Did anyone see the Time Travel presentation on Sunday?

[sallycollins]

I was wondering if anyone at the festival and on this board saw the time travel presentation on Sunday by Frank Borzellieri.

Sally

[ProfStokes]

I saw Frank's presentation. He mainly focused on covering the basic points of the book's first half (the time travel section). 

Frank stressed that time travel does not violate the laws of physics and that the only reason it has not happened yet is because of our limited technology.  He opened his talk by discussing inventions that we now take for granted but were considered fantastical at the time (e.g. an airplane that would take you from New York to Tokyo in one day).  He used examples from "Dark Shadows" to illustrate Einstein's ideas about relativity and the twin paradox. The slideshow contained photos of DS characters who were associated with a particular time paradox (Willie for Barnabas not being in the coffin to be released after 1897 and 1840, Roxanne for having become a vampire in the original history despite the lack of Barnabas in 1840) as well as pictures of famous physicists like Heisenberg, Hawking, and Einstein.  We also saw diagrams of warp speed and wormholes.  The presentation flowed along at a rapid clip and was peppered with good-natured jokes--some of them impromptu and at the expense of Chris Pennock, whose arrival interrupted the presentaiton.

Unfortunately there was no time for questions and answers from the audience. Perhaps Frank will be able to give another lecture at the next Festival, especially if it's in New York and in the presence of a new audience.

ProfStokes

[Taeylor Collins]

That would have been fascinating!!

[MagnusTrask]

It would have been interesting if everyone had walked out of the lecture, and then found that it was an hour before the lecture started.

[sallycollins]

Thank you profstokes for your information on the presentation. I could not go to the festival this year but I've enjoyed the posts about all the events. I read the book "The Physics of Dark Shadows" and heard Frank on the Coast to Coast radio show, so I was especially interested in his time travel speech. As you say, maybe he'll give it next year.

I was hoping someone would put it on youtube so I could see it.

Sally

[KajunDC]

Frank stressed that time travel does not violate the laws of physics and that the only reason it has not happened yet is because of our limited technology.

Wouldn't you think that if time travel really was possible that someone from the future, when we should supposedly have the unlimited technology, would have already come back and visited us?  That is the problem with those that theorize on this topic.  They don't take into account that if we could visit the past then the future has also happened and those people who should now be able to do the time travel should already be making the trip.

Long story short... either it is not possible or we will NEVER have the technology.  Either way, it is a non-issue.

[Taeylor Collins]

Your read my mind.  I have always thought if it was possible we would have had someone come back and warn us about 911 for example or some horrid tragedy that was gonna befall the world.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

Just because no one may have publicly identified themselves as having come from the future, it doesn't necessarily follow that no one has ever done it. One would suspect there would easily be major rules/restrictions about interfering with the past - and if someone was to publicly identify themselves as being from the future, well, that would certainly qualify as interference. 

[KajunDC]

Just because no one may have publicly identified themselves as having come from the future, it doesn't necessarily follow that no one has ever done it. One would suspect there would easily be major rules/restrictions about interfering with the past - and if someone was to publicly identify themselves as being from the future, well, that would certainly qualify as interference. 

True, but if one believes chaos theory - i.e. a butterfly can flap its wings in Japan and set off a series of events that could theoretically cause a storm, etc. in another area of the world, then simply showing up and breathing would have the capacity to alter the future.  Not to mention that interacting with someone in the past could cause them to be late or miss an appointment or meeting that could end up causing 2 people not to meet and fall in love and not have a certain child, which would also alter the future.  So simply making a trip like that to the past has the ability of making it where that particular person will never even be born.

If I had not looked up at the exact moment I did one day several years ago, I never would have met my wife and my daughter would not be with us today.

In other words, how could anyone travel through time and not have it result in a change in the future?

[Garth Blackwood]

Kajun-- Even if the future had been altered by someone traveling in the past, we would still not know about it. As non time-travelers, people could be changing our world every day, but our memories are also changing along with it, so we would sort of definitionally be unable to detect someone messing with time.

On the other hand, in order to take advantage of the implications of general relativity, we would need to be able to travel faster than the speed of light. Making anything travel that fast sounds impossible enough, but inventing technology which allows the human body to handle such speeds one can confidently say, will never happen. So, as someone above said, it's a non-issue.

[Taeylor Collins]

It's still fun to discuss I think.  Time Travel in general gives me a headache.  On Charmed, that is what they always would say.  "Don't think about it too much it will just give you a headache" and I agree.  Now where the HECK is my Excedrin Migraine!?

[Teresa]

I missed  the fest this year but will be traveling back in time to see what I missed now!  Yah!

[sallycollins]

Me, too, Teresalita!!

Actually, while the above comments on time travel are interesting, it seems that profstokes is the only poster who actually SAW the presentation and read the book. I was looking for feedback on it because I read "The Physics of Dark Shadows" and was unable to make the fest. What's interesting is that the above skeptics are the very types of comments that Frank Borzellieri writes about in the book. He writes (and acording to profstokes, said on Sunday) that people being people, will always doubt an idea like space travel, time travel, etc. until it actually happens. It doesn't defy the laws of physics. So time travel is not a non-issue, at least not according to Einstein and today's leading physicists.

I hope the presentation winds up on youtube.

Sally

[Midnite]

He writes (and acording to profstokes, said on Sunday) that people being people, will always doubt an idea like space travel, time travel, etc. until it actually happens. It doesn't defy the laws of physics. So time travel is not a non-issue, at least not according to Einstein and today's leading physicists

According to frankb, Stephen Hawking himself echoed one poster's skepticism ("Wouldn't you think that if time travel really was possible that someone from the future, when we should supposedly have the unlimited technology, would have already come back and visited us?"--KajunDC).  Hawking was quoted in the presentation as having posed the question, "Why haven't we been overrun by tourists from the future?"

LOL, I had no clue about the origin of the term "wormhole" until it was explained this weekend.

[Garth Blackwood]

So time travel is not a non-issue, at least not according to Einstein and today's leading physicists.

Anyone with any experience studying physics knows that the theoretical possibility of time travel exists is a direct result of general relativity. Physicists accept this as a vacuous truth, but will also place it in the "but who cares" kind of category. The relevant information that can be derived from general relativity here is that if you can travel faster than the speed of light, you will go backward in time. That is one enormous "if".