Steven Hawking says time travel possible

[Jive Turkey]

I cant wait for him to say something original...

 

[purpleoscar]

Is Stephen Hawking ok?

 

[A_Wanderer]

Of course not! He is facing a death panel in the SOCIALIST UK.

 

[purpleoscar]

Of course not! He is facing a death panel in the SOCIALIST UK.

No he's facing run away global warming.

 

[mad1]

someone must've gone back and killed the guy who posted that picture before he had a chance to post it

I wet myself with laughter there!

 

[cobl04]

we're going to run out of space sooner or later...

 

[Kieran McConville]

Did anyone ever see that Onion story years ago about how Stephen Hawking's new mechanical exoskeleton gives him the strength of a hundred men and the ability to crush buildings at will, as well as to walk on the surface of the sun? Well it happened and it was pretty hot.

 

[kramwest1]

Anyone listen to MC Hawking?

MySpace Player

^All My Shootings Be Drive-Bys


My favorite is Entropy set to O.P.P.

 

[AliEnvy]

With $200,000 and a sense of adventure...or survival instinct...

Welcome | Virgin Galactic

 

[purpleoscar]

 

[Jive Turkey]

wow, those special effects are so special when you freeze it like that

 

[purpleoscar]

The thread should continue "If you had a time machine where would you go?"

I personally would like to see all the prophets and religious leaders and practice time travel archeology. Of course there would be a temptation to see future lottery numbers. There would also be a temptation to go farther back in time and be a king of prehistory and dominate early humans. Of course you would have to make sure that you don't bring any diseases back in time because you would kill early humans.

 

[kramwest1]

The thread should continue "If you had a time machine where would you go?"

I personally would like to see all the prophets and religious leaders and practice time travel archeology. Of course there would be a temptation to see future lottery numbers. There would also be a temptation to go farther back in time and be a king of prehistory and dominate early humans. Of course you would have to make sure that you don't bring any diseases back in time because you would kill early humans.

Do we get to just witness or participate (and if it is participate, are there consequences?)?

I'm more likely to consider going into the future anyway--which is possible right now to a certain extent.

 

[purpleoscar]

Do we get to just witness or participate (and if it is participate, are there consequences?)?

I guess there would have to be consequences theoretically, unless we are supposed to believe that it's a completely new time strand that doesn't interfere with the other. I think I'll have to ask Spock.

I'm more likely to consider going into the future anyway--which is possible right now to a certain extent.

I want to see how humans evolve in the future.

 

[Achtung11]

i agree KMac, the aliens thing makes sense, especially if you look at it from purely a numbers perspective. we're one of trillions of planets, surely there is at least one other form of life out there.

I'm not disagreeing or agreeing with you that there is life out there, but basing it on numbers is tricky. Yes, the sun is 1 out of 200 billion or so stars in our galaxy. And there are 100 billion galaxies in the visible universe. So people generally conclude that purely by chance there has to be life out there. But the question is, what are the odds of an environment to form with all the necessities for life around any given star?

If we're talking about life as it exists on earth, we need much more than just water. Our planet is an almost perfect distance from the Sun, we have a strong atmosphere that takes in the necessary sun rays, and blocks the harmful ones. We have a powerful magnetosphere, without which solar winds/flares would be a threat to life. Also, lucky for us, the solar system is not very active, as in there isn't much bombardment from asteroids/comets as there was in the early years of the solar system. Plate tectonics are relatively stable on earth, we're not constantly erupting and flowing lava. We even need our moon to survive, and its also a perfect size and distance from us. Without the moon, the earth's rotation would be out of whack. Speaking of rotation, imagine if one day on earth was more than 24 hours? One day on Venus is 243 earth days long. We would never survive on that. I'm sure there are many other pieces that came together perfectly in order to form life on earth.

Having said all of that, we shouldn't assume that whats essential or uninhabitable for us would be for other potential life forms. Who are we to say that all life in the universe requires water? Who are we to assume that other forms of (intelligent or not) life can't live in 10,000 degree temperatures, can't breathe carbon monoxide, or even need water?

The truth is that we really don't know. If the universe is limitless, then purely statistically speaking, we aren't the only ones. If I had to guess, I would guess we aren't alone, and that's partially because we believe that there are more planets with life in my religion.

 

[deep]

I want to see how humans evolve in the future.

I was trying to speculate

with science and medicine, the survival of the fittest is irrelevant


WALL-E may have gotten it right

 

[Jive Turkey]

I was trying to speculate

with science and medicine, the survival of the fittest is irrelevant

Immunity to cancer, heart disease, and any number of other diseases would be relevant. As would an increase in reaction time. I wonder what sort of physical mutations would be beneficial

 

[purpleoscar]

I was trying to speculate

with science and medicine, the survival of the fittest is irrelevant


WALL-E may have gotten it right

Yeah that's no joke.

 

[kramwest1]

Immunity to cancer, heart disease, and any number of other diseases would be relevant. As would an increase in reaction time. I wonder what sort of physical mutations would be beneficial

Well, our hands evolve over our lifetimes to accommodate our skills.

 

[A_Wanderer]

I was trying to speculate

with science and medicine, the survival of the fittest is irrelevant

I don't think this has been demonstrated yet. I also think sexual selection can still play a role in changing gene frequencies in human populations.

 

[the iron horse]

Where are these time travelers that live a few thousand years ahead of us?

Or a few million years?

 

[Jive Turkey]

Well, our hands evolve over our lifetimes to accommodate our skills.

I think 'evolve' is being used in a different sense in that example

 

[Achtung11]

Where are these time travelers that live a few thousand years ahead of us?

Or a few million years?

It could be that in the future we find a way to travel into the future, but not to the past. Its also possible that we find a way to travel to the past to a period only as far back as when the method was discovered.

 

[Moonlit_Angel]

*Blinks*

That made my head hurt reading that at 3 in the morning .

Achtung11, great post. We can talk about colonizing space all we want, but we'd have to find something close enough to the conditions we're used to now if we're going to survive out there (which so far seems to be Mars). Unless, of course, we somehow manage to evolve and adapt even more down the line while living on Earth, to the point where should the day finally come when we do have to escape this planet to survive, we can plunk down anywhere and be okay.

I firmly believe there's other life forms out there, of all sorts of strange and wonderful kinds. How they'd react (if they can react) to our invasion, however, would be worthy of some concern, though. As for time travel itself, who knows? I won't rule anything out (and I think I'd probably go back in time, if I had to choose. Sure, the future would be fun, but at the same time, there's the element of surprise and what if I went forward and found out something distressing was going to happen and I couldn't do anything about it?). It'd be a fascinating development-of course, then we'd have to worry about it getting into the "wrong hands". Would it even be possible to regulate time travel so as not to abuse the opportunity?

Angela

 

[the iron horse]

“Time travel is not theoretically possible, for if it was they’d already be here telling us about it!” - Stephen Hawking

 

[Jive Turkey]

“Time travel is not theoretically possible, for if it was they’d already be here telling us about it!” - Stephen Hawking

It could be that in the future we find a way to travel into the future, but not to the past. Its also possible that we find a way to travel to the past to a period only as far back as when the method was discovered.

.

 

[Kieran McConville]

There's already a way to travel into the future. It's called time dilation travelling at or near the speed of light. Also, black holes.

However, that is quite a different matter from making the experience survivable by the sack of blood and meat known as 'us'.

My impression is that realistically, travel backwards into the deep past is quite implausible, at least for object larger than certain exotic particles.

 

[Kieran McConville]

I should perhaps have said there's an even better way to travel into the future: it's called living.

 

[cobl04]

I should perhaps have said there's an even better way to travel into the future: it's called living.

what an original thought!

 

[deep]

God did not create universe, says top UK scientist Stephen Hawking | Herald Sun

But in The Grand Design - to be published on September 9, a week before the Pope's visit to Britain - he sets out a comprehensive thesis that the scientific framework leaves no room for a deity.

In the book, co-authored by American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Professor Hawking deconstructs Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe could not have arisen out of chaos due to the mere laws of Nature, but must have been created by God.

Professor Hawking writes that the first blow was the confirmed observation in 1992 of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. "That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions - the single Sun, the lucky combination of earth-sun distance and solar mass - far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings," he writes.

And not only are other planets likely to exist, but whole other universes, known collectively as the multiverse, are too, says Professor Hawking. If God's intention was to create mankind, then these many untouchable worlds would surely be redundant, he suggests.