

That all depends upon with which Christians you are speaking.  I know one who firmly holds that belief.  Then again, he is against children reading about witchcraft for fear that if they try the spells, there are demons who will make the spells work, thus leading the children away from Christ.  All in all, he seems otherwise normal, so long as you don't bring up religion or science.  

[TomKalbfus]

Well it seems to me that to "leave the question hanging" is the only rational thing to do, given the absence of evidence to make any determination. Science cannot go beyond the evidence. Anything more is mere metaphysical speculation and a matter of personal taste.

 

I was amused to read your idea that Christians might be biased towards Big Bang cosmologies. I recall reading that there was initially some consternation among cosmologists, when the evidence for it was discovered, for exactly that reason; that people would seize on it as proof of an act of creation (presumably by a creator, if one believes that all effects have a cause).

 

But on the detail, it is quite wrong to think that Christians believe the universe was created 6,000 years ago. That was Bishop Ussher's chronology, put forward in the c.17th century, which was always controversial and was abandoned by educated Christians when modern geology was developed (by clergymen, as it happens) in the c.19th. Today Ussher's chronology is believed today by only a handful of extreme Protestant sects. 

Yes, I know, religion typically has to adapt of die, the religion of the Ancient Greeks didn't adapt, so it is a mostly dead religion, it has multiple gods in charge of different parts of nature, parts that are easily explained by science, so there is no need for a god of weather for instance or to make sacrifices to that god if you want it to rain on your crops or for it not to blow your house down. The 6,000 year old timeline is an extreme example, but if the "apparent Universe" we live in is only a computer simulation then that is also a possibility, it would among other things explain the Fermi paradox. The reason we don't see or detect alien civilizations is because the creator of the simulation we find ourselves in didn't want us to find them, do they were left out, maybe for our own good perhaps, that in any case seems like a more hopeful explanation, than their being a Great Cosmic Filter where each and every such civilization inevitably wipes itself out, leaving not a trace behind for other civilizations to find, since each civilization's existence is so brief because of this. The Fermi paradox is one of the things that makes me suspect that we may be living in such a simulation, and thus apparent "time travel" to other simulations resembling the past may be possible, more likely those simulations would have diverged from what we know as the past if they are currently running by the time we encounter them, this is all depending on whether the creator left any doorways open to the that we can use. Fantastic stuff for a science fiction novel I suppose. Not science of course, unless we can build such a simulation ourselves.

[TomKalbfus]

That all depends upon with which Christians you are speaking.  I know one who firmly holds that belief.  Then again, he is against children reading about witchcraft for fear that if they try the spells, there are demons who will make the spells work, thus leading the children away from Christ.  All in all, he seems otherwise normal, so long as you don't bring up religion or science.  

"witches" can maybe hack into the simulation we are in, and maybe "demons" are computer viruses that the "creator" is trying to eliminate. Haven't seen any evidence of it however. We don't seem to live in a Universe where "magic" is readily available for us to use. Great stuff for a science fiction novel perhaps! I believe there is a lot of wisdom in Christian morality, so long as it doesn't become a means for some people to control others through their belief system. There are many different religions out there. Most religions rely of faith rather than evidence, a strong religion is one that is flexible and can adapt to the current world view, the weak ones try to suppress science because they feel threatened by it, mostly because the authority figures within it feel their power over others threatened by it.