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Time Travel

jredf said:
More seriously than above, aliens have craft that have been documented to take off at what, about 10,000 miles an hour?
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Welcome to the JREF forum jredf, I hope your stay will be inspiring!
 
thought_fugitive said:
Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 322 Oakview, CA 93022. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.
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If you're traveling in time, why can't I get paid up front?
 
jredf said:
I thought it was a damn good plot device. Oh well.
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It's a great plot device. And frankly has more internal logic than most time-travel stories.
(Just not enough to weork in reality.)

About the saving people, you wouldn't be changing anything. You might think you are, but you aren't, you're really just doing what's already happened. They are believed to be dead, but possibly alive.
I think that's what could explain so many Elvis sightings. Someone went back in time and molecularly changed a hog into a slobbering humanoid who appeared to od on the crapper. I'm just saying.

More seriously than above, aliens have craft that have been documented to take off at what, about 10,000 miles an hour? In the atmosphere? I wonder how fast they'd be in space. Ofcourse, normal people would probably just spontaneously combust at those speeds unless in some kind of stasis field. Surely that's fast enough to do some time traveling. That would explain why there are craft hovering near major disasters, not because they caused them but because they are documenting them for their alien History Channel documentary "Earth: How Many Times Can One Planet Almost Blow Itself Up?"
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Ah okay you're joking. Sorry didn't realise - it's often hard to tell here, especially with new posters.
 
The S.F. novel I remember in time travel, was that each moment was a sphere, like pearl on a necklace. Going back only changed that time sphere, but going back to yours it as if there had never been any change whatsoever. That was a very good explanation on why nothing ever changed.

There was another one where going backward actually created parallel branch of the universe , but you always returned to your own branch and no change whatsoever was done (although IIRC the protagonist at the end was "losing" substance by too many travel and was becoming ghost like). Again no paradox possible as you could never ever change your own branch.
 
jredf said:
I thought it was a damn good plot device. Oh well.
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I think you were pretty much right (given some basic assumptions). Ashles objections don't hold - if you fake someone's death in the past, you have to change all kinds of things, but as you said, no-one would notice, because if everyone thought that person had died, you clearly didn't leave obvious clues. If people did notice some discrepancy, you'd know before you went back. If you decided not to go back and fake the death because of the doubt about the veracity of this death, then clearly something else must have happened - perhaps the death was badly faked by someone else, or the death occurred but it appeared faked, etc.

Rule #3 - you can't change the future doesn't necessarily contradict rule #2 you can change the past - it depends on your viewpoint; a time-like loop is involved. If you travel back in time and do something, you can view it as changing the past, and therefore changing the future from that point in time, but you can equally view that action as being part of the past - the future from that point that might have happened had you not taken that action, never happens. Calling the action a 'change' to the past or future is misleading - the action was always going to happen. If the action had a noticeable effect, people (including you) might even remember it at the point you go back in time to do it...

Of course, as you said, this requires the basic assumption that all events are fixed in spacetime, which is a little controversial.
 
jredf said:
More seriously than above, aliens have craft that have been documented to take off at what, about 10,000 miles an hour? In the atmosphere? I wonder how fast they'd be in space. Ofcourse, normal people would probably just spontaneously combust at those speeds unless in some kind of stasis field. Surely that's fast enough to do some time traveling. That would explain why there are craft hovering near major disasters, not because they caused them but because they are documenting them for their alien History Channel documentary "Earth: How Many Times Can One Planet Almost Blow Itself Up?"
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Just a nitpick, you can survive any speed whatsoever. The problem is not the speed , it is the acceleration. If you have an acceleration of 1 g over a few minutes, you will certainly reach speed of 3 km s-1 (10 meter s-2 * 300 seconds (5 minutes)=3 km s-1=~10800 km.h-1). 1 G is quite survivable as acceleration and your final speed would be ~10,000k m h-1. OTOH if it was an acceleration to get that speed within 1 second then that would be 300G, yeah, that would not be survivable (record was what , 120g?). You would still not combust, but be rather mushy at the end.
 
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IF time travel to the past is possible, THEN time travelers from the future would be visiting us now. Unless we are considered so boring there is not much point in doing so
 
Aepervius said:
The S.F. novel I remember in time travel, was that each moment was a sphere, like pearl on a necklace. Going back only changed that time sphere, but going back to yours it as if there had never been any change whatsoever. That was a very good explanation on why nothing ever changed.

There was another one where going backward actually created parallel branch of the universe , but you always returned to your own branch and no change whatsoever was done (although IIRC the protagonist at the end was "losing" substance by too many travel and was becoming ghost like). Again no paradox possible as you could never ever change your own branch.
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I've got a good Sci-Fi method myself, but I can't go into it as I'm using it in a book I'm writing at the moment.
But it does allow someone to kill their own grandfather which, I think we will all agree, is the ultimate aim of all time-travellers.
 
dlorde said:
I think you were pretty much right (given some basic assumptions). Ashles objections don't hold - if you fake someone's death in the past, you have to change all kinds of things, but as you said, no-one would notice, because if everyone thought that person had died, you clearly didn't leave obvious clues. If people did notice some discrepancy, you'd know before you went back. If you decided not to go back and fake the death because of the doubt about the veracity of this death, then clearly something else must have happened - perhaps the death was badly faked by someone else, or the death occurred but it appeared faked, etc.
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Your assuming the death is the only change. It wouldn't be. Just because people don't instantly notice the other changes (what did you have to alter to fake the death?), doesn't mean they won't have a knock on effect. Every single one will. Some will be minute, some will quickly become relatively large.

The effects of events over times would not be restricted to what people specifically notice. Any change will have effect - the longer the period, the greater the cumulative effects.
 
Ashles said:
I've got a good Sci-Fi method myself, but I can't go into it as I'm using it in a book I'm writing at the moment.
But it does allow someone to kill their own grandfather which, I think we will all agree, is the ultimate aim of all time-travellers.
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No, I liked both my grandfathers. :)
 
Ashles said:
Your assuming the death is the only change. It wouldn't be. Just because people don't instantly notice the other changes (what did you have to alter to fake the death?), doesn't mean they won't have a knock on effect. Every single one will. Some will be minute, some will quickly become relatively large.

The effects of events over times would not be restricted to what people specifically notice. Any change will have effect - the longer the period, the greater the cumulative effects.
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Well yes but all of that is included in the premise. All these things you have 'changed' in saving someone and covering up after yourself, all of them have already and always happened and the knock on effects of all these changes were already present and in effect at your future point of departure. It's been pointed out several times, this is the 'all events, past and future, are set in stone' version of a time travel plot premise. Which is to say even as you first watch some terrible death, so terrible that years later you will decide to go back in time and save this person - your future self is already RIGHT THERE offstage to the left, projecting a 3-D movie of this death for you to watch, having handed the saved person a one way ticket to Guam. If the guy in Guam ends up conquering it and beginning the New Guam Empire, then the New Guam Empire was already there in the future the time traveller left from, he just probably didn't know his interference was going to be its cause. All of the 'changed' events are not in fact changed, they always happened that way. The time traveller always came back and caused that bit of causality.

Which incidentally, seems to be the version of time travel that "Lost" is using, so far. The other popular plot of time travel is the 'alternate reality' one, where each backwards time travel event creates a new version of reality. It has the subtypes 'many realities' where these events split off discrete independent realities: the old one still exists, minus the time traveler (funny enough the cartoon Dragon Ball Z uses this type of time travel correctly and consistently) and 'one reality' where these events rewrite the current reality into the new one (Back to the Future style).
 
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Tumbleweed said:
IF time travel to the past is possible, THEN time travelers from the future would be visiting us now. Unless we are considered so boring there is not much point in doing so
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Unless the future hasn't happened yet.
 
Tumbleweed said:
IF time travel to the past is possible, THEN time travelers from the future would be visiting us now. Unless we are considered so boring there is not much point in doing so
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Who's to say they aren't ? They may be wandering around with period cameras just like any other tourist.
 
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