Instant travel?

[4thdeminsionists]

Would it be possible to travel instantly in time by bending matter in the 4th dimension? like here's an example:

A B

whats the quickest distance between these to points? In the 3rd dimension it would be a straight line. However in the fourth dimenison couldn't you fold the paper (this isn't really a piece of paper but imagine that it is) to make the points touch, eliminating distance?

[brasileiro]

Well, I guess you would be asking "Is instant teleportation possible?" And for now, the answer is no. We will have to find a way to dissipate matter, then transport it and reassemble it without anything going wrong. We would have to work with wormholes. There was actually a thing on the Sci Fi Channel about 5 years ago telling us the way to make one, but, they aren't able to make it work... of course. We just don't have the science to do it yet.

[4thdeminsionists]

this has nothing to do with dissapating matter, rather bending it in the fourth dimension, and then reapering in another spot in the 3rd

[wendy]

Here we end up with a really bizarre question.

Consider a peice of paper. Beings living in it (ie solid in 2-space) will never detect the proversions that happen in 3D. It is still graph-paper to them, with x-y axies etc, regardless of how much we scrunch it up.

A photo scrunched up does not transfer people across the room.

The real issue is not so much that two distant sides of the photo can be brought into apposition, but the effect of cutting a great slice of photo out and putting it somwehere else.

Most common bends of paper will induce a parity reversal. That is, even if the thing were possible, you would become a great lump of antimatter, which will tidy up some matter in quite a spectular way...

So, it is probably not possible, and the consequences are more dangerous than not.

[Keiji]

If you folded it round into a cylinder with an overlap, you wouldn't get a parity reversal.

[jinydu]

iNVERTED, how did you become a tetraspace native? I have more posts than you, but I'm just a tetraspace visitor.

[Keiji]

Because I'm an admin. Alkaline started as a tetraspace native, so why can't I?

[wendy]

But to roll it to a cylinder, you need an open edge. You don't have open edges on boundless space.

[Keiji]

True, but couldn't you make an S-shape, and then go through two layers?

[wendy]

All-space has no boundary. In order to connect remote corners, you need to do a wormhole thing.

On the other hand, the other assumption is because space is curved, it must be curved *in* something. This is not the case. *any space*, including the euclidean metric, is fundementally curved, without a medium for curvature.

W

[timespace]

Would it be possible to travel instantly in time by bending matter in the 4th dimension? like here's an example:

A B

whats the quickest distance between these to points? In the 3rd dimension it would be a straight line. However in the fourth dimenison couldn't you fold the paper (this isn't really a piece of paper but imagine that it is) to make the points touch, eliminating distance?

I recently read a book that has this explanation in it about the fourth dimension called A Wrinkle In Time Very sci-fi, but its not bad.

[bsaucer]

Sounds like a "wormhole effect"...

[Sliver]

Think of it this way: 3D person B picks up 2D person A from a point on his 2D world and places him down three feet away from that point. To person A, he has just teleported three feet, because he cannot view or comprehend 3-dimensional travel. Now think of it the same way with the 3rd and 4th dimensions. 4D person C picks up person B from Chicago and places him down in Miami. To person B, he has just teleported.

[bsaucer]

If an object "instantly" teleports from point A to point B, then according to special relativity, the transport is only "instant" in a particular frame of reference. In other (moving) frames, the object may be in both places at once, or it may be in neither place, for a finite interval of time.

Doesn't this mean that it's total mass is double (or missing) during that brief interval of time? Doesn't that violate the conservation of mass/energy?

[PWrong]

Think of it this way: 3D person B picks up 2D person A from a point on his 2D world and places him down three feet away from that point. To person A, he has just teleported three feet, because he cannot view or comprehend 3-dimensional travel.

Imagine this scenario. Person A gets on an aeroplane and immediately falls asleep. The plane flies to another country, and person A wakes up. To person A, he has just teleported to another country because he can't comprehend anything while he's asleep.

The flaw in your argument is that you're considering an intelligent observer, when all you really need is a clock. In your scenario, A's clock will continue to tick even if A can't comprehend what's going on around him.

Furthermore, assuming space is approximately flat, the total distance travelled by A is more than 3 feet, and it will actually take longer for him to teleport.

[miseleigh]

That all depends. Is the shortest distance between two points in tetraspace still a line? :P

If so, teleportation is a moot point. And as far as I know, it would be.

[jinydu]

That all depends. Is the shortest distance between two points in tetraspace still a line?

It is in R^4

[wendy]

One should not confuse R4 (an array of four reals), with E4 (euclidean 4-space). R4 applies with equal meaning to say, the projective 4-space, where E4 is only the horoterix.

None the same, a straight line is the shortest way of getting between two points in E4, H4, S4, etc. For all of these spaces, there exists a shorter line outside of space, but one has to severely make the curvature go to -oo to make points side-by-side adjacent.

In terms of the hyperbolic curvature as 1, one can have a euclidean 3-space (horochorix), as a horosphere, and then use a ruler measured in euclidean distances, but the scale running to the time-honoured series like

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, ....

Suppose the curvature term is taken at 4000 miles. In order to travel something like 610 * 4000 miles, one would travel a distance of 15 * 4000 miles of hyperbolic space.

It's kind of like the chord through the earth is shorter than the trip overland, but on a grander scale.

Wendy

[jinydu]

So what is the difference between R4 and E4?

[houserichichi]

It depends on who you talk to - I had one prof who used the two interchangeably (wrong) while the rest used E^n to represent the affine/metric/topological space (depending on the context) and R^n its vector space.

[wendy]

Some euclidean geometries (like inversive-geometry), don't nicely map onto R4.

In any case, one can make R4 any four quantities that map onto reals, eg (money, time, length, weight) forms an R4, but never an E4.

E4 also implies a relation between the axies of the R4, that is, one can with some lee-way swap the axies about without distorting things, eg length = height, but money <> time.

W

[TeamFarrell]

I may have no place to make this comeent, but this theory sounds like it's straight out of the novel "A Wrinkle in Time" in which they actually do bend the third dimension for that one instant to bring two points together. After they get to their destination everything returns to normal.

As far as I know though that is impossible.

[faranya]

OK, just abuot the instantanious travel...wouldn't it always take time? Even folding space over and transposing yourself at the other end, there would be time spent in transition, right? Now, if it was dealing with matter, you would have to cease to exist at your starting point, and assemble at the end point at the same time...not instantaniously or else there would be 2 of you existing at the same time...or am I WAY off base with my thoughts?

[Kahlar]

Of course you could teleport if it were somehow possible to go into the 4d world and and bend everything for your disposal. It would be like walking through a doorway, except the doorway represents 100s of miles or maybe even a little thing like the other end of your house. I don't see why it would take a long time though.

[bo198214]

Of course you could teleport if it were somehow possible to go into the 4d world and and bend everything for your disposal.

I really ask myself, what my 4d neighbour would say if always somebody comes along and bends his world at will. Same for 3d.

[moonlord]

Spin seems to remain a problem... How about spin-0 particles? What would happen to them if they pass through? Would they just 'teleport'? That's what seems logical to me. Seems.

If this is the case, then almost-instant teleportation is possible. Encode some mass into photons, bend space, move photons through contact point, decode the photons into mass.

[houserichichi]

I'm not sure I see where the problem is with spin-0 particles...care to elaborate?

[Nick]

Would it be possible to travel instantly in time by bending matter in the 4th dimension? like here's an example:

A B

whats the quickest distance between these to points? In the 3rd dimension it would be a straight line. However in the fourth dimenison couldn't you fold the paper (this isn't really a piece of paper but imagine that it is) to make the points touch, eliminating distance?

Imagine a 2d senario:
Yes, I think you could. If the two points on the paper were connected so that they were the same point, and someone moved across the point, then they would still be on the same point, except now they have a choice: continue on the plane they were on or move the the other side of the plane. Because he remains on the same point, it would be instantaneous, because *technically* he isn't moving.

[moonlord]

@house: Well, you get a parity reversal when you pass a contact point. What if the spin is 0? 0 = -0 so the particle should remain unchanged.

@irockyou: This has been discussed earlier. It gives birth to parity reversal problems (aka, you will be antimatter).

[Zweistein]

Hello!

I don't think you CAN bend 4D space. Ok, us humans can easily bend a small piece of paper - almost 2D space. But to bend a piece of paper that's as big as a city, we would need to push it all the way through. For that, don't we need the same amount of energy, or more, than for simply moving from one place to another?