Zeo Posted October 14, 2002 Posted October 14, 2002 Let us assume that time travel has just been made within our grasp. That the entire technology has been perfected and taht we can go anywhere in time. Also, let us assume that a close loved one has suddenly expired. So, driven by rage, you go back in time using the time machine and stop the death, and change time itself. However, when time itself continued from the very point from which you changed time, when if got to the point that you eventually went back in time to change the past, you have no reason to go back, hence you never do go back, and your loved one is never saved from death because you never went back to change it. Hence, time collapses upon itself. This is very similar to the Grandfather Paradox, which states that if you were to go back in time to kill your grandfather, he never has your father as his son, hence, his son and your father do not exist, so that they can not have you. Then, you cease to exist and you never go back to kill your grandfather in the first place. Let us refer to my first scenario with the close loved one. If you were to change the past, then they would die anyway, because that is how time repairs itself. If they didn't die...well, you get the idea. But based on this theory, let us assume that you cannot change the future also. for those of you who have seen the movie "Back to the Future Part II", then you would know that the good doctor went back in time from the future to warn the main character that his child does a very bad thing. Hence, the main character travels into the future to prevent it. When time continues from this point, then the doctor has no reason to go back in time to warn the main character. hence, time collapses upon itself. but of course, time will probably repair itself and make up some other reason for the doctor to go back. either way, it is impossible to change the future or past to your own liking. Hence, we are walking a path with no turns.
blike Posted October 14, 2002 Posted October 14, 2002 I've thought about that before. But what if there is nothing that prompts you to go back in time, you just go for the ride? As long as you only observe there should be no problem? Right? Hehe, you should add a "Maybe" or "Somtimes" answer.
fafalone Posted October 14, 2002 Posted October 14, 2002 I believe that if something already happened that you can't alter it, only observe it.
aman Posted October 14, 2002 Posted October 14, 2002 Since we live in reality and some day may not be able to distinguish it from virtual reality I believe we can go back in a virtual reality past and do whatever we want till you die of old age. Whats the real difference? Your born, you do stuff, you die, no matter what. Just aman
Sayonara Posted February 3, 2003 Posted February 3, 2003 Originally posted by the GardenGnome Interesting theory. Hardly. It's nothing new. In fact the grandfather paradox, as this is an instance of, isn't the best regarded proof for the impossibility of time travel. Most people with the faintest notion of temporal mechanics laugh at this theory in much the same way that one would laugh at people who claim "you lose 70% of your body heat through your head".
fafalone Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 Besides, it's not logical. If you were going to do it, it would have always happened in the past therefore you would never have existed, and therefore it couldn't happen.
PogoC7 Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 You could, but you wouldn't be in the future. You would be stuck in the past and never excist in the future. It wouldn't always happen cause it can only happen once. Whats messed is if you went back again, once you killed your grandfather and living in the past (present for you by then). You go back agian and see yourself there about to kill your grandfather. Then there can be two of you.?.?
fafalone Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 No, you couldn't do it at all. If you went back into the past and killed your grandfather, you would have never existed to do it. It's only logical to conclude doing it is impossible.
Piccolo Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 Pogo whats the matter with you, even in back to the future it wasnt possible you wouldnt exist or like in the movie lol slowly disapeer from the picture frame.
Mastermold Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 I suggest reading the past thread I posted on Time Travel...Time Travel Lots of good ideas in there on the subject of travel into the past and I'm gonna stick by Stephan Hawking's conclusion.
PogoC7 Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 If you went back to the past to kill your grandfather then you wouldn't be part of the future anymore. You would be in a different dimension. A dimension were you and your grandfather excist. Once you kill him you are ethier stuck in the past or (if you can travel back to the time you left) you are back in the dimension were your grandfather is still alive. This is why things that have happened can not be altered. In the dimension were you killed you grandfather, you would have never been born. Thats fine cause your in the past and you'll eventually die.
Piccolo Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 So now your sayin we would be in another dimension yet how do we know that for sure Mc fly?
PogoC7 Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 We don't. I'm just saying that it could be done. Like flying to the outer galaxies. It's all about Ideas.
Piccolo Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 Originally posted by PogoC7 We don't. I'm just saying that it could be done. Like flying to the outer galaxies. It's all about Ideas. :scratch: Yeah well maybe pigs will fly one day and it will stop just being an Idea lol
PogoC7 Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 Yea, maybe we'll all just forget about the INFANITE UNIVERSE and "it will stop just being an Idea."
Mastermold Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 There are also questionable paradoxes about travelling into the future. There was this funny Calvin and Hobbes comic that featured Calvin inventing an imaginary time machine. He didn't want to do a paper, so he went into the future to get the paper to bring into the past. See the problem yet? When he arrived, the paper was still not done because the future Calvin remembers going into the future to get it... and it was not there because his memory of the future Calvin had not done it because... and so on and so on. It creates an infinity loop that begs the question, if Calvin writes the paper at any point... can he ever give it to a past time? If he does, then the past Calvin will never do the paper, and so the future Calvin never had it to give in the first place. A paradox that doesn't involve killing people, but is exactly the same. It involves the question of how something can cheat its own destiny of creation. So as Pogo has suggested, it is possible that there are many dimentions to consider. So now consider, Calvin goes into the future and asks for the paper. But which future will he end up in? He could end up in infinite dimentions and many of them will not have a finished paper.... or better yet! What would happen if he DID get a finished paper... which dimention created it and are all the Calvins the same? If so... why did some write the paper and some NOT write the paper. What makes them all different if time travel has not affected their lives yet?
PogoC7 Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 See, the universe keeps things in check. Things that have happened to YOU, can not be altered. Only if it hasn't happened to you (in a different dimesion), it can be done.
PogoC7 Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 Originally posted by PogoC7 Once you kill him you are ethier stuck in the past or (if you can travel back to the time you left) you are back in the dimension were your grandfather is still alive. Imagen your walking down the street. A piano falls, but misses you by inches. Another one of you are living a second ahead of you in a different dimesion. That one of you dies. That dosn't mean you never excisted or your going to die once the other you dies.
the GardenGnome Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 I read a Calvin and Hobbes in which Calvin(the kid, I think) attempts travel through time by slidding down the hill really fast. When he arrives at the bottom of the hill he looks at his watch and notices that it's 25 secondes ahead. So he thinks he travelled in the future. But it was only the time it took to get down the hill.
Sayonara Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 This is a bit like the Terminator 3 problem. A lot of people have asked the question "how can there be a third film? Surely SkyNet never gets built, because the arm and the chip were destroyed". Well, leaving aside the fact that an arm was torn off and left in the steel mill at the end of T2, and also ignoring the endoskeletons that were test-chronoported back in time in "Cybernetic Dawn", the explanation is fairly obvious. The stable timeline sees Miles Dyson designing the neural processor chip in 1995, based on the technology salvaged from SkyNet's 1984 mission. Since SkyNet cannot exist without being designed and built, logic suggests that SkyNet's interference in 1984 did not cause its own creation, but simply advanced the timetable. In other words, had Cyberdyne systems not designed the neural processor, eventually someone else would have. SkyNet simply changed the dates inadvertently. And since from SkyNet's point of view the change was made in the past, and from our point of view as an objective observer this point is the present, we have no idea what the original genesis timeline of SkyNet looked like. Remember that SkyNet's objective in 1984 and in 1995 was to terminate human targets - not to seed the technology required to guarantee its own creation. Destroying all the technology SkyNet sent back the instant it arrived in the past would not prevent the computer's creation, and SkyNet knows this. A machine capable of designing its own chronoporter would have an intrinsic understanding of the irrelevance of translating temporal 'markers'.
fafalone Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 Who's to say that just because the arm and the chip were destroyed no one had already reverse engineered them and produced copies?
Sayonara Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 Originally posted by fafalone Who's to say that just because the arm and the chip were destroyed no one had already reverse engineered them and produced copies? WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
Zeo Posted February 4, 2003 Author Posted February 4, 2003 true, but if that's not the case, who's to say that the chip and arm actually were destroyed, and that Skynet already ensured it's creation through other means like fafalone said? In such case, s.n. wouldn't have been created through what the resistance knows, but through top secret information that cannot be changed or altered... henceforth, it's like I said, we are walking a path with no turns...it is all laid out for us, the future, is inevitable. There is no turning from it.
Sayonara Posted February 4, 2003 Posted February 4, 2003 Did you two even read what I put in that post? The idea for the chip had to come from somewhere. Even if in the currently existing timeline, SkyNet is developed from the chip and the arm that were present in our time due to SkyNet's interference from the future, all SkyNet has accomplished is making the inevitible occur earlier on in time. The chip still had to be designed in a more fundamental timeline. Therefore destroying the chip and the arm that came from the future, before they are sufficiently studied in the present, would not prevent SkyNet's construction. All it would do is delay it.
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