Time Travel

[Kain]

If time travel was possible, the problem represented is 'How do I get back?'. The future would be easy because you could use the same facilities*unless they were destroyed or moved*. The past has a nausiating conundrum: The facility hasn't been created yet.

 

And lets say we have perfected going back in time. The most we could do is create a rift to see, not experience, the past. If someone were placed into say the civil war. He would cause a temporal paradox that could possibly derail the very fabric of reality if someone so much as SAW him. If he interacted in anyway with the civil war (ie: Using modern weaponry against the North or crashing a helicoptor into a southern base), things could happen that could result in our unfortunant time traveller's family history. Modern weaponry would cause the South to win the war and nobody could imagine the repocutions of that alteration (if the alteration is even allowd to happen, i'll get to that in a moment). He might even kill of an ancestor nessecary to his birth. Crashing a helicoptor would advance technology so quickly that he might not of been the traveler sent back.

 

Now lets say he does destroy the north. What would happen? Assume this man was a direct descendent of some guy who lived in the north and fought but died. History would reject the irritant and nothing would change (the man was never born and thus never went back in time and thus couldn't interfere in the war and thus the alterations never happened).

If he crashes his helicoptor, the technology rush would be phenominal, and he would be expelled because things may happen that would result in him not being the soul who goes to the past.

 

History abhors a paradox - Kain

[amadeus]

I read a short story on time travel once. Here's a quick synopsis. I thought it was pretty interesting.

 

A man walks home and finds his wife is cheating on him. He wants to exact revenge in a creative way, so he builds a time machine and goes back in time. He kills his wife's lovers parents and his wife's parents. Then he goes back. They're still there. He figures that he'll have to do something more significant to make something happen, so he goes back again and kills George Washington. He comes back to the future to find that still nothing is happening, but he is finding himself becoming a bit less stable. He continues making changes in history and he keeps getting less dense and matter-like, he starts becoming transparent and can't feel as well. Finally he disappears altogether. The analysis was that destroying things in his past destroyed his own history, since he was going back in his life. In essence, he was destroying history in his own world, and no one elses.

 

I thought this was quite interesting, something to chew on a bit if you're thinking about time travel.

[Master_Keralys]

Interesting. That goes back to part of multiverse, I think. The whole infinite number of universes = infinite number of realities. You can't affect the past without affecting the present. In fact, it could be argued that given that time is a dimension, affecting the future would also affect the present and the past. Which means that any alteration of time would really mess up the world. Imagine - someone messes up an Allied plan in WWII, and now everyone speaks German and thinks Jews are (sorry, were) evil mutant freaks. An underground resistance movement has been formed and...

 

whoa. Sorry, off topic, but you get the point.

[Cosmos Jack]

Very few people can argue with Stephen Hawking. I haven't had the opportunity for him to make me feel stupid, but I would love to. I did; however, once set beside a guy on a plain trip that had met and talked to him. This guy worked at NASA...

 

Anyway everything "SkinWalker" said plus I want to add something of my own. I said something about this in the "rational discussion thread."

 

All matter that has existed in the universe has always existed. The compounds that matter make up; however, have changed forms many many times. In order to travel back in time you must reverse this... Since Everything that has ever existed still exists. The atoms that made up the dinosaurs for example still exists; though, the dinosaurs themselves do not. I don't know if I'm getting this out right?

 

So unless you can build a machine that can literally reverse the changes that have taken place in the universe as a hole? Than you can't travel back in time. Time travel to the future is possible in a limited sense, but isn't really time travel.

 

Do I make any sense or do I just sound stupid?

[Lime-Light]

The problem with time travel, as previously mentioned, is the technology of physicaly being in a different time.

 

Personally, I say screw all that physical world crap. A friend refered me to a book that told of poeple with the ability to project thier conciousness to any point in the universe, without every phisicaly being there. Since time's flow is only a perception of our continual position in it, the most simple solution to me seems to be to merely project one's conciousness into another time. The movement of mass is much too cumbersome and energy consuming. This would also solve the problem of affecting other times, because I can't see how a conciousness merely experiencing time could affect it.

 

Also, these people with the ability say it is a latent one in every human being, and merely has to be excercised.

[Homuncul]

Lime-Light:

The problem with time travel, as previously mentioned, is the technology of physicaly being in a different time.

 

We still have a problem of whether it is possible, not mentioning the technology

 

A friend refered me to a book that told of poeple with the ability to project thier conciousness to any point in the universe, without every phisicaly being there. Since time's flow is only a perception of our continual position in it, the most simple solution to me seems to be to merely project one's conciousness into another time. The movement of mass is much too cumbersome and energy consuming. This would also solve the problem of affecting other times, because I can't see how a conciousness merely experiencing time could affect it.

 

I like that idea. In the modifyed model of quantum consciousness by Penrose such thing is obviously possible for us. If time is just some type of universes in the collection of universes called multiverses, than travelling in time is in no way different from from travelling to other dimentions, which we do as the theory points. It assumes that our mechanism for making decisions is a multiversal thing, that we make decisions after counciling with another-universe-selves.

 

Cosmos Jack:

All matter that has existed in the universe has always existed. The compounds that matter make up; however, have changed forms many many times. In order to travel back in time you must reverse this... Since Everything that has ever existed still exists. The atoms that made up the dinosaurs for example still exists; though, the dinosaurs themselves do not. I don't know if I'm getting this out right?

 

It's intuitive and therefore nonsensial in these matters. Why do people still take Time Machine serious? Traveling in time involves you getting from one snapshot of time to the other. It does not involve continous path from frame 300 to frame 200. Our recent experiments with teleportation are probably a good point to that

 

I don't know but I think that as soon as we understand that we can make time travel possible, we wouldn't need it anymore. What's the point in disturbing time if not for some noninteractive observation of our history. Perhaps we could further use such technology for something else.

[Master_Keralys]

The best possible use would be to confirm (or reject) history. Validate or invalidate all the ideas out there, and see what's really happened. But you can't just go back and play with our history. If someone were to even appear (like has been stated before), it would totally mess up the universe. Here's a wierd thought: you get stuck their and marry your great, great, great.... great grandmother(father?). You're still born because it was a paradoxical loop fated to happen. You're your own great... grandson(daughter). Paradox! But if you think about it, it could theoretically happen. You exist because in ten years you're going to go back in time and get married and have descendants that will have you...

 

Okay, head hurts now. Admittedly, that last scenario is extraordinarily improbable, especially considering DNA. But it's not impossible as long as time travel isn't.

 

It'd be a lot better to simply observe the past than to actually interact with it; interaction would mess up the universe (or at least our little part of it ).