When you travel at close to c you experience time more slowly. So this whole notion of traveling forward in time is just picking a speed close to c to travel at that will seem like a very short time for you, and a very long time for everyone else. With some simple calculations you could pick a speed that would allow you to age 100 seconds, while the rest of us thought 100 years went by. This is totally possible (except the engines required to travel at this speed don't exist, but in theory they could!).

If you could exceed c, in some equations it looks like you could travel backwards in time. Exceeding c (in the hopes of going backwards in time) does not seem possible however because the closer and closer you get to c, the more and more energy you need to go faster (you need bigger and bigger engines). To reach c you would need an infinite amount of energy (an engine of infinite size!).

So in summary; Any speed less than c is in theory attainable, you just need a big enough engine/advanced technology. C and above seem to be off limits though even with advanced technology.

exactly why there is no such thing as time traveling. time is made up in our heads to help us cope with everyday life and keep track of things. in actuality there is only present, but that present is not really a present because it keeps passing by so there is no way to get a hold of time in a point. scientists are just playing games with numbers in their heads

This post was edited by Krassen on Apr 17 2010 03:53pm

in this case, you would just age faster correct? so therefore, if i did set it at 100 seconds and it actually equaled 100 years, i would die within that 100 seconds, because i would age. and i would be well over a hundred years old. but if i set it for 30 seconds would i just be 30 years older? could a body handle this? haha

I believe in Hitchhiker's Guide rules.

Your future self could come back and give it to you, but since all of history already happened and is immutable, the fact that he told you is part of the events that unfold, and you would either fail or accidentally cause the event you tried to stop.

Reading what you wrote it seems you are inferring some kind of absolute reference time. This is a mistake. All we can really do is state how much time passed for you, and how much time passed for everyone else. Trying to figure out how much time "actually passed" will get you into trouble quickly. In the example I gave you would think 100 seconds passed. the people on earth would think 100 years passed. You would return to earth and most of your friends would likely be dead from old age but you wouldn't have aged (ok you aged 100 seconds, but nothing noticeable). This happens all the time actually. If you had a pair of super accurate clocks, and left one with your friend while you took the other one to the store in your car, when you returned there would be a slight difference. You would have experienced every so slightly less time than your friend. This effect has been measured with atomic clocks on jet planes.

Oh with their bad news drive (nothing travels faster than bad news!).

This post was edited by Azrad on Apr 17 2010 06:22pm

does anything time travel? i mean doesnt light time travel itself since it goes th speed of light. so y is it still here and not in the future?

Yes, or not.

Well yeah of course. We are all traveling forward in time! Can you travel at a different rate forward in time? Sure I explained how. Can you travel backwards in time? Apparently no, since you can't reach the velocity required.

going the speed of light will get u forward in time right? (the future) so y isnt light constantly traveling to the future and leaving us behind is what i meant.