Time travel

[psi20]

Ok, here's a story.

I travel back in time with a wireless camera hooked up to me. My friend is monitoring me with the camera from a computer. I go back 20 minutes to the past to San Francisco, a 20 minute walk from my house.

 

a) What would the camera see?

b) Would the camera even work?

c) Can you even go back in time?

d) Would time be skewed?

[Sayonara]

Depends what method you are using to travel, and what the temporal rules are in the theory you are subscribing to in the question.

 

Now watch as people bash in their "I fink..." answers before any constraints are established. Mwa ha ha.

[Crash]

if time travel was possible, i dont know

[iglak]

i fink... assuming you travel back in time 20 minutes (somehow avoiding yourself and your friend), and at that moment your frind hooks up the TV to be able to recieve the information from the carmera you took. also at that moment you finish your walk to SanFransisco, then i don't see any reason why your friend wouldn't see a live video of SanFransisco at that moment.

 

a) you'd see SanFransisco as it is the moment you get there (if it's 20 minutes, that'd be the moment your friend hooks up the reciever)

b) no reason why it wouldn't (unless you went through something involving electrical disturbance, shorting out the camera... or something like that)

c) no idea

d) skewed? (what do you mean?)

[YT2095]

wouldn`t you need to keep the "gateway" that led back to that time open for the radio signals to reach your friend?

[Sayonara]

That's what I originally thought.

 

Question is, if you had an SVHS cable passing through the gateway from time1 (past) to time2 (present), but also left the cassette in time1 when you returned, would the playback on the monitor in time2 correspond with what was on the cassette in time2?

[YT2095]

it wouldld most likely "catch up" as you were watching but you`de have no way to prove it, as no mater what you did, it would be what you saw the second you did it, as light speed is finite, and even radio or electric SVHS signals (electrons) are bound by this speed. to get a signal back through the gate 20 mins ahead of time would violate this law, and as of yet, it`s inviolable.

[Sayonara]

If you're using a wormhole you pretty much violate nothing.

[Pinch Paxton]

Explorer has caused an error, and has now closed. You reboot to find the video finished 20 minutes ago. I guess!

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I fink you would get the signal 20 minutes before you leave. Then you leave and to exactly what you saw 20 minutes ago.

[iglak]

wait, i was saying that (assuming the reciever is initiated the instant he goes back in time) the reciever would pick up a signal from SanFransisco (assuming he got to SanFransisco in less than 20 minutes).

 

and if the reciever is initiated 20 minutes before he leaves, then i agree with Cap'n Refsmmat

 

unless they use a wormhole, have a very direct transmition that goes through the wormhole, or a wire, and DON'T walk for 20 minutes (as it would be hard to get a wire long enough and a direct wireless transmition strong enough) they won't see back in time.

 

also, this is assuming no traveling to the future. he's just traveling back in time 20 minutes to that he can get into SanFransisco around the same time he travels back in time

[-Demosthenes-]

What if you ddi get it 20 min before you left? Would that influence waht you did when you went back so it would be different, so it would influence the past you to do something else, and so on and so on.

I vote d man, time would be completely skewed!

[mooeypoo]

Time has no reason to be skewed, you didn't "touch" it.

If you'd meet yourself, time shouldnt get skewed either. You probably would, though.

 

And assuming your friend lit the TV on "time" (20 minutes before he knew he should), everything should be normal and dandy up to the point you meet yourself and get a heart attack, which in fact causes you to NOT go back to the past and therefore not meet yourself and.. and... you get it.

 

My opinion is that time won't be affected. I strongly believe in the "time strings" thing (Assuming time travel is possible, which is a whole different discussion), which means that if you go back to the past you don't change your OWN reality, you create a parallel one (like in "Back to the Future"), otherwise you fall into REALLY insane paradoxes (like the one i said with meeting yourself, not getting back to the past and so on and so on).

 

Time shouldn't be affected.

I'd make sure I find a solution to how I am not meeting myself, AND not being "doubled" by going back to the past.

 

That could be... bad ;p

 

~moo

[iglak]

i subscribe to the "time is linear" theory (which supprisingly few people believe in, oh well).

basically, you go back in time... this means that you are back in time, why would it mean anything else?

 

and if you DID turn on the TV/reciever exactly 20 minutes before you left, then you would either see something or see nothing.

 

if you see something, then you will think "cool, so it does work!" then you will send the person back in time 20 minutes and keep monitoring.

 

if you don't see something, then you decide not to go into the past because you now think that it won't work. (which is the exact reson you didn't see something)

or maybe you either hooked the reciever up wrong or your time machine doesn't work, those are possible.

 

this isn't one of those "unsolvable paradoxes" like killing yourself.

(in which my viewpoint is the same)

[Sayonara]

The thing about discussing time travel is that (A) humans always try to apply completely flawed constructs like temporal paradoxes, and (B) our languages by-and-large lack the grammar required to describe even a simple time travel experience.

 

I have some ideas about how to represent a lot of ideas more specifically but it's going to take me a weekend to design and present it all so it won't be happening now as I am busy on IHH. Maybe next week...

[mooeypoo]

iglak - this is exactly the reason why I'd rather believe in the "strings timelines" ;p

 

much easier than going paradoxy all over

 

And Sayonara - I agree about the grammar thing. I am not sure I understood the other thing you said about paradoxes so I htink I'll just have to wait for next week.

 

 

 

~moo

[psi20]

I think there are other languages that can talk about time travel easily. My science teacher last year said that some cultures think time is "vertical" or something. I don't know what he means, but that culture could probably talk about time traveling.

[mooeypoo]

I think that if we talk in a time-travel grammar, we'd wish we haden't gone back in time. Or forward into the future. those should be REALLY awful consequences.

 

'Sides, doesn't english have some sort of "time travel" tense -- I dont remember what its called i just remmber studying it in school, something about me finishing something before you finish something and what would happen if right now i want to warn you about something I tell you when I finish and you don't.

 

Whaaah. that was a complex sentence, I think I lost myself.

 

Anyways that kind of tense exists in english, I'm going to try and find an example, but if any of you know what I mean, you'd probably agree that english is probly one of the only languages equipped with time travel tense

 

~moo

[Esquire.J]

well it would not work because

 

20 mins in the past<----------------present-------------future

 

the signal from the camera would gain 20 minutes as it entered the present to get around it i suppose you could send the signal 40 minutes into the future and somehow have a way of a connection from the future to the present so you would have present connected to the past which is then connected to the future which sends back to the present.