Anonhawk

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Time Travel

This is a good read for anyone who is interested in Time Travel

How Time Travel Works

From millennium-skipping Victorians to phone booth-hopping teenagers, the term time travel often summons our most fantastic visions of what it means to move through the fourth dimension. But of course you don't need a time machine or a fancy wormhole to jaunt through the years.

As you've probably noticed, we're all constantly engaged in the act of time travel. At its most basic level, time is the rate of change in the universe -- and like it or not, we are constantly undergoing change. We age, the planets move around the sun, and things fall apart.

We measure the passage of time in seconds, minutes, hours and years, but this doesn't mean time flows at a constant rate. Just as the water in a river rushes or slows depending on the size of the channel, time flows at different rates in different places. In other words, time is relative.

But what causes this fluctuation along our one-way trek from the cradle to the grave? It all comes down to the relationship between time and space. Human beings frolic about in the three spatial dimensions of length, width and depth. Time joins the party as that most crucial fourth dimension. Time can't exist without space, and space can't exist without time. The two exist as one: the space-time continuum. Any event that occurs in the universe has to involve both space and time.

In this article, we'll look at the real-life, everyday methods of time travel in our universe, as well as some of the more far-fetched methods of dancing through the fourth dimension.

Time Travel Into the Future

If you want to advance through the years a little faster than the next person, you'll need to exploit space-time. Global positioning satellites pull this off every day, accruing an extra third-of-a-billionth of a second daily. Time passes faster in orbit, because satellites are farther away from the mass of the Earth. Down here on the surface, the planet's mass drags on time and slows it down in small measures.

We call this effect gravitational time dilation. According to Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity is a curve in space-time and astronomers regularly observe this phenomenon when they study light moving near a sufficiently massive object. Particularly large suns, for instance, can cause an otherwise straight beam of light to curve in what we call the gravitational lensing effect.

What does this have to do with time? Remember: Any event that occurs in the universe has to involve both space and time. Gravity doesn't just pull on space; it also pulls on time.

You wouldn't be able to notice minute changes in the flow of time, but a sufficiently massive object would make a huge difference -- say, like the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A at the center of our galaxy. Here, the mass of 4 million suns exists as a single, infinitely dense point, known as a singularity [source: NASA]. Circle this black hole for a while (without falling in) and you'd experience time at half the Earth rate. In other words, you'd round out a five-year journey to discover an entire decade had passed on Earth [source: Davies].

Speed also plays a role in the rate at which we experience time. Time passes more slowly the closer you approach the unbreakable cosmic speed limit we call the speed of light. For instance, the hands of a clock in a speeding train move more slowly than those of a stationary clock. A human passenger wouldn't feel the difference, but at the end of the trip the speeding clock would be slowed by billionths of a second. If such a train could attain 99.999 percent of light speed, only one year would pass onboard for every 223 years back at the train station [source: Davies].

In effect, this hypothetical commuter would have traveled into the future. But what about the past? Could the fastest starship imaginable turn back the clock?

Time Travel Into the Past

We've established that time travel into the future happens all the time. Scientists have proven it in experiments, and the idea is a fundamental aspect of Einstein's theory of relativity. You'll make it to the future; it's just a question of how fast the trip will be. But what about travel into the past? A glance into the night sky should supply an answer.

The Milky Way galaxy is roughly 100,000 light-years wide, so light from its more distant stars can take thousands upon thousands of years to reach Earth. Glimpse that light, and you're essentially looking back in time. When astronomers measure the cosmic microwave background radiation, they stare back more than 10 billion years into a primordial cosmic age. But can we do better than this?

There's nothing in Einstein's theory that precludes time travel into the past, but the very premise of pushing a button and going back to yesterday violates the law of causality, or cause and effect. One event happens in our universe, and it leads to yet another in an endless one-way string of events. In every instance, the cause occurs before the effect. Just try to imagine a different reality, say, in which a murder victim dies of his or her gunshot wound before being shot. It violates reality as we know it; thus, many scientists dismiss time travel into the past as an impossibility.

Some scientists have proposed the idea of using faster-than-light travel to journey back in time. After all, if time slows as an object approaches the speed of light, then might exceeding that speed cause time to flow backward? Of course, as an object nears the speed of light, its relativistic mass increases until, at the speed of light, it becomes infinite. Accelerating an infinite mass any faster than that is impossible. Warp speed technology could theoretically cheat the universal speed limit by propelling a bubble of space-time across the universe, but even this would come with colossal, far-future energy costs.

But what if time travel into the past and future depends less on speculative space propulsion technology and more on existing cosmic phenomena? Set a course for the black hole.

Black Holes and Kerr Rings

Circle a black hole long enough, and gravitational time dilation will take you into the future. But what would happen if you flew right into the maw of this cosmic titan? Most scientists agree the black hole would probably crush you, but one unique variety of black hole might not: the Kerr black hole or Kerr ring.

In 1963, New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr proposed the first realistic theory for a rotating black hole. The concept hinges on neutron stars, which are massive collapsed stars the size of Manhattan but with the mass of Earth's sun [source: Kaku]. Kerr postulated that if dying stars collapsed into a rotating ring of neutron stars, their centrifugal force would prevent them from turning into a singularity. Since the black hole wouldn't have a singularity, Kerr believed it would be safe to enter without fear of the infinite gravitational force at its center.

If Kerr black holes exist, scientists speculate that we might pass through them and exit through a white hole. Think of this as the exhaust end of a black hole. Instead of pulling everything into its gravitational force, the white hole would push everything out and away from it -- perhaps into another time or even another universe.

Kerr black holes are purely theoretical, but if they do exist they offer the adventurous time traveler a one-way trip into the past or future. And while a tremendously advanced civilization might develop a means of calibrating such a method of time travel, there's no telling where or when a "wild" Kerr black hole might leave you.

Wormholes

Theoretical Kerr black holes aren't the only possible cosmic shortcut to the past or future. As made popular by everything from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" to "Donnie Darko," there's also the equally theoretical Einstein-Rosen bridge to consider. But of course you know this better as a wormhole.

Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the existence of wormholes since it states that any mass curves space-time. To understand this curvature, think about two people holding a bedsheet up and stretching it tight. If one person were to place a baseball on the bedsheet, the weight of the baseball would roll to the middle of the sheet and cause the sheet to curve at that point. Now, if a marble were placed on the edge of the same bedsheet it would travel toward the baseball because of the curve.

In this simplified example, space is depicted as a two-dimensional plane rather than a four-dimensional one. Imagine that this sheet is folded over, leaving a space between the top and bottom. Placing the baseball on the top side will cause a curvature to form. If an equal mass were placed on the bottom part of the sheet at a point that corresponds with the location of the baseball on the top, the second mass would eventually meet with the baseball. This is similar to how wormholes might develop.

In space, masses that place pressure on different parts of the universe could combine eventually to create a kind of tunnel. This tunnel would, in theory, join two separate times and allow passage between them. Of course, it's also possible that some unforeseen physical or quantum property prevents such a wormhole from occurring. And even if they do exist, they may be incredibly unstable.

According to astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, wormholes may exist in quantum foam, the smallest environment in the universe. Here, tiny tunnels constantly blink in and out of existence, momentarily linking separate places and time like an ever-changing game of "Chutes and Ladders."

Wormholes such as these might prove too small and too brief for human time travel, but might we one day learn to capture, stabilize and enlarge them? Certainly, says Hawking, provided you're prepared for some feedback. If we were to artificially prolong the life of a tunnel through folded space-time, a radiation feedback loop might occur, destroying the time tunnel in the same way audio feedback can wreck a speaker.

Cosmic String

We've blown through black holes and wormholes, but there's yet another possible means of time traveling via theoretic cosmic phenomena. For this scheme, we turn to physicist J. Richard Gott, who introduced the idea of cosmic string back in 1991. As the name suggests, these are stringlike objects that some scientists believe were formed in the early universe.

These strings may weave throughout the entire universe, thinner than an atom and under immense pressure. Naturally, this means they'd pack quite a gravitational pull on anything that passes near them, enabling objects attached to a cosmic string to travel at incredible speeds and benefit from time dilation. By pulling two cosmic strings close together or stretching one string close to a black hole, it might be possible to warp space-time enough to create what's called a closed timelike curve.

Using the gravity produced by the two cosmic strings (or the string and black hole), a spaceship theoretically could propel itself into the past. To do this, it would loop around the cosmic strings.

Quantum strings are highly speculative, however. Gott himself said that in order to travel back in time even one year, it would take a loop of string that contained half the mass-energy of an entire galaxy. In other words, you'd have to split half the atoms in the galaxy to power your time machine. And, as with any time machine, you couldn't go back farther than the point at which the time machine was created.

Oh yes, and then there are the time paradoxes.

Time Paradoxes

As we mentioned before, the concept of traveling into the past becomes a bit murky the second causality rears its head. Cause comes before effect, at least in this universe, which manages to muck up even the best-laid time traveling plans.

For starters, if you traveled back in time 200 years, you'd emerge in a time before you were born. Think about that for a second. In the flow of time, the effect (you) would exist before the cause (your birth).

To better understand what we're dealing with here, consider the famous grandfather paradox. You're a time-traveling assassin, and your target just happens to be your own grandfather. So you pop through the nearest wormhole and walk up to a spry 18-year-old version of your father's father. You raise your laser blaster, but just what happens when you pull the trigger?

Think about it. You haven't been born yet. Neither has your father. If you kill your own grandfather in the past, he'll never have a son. That son will never have you, and you'll never happen to take that job as a time-traveling assassin. You wouldn't exist to pull the trigger, thus negating the entire string of events. We call this an inconsistent causal loop.

On the other hand, we have to consider the idea of a consistent causal loop. While equally thought-provoking, this theoretical model of time travel is paradox free. According to physicist Paul Davies, such a loop might play out like this: A math professor travels into the future and steals a groundbreaking math theorem. The professor then gives the theorem to a promising student. Then, that promising student grows up to be the very person from whom the professor stole the theorem to begin with.

Then there's the post-selected model of time travel, which involves distorted probability close to any paradoxical situation [source: Sanders]. What does this mean? Well, put yourself in the shoes of the time-traveling assassin again. This time travel model would make your grandfather virtually death proof. You can pull the trigger, but the laser will malfunction. Perhaps a bird will poop at just the right moment, but some quantum fluctuation will occur to prevent a paradoxical situation from taking place.

But then there's another possibility: The future or past you travel into might just be a parallel universe. Think of it as a separate sandbox: You can build or destroy all the castles you want in it, but it doesn't affect your home sandbox in the slightest. So if the past you travel into exists in a separate timeline, killing your grandfather in cold blood is no big whoop. Of course, this might mean that every time jaunt would land you in a new parallel universe and you might never return to your original sandbox.

Confused yet? Welcome to the world of time travel.

Source- HowStuffWorks

Numbers STations

Now recently while surfing around the web, I bumped into something very interesting yet creepy. All around the world there are radio stations called Numbers Stations (NS) that broadcast certain signals or sound at different intervals throughout the day. What are these sounds? They are beeps and tones, sometimes even voices repeating a set of tones. Why are they broadcasting this? These numbers stations are supposedly used by spies to overlay messages between each other. Now the reason for this theory comes from the Cold War. Supposed NS sprang up all over the world during the Cold War and some messages were intercepted and decode. The information contained were classified military talk are plans. A lot were used during the Vietnam war and some broadcast were used to plan out NVA troop movements above ground and underground in their rat holes. Most NS also relay messages to spies on western Europe, North Africa and possibly the United States. Although during the Cold War, the height of NS usage was pretty high, it doesn't mean that they aren't used anymore. Locating a signal to listen into these stations is not an easy task. Adept knowledge of Ham Radio usage is needed to circle into a broadcast. The more subtle of the messages are the morse code and polytones broadcast. You can use http://www.w4ax.com to search for some signals on your own.

Sacred Labyrinth Info

Ok so I posted up a link so Sacred Labyrinth Minecraft server. Now I am going to post more info.

Sacred Labyrinth (SL) is a Pure Survival PVP server. This means that you have to survive all by yourself with no help from anyone. You may ask for help and if a member decides to help you then lucky you, no one is forced to help you out. Luckily, our community is very friendly and helpful and member, especially our vets are glad to help out a new member. Our staff is very friendly and help and willing to help out players with grief rollbacks using our 1 of many game enhancing Bukkit plugins. We have two main worlds on our map plus the nether totaling 3 playable lands.

Community:
SL has a very active community with many players. Our forums on SL.net is the main place where our members congregate outside the server. Our many topics and conversations keep growing as different member contribute to the forums with different opinions and tips. We also have an official Ventrilo Server where players gather to chat in real time with headsets and mics and also where admins and moderators talk to coordinate events. In game, we have clans where group of players ally with each other and fight and raid against rival clans.

Players: SL has a large influx of players lately due to the successful advertisement of our Owner and main Admin Phaed. Before hand we had a good amount of players, averaging around 30 active players everyday plus more less active players that come and go. We also have ranks among players, this is to determine the veterancy of players in the server.

Guest- This is the lowest rank. You are an automatic guest once you login

Members- This is the main rank. You can become a member once you post an introduction post on the SL forums. After that, a moderator must memberize you. It usually take less than 10 mins to get a membership.

Veterans- You are a veteran, everyone knows you, you know everything about SL. To get this rank, the admins must choose you and this is accomplished by getting to know them or the moderating staff so they can nominate you to the admins.

Moderator-You are a trusted member of the server. Moderators help keep the server flowing smoothly. The warn and ban unruly players. This is also a test phase and Moderators do not have many tools for the job.

Super Moderator- An Smod is the main Moderator rank. To be one means that you passed your trail phase and the admins trust you with the tools you need to fully moderate.

Uber Moderator- Success! You are truly trusted and admins believe you have proven yourself in judgement and ability as a Moderator. You have server breaking capabilities and are trusted with them to help the server.

Administrator- Achievement Get! You administrate the server. What else to say?

Sacred Labyrinth

Check www.sacredlabyrinth.net for an awesome Minecraft server!

As The Morning Wind Blows

     All night I stayed awake, fearful for my life, I couldn't sleep. As the sun rose I decide to get ready to leave this hole. I looked around and notice what was around me. These monsters, as many as there was, were walking all around. Where did they come from? How did they get here? I decided to wait till the sun was higher to make a run for it. As the sun fully came out from the horizon I started to hear loud moans. I looked and saw that these monsters were all ablaze! I thought to myself "Do they hate light? They did appear at night, I didn't see them at all during the day". It took only a few minutes before the majority of them fell to the floor in a pile of burning ash. I saw leaves rustling and then this wind came and blew all the ashes away. Talk about a lucky breeze.
     When I felt it was safe I crawled out from my hole. I decide to go explore and see what was around, maybe I can find a village or something out here. I walked off the peninsula and climbed the small hill ahead of me. As I looked over I noticed the peninsula was actually part of an island. I had a plan now, make my way and find the mainland where I will surely find a town. I knew I couldn't just start heading out with out any form of tools. What  if I need to climb something or if I need to get past a large lake? I need to think of something. As I looked around hunger started to set in. I wondered what I will eat? I walked up to different tress but noticed that none of them had fruits. I climbed back to the top of the hill and noticed a herd of pigs. "What? Where did they come from? Is there a farm around here?". No, there couldn't be, I can see all the sides of the island and no buildings anywhere. I picked up a large rock and walked carefully towards the herd. As I got closer I noticed that one of the pigs was walking slower than the rest. I aimed carefully and threw the rock as hard as I could. WHAM! It his the pig on its side. They all scattered and the hurt pigs started stumbling around, I looked like it was in pain. I ran towards it and kicked it in its head. I know, it's inhumane, but I am hungry and have nothing else. I took the same large rock and smashed its head. Blood started pouring out, I threw up.
     The sun was right above me, it was burning my head. I walked towards a small, young tree and decided to make basic tools out of the wood. I was thin enough for me to use my weight to topple it. I grabbed on to it and pushed. I kicked at it and punch, slowly it started to uproot. I took several steps back and then charged and jumped at the tree. I came crashing down along with it. I pulled of as many branches as I could so I can carry the tree around. I looked around and saw a boulder that had a point to it. I held the tree on it and pushed down, it split. I took some time and thinking but I managed to make an axe and a shovel. Not sturdy, but it will get some of the job done. I took a deep breath and use the axe to cut the pig. Now that I had several slices of bacon, it was time to make a fire. I took a piece of bark and got some bad news. The bark was to moist to start a fire, in fact, everything had too much moisture. Great, time to eat raw meat. It was getting closer to sunset so I made my way to the shoreline. I looked and saw what I think is the main land. I was taking a chance, but anything was better than being stranded on an island. I folded up my clothes, put them, my tools and food and a piece of bark that could float and jumped into the water. The shore wasn't that far from the island so I easily swam to land. The sun was already down when I made it to shore. It was time for me to make a shelter again. I took out my shovel and dug into the sand, worthless. I walked to some dirt and dug quickly. I had dug another hole, another possible grave for myself. I had to find a safe place or make one. I was tired, wanted to stay up...but...I...too...zzzzzz

This is a nightmare

     I awoke to a noise, I looked around and couldn't figure out were it came from. I got up and walked around, I noticed it was evening already and the sun was barely visible over the horizon. It was very dark and I had no source of light. I was sitting near the end of the peninsula and decide to walk towards the mainland. As I walked closer I heard that strange sound again. It was very odd, nothing like you hear in nature. At first it thought it might have been the wind or maybe an animal walking around, but I noticed I was alone. I continued walking and I heard it again, this time it sounded more closer and like a grunt of some sort. I started to get nervous, and I was getting sweaty.

     I got off the peninsula and I heard it again. It sounded like it was behind me. I turned around a saw a figure in the distance. I tried to see what it was but all I could see was a silhouette, the sun was gone and the only light came from the moon. As my eyes adjusted I could tell it was a human shaped figure. I felt relieved, I started walking towards it, but It just stood still. As a grew nearer, I smelled this awful stench, the smell of rotten meat... It smelled like death. When I got close enough I said yelled out.
"Hey you over there! Who are you?"
I received no response.
"Hello?"
Nothing.
"Excus-" I stopped.
The figure began to move towards me. It moved rather quickly.

     All of a sudden when it got closer, it ran up to me and jumped. I moved out the way and when I turned to look at, I couldn't believe it!
"Oh shit" I said.
I got up from the floor and started to run away from it. As I moved towards the hill ahead of me, I noticed something red. I turned to run towards a different direction. I ran around the hill and right there was another figure. I turned around and out of nowhere dropped this huge spider! It had glowing red eyes and it was very large, about half my height.
"Ahhhh fuck!" I screamed. I ran up the hill and another spider appeared. There was only one way I could run, and that was, back to where I started from. The spider under me leaped at me and I took the chance to run under it and head towards the peninsula. I ran as fast as I could, I was out of breath and panting very hard.

     Then...
     POW!
     I got hit from the side by the first figure I saw. I looked at it and got a good view. I couldn't believe it, the figure wasn't human, not even alive. It's skin was green and falling off, the putrid smell was lingering around. Its eyes were absent from where they should be. At that moment it hit me, it was a zombie!

     I got up quickly and ran towards my tree. With nowhere to run or hide, I was out of options. I bent over to catch my breath. I couldn't even grasp what was happening.
"This can't be happening" I said
I looked down and noticed something. Under the roots of the tree, I saw a hollowed out space. With nothing else that I could do, I decided to start digging with my hands. Although, I did look up quickly to notice that the zombie didn't know where I was. So continued on. I dug and dug with my bear hands. Eventually I dug deep enough that I could climb in and close the hole. I left a small opening so some air could flow in and that way I'll be able to see when the sun comes up.

     I sat down in my hole. I was surround by dirt and darkness. I looked at my hand but saw nothing, I knew they were hurt and bleeding, I could feel the pain and warmth. I closed my eyes and relaxed. I thought to myself.
"Is this reality or just a nightmare?"

"If its real, am I dead, or did just dug out my own grave?"