Time Travel

[Mr.Badham]

If time travel were possible, wouldn't things be better cause people from the future would have gone back and fixed/eliminated the problems?

[OnceConvinced]

The problem is... as far as I can see... is that if you went back in time to solve a problem, then the need to go back in time and fix the problem would no longer be there, which would mean that you would never go back in time and fix the problem and thus the problem would be there again.

I can't see how deliberately trying to change something would work. For instance, you could invent a time machine in 2017 and go back in time and murder Adolf Hitler when he was 3 years old. The problem is that this would change the future so that in 2017 there would be no Adolf. Nobody would have heard of him, so you would not end up going back in time to kill him. This would then revert time back to the way it was with Hitler existing again.

The only way I can see that you would be able to change time is accidentally... like in the movie "Back to the future".

[fredonly]

To clarify: time travel to the PAST is impossible. We travel forward in time continuously.

[Mr.Badham]

[Replying to OnceConvinced]

Hmm, I never thought of it that way. Very interesting.

[amortalman]

[Replying to post 1 by Mr.Badham]

Time travel to the past happens often but in a limited sense. Every time we dwell on past events in our lives we travel back in time. But doesn't those memories (or sometimes false memories) in some way affect our relationships with others and our perceptions of the world? In fact, memories can have a very real effect on the present. For example, let's say that an aging man begins to reflect on some serious mistakes he made as a youth. This might significantly alter his behavior in the present. These negative memories were always there but were left unexamined until his old age prompted him to revisit them creating depression and a change in his behavior. Therefore, time travel that was only in the mind became very real in a practical sense.
Any thoughts?

[OnceConvinced]

Very philosophical indeed, amortalman and yes, learning from the past can certainly affect our future. When I think back to my Christian days I can see a lot now that I didn't see back then and have answers for things I didn't have back then (ie Did God really answer my prayer then? No, he didn't, there were other more obvious reasons why I got what I wanted that don't involve any divine intervention).

Hindsight is a marvellous thing and you can learn a lot from the past.

However when I think of time travel, I don't think of it as travelling back in your mind. I think of it as physically travelling back to the past, which from my perspective is quite impossible, but fun to imagine.

[marco]

[Replying to post 1 by Mr.Badham]


Time travel to the past happens often but in a limited sense. very real in a practical sense.

The more we discover the less we seem to know. The Lorentz transformation opened the doors for some sort of time travel being theoretically possible, as did the Schwarzschild radius and black hole theory. The troublesome speed of light always gets in the way as do paradoxes. If we change the past when we return to the future it is no longer our future so our return to what we left can be done only by not changing the past. It's been suggested we return to a parallel universe, which is all very fascinating.

Augustine, pondering on time, thought that the past and future do not exist, which is true in a way. The present exists in a flash and immediately becomes the past.

[Mr.Badham]

[Replying to post 5 by amortalman]

You missed my point completely. I hate remembering the past because it involves me not getting laid in high school. I am desperately working on a time machine right now for no other reason than to solve that problem for my earlier self. Other than killing Hitler, I can think of no better use.

[Coldfire]

If time travel were possible, wouldn't things be better cause people from the future would have gone back and fixed/eliminated the problems?

What makes you think that people would care to go back in time given the opportunity? Or perhaps in their research and development of time travel, they came to understand the potential crisis that that could create.

I agree to some extent that time travel to the past is impossible, but you gave a poor reason to make that conslusion.

Time travel to the future exists, we do this presently. There are also speculations that its possible to actively speed up time to allow a party to travel to the future quicker than another party.

Time travel to the past however is indeed impossible. Simply put, the past doesn't exist as a place you can travel to.

[i777]

[Replying to post 1 by Mr.Badham]

Time is only an illusion that is formed because of our senses that detect invisible waves that enable us to see moving objects. We will never actually travel to the future or the past but we will always experience new moving objects because that's part of the plan.