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Originally posted by Endlesswave Ummmmmmm that "time moving slower" thing is due to the faster you travel towards the speed of light the slower you age (or the faster the people around you age). It has already been proven on an atomic clock that's been put on an aircraft going insanely fast that when compared to the same clock on the ground set at the same time, the clock on the ground was ahead by many seconds/min or something similar. This is the basic premise of the Astronauts travelled into the future in the "The Planet of the Apes" movies. Explain what would happen if you were to go even FASTER on an object while consistently speeding up till you were to hit the speed of light (sure the phsysics behind that would hurt like a bitch, the G Force would be insane, crushing pressure etc but if all of that was taken into consideration then what??).

reminds me of that movie that came out like a year or two ago "Timestoppers" or something along those lines...had 'harry' from 3rd rock in it

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Originally posted by dEsidEL actually i was trying to defend u in my statement ..

I know, thanks. I'm just being honest with everyone, that's all.


To Dr. Z (and everyone else really, but especially Dr. Z):

There are three very important arguments here, two for and one against time travel:

1. Time may be a human invention, but so is space. Physics, including quantum mechanics, is a contrived science based not on any sort of natural law but on the proof/disproof of postulates formulated by completely insane people. Seriously, almost everyone in Physics History who came up with a groundbreaking theory was considered to be totally off the wall. Planck himself said that most of his own theories were probably bullshit, but look at where we are now? Nobody has ever been able to really PROVE a law of physics (just look at how the fundamental matter-energy conservation breaks down, this was Einstein's widely-known-but-rarely-understood E=mc� equation), but in spite of the lack of proof, they seem to work and make sense so we accept them until we see some inconsistency, at which point a new theory comes out...

2. If any of you ever read Michael Crichton's "Timeline", the man did a LOT of research before he wrote the [fictional] book. It is fiction but it's based on a lot of modern-day theories that haven't been disproven yet, particularly the infinite-parallel-universe theory. Basically, if you believe that reality is really divided into an infinite set of realities (or timelines), not just infinite but an infinite order of infinity, then it might be possible to travel through some sort of wormhole to reach a parallel reality at an earlier point in "time." HOWEVER, this also implies that you can't really "change the past." I'll leave you guys to figure out why, it takes too long to explain, but I will say that it actually resolves a lot of odd issues that come to mind. For example, it would be impossible for someone to travel back in time and erase time travel, because the original universe still exists; however, they could travel to another reality and erase time travel, then travel to another reality which would be a "future" without time travel. Or if someone went "back in time" and killed you then there would be another universe where you were dead, but you would still be alive in this universe. This is all pretty abstract I realize, but you see how it solves many paradoxes that are used as arguments against the possibility of TT. Since there are infinite universes, there are infinite possibilities.

3. Related again to what Dr. Z said, time can be used as a measuring tool just as space can be, so that doesn't really bother me... however, the major issue I see is that our measurements of time are based entirely on light (i.e. the speed of light). Time theoretically "stops" when something is travelling at the speed of light. And yes, this has been proven to an extent by having an atomic clock flown out in space.
[EDIT] - what I said before was wrong.
However, I think this is more due to the nature of aging itself, the process of aging is caused by metabolic process and lots of particles moving around inside the human body (or a clock, it really doesn't matter). When the particles are accelerated close to the speed of light, they are more apt to just "sit there" in a relative sense, as if frozen in time, but again this isn't due to time as a dimension, it's just due to all the momentum of the particles being used up in the space travel.
And light itself seems to be subject to time, very simply shown by the concept of a light-year. So this sort of puts a dent in the theory that going FTL would somehow take you back in time.

None of this is bullshit, there are a lot of possibilities floating around right now and nobody's sure of the consequences. If black holes can exist, then "worm holes" might exist too, we might just be looking in the wrong places... or we might have to create them ourselves...

All of you should read "Hyperspace" by Michio Kaku, really good book. I read about 1/4 of it, no time to read the rest but I want to get back to it...

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Originally posted by Dr. Z Yes, people thought certain thoughts were absurd at the times they were in. But the idea of time travel is not the same. Look: When people theorised waves/photons, they were describing matter/reality. They were describing the natural phenomena that occurs arround us. So making new theories is possible, no matter how absurd, you just have to have the proof. But when you talk about something like time travel, you cannot theorise anything. Time is not a natural phenomena, time is a human invention, invented to keep track of changes. Its basically a tool to understand some other natural phenomena, like velocity (speed, meters per second). You cannot theorise/do scientific research on time. Its like saying: There are exactly 100 centimeters in one meter (definition). That is the unit of measurement that we will use. Lets make a theory, If we alter space and make each 1meter(m) = 2m, or 100cm = 200cm. Then all objects will be twice as high. :. Impossible.

time dilation proves that our concept of definite is in fact not as definite as we first thought. Experiments have confirmed that time dilation occurs. You may say we cannot reach such velocities to notice a substantial amount. But dont say cannot...we dont know HOW TO. With the discover of the quantum theory...it shows the world with more chaos than order. Einstein, himself, was not comfortable with this idea and was quoted "God does not play dice with the world" at the uncertainty principle. The string theory is being worked do resolved the grand "unified theory" to bridge the general relativity(macro) and quantum theory(micro) together. Things are coming up all the time. At a time...men thought all the planets revolved around the earth..and no heliocentric. When man couldnt go to the moon because it was just "science fiction". So please dont say its IMPOSSIBLE....refine ur answer a bit and say WE DONT KNOW HOW TO.
I leave you with a quote for the man himself...

"Attempt the absurd, achieve the impossible"
-Albert Einstein

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Originally posted by DigiNut 1. Time may be a human invention, but so is space. Physics, including quantum mechanics, is a contrived science based not on any sort of natural law but on the proof/disproof of postulates formulated by completely insane people. Seriously, almost everyone in Physics History who came up with a groundbreaking theory was considered to be totally off the wall. Planck himself said that most of his own theories were probably bullshit, but look at where we are now? Nobody has ever been able to really PROVE a law of physics (just look at how the fundamental matter-energy conservation breaks down, this was Einstein's widely-known-but-rarely-understood E=mc� equation), but in spite of the lack of proof, they seem to work and make sense so we accept them until we see some inconsistency, at which point a new theory comes out...

There is a fine line between definition and experiment.
-One can define something. Ex let x = 5 , or let 24hr = 1 earth rotation.
-And one can experiment. Ex speed = distance/time.
Thoeries come from experiments. Not from definitions.
So you cannot theorise about time. Its that simple...

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Originally posted by DigiNut 2. If any of you ever read Michael Crichton's "Timeline", the man did a LOT of research before he wrote the [fictional] book. It is fiction but it's based on a lot of modern-day theories that haven't been disproven yet, particularly the infinite-parallel-universe theory. Basically, if you believe that reality is really divided into an infinite set of realities (or timelines), not just infinite but an infinite order of infinity, then it might be possible to travel through some sort of wormhole to reach a parallel reality at an earlier point in "time." HOWEVER, this also implies that you can't really "change the past." I'll leave you guys to figure out why, it takes too long to explain, but I will say that it actually resolves a lot of odd issues that come to mind. For example, it would be impossible for someone to travel back in time and erase time travel, because the original universe still exists; however, they could travel to another reality and erase time travel, then travel to another reality which would be a "future" without time travel. Or if someone went "back in time" and killed you then there would be another universe where you were dead, but you would still be alive in this universe. This is all pretty abstract I realize, but you see how it solves many paradoxes that are used as arguments against the possibility of TT. Since there are infinite universes, there are infinite possibilities.

This is all bogus jargon.
-First of all, this a theory without applications. So the probability of it being correct is extremely small.
-Alternate timelines are a pure paradox to everything that defines physics. Space/time would be undefinable. Energy related ideas would be thrown into the garbage becauase the idea of entropy would not be able to exist... etc
-The existance of black holes does not have any indications that wormoles exist. Black holes are a perfectly understood phenomena. It is a collection of highly compacted matter. What occurs in a black hole is generaly understood, and it has nothing to do with alteration of space/time. Wormholes are inventions, something you see in star trek/ sci fi movies. Their existance is highly impossible because they would be altering dimentions... which is impossible.
-etc

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Originally posted by DigiNut 3. Related again to what Dr. Z said, time can be used as a measuring tool just as space can be, so that doesn't really bother me... however, the major issue I see is that our measurements of time are based entirely on light (i.e. the speed of light). Time theoretically "stops" when something is travelling at the speed of light. And yes, this has been proven to an extent by having an atomic clock flown out in space. [EDIT] - what I said before was wrong. However, I think this is more due to the nature of aging itself, the process of aging is caused by metabolic process and lots of particles moving around inside the human body (or a clock, it really doesn't matter). When the particles are accelerated close to the speed of light, they are more apt to just "sit there" in a relative sense, as if frozen in time, but again this isn't due to time as a dimension, it's just due to all the momentum of the particles being used up in the space travel. And light itself seems to be subject to time, very simply shown by the concept of a light-year. So this sort of puts a dent in the theory that going FTL would somehow take you back in time.

What you describe here is time, a definition coming from the speed of light.
-actually, speed is a function. Speed is the result of taking the distance traveled and dividing it by time. So time has nothing to do with the speed of light.
-matter cannot be accelerated to the speed of light. No, buts, no ifs, no nothing. If you were talking about time travel by objects traveling at the speed of light, you would be false. Matter simply cannot go that fast.
-remember, matter traveling at the speed of light is not impossible because someone said it is. Matter truly cannot go that fast by our knowlege of reality. "If" it were able, all our thoeries, and some definitions would be thrown into the garbage.


On a final comment:
Just because its on TV, or in some book, doesn't mean its possible. And the term nothing is impossible is incorrect. Because, we as humans, have many definitions, we can draw fine lines to seperate different concepts in reality. Alot of things that we define come with possibilites and impossibilities.

Simple math example:
Function y = 1/(x-1)
It is impossible for y = 0 (zero)
or for x = 1

There is no, probability/chance...

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Originally posted by King_Mack time dilation proves that our concept of definite is in fact not as definite as we first thought. Experiments have confirmed that time dilation occurs. You may say we cannot reach such velocities to notice a substantial amount. But dont say cannot...we dont know HOW TO. With the discover of the quantum theory...it shows the world with more chaos than order. Einstein, himself, was not comfortable with this idea and was quoted "God does not play dice with the world" at the uncertainty principle. The string theory is being worked do resolved the grand "unified theory" to bridge the general relativity(macro) and quantum theory(micro) together. Things are coming up all the time. At a time...men thought all the planets revolved around the earth..and no heliocentric. When man couldnt go to the moon because it was just "science fiction". So please dont say its IMPOSSIBLE....refine ur answer a bit and say WE DONT KNOW HOW TO. -Albert Einstein

Sorry, what did you say here?
Don't think you said anything.

i'm just curious but how many of you guys are taking physics in school and how many are basing their information on just general knowledge and self reading ?

(not trying to imply anything here, just wondering where you're getting ur info from!)

<--- 1st year physics
University of Waterloo

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Originally posted by Dr. Z There is a fine line between definition and experiment. -One can define something. Ex let x = 5 , or let 24hr = 1 earth rotation. -And one can experiment. Ex speed = distance/time. Thoeries come from experiments. Not from definitions. So you cannot theorise about time. Its that simple...

The "Scientific Method", paraphrased textbook definition:
1) Form a null hypothesis (postulate intended to be proven wrong)
2) Attempt to disprove null hypothesis
3) If null hypothesis is disproven, form an "alternative hypothesis" as a new null hypothesis, and attempt once again to prove wrong.
4) Hypothesis is accepted as theory once the null hypothesis cannot be disproven.

Don't try to bullshit me here. Theories come in the END from experiments, yes, but you have to know what you're experimenting on in the first place. You have to have a hypothesis. That's why we have "pre-lab writeups" for every single lab we perform in university.

Since we really don't have the technology or resources that would enable us to perform experiments related to parallel universes or time travel, none of the postulates can be made into theories. However, THEY HAVE NOT BEEN PROVEN WRONG, so you cannot just dismiss them as crap.

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This is all bogus jargon. -First of all, this a theory without applications. So the probability of it being correct is extremely small. -Alternate timelines are a pure paradox to everything that defines physics. Space/time would be undefinable. Energy related ideas would be thrown into the garbage becauase the idea of entropy would not be able to exist... etc

WHERE are you getting this from? First of all, it's not a theory, it's a possibility, a postulate, a hypothesis, whatever you want to call it. Secondly, what you've just said is total bullshit and sounds like it's coming from someone who just began studying entropy in Grade 11 Chemistry. We're talking about quantum mechanics here, probability waves and functions and uncertainty principles, not f-cking entropy, that has NOTHING to do with this discussion.

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-The existance of black holes does not have any indications that wormoles exist. Black holes are a perfectly understood phenomena. It is a collection of highly compacted matter. What occurs in a black hole is generaly understood, and it has nothing to do with alteration of space/time. Wormholes are inventions, something you see in star trek/ sci fi movies. Their existance is highly impossible because they would be altering dimentions... which is impossible. -etc

Black holes are most certainly NOT a perfectly understood phenomena. How can you say that? It's impossible to get close enough to one to study one. Everything we know about black holes is really just HYPOTHESES. Remember that word.

I do not believe that very many Star Trek/Scifi movies ever went into detail with wormholes. And incidentally, a lot of things which originated on Star Trek have come into existence (i.e. voice recognition, nanotechnology & replication).

The existence of a wormhole would not alter any dimension. Not even time if you consider that a dimension. I suggest you actually read the material on what a wormhole is before you start saying things like this.

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What you describe here is time, a definition coming from the speed of light. -actually, speed is a function. Speed is the result of taking the distance traveled and dividing it by time. So time has nothing to do with the speed of light.

And how do you think we measure the distance travelled? Magic? EVERY measurement we take, whether it be visual, sound, X-rays, involves some sort of electromagnetic wave being transmitted and received.

Even an atomic or crystal clock depends on electromagnetic properties to keep track of time. Light and time are very closely related, I believe someone mentioned the unified field theory, well this is what physicists today are WORKING ON. Don't pretend that you know more than they do.

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-matter cannot be accelerated to the speed of light. No, buts, no ifs, no nothing. If you were talking about time travel by objects traveling at the speed of light, you would be false. Matter simply cannot go that fast.

No shit, that's why I said "close to the speed of light" in my original post. Besides which, the point of my original paragraph WAS to say that FTL travel wouldn't result in time travel.

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-remember, matter traveling at the speed of light is not impossible because someone said it is. Matter truly cannot go that fast by our knowlege of reality. "If" it were able, all our thoeries, and some definitions would be thrown into the garbage.

There's the key, "by our knowledge of reality." You say all our theories and some definitions would be thrown in the garbage. How many times has this already happened over the history of science?

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On a final comment: Just because its on TV, or in some book, doesn't mean its possible. And the term nothing is impossible is incorrect. Because, we as humans, have many definitions, we can draw fine lines to seperate different concepts in reality. Alot of things that we define come with possibilites and impossibilities.

I'm extremely offended that you would think I got any of my ideas from TV or fiction. Most if not all of my information came from "real" books written by (not to mention discussions with) people in the field.

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Simple math example: Function y = 1/(x-1) It is impossible for y = 0 (zero) or for x = 1 There is no, probability/chance...

Well, I'm impressed. You used a grade 9 algebra example as proof of your opinion on one of the most complicated and debated questions of modern quantum mechanics. Kudos to you.

By the way, x most certainly can be 1, don't know where you got this from. X is simply a variable, it can be any arbitrary value, just because y is undefined for x=1 does not make this impossible. As for y being equal to zero, this is fairly typical in calculus (which you seem to have forgotten) and refers to the concept of infinity. Y will never reach 0 for any "defined" value of x, but this doesn't mean the function is somehow "unusable" at that point or that the values of x for which y=0 are somehow useless. I can think of several examples where this comes into play, for example MP3 compression. I really don't think this is the appropriate place to be teaching calculus, however.

P.S. dEsidEl, I'm taking electrical engineering at university, 3rd year, and quantum mechanics is part of our curriculum (applications in laser diodes, tunneling effects, etc.) Frickin' Waterloo kids, no wonder corporations get pissy about arrogant co-op students.

*sigh* I don't want to beat this issue to death, but I hate it when people get so arrogant because they know a tiny fraction of what they're talking about. Trust me Dr. Z, NOBODY ever succeeded in science by saying "it's impossible."

To close:
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...'
Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

lol DigiNut
You've picked up about 10% of what I have said. And your comments comment on things that I have not said.

It seems as if communication in this complex topic is impossible. I will discontinue to comment..

Nothing against you DigiNut, I'm sure we would have had an indepth conversation, but alot of time would be wasted just trying to communicate.

DigiNut, do you know a guy whose name is Jonathan Weisman(not sure about spelling of his last name)?
He's taking electrical engineering at U of T as well...

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P.S. dEsidEl, I'm taking electrical engineering at university, 3rd year, and quantum mechanics is part of our curriculum (applications in laser diodes, tunneling effects, etc.) Frickin' Waterloo kids, no wonder corporations get pissy about arrogant co-op students.

I may sound arrogant myself, but believe it or not, co-op students are often smarter than management at those corporations. Obviously management gets pissed off...

I was lucky enough to spend my last 3 work-terms at a company where management consisted of smart people. Some of my friends weren't so lucky. Their management often forced them to do really stupid things.

No wonder hi-tech is in such shit right now... Too many people especially in high-management got too much money for doing nothing !

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Originally posted by Durafei I may sound arrogant myself, but believe it or not, co-op students are often smarter than management at those corporations. Obviously management gets pissed off... I was lucky enough to spend my last 3 work-terms at a company where management consisted of smart people. Some of my friends weren't so lucky. Their management often forced them to do really stupid things. No wonder hi-tech is in such shit right now... Too many people especially in high-management got too much money for doing nothing !

Sorry, didn't mean any disrespect to you Durafei, just got pissed off, and no you don't sound arrogant to me... I agree, a lot of co-op students are smarter than the management, management people can be complete idiots sometimes (most of the time). I've always held to the belief that "business" trained people with no engineering background should never be allowed to manage a team of engineers.

Miscommunication is a lame excuse, Dr. Z., I'm not letting you off the hook that easily. I probably picked up on 10% of what you said because the other 90% was still in your ass. But I'll drop the subject if you will.

Anyway, back to original topic, I'm actually not at U of T, I'm at Queen's (guess the Toronto is misleading, but that's where I'm from). You know what though, that name sounds kind of familiar, I'm not sure why... (maybe a getting-in party after HS?) but I probably don't know him, sorry.

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Originally posted by DigiNut Miscommunication is a lame excuse, Dr. Z., I'm not letting you off the hook that easily. I probably picked up on 10% of what you said because the other 90% was still in your ass. But I'll drop the subject if you will.

No wonder our communication fails...

Dr. Z since you are taking physics in Uni, ask one of your profs, see what they say and also read "Hyperspace" it's very good and a prof in the states wrote it. He talks how through string theory (mentioned earlier) and other theories (if proven correct) might be used to unify the laws of physics (ei Unified field theory, which is what Stephen Hawkin is trying to do I think) and in unifying those laws things that might seem completely unattainable might be even within reach. Nothing is impossible. It's just we don't know enough about the universe to make it possible as of right now. That doesn't completely disprove that it still could be possible later on.

i'm sure the true understanding of the universe is far simpler than the human equation .. maybe we're just making it more complicated than it needs to be ..

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Originally posted by dEsidEL i'm sure the true understanding of the universe is far simpler than the human equation .. maybe we're just making it more complicated than it needs to be ..

If what they say in their ads are true, one can apparently achieve this by having a Fruitopia.

Today we had a guest speaker in one of our classes, ... I forget his name. But he is the top Canadian physicist under the age of 40. Some man in his 30s, and he got some distinction for doing research in the string theory.

So he did a seminar on string theory. I was like the whole time. One of things he said:
There is a 8km radius particle accelerator near Geneva that is presently studying the string theory. If they can find the existance of some property of the fudemental string particles, then they will have some proof in favor of the string theory.. etc. Then he said, the string theory will bridge the cap between particle motion (mechanics) and qunatum mechanics. That is pretty impressive considering the differences in the two concepts. I can't wait to see what happens next!

See? And about Wormholes being impossible because of something to do with "altering dimensions". A wormhole is just a tear in space/time and supposedly if one were to look at the fabric of the universe, what it is made up of it would not be "smooth" as some people think but instead rippled, filled with holes, ei wormholes, these bridge the gap between universes (at least that's what the theory says).

Well he didn't mention anything about wormholes. Strings are the fundemental elementary particles that make up all matter/some energy. I dont really see how this can be applied to wormholes.

that's right , there's no such thing as wormholes .. only hyperspace ..

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Originally posted by Dr. Z Well he didn't mention anything about wormholes. Strings are the fundemental elementary particles that make up all matter/some energy. I dont really see how this can be applied to wormholes.

Alright, I've looked up what I can to try and refresh my memory and make as much sense as I can here... so listen up...

Look up something called "quantum foam." It's very closely related to string theory. The existence of quantum foam -has- been supported by evidence, although perhaps not conclusively proven. The key points (to the best of my knowledge) are the following:

1) The laws of thermodynamics were cited earlier to contradict the concept of wormholes; however, the laws of thermodynamics do not apply on a quantum level. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle basically proves this. Read on...

2) Space (i.e. a vacuum) is not technically "nothing." On a macroscopic level it is nothing, but on a quantum level it is really theorized to be an infinite number of quantum 'virtual' particles which exist for tiny amounts of time. I guess this is sort of like matter/antimatter here, but anyway, these particles collectively are referred to as quantum foam.

3) The virtual particles require some sort of energy to come into existence, and after a fraction of time it has to "give the energy back" and disappear again. Think of stretching out a rubber band, you give it potential elastic energy but eventually it will go back to the way it was and the energy will be lost. This isn't a very good analogy but it's the best I can think of, and if you look at it this way you can kind of understand why it's called a "foam." Since they come and go, and return the energy they use, energy and entropy laws still apply on a macroscopic level.

4) The more energy a virtual particle has, the shorter its lifespan. Creating this energy would be pretty hard for us, but not so hard for a black hole. As with the big bang theory, this magnitude of energy might be enough to make a 'virtual' particle become 'real' in the sense of existing for a very very long time (billions of years, perhaps...).

5) Maybe you can see where this is going - if we consider that the possibility that the quantum bubbles are actually tiny universes, then it could be said that the big bang caused one of these bubbles to grow huge and become our universe (which is a pretty good explanation for why the universe is considered to be constantly expanding).

6) If one quantum bubble became our universe and there were an infinite number of quantum particles to begin with... well, there's your answer. The question, then, is would it be possible to travel from one to another? The hypothetical answer is a wormhole. If someone would have asked me to explain why I related black holes to wormholes (rather than dissing my post), I would have said that some people consider a wormhole to be nothing but a microscopic ("quantum size") black hole. Smaller black holes cause worse distortion in space, but obviously have less energy and cannot affect as much mass. There's no telling what might happen with one of these infinitessimal black holes (wormholes), but we're never going to just get "sucked into" one, because of their size.

7) The book I mentioned, Timeline, was based largely on these principles (of which #1-4 I can assure you are very real and accepted by many people, and #5-6 have never been proven nor disproven). The fiction in this book was a technology that would somehow shrink something to such a small size that it would actually get sucked through one of these wormholes.

I didn't come up with most of this. Stephen Hawking did. I don't claim any credit whatsoever for this information. If you still don't believe me, then I will point you here. I haven't had time to go over many of the sites on that list, but it's a good place to go if you're looking for scientific information and not just wild speculation. A lot of the sites there are based at universities, so they are not easily dismissed...

i think people today are too occupied with "what-ifs" to live in the here and now... why are you people speculating about useless garbage like quantum foam and wormholes? (not to mention time travel)

OK i'm about to type up quite a bit, it's taken from a book (michael crichton novel, in fact), but it will do infinitely better than any sort of explanation i can give.

if anyone's read the Lost World, you'll recognize this... IMO the best and most moving passage in the book.

---
"Are you listening to all that?" Thorne said "I wouldn't take any of it too seriously. It's just theories. Human beings can't help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston. You know what it is? No? Well, it doesn't matter, because it wasn't real anyway. They also believed that four humours controlled behavior. And they believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Now we believe the earth is four billion years old, and we believe in photons and electrons, and we think human behavior is controlled by things like ego and self-esteem. We think those beliefs are more scientific and better."

"Aren't they?"

Thorne shrugged. "They're still just fantasies. They're not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon? Can you bring me one of those?"

Kelly shook her head. "No, but..."

"And you never will, because those things don't exist. No matter how seriously people take them," Thorne said. "A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies." Thorne shook his head. "And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. You see all of us together? That's real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else."
---

werd.

quote:

Originally posted by Alccode i think people today are too occupied with "what-ifs" to live in the here and now... why are you people speculating about useless garbage like quantum foam and wormholes? (not to mention time travel) OK i'm about to type up quite a bit, it's taken from a book (michael crichton novel, in fact), but it will do infinitely better than any sort of explanation i can give. if anyone's read the Lost World, you'll recognize this... IMO the best and most moving passage in the book. --- "Are you listening to all that?" Thorne said "I wouldn't take any of it too seriously. It's just theories. Human beings can't help making them, but the fact is that theories are just fantasies. And they change. When America was a new country, people believed in something called phlogiston. You know what it is? No? Well, it doesn't matter, because it wasn't real anyway. They also believed that four humours controlled behavior. And they believed that the earth was only a few thousand years old. Now we believe the earth is four billion years old, and we believe in photons and electrons, and we think human behavior is controlled by things like ego and self-esteem. We think those beliefs are more scientific and better." "Aren't they?" Thorne shrugged. "They're still just fantasies. They're not real. Have you ever seen a self-esteem? Can you bring me one on a plate? How about a photon? Can you bring me one of those?" Kelly shook her head. "No, but..." "And you never will, because those things don't exist. No matter how seriously people take them," Thorne said. "A hundred years from now, people will look back at us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies." Thorne shook his head. "And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. You see all of us together? That's real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else." --- werd.

Why don't we just f*ck every single living thing on the planet, get rich, and die wealthy with 500 children and 500 wives. We can degrade ourselves the the pathetic animals that we watch f*cking everyday in the zoo. Wouldn't that add so much meaning to our life? Wouldn't that make our life so worth while living...

No..

Some people believe in exploration, in understanding more than what we precieve. To go where we have never been before, to discover more than we can understand...

That is life, that is gift of our conciousness.

imo

______

DigiNut, very nice, I hope its true.

sorry couldn't resist

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