Time travel questions.....

[DE31]

This topic i brought up in a local CA forum but we thought that it will get more interest here.

Well, for some reason i was reminded about how the time travel things brings up many questions. ok so i talked to flypinoy7 about this topic and ended up having this huge discussions about it.

We came up with 4 possibilities,

1. Back to the Future 2 - how Future Biff goes back in time to give Past Biff the book, and changes the future. what the doc says is that they didnt change the past but change the universe that they are in, so they are in a parallel universe

2. Star Trek style (flypinoy7 explain it)

3. Something i thought up of, probably not original but cant think of where it might have come from - I think its impossible to change the past since technically if you decide to change the past, the future you has already made that decision and would have "changed" your time, but in reality you didnt change anything.

4. Now last i made a picto story - I dont think its possible to kill yourself in the past since if you kill yourself then you wont have a future after killing yourself, meaning the you that killed you wouldnt have existed Pictostory

 

[fLyPiNoY7]

ook...star trek style (im bringing out the true nerdom on this)...

in the last episode of voyager, the admiral of the starship voyager regrets what happened in the past, so she travels through time to meet up with her younger self to fix what was wrong...long story short, her younger self creates a new timeline that fixes the admiral's mistakes and making the admiral's timeline non-existent...in the end, the admiral dies, effectively erasing her knowledge of her own timeline and her younger self lives life in the new timeline...

yeah, read it a few times and u'll understand it...or better yet, find the last episode of star trek voyager and watch it and u'll understand...

 

[Reffoxel]

Well, It's called a paradox. It's a classic, except most take it further, ie. you go back in time and kill your great grandfather (say by accident) which means your grandfather, father, and you wouldn't be born. Some writers have approached it like these.

1) there is a multiverse (infinite number of parallel universes so that all possibilities all actually exist at the same time. So that you wouldn't actually die because you killed a direct ancestor or your earlier self, but have just travelled to a parallel universe, however depending on how you traveled in time would determine whether you'd be able to go back to your "home" universe
.
2) Past is fixed and therefore you wouldn't be able to interact, only observe.

3) Past is changeable but not a multversal thing, but since you have removed yourself from the timeline by going back in time you personally would not be affected if you killed your earlier self your "home" timeline would be destroyed and even if you'd travel back to the future, it wouldn't be the future you remembered. uhmm sort of like "The Terminal" with Tom Hanks...a man who couldn't enter the US because his passport was no good, but couldn't go back either, he was a man with no country, You'd be a person outside the system and effectively a non-entity.

4) Or the past is self correcting and so after you kill yourself you would cease to exist but since you have now created a paradox, some other event would occur to kill you at the appropriate time, ei botched robbery, car accident, stray gunfire, serial killer, whatever is necessary to elimintate the paradox.

5) By traveling back in time and killing yourself or a direct ancestor you create a timeloop which you may or maynot be able to escape from.

These are just some of the ideas I have read about, there are alot more. I read alot of SF. Time travel stories have always been difficult for me to read as time travel is a knotty thing and most hypothetical ideas about it have too many holes. There's the blantant paradox thing, but then there is the butterfly effect.

 

[Roywhitep5]

traveling back through time would cause the universe to implode and cause it never to exist at all. duh!!!!

 

[DE31]

but what if.... thats the question. its just fun to talk about the ifs. what would happen if we can. most people say its impossible to travel back in time and i believe that, i also believe it will be possible to either see into the future or go to the future, but on a one way trip.

 

[toucci]

you can go back in time and interact with people but it will mess things up if you bring an almanac for sure

 

[DE31]

but trevor, when you return after interacting with the people will you change their futures and possibly change your life? or could it be that the if you go back in time and change things the future you has already gone back to do the change so it wont cause any difference? but then if its possible to go back in time, what if you kill yourself on accident, then goes to choice 4 in my original list. how can you kill yourself in the past and end it there if your able to go into the past in the future to kill yourself?

 

[jflo]

star trek voyager captain janeway

 

[jer3]

Sorry, but I wouldn't hit it (shrug)

star trek voyager captain janeway

 

[jflo]

yeah, me neither

 

[DE31]

damn someones up late.

 

[jflo]

that makes two of us. bwahahah

 

[cable43]

3. Something i thought up of, probably not original but cant think of where it might have come from - I think its impossible to change the past since technically if you decide to change the past, the future you has already made that decision and would have "changed" your time, but in reality you didnt change anything.

this is about where my theory comes in:

the mind is time.. memories thoughts theories it's all in the minds eye

it's not time travel.... it's mind travel

 

[fLyPiNoY7]

star trek voyager captain janeway

yes, thats where my theory came from...wouldnt hit it though

 

[Rob.Tuner]

what if you went back in time and gave Jesus an ak47. would the land we live on now be considered Jesusland?

 

[Breeegz]

^um, sure

Anyhoo, I think this is a good topic (aka nerd magnet)

Einstien predicted that time is relative, not a constant and it has been proven.

(google) "Twin Paradox" + Einstein

(caution, extreme paraphrasing)
It states that time distortion occurs in speeds near the speed of light or near extremely high gravity. So basically traveling forward in time is as easy as traveling near the speed of light...

 

[Moeed]

Remember flight of the navigator? It be kinda like that for theory.