changing the past not possible through time travel?

[belfpala]

Either it's not possible, or there's something WAY bigger than us that's preventing us mucking with things (and it's impossible to get around), or all of history would be rife with time travelers screwing with things.

Let's see... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0111438/

Jean-Claude Van Damme will literally kick your face if you try to screw with the timeline.

edit: /sarcasm tag if necessary.

[Endus]

what bad would come of rome never collapsing? there really isn't anything neccesarily preventing them from doing the same major technological advances. by the time rome collapsed they had already accepted christianity. im sure given enough time they would have stopped using slave labor for everything.

It's not so much "bad", it was just meant to be a "how deeply would that affect all of known history" thing.

It's a little Eurocentric, but Rome was expansionist.

[Deleted]

there's a lot of movies with time travel in them. exactly what proof do you have it doesnt exist?

He says there is no way to know, not that there is no time travel. And he is right, we are discussing something very pointless at this point.

[Mormolyce]

It's not so much "bad", it was just meant to be a "how deeply would that affect all of known history" thing.

It's a little Eurocentric, but Rome was expansionist.

Actually it didn't really expand much in the Imperial period, most of that happened during the Republic.

[breadisfunny]

It doesn't really make any sense that the creation of time travel in 4,000 years (or whatever) will suddenly mean changes will happen to the here-and-now. That's a strange perception bias. If time travel's possible, it's because time is a dimension, like space. If you're falling, you're traveling through space. You don't have any real capacity to change your speed or direction; you're falling. If you can suddenly move yourself upwards, though, to a higher point, you're still falling. You didn't change the fall at all. Just your height.

Again, people are making this assumption that things won't change until we hit that future, when the entire point is that the discovery being in the future doesn't matter; time travel will have always existed, because you can travel through time.

but wouldn't it be the least bit suspicious if strange people in strange clothing started showing up? all it takes it one careless person.....although if you did that at the wrong time period i imagine a stay at the local dungeon/jail would be in order or you might be deemed a wizard/witch and killed....

[ereskigal]

You can only travel back in time to the point the time machine was invented

[Kaleredar]

There's a theory that you can only time travel to the point when the first time travel machine was made. Which means that its impossible for us to actually go back in our current history, only people 1000 years from now will be able to come back to the point when we will invent a time traveling machine if ever. Why ? I have no idea, it would of made sense if we could of only time travel to the point of the first travel which would of made a rip in time and space and it could of been traceable with another time machine. But the dilemma here is if we were to invent a time machine tomorrow it wouldn't be operable with this theory because there is no other time machine to connect to the first one...

The only thing I recall about that "speculation" is if you used a wormhole to travel through time; you'd be unable to regress to back before the wormhole was formed. Though it's not like this is "exact science" anyway. It's all wildly theoretical, if not little more than a physicist's thought experiment to toy with while they're waiting at the dentists. Personally, I'll stick to occam's razor on this... if you were to travel back into the past, anything you would have done would already have been done, as you would have already done it, seeing as it was done in the past. Cuts out all the "A Sound of Thunder butterfly effects" and "infinite dimensions" angles.



And at any rate, our most accurate, informative sources on the "science" of time travel teach us that all paradoxes can be amended by singing Johnny B. Goode at your parent's enchantment under the sea dance.

[Deleted]

if its possible, we already have.

prove otherwise.

- - - Updated - - -

Fortunately, time travel is impossible.

Or at least, it is possible, but only in the forwards direction. At a rate of 1 second per second.

ofc that is all relative... someone traveling at a higher speed will have a longer second compared to someone traveling at a lower speed.

[belfpala]

The only thing I recall about that "speculation" is if you used a wormhole to travel through time;

There's a difference on what people mean by time travel. Wormholes allow (theoretically) giving information before that information was perceived to be sent. Basically, "Hi, Kaleredar!" Then I pop through a wormhole and say the same, "Hi, Kaleredar!" Millions of years later you get my actual transmission.

I might be wrong, but it seems most people are thinking of a Back to the Future device. That's just not going to happen.

[Endus]

but wouldn't it be the least bit suspicious if strange people in strange clothing started showing up? all it takes it one careless person.....although if you did that at the wrong time period i imagine a stay at the local dungeon/jail would be in order or you might be deemed a wizard/witch and killed....

It wouldn't be "started showing up". They'd have been showing up for longer than we've had things like "writing". They'd be everywhere.

Look at a simple piece of technology, like a car, or a gun. Now, see how many people misuse them over the course of a day. Now, consider every future day there is, and every future human that will ever exist, and combine that with time travel.

We'd have drunk time travelers showing up to heckle Shakespeare in the Stratford theater, just to do so.

[belfpala]

ofc that is all relative... someone traveling at a higher speed will have a longer second compared to someone traveling at a lower speed.

That's "time traveling" yes. But only in one direction, and via clearly defined math.

[Endus]

That's "time traveling" yes. But only in one direction, and via clearly defined math.

What I love is when they say we travel through time at a constant speed.

Go ahead. Define "speed" for me real quick.

[Kaleredar]

but it seems most people are thinking of a Back to the Future device. That's just not going to happen.

Indeed. It seems people think there would be some "quantum rule" that would hold that Doc and Marty couldn't travel back before 1985, as the time machine hadn't been built, "because reasons."

[breadisfunny]

It wouldn't be "started showing up". They'd have been showing up for longer than we've had things like "writing". They'd be everywhere.

Look at a simple piece of technology, like a car, or a gun. Now, see how many people misuse them over the course of a day. Now, consider every future day there is, and every future human that will ever exist, and combine that with time travel.

We'd have drunk time travelers showing up to heckle Shakespeare in the Stratford theater, just to do so.

wouldnt something like that royally mess up history? because you would have at least a few thousand people trying to affect history at any given time.

[Nebria]

well if somebody from the future would change the past we wouldn't remember the alternate timeline cause it wouldn't exist for us.
because we all remeber about ww2 nobody seems to get back to kill hitler, give him phase canons or whatever.

this could be explained if we really can't travel back in time to some point before time travel was invented. (I mean nobody killed hitler a least in our timeline) but for me it looks like a lame excuse.

I like the version where you travel back in time, change the past and fork a new timeline. it makes more sense why the original timeline would keep intact and still allows him to travel back in time.
I think what is much more complicated it time travel into the future. because future not happened yet the multiverse theory makes no sense here. in what future I would travle initially?
time travel into the past is always the past of the time traveller.

[Mormolyce]

if its possible, we already have.

prove otherwise.

- - - Updated - - -



ofc that is all relative... someone traveling at a higher speed will have a longer second compared to someone traveling at a lower speed.

Relative to our own frame of reference, I meant :P

What I love is when they say we travel through time at a constant speed.

Go ahead. Define "speed" for me real quick.

The number of seconds it takes for a second to elapse.

=1. QED

^_^

[Endus]

wouldnt something like that royally mess up history? because you would have at least a few thousand people trying to affect history at any given time.

Yeah. That's the point.

Time travel isn't possible, because the number of total dickheads in the population is high enough that the possibility of a dickhead getting a time travel device and screwing with the past is pretty much 100%, given that we have to consider the entirety of the future history of the human race as a potential source for said dickheads.

If time travel were possible, there'd be more time travelers around than normal people. Or, it's stupidly impossible (like, needs the entire tapped power of a sun to power it or something), or there's some uberentity that's not letting us much with things (the Doctor, or God, or what have you).

[Kaleredar]

wouldnt something like that royally mess up history? because you would have at least a few thousand people trying to affect history at any given time.

well, that's where the cause and effect come in... obviously, we've no reports of any such thing happening. So if we assume time travel into the past is "feasible," then it stands to automatic reason that either 1) every time traveler, ever, keeps a tight lid on things or 2) it's impossible to change the past, or anything they did in the past would already have been changed, and would have been that way since whenever it happened, seeing as it first happened in the past.

[breadisfunny]

well if somebody from the future would change the past we wouldn't remember the alternate timeline cause it wouldn't exist for us.
because we all remeber about ww2 nobody seems to get back to kill hitler, give him phase canons or whatever.

this could be explained if we really can't travel back in time to some point before time travel was invented. (I mean nobody killed hitler a least in our timeline) but for me it looks like a lame excuse.

I like the version where you travel back in time, change the past and fork a new timeline. it makes more sense why the original timeline would keep intact and still allows him to travel back in time.
I think what is much more complicated it time travel into the future. because future not happened yet the multiverse theory makes no sense here. in what future I would travle initially?
time travel into the past is always the past of the time traveller.

so if person a went with person b into the past and they both changed something different in the same year would person a still be able to return with person b? or would person a be sent to a different timeline altogether where person b may or may not know them in the same context along with the events that changed as a result?

[Kaleredar]

so if person a went with person b into the past and they both changed something different in the same year would person a still be able to return with person b? or would person a be sent to a different timeline altogether where person b may or may not know them in the same context along with the events that changed as a result?

Maybe person A and person B were already there in the past and affected whatever change it was in the first place, which then lead to person A and person B endeavoring to go into the past and attempt to change something... which, of course, they had already done in the past. So in the end, nothing is changed.