Time Travel...the impossible possibility

[Tzar Sectus]

My two cents on this topic... first of all, I can't comment on any of the technical aspects of this. I have no clue at all why travelling faster than the speed of light allows time travel to the past, or what the heck a tachyon is. But I can comment on the logic on travelling back/forth.

 

Anyway, let's say if a person (let's call him Joe) goes back into time when he was a little boy, and he kills his younger self. Thus preventing himself from getting older and going back into time to kill himself. This is a very clear paradox. Is this a reason why time travel isn't possible, or would this just be two different time dimensions, where in one Joe died as a young boy, and in the other he grew up to kill himself? Now then, if it's so that there are infinite amount of these time dimensions then life itself will seem almost pointless, where if time travel is allowed you (or anyone) can time travel and mess up time as you see fit, forging the universe into your own playground (hmm, perfect for megalomaniacs =p ).

 

Anyway, let's expand this a bit. We go back to Joe's situation, we have TD1 (time dimension 1) where he grew up normally and then went back into time, and TD2 where he died as a young boy (and obviously never got the chance to do any time travelling). Now then, if TD1's Joe decides to have some more fun, he travels back even further back into time and he decides to kill himself while he was a baby, what has happened then to TD2? In TD2 he died as a young boy, but how could he die as a young boy when he died as a baby? This means that these time dimensions must exist in threads, this new TD where he died as a baby will exist as a sub-dimension of TD1. And TD2 exists independently with it's chance of it's own subdimensions if someone gets the "smart" idea to mess up time more.

 

And then we have of course the obvious consequences of time travel, some guy may go really far back into time and do something drastic which will wipe out the entire mankind, or make the French take over the world (which would be even worse, think of that, everyone speaking french! eeek! =p ). And even the smallest thing a person does would have it's effect on the future. But then again, if time has infinite dimensions this wouldn't matter at all except for the man who actually did this. We would only be talking french in another time dimension =p

 

Another thing, if time has only one dimension with all the paradoxes that has for time travel and if time travel actually exists, why haven't we seen any time travel in our time? If time travel is going to be invented, then surely someone would have done a lot of it already and we would already have seen some results. After all, the present is the future's past.

 

For conclusion if time travel ever gets invented, I surely hope it gets banned immediately, and measures are done to prevent anyone from doing it. Even though it has some nice scientific purposes (for instance the chance to see how the past *really* was and finally document the entire mankind's history) it simply has too many bad sides with it.

 

Now I'll stop talking before my head explodes out of this silly babble...

 

-Remi

[Luc Solar]

(Didn't read all posts, so someone might have pointed this out already:)

 

If time travel could be accomplished, don't you think we knew about it already?

 

Surely we would have had visitors by now...but since we (as far as I know) have not, time travel won't happen, ever.

 

The only way it might be possible is if someone inveted it but never used it. And somehow I doubt that.

 

And there's really no use in "waiting for someone to invent it", 'cause if someone had or will, time would seize to make any difference anymore.

 

Actually, there is no point in even pondering about the whole subject - time travel backwards is impossible. If it could EVER (no matter how far in the future) be done, we'd now about it today. See my point?

 

O.o - I think I managed to confuse even myself!

[ShadowTemplar]

Originally posted by C'jais

I can't imagine going back in time. Forward is fine, but backwards would likely create some serious paradoxes.

 

Going forwards is simple: Invent Cold Sleep. As Jah said it is already happening. But then the present would be past, to which you cannot go back (due to the Grandmother Paradox).

 

Anyway, I know absolutely nothing about this subject, but Astronomy is still in R&D, IMO. Basically if you go onto interstellar levels you are approaching metaphysics at a freightening rate (or so I think, but again: I don't know enough to say anything of consideration).