Time travel / age

[phpworm]

First of all I'm not really a scientist or anything, so I hope you don't make me feel stupid. Just pulling a thought out of thin air here...

There is the theory that the faster you travel through space, while the perception of time doesn't change for you individually, it does slow down from the perception of others.. In other words, if you were to travel at even half of light speed away from earth a stretch and back, you would return younger than you would be had you not gone anywhere at all.

Assuming that's correct, and also assuming that "time" is a man made concept, then perhaps this could be simulated not by an object traveling through space but rather by space traveling through an object.

To give you an idea of what I mean, I visualize the growth of the human body as a really slow explosion of molecular data, and empty space also contains molecular data. If you blow up a stick of dynamite out in the open, it ages rather quickly. If you blow up a stick of dynamite in water, it ages slightly slower because it's traveling through extra mass. So if you consider space like water, and our aging process like a stick of dynamite, that would explain why time is altered the faster we're going. For every action (pushing against water/space), there is an equal and opposite reaction (our growth being compressed by the weight of the extra mass).

This might also imply that we could age slower or faster if we were to live in different parts of the universe where the expansion is different from how we currently perceive it.

Anyway, a lot of babbling which brings me to my point...

How dangerous or probable would it be to set up some type of living area for a group of people, directly in the path of a consistent number of particles being fired by the LHC? Would that not simulate traveling through space at high speeds?

[Kasuha]

Living in the path of a particle beam comparable to LHC's is sure pretty dangerous as these particless can damage solid objects in their path and create radiation sprays that could be dangerous even to life forms that are not directly in the beam path. That's why the LHC is buried deep in the ground.

Regarding space falling through your body, however, such particles have negligible effect. The most space falling comes from what we all are used to - the Earth gravity. Gravity creates a constant spacefall which makes us age slightly slower than objects that are out of reach of Earth or Solar gravity. But even this difference is very small and measurable only using modern very precise equipment.

[DCWhitworth]

First of all I'm not really a scientist or anything, so I hope you don't make me feel stupid. Just pulling a thought out of thin air here...

There is the theory that the faster you travel through space, while the perception of time doesn't change for you individually, it does slow down from the perception of others.. In other words, if you were to travel at even half of light speed away from earth a stretch and back, you would return younger than you would be had you not gone anywhere at all.

Slightly pedantic point but it's not a theory, it's proven and been measured. Granted it hasn't actually been tried with humans to the degree that they can perceive it but that's a simple extrapolation once the effect has been proved.

Assuming that's correct, and also assuming that "time" is a man made concept, then perhaps this could be simulated not by an object traveling through space but rather by space traveling through an object.

That is absolutely correct but actually irrelevant because it is the movement *relative* to each other that is the point (hence relativity). So from the perspective of the object it doesn't know if it or space is moving.

To give you an idea of what I mean, I visualize the growth of the human body as a really slow explosion of molecular data, and empty space also contains molecular data. If you blow up a stick of dynamite out in the open, it ages rather quickly. If you blow up a stick of dynamite in water, it ages slightly slower because it's traveling through extra mass. So if you consider space like water, and our aging process like a stick of dynamite, that would explain why time is altered the faster we're going. For every action (pushing against water/space), there is an equal and opposite reaction (our growth being compressed by the weight of the extra mass).

This might also imply that we could age slower or faster if we were to live in different parts of the universe where the expansion is different from how we currently perceive it.

Anyway, a lot of babbling which brings me to my point...

How dangerous or probable would it be to set up some type of living area for a group of people, directly in the path of a consistent number of particles being fired by the LHC? Would that not simulate traveling through space at high speeds?

Unfortunately this is where your idea breaks down I believe. You say "empty space also contains molecular data." - no it doesn't. Empty space is, well, empty. OK the space in our universe does contain a very, very low density of particles but they are irrelevant to this and they are not part of 'space'. You would still have time dilation effects if you moved through a total vacuum.

You could say that space is like an empty room, you can put furniture (matter) in it but they aren't strictly 'the room'. You can move across the room and you move relative to the furniture and the room. But if instead you move the furniture so it moves relative to you then the room *doesn't* move.

Living in the way of a particle accelerator beam would be fatal and fatal pretty quickly, but passing particles through humans at relativistic speeds does not in any way move them through space, the particles are not space.

[Kasuha]

It depends on how we define "moving space" as there really is no such thing ... but people sometimes talk about black holes as great spacefalls (as similarity to waterfalls).
If observers A and B move relatively to each other relativistically nobody can tell which of them is aging faster - A sees himself aging faster than B and B sees himself aging faster than A. It's only when they both move to a common frame of reference when the real comparison can be made who aged faster than the other one. And this change of reference frame includes applying acceleration/deceleration on the observer. So if A decelerates to change his frame of reference to be parallel to B's, then both realize A was aging slower.
Therefore we can define this acceleration as real moving through space (although it in fact is just applying force to change frame of reference).
On earth, the only such case is the gravity field. Forces applied on particles in LHC to accelerate them to relativistic speeds has no effect on people around.

[kallin121]

i have to say that thanks for sharing your reviews about Time travel / age

[Byron]

As to whether you would come back younger than when you left I would have thought is debatable. Cells still divide at a given rate which causes ageing. Though I do stand to be corrected. Depak Cheopra seems to believe the aging process can be reversed. And the aging process is caused by the passing of time.

[shaneB]

In this world, everything is possible. No wonder time travel can be done but can't be published as some political reasons may rise as to change the history or other reasons.