@Sarzy YOU'RE NOT THINKING FOURTH DIMENSIONALLY!!!

Biff can't gradually return to a different future. Just like Doc says when they leave Jenifer behind "The change will be instantaneous!" I'm with Lucky on this one, if the past was modified, Biff should not have been returned to the original timeline, he would have gone to the future where Biff was a millionaire and built a casino in that shitty town.

And I for one think the second movie would have ended well with Doc and Marty sucked into a wormhole of nothingness, leaving no room for the pile of dead cheeseburger meat that was the third film.

There is another solution that allows for time travel and does not involved paradoxes.

Simplifying it, it goes like this:

1. Nothing can go faster than the speed of light, but we can travel as close to it as possible, neglecting the technological issues.

2. You engineer a wormhole, a Time Tunnel into the past using some sort of as-yet unknown technology.

3. Entering the wormhole at one end with your space/time machine, you emerge ten years in the past (say from 2011 to 2001), TEN LIGHT YEARS AWAY from earth.

4. Immediately, you set out to return to earth at the speed of light (less an infinitesmal amount).

5. You would arrive back at earth in 2011 just seconds/minutes/hours after you entered the Time Tunnel the first time. Because you emerged so far from Earth there was/is nothing you could have done to change or affect your past. You couldn't kill your parents in the past, you couldn't have stopped yourself from entering the Time Tunnel...

I suspect that we'll find that time travel via wormholes is possible but that wormholes will only form in such a way that the two ends cannot lead to paradoxes being created.

This means that we will still never be able to travel to see dinosaurs. Travel back in time 65 million years and you will emerge 65 million light-years away. Travel back to earth and you will still only arrive just after you entered the other end of the time tunnel.

Hence we will also never see future time travelers in our time, including killer cyborgs from the future.

>> ^budzos:

Netrunner don't know if you read sci-fi but there is a great book co-authored by Arthur C Clarke about this concept. It's called The Light of Other Days and is all about wormholes. Highly recommend if you've any interest.

I've probably still read more sci-fi books than anything else. In fact, my reaction to reading that was "holy shit, there's an Arthur C. Clarke book I haven't read?"

But yeah, various forms of FTL communication show up all over the place in sci-fi, and the (somewhat obvious) common thread is that they all rely on something that us 21st century people don't know how to detect.

My other thought is that maybe we do know how to detect it, but all we see is noise because they're using encryption that's millions of years more advanced than ours. Vacuum energy fluctuations are my (and several sci-fi authors') favorite place to imagine this might be happening.

Netrunner don't know if you read sci-fi but there is a great book co-authored by Arthur C Clarke about this concept. It's called The Light of Other Days and is all about wormholes. Highly recommend if you've any interest.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^rottenseed:
Well we're playing with radio waves which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, I don't know what makes radio waves so special when it comes to transferring data. I mean aside from the fact that they're harmless to us (large wavelength, low frequency, low energy) there's nothing inherent about tuning into those frequencies. Imagine too, that radio waves travel at light speed. That's the fastest we know ANYTHING to travel. If were to pick up a transmission that was sent a thousand years ago, that solar system could be as good as gone by now.
well maybe not a 1000 years...unless it was their last cry for help.

Right, that's why I'm thinking radio isn't the ultimate communication medium. Maybe there's something else more exotic that doesn't get weaker at a geometric rate, and is less susceptible to noise, and who knows, maybe even breaks the speed of light.
Drake's equation sorta assumes that there's some basic level of communications technology that civilizations develop relatively early in their lifespan, and then use continuously for the remaining duration of their existence.
I think that's a bad assumption. I doubt we'll still be broadcasting radio waves in a thousand years, let alone a million.

I played a lot of baseball in college and would frequently hit balls like this through miniature wormholes. It's in the wrist really. Also I recognize the echo off the interdimensional vortex collapse. (Pause it right before he catches and listen.)

>> ^TheSluiceGate:

I hate in in these "recreations of media past" when the producers go to all the trouble of getting the look and texture of a video recording and then totally blow it by not treating the sound in the same way too. It's far too crystal clear and 2011 sounding. Still though, good job...


Totally agree. The sound gives it away easily, but yes...good job.

I lol'd at "wormhole generators" right next to "stereo FM radio".

Imagine a universe that lasts of only 10 seconds and only has one particle in it. Lets call the end of time X. At X - .99999999999999999999999, we send the particle back to T = 1. At T= 1, we now have 2 particles. At T = 1, we send both particles back to X - .99999999999999999999999. We do this again, and again until we create a universe of infinite density from one particle. I don't know if this is exactly the time of feedback they are talking about, it is from my own thought experiment on time travel.
>> ^Payback:

>> ^jmd:
The whole feedback thing was really interesting though, the reason we can see through the portals is because light radiation is streaming through the portal to our eyes. If you stuck a portal infront of you and then a portal behind you, light radiation would stream in and out of the portals into an infinite feedback loop causing catastrophic energy output.

Why would that happen? You're not creating more sources. It would be the same net effect as pointing two mirrors at each other. Only instead of light bouncing off and heading back, the light stops being in front, and then appears behind.
Light passing through recursive portals would end up collimated, but I can't see how it would multiply, as the light coming out of portal a is disappearing into portal b at the same rate.
Personally, I was kinda let down that the portal system didn't really change, they just added magic goo. I was TOTALLY expecting PortalGun 2.0 to create bi-directional portals, that is, you would exit one side or the other of portal b, depending on what side you entered portal a. True non-euclidean physics. Also, did Valve ever describe the portals as worm holes? I always thought they were quantum teleporters or something to do with nth dimension physics.

>> ^jmd:

The whole feedback thing was really interesting though, the reason we can see through the portals is because light radiation is streaming through the portal to our eyes. If you stuck a portal infront of you and then a portal behind you, light radiation would stream in and out of the portals into an infinite feedback loop causing catastrophic energy output.


Why would that happen? You're not creating more sources. It would be the same net effect as pointing two mirrors at each other. Only instead of light bouncing off and heading back, the light stops being in front, and then appears behind.

Light passing through recursive portals would end up collimated, but I can't see how it would multiply, as the light coming out of portal a is disappearing into portal b at the same rate (and vice versa).

Personally, I was kinda let down that the portal system didn't really change, they just added magic goo. I was TOTALLY expecting PortalGun 2.0 to create bi-directional portals, that is, you would exit one side or the other of portal b, depending on what side you entered portal a. True non-euclidean physics. Also, did Valve ever describe the portals as worm holes? I always thought they were quantum teleporters or something to do with nth dimension physics.

>> ^def:

ok... so you are ripping on the guy's framerate, but playing portal without a mouse.. on a touch pad... for several hours... that's completely fine with you?
unfortunately portal2 was castrated for console players to be able to play it. it no longer has timing puzzles. it's all mostly logic.

charlie, nah, its a bad fps. The videos FPS is pretty good...atleast 20+ if not very close to 30. There is smooth hand shake without tearing. If we had any synch issues with the lcd monitor then we would be seeing torn frames on the monitor. For the most part however LCD camera captures have very little frame defects, only poor image quality overall.

What sucks is this probably made it impossible for him to spot the question SS viewers probably wanted answered. That is, the physics of the player as they translate through portals. Speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out. Most people would agree that a hand held gun that can paste wormholes onto walls is pure scifi, and couldn't happen to us in a thousand years. But instead lets imagine that portal wormholes exhist, how accurate is portal 2's experience to how they would react in real life.

The whole feedback thing was really interesting though, the reason we can see through the portals is because light radiation is streaming through the portal to our eyes. If you stuck a portal infront of you and then a portal behind you, light radiation would stream in and out of the portals into an infinite feedback loop causing catastrophic energy output.

Your video, Wormholes & Portal 2 - Sixty Symbols, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

>> ^Lithic:

Wow, that poor guys frame rate was torture, but the wormhole lecture was interesting.
Also this will probably get cut, bu[cut]


yeah the framerate was bad on his laptop. also, did you notice that he had been playing "a couple hours" and still had the blue-only portal gun? i thought you only had that for like 2 test chambers...

Wow, that poor guys frame rate was torture, but the wormhole lecture was interesting.

Also this will probably get cut, bu[cut]

>> ^Mcboinkens:

This is so ridiculous I can't even really take the comparison seriously. Not discovering the Americas earlier in the history of Earth was mostly due to our own ignorance. We though the world was flat, and assumed nothing else existed. The vikings are alleged to have made it to the Americas much earlier than Columbus, even.
On the other hand, physics is holding us back in space. Sure, if we learn how to bend spacetime or use wormholes we may have a shot at getting off earth, but it's silly as hell to think it will actually happen within the next 1000 years or so. By that time, we'll probably all be extinct already.
Terra-forming is out of the question, it would be impossible in anything but science fiction, and the only reasonable planet we could even do it to is Mars, which we can hardly get a probe to that worked successfully. Will we make progress? Yeah, definitely. But to think we'll leave this planet is absurd. The only hope for humanity is progress in renewable energy, population control(limiting births, not promoting genocide)and learning to accept other people for their culture and religion. The faster we figure that out, the better off we'll be.
Also, that west wing clip was flat out dumb. Sending men to Mars would do nothing for us but inflate our Space-peen. There is literally nothing to gain from sending humans there rather than robots. It is riskier both cost and liability-wise. The only thing remotely useful would be setting up a base, which would require huge funds, and a ridiculous amount of new research. Plus, they really wouldn't be able to do much once it was set up. We already know the atmosphere, composition, and features of Mars. What would a man do?


First, the issue of whether or not the earth was flat was pretty much settled by Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE. Columbus had so much trouble drumming up funds precisely because anyone who knew anything about cartography (i.e., the Portugese) knew that he was either lying or suicidally deluded. We don't know why Columbus thought what he thought, and we probably never will. Perhaps he believed but could not prove that there HAD to be something between the Western coast of Ireland and the eastern coast of Japan. As for why no one else tried it, you're right. Others had. Don't forget that there is strong evidence of others visiting the Americas prior to the Vikings. Given how many Polynesians must have given their lives to map out the ocean currents that led to the fragments of rock jutting out of the ocean, it was apparently something intrinsic to the species, but no longer as strong a yearning.

And I never precluded the use of robots to get us where we're going, at least initially. I do think that there is tremendous hubris in the fields of science when it comes to what we know and what is left for us to discover. It does seem like there's a lot of space out there, and the distance which once seemed so insignificant to the early sci fi writers now seems insurmountable. I take Pascal's Wager (or at least the fallacious logic that drives it) and say that the actions we must take to get us out there would benefit the human race as a whole far more than it would hurt. To give up would be to surrender to a nihilism quite endemic in the species. Consider for a moment the construction of the cathedrals. Would such populist public work projects even be possible in this day and age? Would the average Joe be willing to start a project, knowing that he would not be able to live to see its completion? If we don't get off this rock, I blame that attitude far more than I blame the laws of physics.

To get back to the present topic, it's possible that the railgun technology being developed could serve as a kind of propulsion, but it seems as if they've worked out the mechanics of the propulsion, and only need to get the scale down pat. They know how to send something really fast, but they want to weaponize it, to better kill at a distance, an attitude that has never won us many friends. As a result, I'd pull money out of this program.

Finally, I cannot really respond to your dismissal of a manned trip to Mars, because it's clear that you don't see what I and so many others see. Maybe it's a simple matter of me being that Polynesian sitting on the shore of Rapa Nui, wondering what other islands were out there. You, on the other hand, would rather we invent some better way to catch fish, or to figure out what to tell people so they don't chop all the freaking trees down and doom us all to a nasty population crash. Your instinct and my instinct don't run contrary to each other, as long as I'm willing to plant a few trees on my way out to sea. What you learn and what you do help me to do what I want, and what I might learn would benefit you and what you do.

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