Hawking backs possibility for humans to travel millions of years into the future

[Confederate Kahanist]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1270531/Hawking-backs-possibility-humans-travel-millions-years-future.html




Stephen Hawking has claimed that humans might one day be able to use time travel to skip generations into the future.

The famous astrophysicist, speaking in a new documentary, said spaceships could one day be capable of such high speeds that time slowed down for those on board.

He admitted he had avoided talking about time travel previously ' for fear of being labelled a crank', saying the subject had once been 'scientific heresy'. 'These days I'm not so cautious,' he said.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1270531/Hawking-backs-possibility-humans-travel-millions-years-future.html#ixzz0mv52MQjj

Theoretically, such a space ship would allow the crew to repopulate the earth if they found our species had become extinct during their flight.

Stephen Hawking's Universe, in which he makes the comments, will be screened on Discovery next Sunday. In another part of the series he says alien life is likely to exist but that humans should avoid making contact.

Hawking said a spaceship capable of travelling through time - but only forwards - would breach Albert Einstein's theories of relativity.

Having taken six years to reach its full speed of 98 per cent of the speed of light (650million miles per hour), a day on board the ship would be equivalent to a year on Earth, he said, allowing those on board to reach the edge of the galaxy in just 80 years.

But the ship required for the journey would have to be massive to allow for the required fuel.

He dismissed the idea of travelling backwards through time, saying doing so would violate a fundamental rule that cause comes before effect and that such an act could allow people to make themselves impossible, such as if a person travelled back in time and shot thir former self.

While backing Hawking's theories, Brian Cox, a Manchester University professor and the presenter of BBC's Wonders of the Solar System, admitted there were significant impediments to realising them.

'We can already see how time slows down for objects travelling at high speed by looking at what happens in paricle accelerators,' he told The Times.

'When we accelerate tiny particles to 99.99 per cent of the sped of light in the Large Hadron Collider at Cern in Geneva, the time they experience passes at one-seventhousandth of the rate it does for us.

'If we could build a spaceship that was fast enough, then it could reach other stars in the lifetime of the crew, but maybe 2.5million years would have passed by on earth.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1270531/Hawking-backs-possibility-humans-travel-millions-years-future.html#ixzz0mv58HkdB

[cjd]

Some years ago Stephen King had a great movie called The Langoliers.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Langoliers
Fictional creatures would eat up the remnants of the past and leave nothing but a black void.... From time to time people like Hawking talking about the possibility of traveling into the future but not the past. I have my doubts that either is possible... I think G-d has seen to it that this sort of thing is just not possible.

[angryChineseKahanist]

That's not really time travel. It's one way. You can go back. All you're doing is stretching your own time. Your body is slowed dramatically so that time outside passes by faster.
The closest equivalent to this is being in a coma.

[MassuhDGoodName]

We need to experiment.

Let's get a few jigs...put 'em in a spaceship, send 'em a couple of million years into the future, and see if they turn into humans!   

[IsraelForever]

Stephen Hawking has claimed that humans might one day be able to use time travel to skip generations into the future.

Stephen Hawking needs to get his head examined.  These so-called "geniuses" have left reality behind.

[Cato]

Stephen Hawking has claimed that humans might one day be able to use time travel to skip generations into the future.

Stephen Hawking needs to get his head examined.  These so-called "geniuses" have left reality behind.

Somewhat abusive. We should not blindly follow anyone, but should accept that we are not all experts on theoretical physics, and as such should accept that there may be possibilities which the rest of us have missed, however difficult to believe at the present time.

[IsraelForever]

Stephen Hawking has claimed that humans might one day be able to use time travel to skip generations into the future.

Stephen Hawking needs to get his head examined.  These so-called "geniuses" have left reality behind.

Somewhat abusive. We should not blindly follow anyone, but should accept that we are not all experts on theoretical physics, and as such should accept that there may be possibilities which the rest of us have missed, however difficult to believe at the present time.

I think the theoretical physicists are the abusive ones.  They're abusing my intelligence with their nonsense.  I'm dead serious about this, too.  Have you read up on string theory?

[syyuge]

Socialists will be highly disappointed by going through the future travel as they may not find the muslamics i.e. their best friends.

[Dr. Dan]

This isn't technically time travel. It is simply a description of what could take place if someone survived traveling faster than the speed of light. If you took a one year flight somewhere and then returned home, one year will have passed and therefore one year into the future. Except that's not time travel;that's common sense.

[Cato]

Stephen Hawking has claimed that humans might one day be able to use time travel to skip generations into the future.

Stephen Hawking needs to get his head examined.  These so-called "geniuses" have left reality behind.

Somewhat abusive. We should not blindly follow anyone, but should accept that we are not all experts on theoretical physics, and as such should accept that there may be possibilities which the rest of us have missed, however difficult to believe at the present time.

I think the theoretical physicists are the abusive ones.  They're abusing my intelligence with their nonsense.  I'm dead serious about this, too.  Have you read up on string theory?

I'm also dead serious. In the words of Sherlock Holmes, "Sometimes Watson you have to think beyond the actual to understand the actual".

If you have a clear night, look into the sky and then tell me that you understand everything. We are creatures born on earth and selected for a limited intelligence range mostly connected with survival and reproduction.

If someone breaks through this barrier into some form of pure abstract deductive intelligence then it doesn't mean that he needs his "head examined". Even if this were not the only part of him still functional such that the expression is in any case highly inappropriate and distasteful.

[Spiraling Leopard]

Even if timetravel is possible, the method described here is not the way.

[HiWarp]

I'm not sure I see the problem here. I watched that particular episode and it basically uses Einstein's theory of special relativity, which is nearly a century old, to describe what would happen to occupants of a space craft traveling close to the speed of light. The only issue is the fact that we can't build this space craft and thereby prove the theory; which isn't really an issue since the whole concept is theoretical.

I don't know whether this, and the millions of other things we don't know about in the universe, are possible. I do know that I like to maintain an open mind with a slight degree of skepticism regarding scientific theories.

I like to think that I wouldn't have been the guy laughing at and mocking Newton and Bernoulli 300 years ago when someone pointed out that their theories would allow us one day to fly through the air and leave Earth in space craft that would take us to other planets.

[mord]

Good if we can send muzzies a few million yrs into the future maybe their culture will  reach the 10th century

[Rubystars]

Good if we can send muzzies a few million yrs into the future maybe their culture will  reach the 10th century

I'd be happy with sending them to the present, on the sun

[syyuge]

Good if we can send muzzies a few million yrs into the future maybe their culture will  reach the 10th century

I'd be happy with sending them to the present, on the sun

Do you think they can survive on moon.