Is Cryogenics a form of Time Travel?

@QuinticNon,

If it is, then sleeping is time travel.

1 Reply

@QuinticNon,

Excellent point!

So is it or not?

1 Reply

@QuinticNon,

QuinticNon;124892 wrote:

Excellent point!

So is it or not?

A person could say that doing nothing is still a "forward" motion thru time. I suppose "time travel" is used as a phrase that means "unusual time travel." I would say cryogenics is unsual enough to qualify for what some might call subjective time-travel.

0 Replies

@QuinticNon,

Hey, I like that "subjective time-travel"... Reminds me of the chick flicks my girl makes me suffer through. What goes by fast for her is an eternity for me.

I've been considering Jebediah's comparison to sleep. On second thought, I'll have to reject that comparison. Blood flow and brain activity are still "moving through time" whilst sleeping. I think cryogenics stops everything, freezing it still. Yet, the encased body is still rotating around planet earth, rotating around sun. So does that qualify as movement through space? Is there a difference between voluntary and involuntary movement through space?

1 Reply

@QuinticNon,

QuinticNon;125997 wrote:

Hey, I like that "subjective time-travel"... Reminds me of the chick flicks my girl makes me suffer through. What goes by fast for her is an eternity for me.

I've been considering Jebediah's comparison to sleep. On second thought, I'll have to reject that comparison. Blood flow and brain activity are still "moving through time" whilst sleeping. I think cryogenics stops everything, freezing it still. Yet, the encased body is still rotating around planet earth, rotating around sun. So does that qualify as movement through space? Is there a difference between voluntary and involuntary movement through space?

If time is conceived as a fourth dimension, I suppose that time-movement is as relative as space-movement. It depends how we define time, doesn't it?

I once considered trying to write a story about Sleepers who "time-traveled" with Cryogenics. They could set timers to wake them up every 50 years, spend a week or two looking around, and go back to bed. Repeat.

Perhaps at some point they will have found that the human species has conquered aging. Maybe they can trade accumulated souvenirs for money and buy some ambrosia.

They could meet a young adult, go back to bed, and on what for them is the next day see this young adult as an old man. Also they could beget children one day and see them at 50 the next.

If the sleepers start young, they could see their children as elders many times. They could watch their genes spread out.

Would they spend much time, this team of sleepers, gambling on the future?

2 Replies

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;126003 wrote:

If time is conceived as a fourth dimension, I suppose that time-movement is as relative as space-movement. It depends how we define time, doesn't it?

I once considered trying to write a story about Sleepers who "time-traveled" with Cryogenics. They could set timers to wake them up every 50 years, spend a week or two looking around, and go back to bed. Repeat.

Perhaps at some point they will have found that the human species has conquered aging. Maybe they can trade accumulated souvenirs for money and buy some ambrosia.

They could meet a young adult, go back to bed, and on what for them is the next day see this young adult as an old man. Also they could beget children one day and see them at 50 the next.

If the sleepers start young, they could see their children as elders many times. They could watch their genes spread out.

Would they spend much time, this team of sleepers, gambling on the future?

Sounds like a science fiction novel. Maybe the sleepers would have some overarching plan to structure society. They would wake up at critical moments and take action. It's a variation on Azimov's Foundation Trilogy but still pretty cool idea. They would keep their work secret or maybe there would be a secret society that protected them...

1 Reply

@Reconstructo,

Reconstructo;126003 wrote:

I once considered trying to write a story about Sleepers who "time-traveled" with Cryogenics. They could set timers to wake them up every 50 years, spend a week or two looking around, and go back to bed. Repeat.

I think it's a hit! I immediately tried to put myself into the scenario. And I like Deckards idea about the secret society that protects them. I see a that society as a closed system, so that groups of individuals take yearly shifts. One person wakes up, and another goes to sleep. 100 different people would cover a 100 year cycle (unless the awakened one gets hit by a bus)... Need some fail safe...

Oh the drama! Some would not want to continue, throwing off the cycle. A year awake, keep notes and pass it along to the next awakened one, of whom starts an affair with the previous awakened one's babe... Oh the drama!

Pull out that quill and get some ink on the page!

---------- Post added 02-07-2010 at 10:54 PM ----------

Deckard;126005 wrote:

They would keep their work secret or maybe there would be a secret society that protected them...

I once started my very own secret society. Ended it out of guilt. Felt like I was breaking the secret every time I invited someone to join. Couldn't deal with the self inflicted paradox.

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@Deckard,

Deckard;126005 wrote:

Sounds like a science fiction novel. Maybe the sleepers would have some overarching plan to structure society. They would wake up at critical moments and take action. It's a variation on Azimov's Foundation Trilogy but still pretty cool idea. They would keep their work secret or maybe there would be a secret society that protected them...

I love sci-fi. It's a juicy theme that could be taken in many directions. I'm not surprised that someone has already tapped into it.

0 Replies

@QuinticNon,

QuinticNon;124838 wrote:

It sounds right out of the traditional sci-fi scenario. Jump into the tube today, then jump out of the tube 200 years from now. Would the traveler notice time passing, or would her consciousness have actually time traveled?

This is a long used idea of science fiction writers, the the traveler at near light speed, relative to his space vehicle, sees time flowing normally according to his frame of reference, while someone still held in the confines of say earthly gravity ages much faster when clocks are compared. The spaceship racing at near light speed, from the view point of a guy on earth, would seemed to have almost stopped.

The earth bound guys clock would appear to be racing at an unimaginably faster rate, relative to the clock on the spaceship.

Thus in a round about way physics allow for time travel, but only into the future :perplexed:

1 Reply

@Alan McDougall,

Alan McDougall;126932 wrote:

Thus in a round about way physics allow for time travel, but only into the future :perplexed:

Even if you could go back in time, it would be future time according to the observer.

It would be fun to go into the future and see what sort of developments have happened, the state of humanity but I don't think I could actually adjust to living too far into the future. I just wouldn't have the mentality for it. Think about it. Imagine if you took someone from out of the Renaissance or Ancient Egypt and placed them into our time. The sight of cars, planes, televisions, computers would probably send them into sock. It would be information overload. I imagine something similar would happen to me if you placed me a thousand years give or take a hundred, into the future. Despite the fact that I am technological, I bet there would be things far beyond my comprehension that far down the line.

Going into the past is something I have never liked. It is not so much about already knowing what to expect, but instead the implications of actually going there. You could effect so many things in so many bad ways that even if you had good intentions you never know what the actual results would be. For example, you might want to go back pre-ww2 germany and assassinate Hitler before he is known politically. Then you return to your time to discover that someone else became the "Hitler" but they were just some random soldier who was meant to be killed on the battle field which never happened because you just prevented it. Maybe it was the other way around? Maybe it was six million Germans who were killed instead? Maybe because the bomb was developed in Germany and used on it's own people because it was stolen by this alternate "Hitler", I don't know.

I like the time I live in, I always say, that I live better than all the Kings in the past. Think about it. Those kings thought they had it made, but compare my life, with theirs. My simple life trumps all the kings of the past even though I am not royalty I have more in one day than they had in probably their entire life. I assume that the in the future it will be similar. They will look back to our time and think we were in the stone age.

"They actually had to physically drive their autos around. They crashed a lot and many died at something so easily preventable today. They actually flew in flying tubes called airplanes. Imagine that? How barbaric and insane. Why would you lock yourself into a death trap like that? I don't know they were just lacking the knowledge we have. Oh here comes the train to mars, well talk to you later. Thought reader off."

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple;126943 wrote:

"They actually had to physically drive their autos around. They crashed a lot and many died at something so easily preventable today. They actually flew in flying tubes called airplanes. Imagine that? How barbaric and insane. Why would you lock yourself into a death trap like that? I don't know they were just lacking the knowledge we have. Oh here comes the train to mars, well talk to you later. Thought reader off."

This is good. That just makes me want to see the future. Imagine the entertainment, the medical tech. (Assuming humans survive themselves.)

Sure, it would be disorienting, but one would be like the "savage" in Brave New World, except hopefully happier with the attention.

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@Jebediah,

Jebediah;124873 wrote:

If it is, then sleeping is time travel.

Can't agree with this interpetation, as it's naturally occuring and your aging, forfilling your natural life.

Imo you should be able with time travel exceed your natural life expectency, be it going forwards or backwards in time.

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Is Cryogenics a form of Time Travel?

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