Tal, a conversation with an alien Read Online Free Page A
Author: Anonymous
to my soon finished chess event, and my quickly emptying crate of juice.
Twins
Well thank you f or that philosophy lecture, but can you get to the point? Aside from being able to live a long time, do you have other special abilities; I mean you said you could teleport and time travel. How do you do it?
Yes , I can time travel. Though the first question you should be asking is how I observe time and the other dimensions of the universe.
-- This statement went over my head at the time, and I pressed him on my original point.
S o if you are a time traveler, can you travel into the future?
Of course , but unfortunately for you, in your lifetime, your technology will not let you time travel. At least in any significant way.
I understand that, but how do you do it?
You still miss the point, it is not my ability to time travel, but my understanding of how the dimension of time works that should be important to you. But to answer your question, there are actually many ways of time traveling. The easiest for humans to understand and a method which has been proven and well understood for over one hundred years by your scientists, is the ability to travel into someone else's future. For instance, if I wanted to travel into your future, I could get into my space ship and fly off near the speed of light. I could travel near the speed of light for just a few minutes, but when I get back, you would be 60 or 80 years old, or even long dead; depending on how close to the speed of light I traveled. Yet I will only have aged those few minutes that I was flying. When I returned to earth, it would be many years later by your clocks, but just a few minutes by mine. I will still be young and you will be old. Therefore, I would have traveled into your future.
Yes , yes, that is the famous twins example in Einstein's theory of relativity. One twin stays on earth and the other speeds off at near the speed of light. When the speeding twin returns in what to him seemed like just a few minutes, he sees that on earth many years have passed, and the twin who remained on earth is very old.
Yes, Einstein was famous for creating imaginative thought experiments. They couldn't be proven in a laboratory at the time, but they expanded his theories into possible real life situations.
I know this thought experiment w ell. Is there anything you can do that I don't know about?
I can see you know of the experiment, but do you understand it?
Well I can't say that I can explain why it happens, but I know that it is true.
Then you don't really understand it , you simply believe it. The reason it is confusing to you, is because your senses give you a pretty good idea of the nature of space, but they completely mislead you about the nature of time. It seems to you that everything in the universe operates by the same time. You and I could be at different coordinates in space, and we can move through space at different speeds, but we all occupy the same time, this moment, and we all move through time at the same speed. This is actually an illusion. Just as there is no single point in space more important than any other, there is also no point in time more important than any other. That is an important idea in Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein explained that time is a dimension, tied together with the three spatial dimensions you are aware of, scientists now call this concept space-time. In other words, you are not a three-dimensional being, you are a four-dimensional being. You exist in the three dimensions of space, and in the dimension of time.
You said d imensions we are aware of. There are more?
Yes there are more , but before I can explain any extra dimensions you don't sense, you need to fully understand the dimensions you do sense. If you really understood the dimension of time, the twins thought experiment would be very simple.
I am not even sure why you claim that time is a dimension in the first place.
I will explain why , but
Twins
Well thank you f or that philosophy lecture, but can you get to the point? Aside from being able to live a long time, do you have other special abilities; I mean you said you could teleport and time travel. How do you do it?
Yes , I can time travel. Though the first question you should be asking is how I observe time and the other dimensions of the universe.
-- This statement went over my head at the time, and I pressed him on my original point.
S o if you are a time traveler, can you travel into the future?
Of course , but unfortunately for you, in your lifetime, your technology will not let you time travel. At least in any significant way.
I understand that, but how do you do it?
You still miss the point, it is not my ability to time travel, but my understanding of how the dimension of time works that should be important to you. But to answer your question, there are actually many ways of time traveling. The easiest for humans to understand and a method which has been proven and well understood for over one hundred years by your scientists, is the ability to travel into someone else's future. For instance, if I wanted to travel into your future, I could get into my space ship and fly off near the speed of light. I could travel near the speed of light for just a few minutes, but when I get back, you would be 60 or 80 years old, or even long dead; depending on how close to the speed of light I traveled. Yet I will only have aged those few minutes that I was flying. When I returned to earth, it would be many years later by your clocks, but just a few minutes by mine. I will still be young and you will be old. Therefore, I would have traveled into your future.
Yes , yes, that is the famous twins example in Einstein's theory of relativity. One twin stays on earth and the other speeds off at near the speed of light. When the speeding twin returns in what to him seemed like just a few minutes, he sees that on earth many years have passed, and the twin who remained on earth is very old.
Yes, Einstein was famous for creating imaginative thought experiments. They couldn't be proven in a laboratory at the time, but they expanded his theories into possible real life situations.
I know this thought experiment w ell. Is there anything you can do that I don't know about?
I can see you know of the experiment, but do you understand it?
Well I can't say that I can explain why it happens, but I know that it is true.
Then you don't really understand it , you simply believe it. The reason it is confusing to you, is because your senses give you a pretty good idea of the nature of space, but they completely mislead you about the nature of time. It seems to you that everything in the universe operates by the same time. You and I could be at different coordinates in space, and we can move through space at different speeds, but we all occupy the same time, this moment, and we all move through time at the same speed. This is actually an illusion. Just as there is no single point in space more important than any other, there is also no point in time more important than any other. That is an important idea in Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein explained that time is a dimension, tied together with the three spatial dimensions you are aware of, scientists now call this concept space-time. In other words, you are not a three-dimensional being, you are a four-dimensional being. You exist in the three dimensions of space, and in the dimension of time.
You said d imensions we are aware of. There are more?
Yes there are more , but before I can explain any extra dimensions you don't sense, you need to fully understand the dimensions you do sense. If you really understood the dimension of time, the twins thought experiment would be very simple.
I am not even sure why you claim that time is a dimension in the first place.
I will explain why , but
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