Time travel paradox solved

[Nathan]

I think you're misunderstanding how it's all relative to the subjective viewpoints of the observer(s). Less time passes on the spaceship, but that's subjective time. From the reference point of the earth, the slow moving time in the spaceship has still been moving forwards through time compared to the earth.

It's late now and my head is hurting.

I'm not misunderstanding anything - it's spelled out quite clearly in the Wikipedia article I quoted.

This could be accomplished by accelerating one end of the wormhole relative to the other, and then sometime later bringing it back; relativistic time dilation would result in less time having passed for the accelerated wormhole mouth compared to the stationary one, meaning that anything which entered the stationary wormhole mouth would exit the accelerated one at a point in time prior to its entry.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I think you're misunderstanding how it's all relative to the subjective viewpoints of the observer(s). Less time passes on the spaceship, but that's subjective time. From the reference point of the earth, the slow moving time in the spaceship has still been moving forwards through time compared to the earth.

It's late now and my head is hurting.

I'm not misunderstanding anything - it's spelled out quite clearly in the Wikipedia article I quoted.

This could be accomplished by accelerating one end of the wormhole relative to the other, and then sometime later bringing it back; relativistic time dilation would result in less time having passed for the accelerated wormhole mouth compared to the stationary one, meaning that anything which entered the stationary wormhole mouth would exit the accelerated one at a point in time prior to its entry.

Sounds like wikipedia is wrong then (wouldn't be the first time). Time dilation effectively takes you into the future at a faster rate, not the past. Although less time passes at the moving end relative to the fixed end, from the viewpoint of the startpoint (ie the fixed end), a longer amount of time has passed by. The person at the stationary end would have to pass throught the accelerated end to go back into the past, not the fixed end.

If wormholes could be discovered, it might allow us to travel to the past as well as the future. Here's how it would work: Let's say the mouth of the wormhole is portable. Then person B in the example above, who traveled at 50 percent of light speed into space for a few hours, could carry one wormhole mouth into space, while the mouth at the opposite end of the wormhole would stay with person A on Earth. The two people would continue to see one another as person B traveled into space. When person B returned to Earth a few hours later, a few years may have passed for person A. Now, when person A looks through the wormhole that traveled into space, that person will see him or herself at a younger age, the age he or she was when person B launched into space. The cool thing about it is that the older person A would be able to step into the past by entering the wormhole, while the younger person B could step into the future.

Sources here and here to explain it better.

 

[hughJ]

As you approach lightspeed you must burn a certain amount of of fuel to maintain that speed... time moves so slowly on the ship, that you cannot burn enough fuel to increase your speed... as your mass increases you increase the fuel requirements also... if you hit light speed time stops for everyone aboard as well as the fuel so it cant be burnt....

The time onboard the ship would be business as usual for the people, as well as the burning of fuel. The point behind the speed of light being a limit, is the fact that as you go faster, you require more and more energy to accelerate your speed. As you approach the speed of light, you'd would near infinite mass which would require near infinite energy to accelerate further (and infinite energy is kinda tough to come by these days with the oil crisis and all.)

 

[Frank]

While both ends of the wormhole might exist at different locations and throughout a span of time, I think you wouldn't travel through time when you went through, but would exit at the location and time where the other side would be at the same timeframe as you enter it. So you could travel from the spaceship back to Earth, but not from Earth in the future back to the past on the spaceship, as I think the whole future part of the wormhole wouldn't yet exist for you. And if it did, you would travel through it to the location where it would be at the same time as your local time. You wouldn't exit on the ship in the past.

 

[blakjedi]

While both ends of the wormhole might exist at different locations and throughout a span of time, I think you wouldn't travel through time when you went through, but would exit at the location and time where the other side would be at the same timeframe as you enter it. So you could travel from the spaceship back to Earth, but not from Earth in the future back to the past on the spaceship, as I think the whole future part of the wormhole wouldn't yet exist for you. And if it did, you would travel through it to the location where it would be at the same time as your local time. You wouldn't exit on the ship in the past.

The worm hole isnt anti entropic so the worm hole itself is moving forward in time too.. if i left today and spent a year onthe other side... when i returned, the world be a year older... not the same time you originally left.

 

[Nathan]

The worm hole isnt anti entropic so the worm hole itself is moving forward in time too.. if i left today and spent a year onthe other side... when i returned, the world be a year older... not the same time you originally left.

Worm holes can consist of two black holes or one black hole and one whitehole. A white hole is basically a black hole, except that time runs in reverse and it spews out matter. White holes break the second law of thermodynamics.