21 replies to this topic

[Skipper]

Alright. In the past month, I've been putting some thought into this.

First, let's talk about traveling to the past.



Suppose time travel was possible, and you go to the past. Technically, you wouldn't be able to change a thing, because history hasn't written you in yet. You'd... I dunno, be in some weird pseudo-spirit form. Technically, you wouldn't exist.
Now, here's the problem: Suppose you time travel to the past... let's say a day after you were born. Would you have a physical body? I mean, history already wrote you into that time, therefor theory tells you that you'd exist--and I just now realized the answer to that question: Destiny didn't write two copies of you into the book of history. So, basically, you'd still be there... only there'd be two of you: a pseudo-spirit who technically doesn't exist, and a retard baby.

So. What are your theories on such?

[Animus01]

I imagine time travel to be just as unintereferable as what your theory says. I believe that if you did exist with your body intact, you cannot change time, because the events have already been recorded in your time. Now, there is a problem with that, though. Time paradoxes (term dubbed from Timesplitters: Future Perfect) can occur, because of knowledge that was impossible to obtain in the past. So, if you learned that, say, someone beat Benjamin Franklin to creating lightning rods, you would go back in your own time to stop the person who supposedly changed the future. But, it has already been done. Therefore, you won't go back in time, but that would mean the event does not occur, and so on. Also, that person who changed the future would've changed the future before he got started. So, you have a time paradox there, as well.

I remember, I think Stargate did something on time travel, trying to explain how they think it works. I heard that they used a theory of multiple dimensions (I think that's the theory that there's a dimension for every change in history), which might make some sense.

[NineLives]

If Time was the FOURTH DIMENSION, the fourth "thing" (Lentgh Heigth, Width) would be Duration. So then. I believe it is possible to travel into the future, if you have a spaceship that can travel at light speed, go out TWO DAYS in space in the lightspeed spaceship, come back, and you should be 40 years into the future.
But our body can't handle that much speed.
To go back into the past, we need to be able to live in the Fourth Dimension, I think. OR, a time hole, black hole, worm hole.
IF time was the fourth dimension, and we were able to "SEE" what it is like, we may be able to freely travel. IF.
I don't know
You guys should read "Flatterland" if you wanna know.

[NoeL]

At the moment Time looks like a scalar dimension (i.e it only goes one way. You can't have negative time) so going backwards in time is theoretically impossible anyway.

However, if you COULD go back to the day you were born, I don't believe you'd be in a spirit form, you'd just be there. On the day you are born, you (or someone else) would see future you standing there already. That's why I have a problem with "if you alter the past you can affect the future!" movies, because if you REALLY went back to the past, you would have already been there when the past was still the present, and so any future you "make" would be exactly the same as the original future. So you CAN'T change the future by altering the past, only WRITE the future by acting in the present.

Destiny didn't write two copies of you into the book of history

I doubt a "book of history" exists. Do you know how many gigs it would take to hold the universe's current state for every fraction of a millisecond since it's creation? I believe as soon as the present is no longer the present, it doesn't exist.

[CastChaos]

I'm sure time isn't linear and works in a practical way. So, if you travel back to your birth and kill yourself, then there will be two worlds:
1. The one you left, from where you travelled to the past. People will treat you as "missing person".
2. The world where you travelled through time travel. You kill your baby form, so you will be the only "you". Of course you won't disappear, since you already born. If you don't kill yourself, then there will be two you, but these "you"s aren't identical. You won't be a prophet either way, anything you say about the future won't happen, because even squashing a spider greatly modifies the time that is both "past" and "future" for you. Technically and practically future.

So, fate and prewritten history doesn't exist. There isn't anybody who watches over the happenings and for example kill you if you try to travel back in time.

So, every timetravel creates a new world. Doesn't matter, there are already infinite worlds.

Travelling FORTH to the future is easy, for example with hibernation. Not like perfect hibernation exists... yet.

Once when soldiers were on action, one of them simply disappeared and later he appeared in the same position. So, there ARE time holes. Maybe some of those whos are really against environment damaging came from the future because the Earth is a big poison orb at that time.

But people rely too much on machines. However, it's not sure that there will be a timeMACHINE. Maybe there are natural ways. For example, I'm sure that Stonehenge is for teleportation and time travel. Somebody other realized it, too... that's why got Stonehenge closed down and now a SWAT team protects it shoots anybody who goes near it. Seriously, such astounding protection clearly shows that there is something big, like a time gate...

[Shoelace]

I don't believe in time travel. Because the way I look at it is, if in the future we time traveled and went into the past, then that occurance would have happened. You can't change the past because, it would have already been changed. Plus, after reading all of the theorys of "turning back time", none of them make any sense to me. I just haven't seen a good enough theory for me to believe it. But it is fun to think about it.

[Mitchfork]

Second Shoelace's opinion. If you go back to kill your grandfather before your father was born, you wouldn't be able to. Why? Because you already failed, before you went back in time. In fact, by going back in time, it may be possible to cause exacly what you were trying to prevent (like in that Fairly Oddparents episode with Crocker's mindwipe ). Still, time travel seems like a pretty far-fetched thing... I won't discount it, simply because there's been so much change in history that people thought was impossible (the internet for example).

[Skipper]

I doubt a "book of history" exists. Do you know how many gigs it would take to hold the universe's current state for every fraction of a millisecond since it's creation? I believe as soon as the present is no longer the present, it doesn't exist.

Well... whatever. ;P I couldn't think of what else to call it. To put it more simply:
Destiny hadn't allowed there to be more than one you.


...Anyhow. Nice theories, guys.

[Comix]

Unless you count the way of by even going back, as soon as you hit any time before you exist, the whole path past the time you went back would be changed.

You would basically destroy your whole existance if you went back unless the world already has people from the future in our pasts, which is highly unlikely.

[ShadowTiger]

I think we're being a lot more stringent than we have to be. There are theories that state that if you go back in time, you're actually adding to the amount of energy or matter in the world, (As per the law of conservation of matter.) and the world would be destroyed. I honestly highly doubt that this would occur at all. It's not the world which would explode, but the heads of the scientists who managed to create this theory.

I heard that they used a theory of multiple dimensions (I think that's the theory that there's a dimension for every change in history

I heard that this was the "Whole Worlds" Model. It's similar in nature to God's omniscience and ability to see the future. (Let's NOT get into a religious debate here though.) Basically, it was over God's ability to see the future. They've determined that since no future has happened yet, coupled with Free Will and all, (Fairly self-explanatory, as, and, once again, this isn't a religious debate.) God can't know the future, but can only know what futures are possible. It's more of an "If you do this, this will happen. Then Bob could come and change that future too." It's all a whole big mess of "Coulds."


I don't really see time travel happening. All I can see is a bunch of reversing processes.

[Animus01]

because even squashing a spider greatly modifies the time that is both "past" and "future" for you.

Have you ever read a short story called "A Sound of Thunder"? It's really interesting, and what you said reminded me of it. Basically, there's a time-travel dinosaur-hunting place (which is supposed to be kept secret), and in the past, there is an antigravity walkway in the era of dinosaurs. Now, in order to keep the future from being affected, the staff monitor when a dinosaur dies, so they can mark it (probably with a heavy paintball gun) for the hunters. After the hunter kills the dinosaur, the hunter has to get the bullets out, so as not to disrupt time. Eckels, the main character of the story, ends up disrupting time by stepping off the walkway. So, when he goes back to the time-travel place, he finds that people talk like hillbillies, and (since there was an election that just happened), instead of one man, the other was elected. Eckels realizes he stepped on a butterfly (it was on the bottom of his shoe) when he got off the walkway. At the end, the staff person who was leading the trip shoots Eckels.

I heard that this was the "Whole Worlds" Model. It's similar in nature to God's omniscience and ability to see the future. (Let's NOT get into a religious debate here though.) Basically, it was over God's ability to see the future. They've determined that since no future has happened yet, coupled with Free Will and all, (Fairly self-explanatory, as, and, once again, this isn't a religious debate.) God can't know the future, but can only know what futures are possible. It's more of an "If you do this, this will happen. Then Bob could come and change that future too." It's all a whole big mess of "Coulds."
I don't really see time travel happening. All I can see is a bunch of reversing processes.

Sorry about that. I mentioned it because I read about it in a Non Sequitur comic.

Edited by Animus01, 18 June 2007 - 11:28 AM.

[Red Phazon]

All right a time travel topic. Right now we are, of course, traveling forward through time. Gravity and speed has been proven to effect time. The stronger the gravity or faster the speed the faster (or was is slower?) time is "flowing." An example would be a black hole, which the closer you get to the event horizon the slower time passes until time stops. There does seem to be problems with that though, so correct me if I'm wrong about that. I think that time is going by at this rate because we're moving so fast right now. The galaxy is moving, the solar system is moving, and our planet is moving.

I believe that:

A. Time splits or branches out every time a decision or possibility of multiple outcomes occurs. (multiple worlds/universe theory) This would let you interact with the past, but on a different time line or branch. I found something about this guy, John Titor, who claimed to have come back from the year 2036 to 2000 and went back a year later (I don't know how much time) and was never seen again. It's kind of hard to believe something like that though. Here are some of the posts he made.

B. You can't go back in time. Just like there is no negative distance there is no negative time. My biggest reason for traveling to the past on one time line is that it would seem to me that you would create another of yourself right? But you can't create nor destroy matter. If the matter you're made of is already somewhere else you couldn't even go back a split second.

That's all I can think of right now.

[Foxx]

Time travel is possible, but only into the future. In order to travel back into the past you need to find a way to exceed the speed of light. Good luck.

[jimbob]

But people rely too much on machines. However, it's not sure that there will be a timeMACHINE. Maybe there are natural ways. For example, I'm sure that Stonehenge is for teleportation and time travel. Somebody other realized it, too... that's why got Stonehenge closed down and now a SWAT team protects it shoots anybody who goes near it. Seriously, such astounding protection clearly shows that there is something big, like a time gate...

That is a joke, right? Stonehenge isn't closed down, 'cause it's in the middle of a field. There's always police around though, because stoned hippies keep breaking it. No-one's ever teleported from Stonehenge... they jost got drunk/high.

Also, backwards time travel isn't possible, because... well where are they? If it was possible for anyone to travel backwards in time, we would have seen them!

[Limzo]

People, you need to read Johnny and The Bomb by Terry Pratchet. Read it at least twice. It will solve all of your problems.