Time travel....why we won't see it.

[findingZzero]

Being there. Doing that.
"I once put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time." Steven Wright

 

[HoughMade]

But if I hit warp 10 and slingshot around the sun....

Damn whales.

 

[ATM]

46 years ago we landed on the moon.

...allegedly.

 

[cromus]

Time travel is really tricky. This is evident if you've ever heard of The Flashpoint Paradox. You don't know how your actions will affect the future or if you're even still operating in the same timeline.

If time travel ever existed, wouldn't the future person have already gone back and killed hitler? Or, would they understand the riple effect that it would cause and decided to not do anything that alters the timeline. Or, maybe the person than invented TT went back in time, but was killed before doing the deed.

I agree with OP's friend as well. If TT is like wormholes, you better be pretty accurate with your calculations or you've just phased into something you should be phasing into.

 

[Libertarian01]

Time travel is really tricky. This is evident if you've ever heard of The Flashpoint Paradox. You don't know how your actions will affect the future or if you're even still operating in the same timeline.

If time travel ever existed, wouldn't the future person have already gone back and killed hitler? Or, would they understand the riple effect that it would cause and decided to not do anything that alters the timeline. Or, maybe the person than invented TT went back in time, but was killed before doing the deed.

I agree with OP's friend as well. If TT is like wormholes, you better be pretty accurate with your calculations or you've just phased into something you should be phasing into.

The easy workaround for this problem was mentioned by Hough, simply do it in space. Space is so vast, even locally, it is beyond our normal comprehension.

Consider, there are anywhere from 1.1 - 1.9 million asteroids over 1 kilometer in diameter. Add to that perhaps billions of smaller asteroids all surrounding our planets orbit between Mars and Jupiter. So how do we navigate our probes to the outer solar system? How do we avoid the asteroid belt and the risk of losing a probe? Easy - we fly right through them! Even though there are many millions of asteroids the space is so vast between them it is safer to fly through the asteroid belt than to drive in a large urban city, by a huge amount. As many as there are the space between them is so vast the odds of our probes hitting an asteroid are negligible.

All a time traveler would have to do is move a small amount away between Earth and Mars, time jump, then find Earth and fly back.

---

As to the paradox of going back in time to kill my grandfather, perhaps it has already been done countless times. Each time it is done it creates a new alternate dimension that the time travelers were unaware of. So we keep making the same mistake over and over again with no real harm, just endless parallel dimensions of events.

Consider this possibility: You build a time machine and send me back to kill Hitler. I go back and I kill Hitler. Now I try to come back home to the future, but in this future (your current) you never sent me to kill Hitler because Hitler didn't even exist since before you were born (I killed him in 1890), so you had no reason to send me back. We never met, so if I can find you, if you even exist, you have no idea who Hitler ever was. So now I try to fix things. I go back in time on my own to meet myself and stop myself from killing Hitler. Presume I succeed. Now there are two (2) of me trying to get home to the same original time stream, but we're NOT from the same, original timestream. Doug #1 is from the original, but Doug #2 is from an altered state. Which of us goes, or do both of us? Our very existence could well impact the worlds timestream simply by displacing atoms by our existence. Now when we both return to the future (there are two (2) of me) we meet you, except that we may have changed things yet again because you didn't send two (2) of me. Eventually I figure out that every time I jump I in fact create a new timestream and a new alternate reality. Perhaps the alternate is slightly or significantly changed, but it is alternate nonetheless.

This isn't damaging, per-Se. Time and the universe don't care how many alternate dimensions there are. There could be an infinite amount. Who suffers the problem is the original time traveler, who can never quite make it back to their original, unpolluted timestream. So a wise time traveler understands that it is truly a one way trip, that they can never make it "home", and in reality they can never really affect the timestream they originated from, they can only create alternates that offshoot.

So how could we utilize time travel in a positive manner without impacting the timestream and creating alternate realities? The easiest thing that comes to mind is combining time travel with remote viewing. If we could find a way to go back in time, we modify this to not send a single physical thing, but rather to simply look & listen. We could "look" and see who really kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. We could finally identify Jack the Ripper. We could watch the Pyramids being built, or Stonehenge. Perhaps we are being watched now...? The future could be one of no mysteries, as "Time-Viewing" makes all crime solvable and all past mysteries understood. Perhaps....

Regards,

Doug

 

[T.Lex]

Dang. Premature repification. I hate it when I do that.

 

[printcraft]

You raise your shield before you time jump, duh.

 

[ws6guy]

Have we not learned anything from Homer!

[video=youtube;HLTGcSGVbE8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLTGcSGVbE8[/video]

 

[Mr Evilwrench]

The entire solar system orbits the center of the galaxy, and the galaxy moves outward from the center of the universe. Aiming even for an orbit between Earth and Mars would be problematical over the period of just a few years, nevermind hundreds.

Now, presuming you could select your location, and have the machine lock on to a hospitable landing spot, there may be other ways that reality may use the spawning of alternate timelines to preserve the basics. Perhaps someone went back to kill someone, not Hitler but much like him in most respects, then came back to find someone else had filled the role. Someone went back to kill him, returning to find yet someone else had been the Hitler. This could happen over and over, with Hitler himself being merely the current version. Who will it be next time? There's no way to determine without letting it go all the way through.

I remember fondly many hours geeking out over time paradoxes with the EEs, NucEs, etc. at uni

 

[stephen87]

I travel to the future all the time. I'm doing it as I type.

 

[femurphy77]

The bigger problem here that nobody has yet discussed is that there just aren't enough DeLoreans to go around! The sudden upsurge in demand for them would send the prices spiraling upward effectively making the whole concept cost prohibitive. Besides, if you're over 6' tall getting into a Delorean is pure torture!!!

 

[edporch]

What about the fact that each of our bodies is made up of atoms that are being used in the present.

If somebody could transport through time, NOW those same atoms that are a part of their body have to be in 2 places at the same time in the transported to time.

HOW is this accomplished?

 

[Alpo]

It's just a jump to the left
And then a step to the right
Put your hands on your hips
You bring your knees in tight
But it's the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane,
Let's do the Time Warp again!

Spent a few Halloweens in Boulder Colorado watching this flick.

 

[HoughMade]

I bed Jared wishes he could time travel.

 

[T.Lex]

I bed Jared wishes he could time travel.

Paging Dr. Freud, would Dr. Freud please pick up the red courtesy phone.

 

[Libertarian01]

I bed Jared wishes he could time travel.

You "bed" whomever you want, it's none of our business and I don't want to know!

Doug

 

[femurphy77]

Spent a few Halloweens in Boulder Colorado watching this flick.

Amateur! Well over 150 showings while living in Key West '77-'81. DAMN we had a lot of fun in those days!

 

[ghuns]

I bed Jared ...

Doubt it. You're definitely NOT his type.

 

[9mmfan]

But Dr Who has been time traveling for years.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Warp speed could be a reality in the next 100 years: Star Trek-like travel between galaxies is possible, claims astrophysicist | Daily Mail Online

If warp speed is possible, maybe Scotty or Spock or whoever it was that figured out how to go back in time might well prove to be the prophets that have been foretold....