Let's talk about time travel

[MFDub]

Obviously, some of the world's greatest minds have worked for decades creating time travel theories that take into consideration all we know about physics, astronomy and various other sciences. And then there's the theories we make up at three o'clock in the morning when we're half-asleep. Let's introduce both kinds of theories here.


My theory has always been that time is a straight line until the present. At the present, time winds up splitting into an infinite amount of other lines to represent the infinite amount of possible futures. This means that you can never truly travel into the future. You can travel in a future, but you can't be sure which future it is. However, once you're in the future (which is now the present) that past is a straight line, like I mentioned before. So if you travel into a future, you will always be able to return to the time you left from, since it's along the same timeline.

Similarly, it's easy to travel into the past because it's along a single line. However, once you're in the past, the future you came from becomes lost amongst the infinite amount of other futures being borne from that point. So you can definitely travel into THE past, but in doing so you lose your present, which is simply A future from that point.


I thought this up last night and I bet some famous science guy has already said it, but I still claim it as my own work. :D Anyway, what are some other theories of time travel, both serious and silly?

[Myrsilus]

Time travel... is like a big cookie. O.o It has a chewy center and the chips are the sweet future... Ug.

That's basically my theory man. I agree with everything. I'll poke at the past part, specifically. I mean if you travel to the past, you are altering history by being there when you're not supposed to be. So then the future you may have come from is altered and becomes a whole different future. Every action creates a different reality.

Makes me feel so small and insignificant... Which is why I must master time. And I will.

[Urban~Ninja]

I would go back in time and punch myself just before the rugby game where i fractured my back last month, therefore giving me a 2 day black eye and not a 3 month recovery period for my back.

As for time travel being possible, im gonna go with a sorta, it probably would be possible to go forward, by making a super fast plane and going fast then the planets rotation, but then again going to the past, i wouldnt think that to be possible.

[Shadowblade]

Well, i've thought up many different time travel theories, but i was too lazy to write them down and therefore i forgot them.

Anyway the theory that i remember the best goes something like what you MFDub, in that the past is a straight line and there is no set future, rather that there is an infinite number of futures, because every single choice thats made ultimately changes what the future will be. I also think that once you have travelled into the past it would be nearly impossible to return to your own present because even just taking a breath in the past could ultimately make the present that you remember non-existent.

Anyway thats my view on time travel, I hope it made some sort of sense.

[Myrsilus]

88 miles per hour... 88 MILES PER HOUR!! We're going back to the future!

It's possible. Just believe in yourself.

[Jormungand]

after a bowl fula some good shit time and space become a mystery to me

[Praetorian]

I don't think you can go back in time. Because when you travel back in time and kill your grandfather before he meets your grandmother which precludes your own conception and, therefore, you couldn't go back in time and kill your grandfather. Paradoxalishious.

[Myrsilus]

But what if you were actually your grandfather and were supposed to go back in time to have sex with your grandmother?

[h2orowe]

I'd go back to when Adam and Eve were around, act like an asshole, and get Eve as my girlfriend, but than I'd treat her like shit, and make her lesbion, thus preventing the future!

[Jormungand]

I'd go back to when Adam and Eve were around, act like an asshole, and get Eve as my girlfriend, but than I'd treat her like shit, and make her lesbion, thus preventing the future!

that would have to work it holds together so well

[Praetorian]

But what if you were actually your grandfather and were supposed to go back in time to have sex with your grandmother?


Hello, Futurama.


And no. No fucking way I'm going to have sex with my grandmother. Why does everything have to turn into sex around here?

[Myrsilus]

Hello, Futurama.


And no. No fucking way I'm going to have sex with my grandmother. Why does everything have to turn into sex around here?
Glad someone got the reference.

And don't whine about that. Enough whiners as it is. It wasn't even horribly sexual, it was a reference to Futurama. The anger, oi...

[Kos]

My theory has always been that time is a straight line until the present. At the present, time winds up splitting into an infinite amount of other lines to represent the infinite amount of possible futures. This means that you can never truly travel into the future. You can travel in a future, but you can't be sure which future it is. However, once you're in the future (which is now the present) that past is a straight line, like I mentioned before. So if you travel into a future, you will always be able to return to the time you left from, since it's along the same timeline.

Similarly, it's easy to travel into the past because it's along a single line. However, once you're in the past, the future you came from becomes lost amongst the infinite amount of other futures being borne from that point. So you can definitely travel into THE past, but in doing so you lose your present, which is simply A future from that point.

Question: If the "future" is a cloud of possibility, why is the "past" linear (and seemingly) limited to only one choice?

[koku]

makes no difference on my life what i think, you think, or some scientistic guy thinks because

we won't see time travel :P

so i vote the "i'll go fiddle with things that can impact my life" choice.

:P carry on though.

[MFDub]

Question: If the "future" is a cloud of possibility, why is the "past" linear (and seemingly) limited to only one choice?

Because the past has happened. You can't dispute the events of the past, either it has happened or it hasn't. This message was posted. From this point in the present, no matter how you look at it, I posted this message.


Now, if we went back in time to the moment just before I posted this message, then whether or not this message will get posted is unknown.

[sakana]

Glad someone got the reference.

And don't whine about that. Enough whiners as it is. It wasn't even horribly sexual, it was a reference to Futurama. The anger, oi...If he was supposed to be his grandfather how come the other guy looked a lot like him? The world my never know. The moral of that story is that you should never put Jiffy Pop in the microwave.

[Mojinr]

Time is a concept of man. It's impossible manipulate time anymore than we can change God or the fact Family Guy owns Futurama.

[TheLostProphet]

I always thought it was pretty easy to kill your grandfather and keep it like that. Because if you go back in time and you kill him, you'll automatically cease to exist, right? The problem here is that most people think so how can he be killed? It's because he's already dead.

Makes no sense? No? Nah, it never does...

XD

[Cheapo]

there is no such thing as time travel, simply because time is a concept made by men. We cannot grasp it, we cannot manipulate it, the only thing we can do is to use a universal measurement system to keep track of it.

I have been studying the expansion of the universe recently for school and i read an article about how time may be slowing down, but since everything else is slowing down as well, ie. us as well, its all relative so you do notice it.

There are theories going around that time is the 4th dimension, although i haven't done any research into this, i think it means that you have your three normal dimensions, then you have it up against time to determine the object. if thats the case, then it would support parrallel universes and time travel, all proved with graphs and complicated maths symbols and equations. If time travel were to actually available then, you still can't jump back and forth in time, you would have to procede back going through every second only at a much faster rate. Its like drawing a straight line with your pencil, without lifting your pencil, how do you go back to the beginning of the line? There are 2 ways to do that, one is go back thorugh the line you just drew, or u can fold the paper up to the beginning point and move your pencil over it. The second way is just too hard for mankind to acheive within the next thousand years or so. (btw, the pencil explanation is also used to explain wormholes but it works fine for time too)

Also, it doesn't matter if you can fly around the world in 2 hours, you won't be travelling back in time at all, you'd be wasting many hours of your life. Somehow all these people get the notion that if you fly over the IDL (international date line) twice in 24 hours, you'd be up a day. Time doesn't work that way, you pass over the IDL at 5am, and it takes you 5 hours to do one revolution, your time when you pass over the IDL is 10 am the same day, it's relative to the area, not the plane your travelling in.

I think i stop stop my incoherent ramble now, so i'll do a quick summary:
There are many arguments for and against the possiblities of time travel but in the end i don't think time travel can be put into practise.

[Praetorian]

If time travel, at least backwards, would exist, howcome people haven't visited us yet?

[Random]

If time travel, at least backwards, would exist, howcome people haven't visited us yet?

Unless, of course, it is revealed that going back to now and being conspicous about it would lead to some kind of calamity.
Just look at the Terminator films!

Seriously, though, if that's the case it looks like the future governments have got a strong hold on things, or everyone has decided to be peaceful. I know which scenerio I'm hoping for....

[Cheapo]

because no through research has been done to prove that it is safe for time travellers can make contact with people of that time, haven't you watched back to the future series??
or maybe they actually travel to an alternate reality
or maybe they have been disregarded as a minority and has been sent to mental institutions........

[Random]

Or maybe there is timetravel, it's widely used, and the whole thing is a big government cover-up.
There are a lot of maybes here.

Finally, ever consider that maybe there is timetravel, just you can only go back to your birth at earliest, and then you become yourself, not another person (solving all those paradox issues) with no memory of going back - but maybe still somehow able to do something different, at least give yourself another chance at something, which makes it all worth it?

Just another 3-am theory written at 2:30pm.

[StormShadow]

For all you nay-sayers who claim time travel impossable, Superman did it. And to those who say it is HUMANLY impossable, I also say Superman was not human. He came from Krypton.

To the thought of goverment cover-up, I'd say that I think it would be more of a '12 monkeys' type deal, where those from the future can't cope, and so people think that they are crazy. That bag lady with 15 cats you se at the park? The one you speaks gibberish and screams at the trees to stop stealing her peaches? The very same woman who Tried to breast feed a racoon corpse she found? She came from the future

[Random]

Or maybe, in a great paradox, timetravel must be invented before it can be used.

Which explains why we haven't seen anyone from the future; time travel hasn't been invented yet.

edit: and once it has been invented, we can go back years and give it to them them, or mess around with time, or whatever, but first it must be invented.

[Mojinr]

If I had a way to go back in time I know exactly what I would do.

Bang the Virgin Mary before God got her pregnant.

Come on!! That would be so funny if someone did that and came back to the present and saw NOTHING changed. I mean, how many people could say that God got their sloppy seconds? And it be none other than the Virgin Mary!