Time Travel

[paint3dblack]

Is it possible to go into the future change things, then go back into the past.

 

Let's say you go into the future and kill your friend. Then you go back in time, and plan not to kill your friend does your friend die?

[reyam200]

Is it possible to go into the future change things, then go back into the past.

i don't see why you would want to.

you don't have to travel to the future to change it.

 

1: your friend would die if you came back after the time you left to kill him, because you will and already have killed him, but if you returnd to a time before you left, you could then change the timeline buy deciding not to go.

 

2:you could change it by stopping your past self from going(as in the movie "back to the futrue").

 

1: being if the time travel changed the current timeline.

2: being if it made an alternate timeline.

 

Time is a funny thing.

[ecoli]

There are lots of time paradoxes, which leads many scientist to conclude that time travel is impossible. Some scientists say that by time traveling, you slip into an alternate universe, so paradoxes don't matter. I've heard one theory (even the author didn't take seriously) that you can't travel into the past, but you can travel into the future so far, that you come into a time when the current universe is dead and a new one is reborn in exactly the same way. You can experiance past events by traveling really far into the future.

[Sayonara]

The thing is, "time paradoxes" are not time paradoxes at all. They are human reasoning paradoxes, and without the ability to test them we have no idea how the universe would deal with such scenarios.

[Genecks]

The thing is, "time paradoxes" are not time paradoxes at all. They are human reasoning paradoxes, and without the ability to test them they have no idea how the universe would deal with such scenarios.

 

Exactly human reasoning.

[JohnB]

Didn't we have this conversation next week?

[macmac]

The simple way to find out is by trial and error. For all we know this is already happening in a 5th dimension.

[GuardianTech]

Time doesn't allow for paradoxes. Have any of you heard about the multi-verse theory? That every time someone makes a choice, a new universe is made. So techniquelly, you may travel to the future, and kill your friend... And then catch up with yourself in the future, and watch as your friend died. Why you would do such a thing... I'll never understand... BUT if you traveled into the past, killed your friend, and then tried to travel back to your own time, you would STRICKLY SPEAKING IN THE MULTI-VERSE THEORY,You would not only be transversing time, but ALSO universes as well.

[Forensicmad]

Never heard of that Multi-verse theory - interesting.

If a new universe is created for EVERY choice, thats got to be quite a few of them out there.

 

I wonder about the universe that was created to face the choice of not bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If we live in the one where we did, I wonder what the world is like which plays the story of not bombing them.

Something to think about.

[GuardianTech]

According to the theory, there is, and will be an infinite number of universes ever growing, out there. Or in there, whatever.

[GutZ]

Factoring Humanity (book ) BASED on multiple universe theory.

 

The more you think about time travel the more redundant it seems to be thinking about it.

[padren]

I don't think the theory really has you "creating" alternate universes...if it did...and if we could tap it...we could tap all the power humanity will ever need out of the simple decision of whether to eat pancakes or waffles for breakfast.

 

If the alternate universe theory has merit, I'd imagine it would include all possible universes already existing, and we experience a possible outcome in the same way we experience a moment of time....that is, the present is no more special than the present you'll experience in 6 months, but they are points on a static track, and it only seems special from our perspective.

 

I think the universe, including time and (if it exists) probability, could be described as a single unchanging glass marble, in which each molecule of glass, and how its connected to other molecules in x,y,z represent the connections between points of x,y,z,t[,p] in relation to the causal and spatial and probable bonds that connect energy/matter via the laws of physics.

 

 

 

 

In that case, you no more create an alternate universe with a choice than you create a hallway on the other side of a door you choose to open.

 

 

Edit: Ok, that last shot of whiskey either helped or hurt, but I'll try to say it this way:

 

All moments of our existence are experienced at once without relation to time, but we precieve that we are experiencing a moment in time because, each of those moments of experience (created by the layout and state of our brain's neural makeup) are seperate. Since the state of the brain's data/processing system at any moment is based on the state it was in a moment before, (but not at all on the state of the brain that will come next in time), we preceive a steady flow of time and causal continuity from the past forward. The memory of the past though, is not the same as experiencing the past, and the past is as seperate from our vantage point as the future, regardless of how recent or long since.

 

Instead of thinking of a dot on a timeline where memory is looking back, and you can't see forward, think of it as at each point you can only look "down" and that "down" contains an ever increasing record of the past as it is recorded in the present state of the brain.

From that perspective all points have a static set of data below them, being at any point gives the illusion that that point is the "current" present, even though its static and unchanging just ink on the paper.

[Sayonara]

Time doesn't allow for paradoxes.

And you know this because...?

[mooeypoo]

I have to point out something: Time is something we are affected by, but do not percieve. It is like a "Fourth Dimention" not in terms of universes dimentions, but in a sense of us actually able to understand and "see" it.

 

We percieve three dimentions, and therefore are able to at least mostly control them: build up high, jump, understand gravity and the laws that operate within those "three dimentions" that we understand.

 

That said, our clocks don't measure time, they measure it's effect on us: Perhaps if we manage to one day understand the full scale of what time is and how it is embedded in space around us - whether it is a "mesh" in "spacetime continuum" as startrek puts it, or a ticking clock in the hands of some diety somewhere - we might be able to understand better all those "paradoxes" we seem to have.

 

You can explain those paradoxes in a few ways, each would be some sort of theory on the function of time. We don't know yet, but we might one day figure out a way to control time so functionaly, that we would laugh at today's paradoxes, just like we laugh at the paradoxes that existed 500 years ago about the world's "flatness"

 

I think the better question is whether or not we SHOULD manipulate time, and whether or not it will turn out to be a good thing or a very bad thing. I think anyone trying to do that might go insane.

 

But then again, aren't we all insane already...?

 

~moo

[GutZ]

I have a question is time travel regarded as "fast forwarding or rewinding a tape" or more of an alternative path that links back to the normal time line, like "merging on and off a highway".

[mooeypoo]

I guess it depends what theories you built your belief on time-travel on.

 

Personally, I love the way "Back to the Future" trilogy did the paradox-solving, as they had "seperate timelines", kind of like having different universe-dimention to each change they did in the past.

 

Sounds pretty good to me, though, naturally, it's not the only theory out there, and it might create other paradoxes aswell.

 

~moo

[Mole]

"How to build a time machine" by Paul Davies.

 

I read it at around my exams... hell if they went pear-shaped and I had a pair or two of black holes handy I could take resits without eating into my summer hols.

 

Basically this book states that you can't go back further than your start point. It also said something about rotating black holes and a hell of a lot of energy, but I've forgotten most of it. Long story short: Take two black holes which are orbiting one another, Input alot of energy, wait a while (as long as you want your time machine to stretch between) then do the same thing with another pair of black holes... and voila, you'll have a bridge between the two times and places in space-time.

 

Or something like that.

 

Plus: If time travel WAS (was/is/will be) possible, wouldn't someone have come back (come back/gone forth/etc) to tell us so???

[mooeypoo]

If you've seen Startrek (as long as we're discussing "scientific" shows ) then perhaps in the future they figured out that coming back to warn/change the past will cause bigger damage..?

 

Bah. I don't know, but that actually was one of the better-explained things in sci-fi throughout the movies; the "Rule" of no-manipulating-the-past.

 

The fact we didnt have anyone coming from the future doesn't mean they didn't try and were stopped. If you have timetravel, you cannever fail - if you failed stopping a "time-snitch" once, you just go back again and try again.. until you get it right..

 

I think...

 

~moo

[reor]

Let's just assume time travel IS possible, how would you go about to test or prove it? If you were to send a probe you'd have to make sure it survives the journey and doesn't corrupt the timeline by exposing sensitive data.

[mooeypoo]

I'd just go to the past and see what it was like.

 

Don't know about you, but this would've proven it for me..

 

~moo

[cpwmatthews]

If as you say that a new universe is created at every choice then where would all of them coexist? The big question we all would be asking would be "What if" What this says to me is that we can all delve into the future by Planning out our options like a game of chess.

[Teotihuacan]

Let's just assume time travel IS possible, how would you go about to test or prove it? If you were to send a probe you'd have to make sure it survives the journey and doesn't corrupt the timeline by exposing sensitive data.

 

History:

 

5,000 years ago, the time probe was a Pyramid and yes, the Timeline wasn't disturbed untill the tomb was opened, exposing the sensitive and deadly virus or as it was known then, King Tut's curse.

 

He was shooting to traverse Eternity.

[reor]

I'd just go to the past and see what it was like.

 

Don't know about you' date=' but this would've proven it for me..

 

~moo[/quote']

You mean you'd risk being torn apart by the Gates Of Doom™?? You're one keen one!

[Hanso]

Time travel is possible.

 

We record and live by a system that we control, if it can be done, then it can be undone.

 

Although when I say time travel is possible, I don't think you can create any paradox's, like your grandfather paradox, or multiverse paradox. It's just not possible to travel backwards in "time" as our natural momentum is forward.

 

However, if I were to jump in a space shuttle and travel at say 10 x the speed of light in one direction for 6 months, I would have aged 6 months while on returning to earth, I find that Earth has aged 1 year, because I followed a differant system from Earth.

 

Or if I were to travel 20, even 30 times that speed, the gap would get bigger and my body would not age the same as my 'friend' on Earth. So in effect, I'm time travelling. Just without the paradox's.

 

The grandfather paradox is a funny thing. If I were to go back and kill my grandfather who was aged 20 at the time, would I still be born?

 

Yes.

 

What I'm doing is killing a differant version of him. He already existed before I built a time machine, and when I returned to the present, he would still be there, none the wiser.

 

Time is like rendering frames, taking living polaroid's, you would need to kill every version of your grandfather, from his first moment of his conception untill the moment you left. Even when you return, his life has not been affected because the rendering process continues with your return. You would need to skip into the future, ahead of the process, to do the dastardly deed on your grandad. Even then, you have only changed the future and not the past.

 

But that's not possible (imo). Time travel is.