tomgwyther

In the long scissors/two pieces of paper idea; Nothing is actually moving. No mass is being accelerated. No object is going from point A to point B. Moreover; If you put an object at the closing point of the scissors (I.E as if you were trying to cut it in half. but actually push it forward.) You would not be able to accelerate the object beyond the speed of light because you would need an infinate amount of energy to close the scissors.

I think you should do some reading and find out what's actually going on in the universe, not what's going on in your head!

With 25,000 humans being killed every day from starvation and curable diseases; who’s going to miss a few hundred rats?

You would have given your past self the wrong lottery numbers and would have won nothing ... You would have seemed to have changed the past as you know it, but only because you had extensive knowledge of the future. but then that's what you were going to do anyway. One thing I failed to mention in my orgional statement was that; if you have precise knowledge of what we call 'the future' then you can indeed appear to change it... it would seem as though you'd changed it. but actually it was have going to have happened anyway. OR (If everything was 'sunshine and lolly-pops!') If you have precise knowledge of the future then you would change it in your own reality, but then there would be another reality running parallel to your own but both would be unaware of each others existance. Unfortunatly, neither of us has a time machine to test these two theories out! ---Absolute fixed causality (Sounds a bit depresing but still most likely) ---Two bodies sharing the same space and time but unaware of each others existance (Sounds like my parents in bed!) p.s. I've spent ten years reading temperal mechanics, Quantum mechanics, special and general relativity, and it all made perfect sense; I had it figured out until you posted your causality paradox!!! I guess I'd better do some hard-core thinking! P.P.S. it's good to lock horns with a similar interlect.... thanks Tom

Time is just natures way of stopping everything happening at once! We don't realy have any proof that time flows from past to future, only that events happen at different pionts in spacetime. This collection of events are what we call time. Consider this:- Winston Churchill is sat in his office in London wondering which way the war will go, At this piont he belives anything could happen and that he has complete free will. We in the future on the other hand (If we could go back in time and visit him) know exactly what's going to happen, down to the last detail. We could tell him everything thats going to happen, with precise acuracy, even what he was going to have for breakfast next week! He wouldn't be able to change any of it. In the same way, someone in the future could know exactly whats going to happen to you or I, having read it in a text book. we wouldn't be able to change it because we havn't experienced those events yet, but the future guy could easily tell us what we're going to be eating next week. Changing the future is as impossible as changing the past. Events past and present are have or will have happend events. Even if you did have a time machine, If you went back in time to try and change somthing, the event of you going back would always have been there anyway.