Space and physics question

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Mmm390

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I've been on a space and physics binge...streaming services tend to do this.
But I have a questions for greater minds than myself.

I've seen all these concepts laid out separately but never asked as the question I'm about to ask.

How come I can physically travel into the future(everytime I get on a plane, etc) but I CANT SEE into the future....and how come I CANT physically travel into the past but I CAN SEE the past every time I look up at the night sky.

My binge watching tells me its all relative and it's all possible.
But why isn't this what we observe ?
Part of the human condition ???
 
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Mmm390 said:
I've been on a space and physics binge...streaming services tend to do this.
But I have a questions for greater minds than myself.

I've seen all these concepts laid out separately but never asked as the question I'm about to ask.

How come I can physically travel into the future(everytime I get on a plane, etc) but I CANT SEE into the future....and how come I CANT physically travel into the past but I CAN SEE the past every time I look up at the night sky.

My binge watching tells me its all relative and it's all possible.
But why isn't this what we observe ?
Part of the human condition ???
Click to expand...
Because, until the day you die, you are always in the present.
You can hop on a plane and fly to another timezone, but you will never physically have left (or arrived anywhere but) the present.
You can permit your mind to dwell on the past, but you will still always physically remain in the present.
 
It’s been very long since I’ve taken physics but I’ll take a stab at it.

You are not traveling to the future getting on a plane, you are entering another time zone. It is still the present, just a different labeling of that same time.

You can “see” the past because it takes time for light to travel (for example, roughly 8 minutes from the sun to earth). For you to actually travel to the past you would have to theoretically travel faster than the speed of light.
 
When you look up at the stars you are seeing an image of the past. It has just taken that image, via light, millions or billions of years to travel to your eyes. Think of it as someone showing you a photograph they took in 1975. You are seeing an image of the past, but you are seeing that image in the present.
 
I'm not talking about time zones...
2 people have sycronized atomic clocks...1 person with a clock stays stationary on the ground...1 person with a clock travels on a plane around the world and meets up with the person on the ground when he lands.
Their clocks no longer match up. The clock that was on the plane has travel slightly into the "future" because time has slowed down for it due to the speed it was traveling at in relation to the stationary clock.

Its why gps satellites have to be constantly corrected.

I know about the speed of light and the delays that come with it.
But what I'm trying to say is why can we see the light from the past but not the future?
If all instances are happening at once. Shouldn't I techically be able to "see" in both "directions"?

If I can physically travel into the future(atomic clock example) why can't I see light from the future?
But I can see light from the past but not travel there.


Traveling closer to the speed of light slows time down for you. Traveling faster than light isn't possible. Because your mass will become infinite at the speed of light. You can't go past infinity
 
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marcinek said:
Time and space are illusions, man.
Click to expand...

Yes...that's the idea that many of the top minds are leaning towards. Everything may be a 3D repensentation of information smeered on a 2d plane(hologram) Very similar to the event horizon of a black hole...strangely enough.

And time is something that may just be in our human minds.
But for some reason we can't prove it one way or another.
It's a very deep and perplexingly hard question to answere...even tho we experience time everyday and don't give it a second thought

What is space...
That's also an incredibly hard question to answere even tho space is something we experience everyday and don't give it a second thought.
We may be in a sort of hologram and space is just an illusion.
It would help explain several complex theories if space were just an illusion
 
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Mmm390 said:
But what I'm trying to say is why can we see the light from the past but not the future?
If all instances are happening at once. Shouldn't I be able to see in both "directions"?
Click to expand...

You are not seeing light from the past. You are seeing an image from the past when the light reaches your present. The light is coming to you from your future. The image/object can only be sensed in YOUR present. Yesterday, you couldn't see that image because the light hadn't reached you. It was in the/your future. Tomorrow, you will not be able to see that image (the exact image you see today no matter the similarity) because it will be in the/your past. We can neither see into the future nor the past. Images or corporeal objects are only available to us in the present. They come to us from the future, we experience them, and they are lost to us in the past.

The time difference you describe of clocks isn't time travel, it's the change in rate of the present that different people or clocks or things experience when separated by speed (slower) and altitude (faster because of the Earth's weaker gravitational force the higher you go). A person traveling near the speed of light isn't traveling into the future. He's experiencing his present more slowly than the person standing still. It's relative.

P.S. For those real time travel enthusiasts, our group will be meeting at Joe's Diner in Bridgeport, Connecticut at 7 p.m. last Thursday. See you there.
 
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panella said:
You are not seeing light from the past. You are seeing an image from the past when the light reaches your present. The light is coming to you from your future. The image/object can only be sensed in YOUR present. Yesterday, you couldn't see that image because the light hadn't reached you. It was in the/your future. Tomorrow, you will not be able to see that image (the exact image you see today no matter the similarity) because it will be in the/your past. We can neither see into the future nor the past. Images or corporeal objects are only available to us in the present. They come to us from the future, we experience them, and they are lost to us in the past.

The time difference you describe of clocks isn't time travel, it's the change in rate of the present that different people or clocks or things experience when separated by speed (slower) and altitude (faster because of the Earth's weaker gravitational force the higher you go). It's relative.
Click to expand...

Umm idk. 2 people separated by millions of light years can experience the same slice of time(imagine a sliced bread loaf)if they're on the same plane(slice of bread). But if one person moves towards or away from the other, even at a very slow speed. Their slices of time will now differ by hundreds of years in the future or past depending on the direction they traveled and speed.
How is that not time travel?
Or how does that not at least suggest that time is just an illusion?

"Fabric of the Cosmos" series does a really good job of putting this into visual aids.
I'll try and find the segment online
 
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Now you're asking how time works. That's a different question from "seeing" the past and not the future - which I explained.

Suggest you would enjoy the very short, and very famous book: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, by Edwin Abbott Abbott (name is correct).
 
Well if Were on the same plane of time separated by millions of light years... Then Wouldn't my perception of you, in time, change depending on my direction of travel? And if I had a big enough telescope to track you?
Technically couldn't I see you in both past or future?
 
Yes. Your perception would change.

No. A telescope, no matter how powerful, doesn’t see light any further away than you do if you are viewing from the same spot. It just sees the light better. It resolves it better. It can’t see light that hasn’t arrived at its lens yet.

If that telescope could “see” me millions of light years away it would still be seeing a million year old image that just arrived in your present.
 
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panella said:
Yes. Your perception would change.

No. A telescope, no matter how powerful, doesn’t see light any further away than you do if you are viewing from the same spot. It just sees the light better. It resolves it better. It can’t see light that hasn’t arrived at its lens yet.

If that telescope could “see” me millions of light years away it would still be seeing a million year old image that just arrived in your present.
Click to expand...

Ok that makes sense.
So if I traveled towards you...your image would seem to fast forward ...and traveling away you would slow down. Correct?

So the only way to get past this fast forward and slowing down effect would be to travel through a wormhole...if they exist.

If 2 objects with optical sensors are traveling towards eachother close to the speed of light what would they see?
 
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Alright get ready to have your minds blown. The OP was talking about two men who were twins. One was an astronaut abroad the ISS, the other on earth. Their watches didn’t link up because of the velocity at which the ISS moves. This is a concept called time dilation. Time will dilate in the direction of motion dependent on velocity. Say you could travel at 90% of the speed of light, to a planet that’s 10 light years away. You’d expect it to take 11 years, but it won’t. Time will dilate in the direction of motion, and you’ll find you only spent about 7. But, to everyone on earth, it actually did take 11 years, because time is relative and they weren’t moving relative to you. Say you had a twin that was the same age. When you got back from your 14-year voyage (7 there and 7 back) they would’ve waited 22. You’d be 8 years younger. That’s part of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Technically speaking, time is something that we made up. Time doesn’t actually exist, it’s just something that we invented and used to measure something we have no clue about.
 
aVyD said:
Alright get ready to have your minds blown. The OP was talking about two men who were twins. One was an astronaut abroad the ISS, the other on earth. Their watches didn’t link up because of the velocity at which the ISS moves. This is a concept called time dilation. Time will dilate in the direction of motion dependent on velocity. Say you could travel at 90% of the speed of light, to a planet that’s 10 light years away. You’d expect it to take 11 years, but it won’t. Time will dilate in the direction of motion, and you’ll find you only spent about 7. But, to everyone on earth, it actually did take 11 years, because time is relative and they weren’t moving relative to you. Say you had a twin that was the same age. When you got back from your 14-year voyage (7 there and 7 back) they would’ve waited 22. You’d be 8 years younger. That’s part of Einstein’s theory of relativity. Technically speaking, time is something that we made up. Time doesn’t actually exist, it’s just something that we invented and used to measure something we have no clue about.
Click to expand...

And if 1 twin were to cross the event horizon of a black hole...his twin would see him frozen in time for all eternity from his perspective. From the perspective Of the twin who crossed the event horizon time would speed up dramatically and if he were to look out into space...the entire history of the universe(billions or trillions of years)would unfold before his eyes.
 
danbot said:
You fixed me?
Click to expand...

An object can see. Just needs the right sensors.
It doesn't even need to be an object. Plenty of people believe the Internet is concious and watching us right now.
Plenty of people also believe the universe itself is concious and the only reason we as humans are here is so the universe could observe itself.
we are all just star dust looking at stars.
 
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