Time Travel

An old question, probably been asked many times before...
But, if you could go back in time - theory says it is possible -
then would you change anything?
For example you could go back in time and kill the young Hitler or Stalin right?
That would be a good thing, wouldn't it?
Maybe you would time travel and do a 'Groundhog Day' to get hold of that woman / man
you have always been after.
Perhaps it would be something simple like just saying goodbye to a loved one.
What would you do if you could?

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I will answer my own question about going back in time to kill Hitler or Stalin though.
And would have to say that no I wouldn't. Potentially the lives of many many millions would be saved by pulling short the lives of either of these two, but who is to say that if you were to kill them, that another more evil sadistic dictaror would come along to kill ten times the number that they managed?
Surely it is only through making mistakes that we learn, right? The errors of yesterday make us who we are today, thats the way I see it.

Anyway let me know what you would do! :)

Time travel is possible. You're doing it right now. As you read this, you are moving forward through time.

Personally, barring any possibilities of other dimensions existing, I think it's impossible to go back in time. What I mean is let's say you go back in time and kill hitler. We know that hitler was not killed in our particular dimension, therefore you have not changed anything here. You may have affected another dimension, but then, if that dimension were current with us, you would have already done that.

The past is fixed, there is no changing it. You can, however, alter the future, and I think that if more and more people concentrated on doing that instead of lamenting bad things that have occurred in the past, the world would be a significantly better place.

BTW, in case it comes up, Einstein never did theorize that time travel backwards was possible.

the_g_nee:

Well, I think that if I had the ability to travel backwards and forwards in time, I would really just like to visit periods of time to see how they truly lived. I don't know if you've ever read the Michael Crichton "Timeline," but it is a story of time travel back to feudal times in France. I think it'd be very interesting to go back and see history first hand. Then again, this would probably pose all sorts of dangers to me. After all, I probably couldn't watch the Battle of Normandy first hand without probably getting shot.

As far as changing the past goes, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole. As you said, you never know what your actions could affect. Maybe if you go back to get that long lost love, and you finally win his/her heart, and then years later you commit suicide because of him/her, or something messed up like that. Then you wouldn't even exist in the past to win her heart in the first place, and then time will collapse on itself and everything will vanish. :) Well, maybe that isn't exactly what would happen, but there would be considerable responsibility to not just your time line, but to those of everyone else in the world. A responsibility that I would believe is unbearable by any human.

Regards,
Wizeman

According to Einstien's Special Theory of Relativity time travel is possible. The details are found in his time dilation equation here: http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssc...ity/u7l2a.html

when time travel is made reference to in physics, physicsists do not mean travelling back to a certain period and reliving it, that is completely unrealistic. What is meant by time travel is altering time in relation to the speed of light and universal clock.

i dunno. I dont think i would change anything if i were to travel back in time (the romantic sense not physics.)

since it is along the same lines, does anyone know anything about the philedelphia experiment? was it a hoax, was it real, etc.? Im not quite sure what to think of it though it would be interesting, if it were true...

Quote:

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Originally posted by oblio
when time travel is made reference to in physics, physicsists do not mean travelling back to a certain period and reliving it, that is completely unrealistic. What is meant by time travel is altering time in relation to the speed of light and universal clock.

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What relativity does is shift the unversal constant to the speed of light....hence time is a varible and given the right set of circumstances can be "altered"

The great paradox rears it's ugly head.

If one does go back in time and say for instance. Breaks up his mother and father or kills a distant relative thus providing that ones own parents do not bear an offspring. Then will one continue to exist or not? Will you exist only in the time you traveled to, or disappear when you return to your own time? Or is it whatever plain of existance that you are on?

Food for thought. :confused:

simply mathematically speaking, yes time can be altered as is demonstrated in the "twin theory". The point I was making is that if it was currently possible to time travel, the results would certainly not be the reliving of a past age.

Quote:

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Originally posted by {P²P}Apocalypse
The great paradox rears it's ugly head.

If one does go back in time and say for instance. Breaks up his mother and father or kills a distant relative thus providing that ones own parents do not bear an offspring. Then will one continue to exist or not? Will you exist only in the time you traveled to, or disappear when you return to your own time? Or is it whatever plain of existance that you are on?

Food for thought. :confused:

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I think what oblio said in his last post can be applied here...if you read that article I linked to you will see how time travel would work....it eliminates possible paradoxes

My favorite treatment of this subject
will always be Dr Who.
Every episode explores the paradoxes,
possibilities, and the humor of it.

Einstein can't possibly be right, can he?
:cool:

Wizeman said:

Quote:

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I don't know if you've ever read the Michael Crichton "Timeline," but it is a story of time travel back to feudal times in France.

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I read that book and liked it. It really would be cool to do the same time, except with a different era. Imagine the money you could make videotaping each era and selling it during modern times.

On a fictional note:

A scientist thinks he has invented a machine to take him far into the future. To be safe he attaches IV's to himself incase the trip sucks out nutrients or does something strange like that. But when he steps inside his machine and starts it, it instead causes him to fall into a coma for several months, and the IV's keep him alive during that time. When he recovers he discovers that yes, he has travelled in time and proclaims himself a hero.

This didn't really have a point but as chsh said, we're travelling in time as we speak. Or are we? We live in the present, so even if we were to travel back 1000 years then for us, it'd still be the present. No matter how far forward or backward you travel, you're still in the present.

In order for you to be able to read this post, light is comming from a light bulb, or through the window, its then bouncing off the screen, and into your eye. Now more light is bouncing around than what you or I would be seeing at any one point in time - our eyes can only be in one place at a time. So this also happens, light is emmited from the light bulb, bounces off the screen, misses your eyes because they are not in the path of the light waves, passes through the window and carries on its trajectory maybe through our atmosphere and into outer space. Now if you were a few trillion miles from earth and had a very powerfull telescope, then you would be able to read my computer screen. My point is that the light that bounced off my screen will go on forever and ever.
Heres the going-back-in-time bit. Lets say you jump into your time travelling machine, which happens to be in my house next to the puter screen. And then start to accelerate on the same trajectory as the light which bounced of the screen and into outer space. Now you start to travel ever faster and faster - always staying on this trajectory. Now at a given point if you were to be travelling faster than the speed of light, what in effect you would be doing is catching up with light that left earlier and earlier in time, and therefore you would actually be travelling back in time.
Now I believe the theory goes that you would not have to travel in a constant straight line but you could go in a circle, or even spin, maybe even just shake, the only criteria is that you do so faster than the speed of light. Travelling faster than the speed of light = gong back in time. Though the theory on going forward in time.... :confused:

***

chsh, I think that maybe your idea of travelling back in time to kill Hitler and thereby being in another dimension to this one is maybe wrong. As we know it today there is only one dimension - a 3D one - bredth width and height. There might well be 2D dimensions or even 8D dimensions, who knows, but if you could travel back in time you would be in the same dimension - a 3D one, would it not be the reality that had changed and not the dimension?

ps As soon as I build my faster than light time travelling machine, I'll post a new thread, cos it is simple in theory.
:rofl:

Just for shear boredom purposes, let's say there is a flaw in the universe that allows traveling backwards in time. Let us say that yes, you can go back to WWII, cool....this is SOOO cool! :) Now...imagine you go back, kill hitler. My simple question is since you killed hitler before he caused mass genocide and in general a bad year for the world. Why would you (some years later) actually have a reason to go back and kill him? This is to say that the past must be written, in order to change it would result in a paradox. Just a thought and a conflict for classical views of time travel to consider.
Cheeseball

i would change anything if i went back in time cos you don't know what the consequency will be.... besides, as i've said before, i believe everything happens for a reason

Quote:

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Originally posted by antihaxor
According to Einstien's Special Theory of Relativity time travel is possible. The details are found in his time dilation equation here: http://www.glenbrook.k12.il.us/gbssc...ity/u7l2a.html

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I'm aware of his Special Theory of Relativity. If you check it out, you'll see he wasn't trying to say that you could travel backwards in time, he was saying that you would PERCEIVE you were travelling backwards in time.

This is the whole 'look at the clock while moving away from it at faster than the speed of light' analogy. You're not actually travelling backwards in time, you're merely perceiving that you are.

Besides, it's already been shown that the speed of light isn't a static limit and that it can be broken.

ADDENDUM:
Speed of light can be broken:
http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~inte...ring/PAGE2.htm
http://www.compu-web.com/nimtz.htm
Speed of light is not a constant:
http://www.khouse.org/articles/techn...00701-265.html
http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw33.html

Quote:

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Originally posted by the_g_nee
chsh, I think that maybe your idea of travelling back in time to kill Hitler and thereby being in another dimension to this one is maybe wrong. As we know it today there is only one dimension - a 3D one - bredth width and height. There might well be 2D dimensions or even 8D dimensions, who knows, but if you could travel back in time you would be in the same dimension - a 3D one, would it not be the reality that had changed and not the dimension?

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Perhaps 'dimension' was the wrong word. Perhaps something along the lines of 'parallel alternate universe' is a better descriptor.

Great links in your post chsh!! ;)

People go check them out right now!!

:D

Imagine if someone actually discovered a way in which time travel is possible. Think about all the effects it would have. It would raise so many issues. People would straight away be wanting to goo back in time to fix this or kill these bad people or whatever. Others would be thinking what is ethical and should we change anything? What will the effects on our current state be?

I believe if we actually discovered a way to travel back in time, it would be one of the biggest disasters waiting to happen. What is it got into the wrong hands or someone altered something without carefully considering the after-effects? Changing something that we thought was bad, such as killing Hitler, might change the world in a negative way. I mean we simply view it as good - kill Hitler, save millions of lifes. But there are so many things that can happen as a result of this, things that we may not even begin to imagine.

Playing with the past, if we ever get the opportunity, is something that we shouldn't do. Just like angelic_ky said, everything happens for a reason.

Anyways, that's my two cents.

Greg

The same ethical issues are involved in
what you do in the present.
What you do today will control the
course of future history.
:cool:

There is a great series of books call "What If?" which explore how the world might be different if history took a different path.....fasinating reads (Books 1 and 2). Might give us some idea of the power and danger of time travel....