yes! Atlast! A penguin who agrees with Moe. I was beggining to think I was all alone in this. Tis what Moe beleives is true . A time machine has not been built yet. Everything else is hypothectical mumbo gumbo jumbo untill then.

That arguement doesn't make any sense though...just because a time machine hasn't been invented yet, doesn't mean that it couldn't be used to travel to this time, or any time before the present. A time machine only hasn't been built from our perspective, doesn't mean that a traveler couldn't travel back to this time when/if a machine was built

Just because we've not reached the level of building time machines, doesn't mean that a traveler who came to this date wouldn't appear anyway. By the arguement you made, you wouldn't be able to travel back in time at all, because your point or origin didn't exist in the time you were going to...which would sort of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it?

The fact that your start point doesn't exist from the perspective of your destination, doesn't mean you wouldn't appear in that destination. If we're to assume that, a hundred years from now, someone travels in time and arrives say...6:00 pm GMT, outside my house...then they're standing there right now. The fact that the actual start of the journey hasn't occured from my own perspective, does not negate the fact that it was this place and time that was their destination.

also anyone who was from the future and said so would be packed of to the asylum

According to the article moe posted it's not difficult to understand the thought of time travel if you consider various timelines as alternate universes.

In theory, when a person in a time machine travels either backward or forward in time, that person actually leaves our timeline universe and enters a parallel universe. The past in that parallel universe is a mirror image of our past. So, anything the time traveler does to alter that past will not affect our timeline, since he is altering the past of a different universe.

Now, once a person has left this timeline universe his physical structure becomes altered down to the Quantum level, so he can never return to his original timeline universe. Even if that person were to set their time machine to travel forward in time, say to the date he began the journey, he would be taken to an alternate future.

So, if someone went back in time and killed Hitler, then traveled forward to the date they had left, they would not return to our timeline, but rather, a timeline universe where Hitler had, in fact, been assassinated.

Since we remained in this timeline universe, we would proceed forward through time with our past unaltered.

The down side is, we would never see the time traveler in this universe again.

To be honest, I think that article was really just overcomplicating things, and making it far more difficult to understand a concept which is actually impossibly simple. I think, as much as the likes of Steven Hawking are the greatest minds of our time, they seem to love to needlessly embelish this sort of thing.

I agree Seraphina.

I should've stated that I don't think time travel is actually possible. The problem I have with the theory is that for it to be plausible, there would have to be an infinite number of parallel universes. This is something that doesn't jibe too well with current theory.

Moe has an arguement???
No we dont, precious. To say that Moe has an arguement would say that he is arguing. We dont like to argue about things in science fiction books and movies. Moe has an opinion , yes. But please dont fuss over it.
*nods and smiles*
Beam me up Scotty! Time to repair the flux capasitor so we can hit 88 miles per hour.

I don't think time travel is possible either...but, I also believe that, if it was, it wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to us here in the present...

This idea of 'parallel' universes and all that rubbish is just plain silly...is it so hard to understand that, if someone from the future traveled back in time and had an effect on the past, then that effect has already taken place?

What is so hard to understand about the past having already occured...if an event had ever, or will ever be prevented by a time traveler, then it would have have occured for us to remember it. We don't need to wait for the point of origin to occur in the here and now for the destination to be reached by the traveler, that would defeat the entire concept of 'time travel'.

Every hypothetical time traveler who will EVER appear in our past has already appeared there The past has already occured, and since that was their destination, so too have any actions they took there, whether they helped shape history as we know it or not.

Somehow, I find the idea of linear time, in which the past has already occured (if someone from the future succeeded in altering it, the event would never have occured in the first place for us to know about it), and cannot be changed, a far more logical concept

Seraphina, even the time travel theory states that our past cannot be altered. But where the theory "cheats" is in the use of multiple timelines.

It's like a child scribbles on a piece of paper, doesn't like the picture they drew, then grabs a blank sheet and starts over again. No matter how many times the child starts over, the original scribble remains on the original sheet of paper.

In the time travel theory, it's our original past that remains unaltered.

Now, multiple sheets of paper exist (I know because I've seen them ).

But multiple universes?

Again, I agree that time travel isn't possible, but for a different reason.

well there as to be an infinate amount of parallel universes/times as there is an infinate amount differences/changes that can accour all the time

for example say there is a plaguemost




plague

1)spreads affects many 1)doesn't catch on
1.5)spreads kills many 1.5)fizzles out
2)remains the same strain 2)rapidly mutates


the possiblility is endless this means there as to be a universe for every difference no matter how small.

not really its a matter of chance, you can't say that there are factors that stop somthing from happaning or limit it, look at stuff like sars and aids, sars fizzled out we had nothing to do with its fizzling down even though to an extent was as contages as influenza was a few years ago. while aids can only be prevented not stoped, well not yet.

this means theres an equal chance for everything to happen, ence the term theres no right or wrong, things keep going on. factors can only guide and direct not amper or cause.

Like if I went back in time in the plane and fought the terrorists over the controls, The very fact that i fought them could have made the crash hit the the world trade center by accident.

Like Seraphina said my interference was already there.

For anyone who has seen Back to the Future....

If Marty failed in 1955, then he would have been erased from existance. Because of this he wouldn't have been able to travel back to 1955, and therefore he wouldn't have changed the past and would be born anyways.

So no matter if he changed the past or not, it would come to the same conclusion.


Really, the whole debate is about wether any particluar point in time (past, present, future) is a fixed one, or if it is changable.
I dobut time-travel is possible.

On an off-topic note:

Mmmmmmm..........................Citroen sauce

On an off-topic note:




What part of the Labrador Retriever do they get Lab chops from?

...and I think I prefer the garwy sauce


Is it really possible to invent a time machine in the future? Wouldn't we have to already have a time machine in order to travel into the future? In which case they would have already been invented.

Now, people, aren't we forgetting good ol' overkill?

Theory: Time travel could be achieved by reversing the events of the Universe itself, as opposed to sending the traveller back legitimately to another coordinate in the time dimension.

This is done by either producing a 3D "photograph" of the Universe at this point, waiting some time, erasing the current Universe and using the previous Universe's energy to replicate the "photograph" (no suggestions on how to make the photograph, or replicate it, though it would have to be accurate down to the last electron); or initiating a "reversal reaction" to theoretically send every event backwards.
You would exclude yourself from the reversal ofcourse, though you would have to create an identical energy structure to your presence so it could be reversed if you opted for the reversal reaction.

This could be greatly implified (though still a colossal project) if you could limit the reversal to a smaller section of the Universe, say our solar system; though you would have to be careful of the impacts of external influences, or the reversal would be off.
It may also be considered that inaccurate reversal/replication isn't of too significant an impact, depending on your requirements, though you may also cause some particularly disasterous abnormalities if it's more than 0.000000000000000000000000000000000001% (approx.) off.

This is "cheating" - time still has remained the same, or even moved forward as you proceeded with the change. You may've also unaligned the solar system with the timeline of the galaxy and the rest of the Universe, though if it's not too far it won't be too significant (except for a few interstellar asteroids etc, which I would attempt to accurately immitate). This "time reversal" would then be able to develop another sequence completely unique, ofcourse, andif you kept a photograph of the "time" you left, if you've gone this far with your technology you could probably go back, too.

If the process of existence is predetermined (which is a theory I subscribe to), it makes time reversal more possible, though ofcourse, there is a reason why I call these theories "Overkill".

I also theorise that, if computer simulation could be produced both efficient and powerful enough, this sort of thing could be done entirely in computer simulation; photograph of the current Universe taken, time reversed in simulation, data in simulation produced into reality over top of our current reality, whatever.
Hell, for more practical purposes, ie in order to advance technology, we could create a simulation of Earth today, send them forward 1000 years and collect data on their technological progress.


Oh, and a few points:
-Your mere presence say, 60 years ago, would probably wipe you from existence.
-Once you have mastered everything else and are travelling back in time, don't forget that moving to a different coordinate in the 4th dimension would also require adjusted 3D coordinates - otherwise you'll land yourself a linear distance of several trillions of kilometres away from Earth, extended from the line connecting Earth and the Universe's centre.
Real time travel is risky business.

i have actually seen quiet a good movie about this question,

set in future, where time travel is posible, hunters go back to past to hunt down dinosaurs, but only once that that are about to die in seconds anyway, one hunter gets lost sdteps on buterfly and when they all come to future its nothing like it was before they went to past,



in other words, any contact what so ever with us, by people from future would complatly destroy our future, so my opinion is NO we will not be coming back any time soon

I'd want to save the universe a day before exam and load it until I pass

I don't think so because time is invariant. It doesn't flow in any direction and you can't travel to the past, since it is not a location.

I think that one reason we haven't come back in time yet is that we "may" be the first version of us to do it, and only when our world is capable of making a time machine we will be able to then go back and alter time...confusin i know

time wouldn't be altered

Sorry to burst your bubble Moe (and I know you were joking, but.....), but the bank requires a transaction of some kind at least once every seven years. If the account is inactive for that length of time, it will be suspended, the money dissappears.

Hmmmm.

But anyhow, to answer the poll, I was hoping for an "I don't know" response, because obviously, I don't know. But i'm leaning more to the idea that there's no such thing, otherwise there'd be evidence of it in the here and now, so for the sake of argument, I voted for that answer.

Regards, PA

i think that if somebody went back in time and changed something it would have no effect on the future because what the person did made the future what it is

interesting question. If you had the ability to travel backwards you would be faced with a terrible dilemma because, although you could visit,for example,germany during the rise of hitler you could do nothing that would save the lives of millions of people lost during a war you knew was about to happen because if you did, you may be ending your own life.
so if you could travel back to kill hitler and stop a terrible war would you do so knowing that your own life may suddenly cease and also the lives of millions of other people....people that were never born because you changed history?
For instance, you are an american and you travel back in time to kill hitler and save millions of people from horrible deaths then what about America? America was in a state of economic depression prior to ww2 with millions of americans on the breadline. WW2 gave America an economic opportunity to rebuild its economy to the point where it has become the most powerful nation on earth.Without WW2 this would never have happened, in fact it is likely that Russia would have become the world's most powerful nation with Japan free to conquer China and the far eastern nations.

I am not voting, because this is simply speculation, it is said you can only go back, but not change anything, but to go forward from now, would land one in a parallel world, similar but not like ours.

if at all a time machine is invented i feel its only proper that paralle's exist.
i dontlike that thought buts its one of two rational ways that allows one to avoid paradoxes.
i do agree with seraphina that if someone from our future travelled back to our timeline they would not be able to change squat..
and as the sorce pointed out on the the artical that moe so kindly snatched us, the only way we in this time line would know that people could travel in time is if said people came from a paralle future.

so its one of these?right?
a) you can travel to the past but not change anything.
you can travel to a paralle past and change crap but are pretty much exiled from the present you came from.
c) or you simply cant go back.

i like to add onto what demon watcher said.
if any one where to travel to the future, they would by all means end up in a paralle universe. only because the future has not happend from our perspective.
so in in that sense one can stack the deck so the odds are in their favor.
how ever the futher you travel the more difficult it would be to do so, because your traveling to a future, where the choices you could have made you didnt, simply because you where time traveling(unable to make those desions for *x* amount of time).
you could prolly go to the future one day ahead, get the winning lotto numbers,the winning horses,check out and memorize the sports section in your dailly paper do the same thing with the stocks, hell check out the obits for the hell of it(your in luck someone you hate died).
then go back to the present get some lotto tickets,go to the tracks and place bets on trifecta's,call your bookie and tell em what teams you want,go online emty your bank account put all your savens on to the best stocks, then go next door and tell your fat a$$
neighbor (you know the one that always lets there dog take a big crap in your yard) i hope you choke on a pork chop bone you !@#$%^$%@#%..
which would totally change tomarrow eccept for your fat neighbor(i mean common thats like playing god), just remember tomarrow to use the obituary to pick up there dogs sh!T from your front lawn.

My opinion on time travel is one-sided: It doesn't exist. As some others have said, if time machines were/are built than we would be hearing from these people. Also, every microsecond ever would have to be constantly occuring somewhere in order for a being to travel there. One post mentioned going back and killing George Washington and altering the future. What about the time you left? Say your buddy John sees you and your time machine off, then you go and kill Mr. Washington. In Johns existence, what is happening? Is there a split second change because of what you did? Does he realize the world is different? Or does he for some reason remember being taught how some guy in unexplainable clothing killed the first President. Therefore, I'm sorry to say: I just can't see how it would be possible.

how about by changing that aspect of history like killing Washington, would most likely make it so this hypothetical John, never existed, therefore the traveller would not be able to return to the exact moment when he left, on the hand this would set a course for a different timeline to be created, and when the traveller returned nothing would have changed. By changing an event in the past you create a parallel world where things are similar but different, at the point in which one would leave, he would end up in either the time line he was born in or would end up replacing his equivolant in the new timeline, permantly removing himself from the timeline in which he orginated, this would be the only to prevent a paradox that could theoretically tear a hole in the space-time continuum.

ok i know this subject has been done to death, so this is a first person perspective on what can/could happen, based on what most have posted thus far.
mind you this is not an argument but rather intamite look at such things.

*john tells his buddy to to safe guard his machine dont let no one touch it while hes away. this way when he kill washington and comes back they can share beers/drinks whatever together. john kills washington-----at that moment x-amount of years in the future johns buddy gets a head ache,and forgets about alll the crap washington has done eccept that he has died.
john goes back to the future bout ten secs after he origionaly left, and finds out history has been rewritten then shares a beer/whatever with his close friend, that is assuming his friend has not some how been erased from history, in which case hell prolly be hangen out with someone who knows all about him and in all reality is just a stranger.*

*john tells his buddy to to safe guard his machine and what till he returns from killing thr former prez washinton. john pulls out his gak, bout to bust bust a cap in the a$$ of ole washy boy, when he trips missfires hits his head on a rock an.... in the future his buddy waits and waits and then says the helll with john imm a gonna drink/whatever with out this punk b!tch..lol cause i just know he vaporized himself thats all*

*john tells his buddy to safe guard the machine, but before he gose back to do his task he says, lets go have a drink/whatever...... then sometime later, they forget about doing it or mayhapes they realized it not possible/too risky....... who knows?*

i think that if time travel from our future is possible they are already here, perhapes u.f.o.'s ?.....
im not a ufo fanatic so dont think i am, but if there not here yet then perhapes itll happen in the near or beyound our futures?
how about its impossible well never see them,
perhapes there from another universal time line and they dont look like us at all may be they wont show them selves.

im not bashen this subjet really i think if time travel dose happen or we witness it it will be a tremendious occassion.even more so if it happens from the future back this way, i mean think of what we can learn if thats possible.
mostlikly theyd wanna presearve ther future there live there very being so what better way then to travel to the future and make sure there not screwing up in the past some how..
sorry its just my thoughts i hope you understand..

So if i cut your legs off you could grow new ones? I think not.

However the thought of time travel hurts my brain, so many good arguments. So many variables.

If we had invented time machines in the future surely someone would have come back and told us.

nah, only if they came back from a paralle universe(like ours but diffirent in some or many ways)would we then know time travel is possible( or there trying to show us there here but in a way where just not able to understand yet?),
but if they come back to yesterday you still wont know cause that in its self would create a paralle universe(because today right now has happened).

that is assumein that once something has happen it cant be change now if it can be changed and time travel is possible and some one came back we would know about it, but we would at this time prolly be written diffrent things about diffrent things about this subject and have not the slightest idea of what our prior post was if the was changed/where changed by just us noticing/ knowing time travelers have arrived..

I once readded this science fiction book about timetraveling it was about a sienctist who traveled back to 1935 (or something like that) to stop a world war. But at about the end of the book this guy who's now badly influenced starts a new war, the WOII and becomes Hitler. I found it pretty cool, the message was basically you cant change faith.

I dont think it would be possible to reverse time but maybe speeding up or looking into the future could be possible, cuz didn't Einstein proofed to us that speeding up time is theoretical possible but it just cant be done cuz we need to go way way faster then lightspeed?

The past cannot be changed. the reason why is quite simple.

Suppose that you are living in 2006 and your financial and career situations are very bleak because the company you had worked for for 25 years just went bankrupt and took your pension down the tubes with it. Now suppose that you were offered a job in 1981 by a brash little startup company called Microsoft, a job that included stock options. At the same time you were offered another better paying job by the company you have worked for for the past 25 years, the one that just went bankrupt.

You stumble upon a time machine and think to yourself "self, I will just go back to 1981 and take that job at microsft and be a gadzillionaire". Self agrees wholeheartedly. So, you go back in time and accept the job at microsoft. The years go by and it is now 2006 again, and you don't go back in time to redo the mistake of taking the wrong job, so you didn't take the job at microsoft and you are still stuck with no pension and no job because your company went bankrupt. See the point? If you go back in time to change something, then when you arrive back at the moment when you went back in time to change the thing, you won't then go back in time to make the change and everything will revert back the way it was.

Sorry.

How do you know people are not travelling back through time, as soon as the changes are made we wouldn't know any different as the alternative history would have never existed? Maybe the Brits won the war of independence as GW was assassinated, someone may have gone back to stop the assassination and the whole of history is altered. Now there a thought

i strongly believe that time travel does not exist and no entity of any kind can go through time,,,,,,,,,,you see, time as you think it to be is just merely the change in placement of matter and energy,,,,,,,,the closest thing we could get to time travel is completely recreating the past, which is beyond our capability,,,,far far far beyond our capability,,,,,,you see, my theory goes: you sit in a safe area, like a bubble which is a machine that doesn't get recreated, then you totally recreate all matter into the placement it was in the past and everything accept you in your bubble is replaced into it's past placement,, and you've got to do some damn good calculating, because you may end up in space or inside the Earth, since your bubble doesn't move,,,,,the entire solar system will be moving, and you'll be stuck in the far abyss

as for travelling into the future, the closest thing you can come up to is just by simply cryogenically freezing yourself---exact same thing as time travel, your older self just may not be there since you already froze yourself silly

It will be real one day, I just hope I'm still alive so I can travel back in time and give my self a sports almanac(sp) hahaha. BIFF

we travel into the future albeit limited right now.
but one day if you or i wish, assuming were alive we could/assuming its avilible(at the time),that is to say its proven but not yet falible.

we could fly to the nearst black hole as fast as tecnology allows us, not entering but just burning massive amounts of fuil to stay out side the event horrizion, then use the kinetictic enegry from the black hole's event horrizon to sling shot us or you or i back to earth.

given the technolgy at had you would age some form traveling here to there and back, but you would have age remarkable less then those who stayed behinde......actually you may have out survived the planet and be all alone in a empty solor system.

Going back in time would F*** eveything up, just being there would alter the entire universe.. I think that everything, everywhere is inter connected, and one thing changing changes something somewhere else , could be in a different galaxy. But that's my take on it. so I think if anyone did go back in time, they may have gone "back" to the future. That is F*ked up, if someomen altered the future.. how would the past be effected?.....

the threads of time are far too delicate to even consider travelling back in time, if you come back to the present time, and everyone are giant red lizards that speak spanish and smoke crack---then your never going to reverse it, it'll be an eternal curse apon you----and i just get a headache when i think of someone going back and stopping themselves from altering the past,,,it'd be a paradox---strange thing paradoxs are, how the hell will reality let you do a paradox? does everything in the universe just freeze and remains on eternal pause

I noticed there is 7 pages on this topic, and im guessing the conversation has gone in a different direction (as it usually does when it gets long) but im going to reply to the original post. Plain and simple, if we were able to build time machines sometime in the future, we would be seeing people from the future right now, wouldn't we? Personally, I think that if the human race lives on long enough, they will undoubtably create some way to manipulate time and space. The only problem with that is the fact that we are way overdue for an apocalypse. Weather it be an asteroid, or global warming, an ice age, or a black hole developing too close to the solar system, it has been stated that the earth has a disaster that ends all life on earth (other than the bacteria in the rocks miles under the ground) every 1.1 billion years. I believe that this world as we know it will end before humans have the capabilities to "travel through time," and thats why we do not see any people from the future now. Of course, thats just my opinion.

(Isnt it amazing how I turned a discussion about time travel into one about the apocalypse )

maybe no one wants to come back to this cruddy period of time :'(

thats supposing that the future has already happnd though and we have built machines, if the future hasnt happnd yet then no nothign can come from the future as its not there yet, physics isnt anyway near advanced enough to actually start mapping different dimensions where time will be ultimatly stored.

on the subject of abortion, it is not god created. Two humans make that descicion themselves, there is no divine intervention

THE FUTURE HAS NOT ALEADY HAPPENED YOU MORONS. GIVE ME ONE SHRED OF EVIDENCE THAT WE HAVE ALREADY LIVED OUR LIVES. BETCHA CANT!

QUOTE(PLO @ Dec 10 2005, 07:45 PM)

thats supposing that the future has already happnd though and we have built machines, if the future hasnt happnd yet then no nothign can come from the future as its not there yet, physics isnt anyway near advanced enough to actually start mapping different dimensions where time will be ultimatly stored.


...................................................................................................................................



THE FUTURE HAS NOT ALEADY HAPPENED YOU MORONS. GIVE ME ONE SHRED OF EVIDENCE THAT WE HAVE ALREADY LIVED OUR LIVES. BETCHA CANT!

mackattack Posted Yesterday, 09:12 PM..

...................................................................................................................................

hmmm, well mackattack, he was basicly saying if a time machine is built 24 hours from now, how come we dont wittness time machines or travelers from 24 hours in the future from now?..the answer i belive is that would cause a paralle universe to be born and in such a case we personaly wouldent now of that happening in this time or space. simply put the paralle time created would be like our perhapes but still diffrent, maybey duplicates of ourselves would know it but we would not.

in order for ourselves to experiance such a happening, someone or thing from a paralle future would have to come back to this time.

also yesterday at 9:12 p.m. ..you asked for one shed of evidence that we have already lived our lives. well here you go,,,,ready???? remember all the stuff you did between your post and reading this one??yes,well there you go one shred for ya,,if no then it is you who are the "moron"..

so you dont understand what im getting at? ill explain..
time runs forward in a straight line in every direction, and it has sense it first came into being. this is why i feel paralles must exist even though i dont quite like the idea of them.
heres a quick way of explaining it yet still a very crude way to explain, so if we morons can pick up on this idea. then maybey the highly advanced brainiac("WHICH OF COURSE YOU ARE")can,or maybey you must have just over looked it.

well here goes...........if your in a craft travaling at high super high speeds, the speed/time in which your traveling can be vastly diffrent from those not on the craft. so although time seemed to normaly pass by for you you would have aged slightly less/ or extreamly less than us, not on the craft,
(this happens everytime some one jumps on a plane for any duration and is a fact, although limited in the scope of what im trying to describe.)
the faster you travel the greater the age/time diffrence would be.
so you would have wittnessed the future happening around you. and hence the shred of proof we have lived our lives already, that is our lives with out your intervetion.
see you dont really escape time but rather switch over to a paralle time so to speak.and in that time you would experiance your new paralle time normally.
now you can witness, a future time slightly out side of yours just by look out your crafts window.
lets call that the future that has already happened/ where others have already lived there lives. now your space and time would be diffrent then our space and time and the faster you moved the great the diffrence would be, and the more we would have already lived our lives compared to what you consider your normal time.
you would have to be traveling much faster to truly escape it.

also its improbable for us to reach the speed of light but if by some means you did time would stop for you compleatly, and when you quit moven you may find your self in some future time, this its self would truly be a paralle universe because it was void of your ability to make or provide actions. you simply would not have existed/or been able to interven somhow/any how for duration of time, so to speak to have a impact on the future you ended up in..and as far as going to the past? thats a whole nother can of worms there..

so in closing the future has happened, is always happening, sence diffrent space and time paralles can/do exist (remember the traveling in a craft bit) factualy/technicaly/and also by default every one has already lived there lives, and where not all morons....

After reading this thread, it's now my time to voice my opinion/theories...


Say hypothetically a form of time travel existed within this dimension
It is possible to alter history...to a degree.

If you return in time, make an alteration which does not effect your 'future' existance, it will occur and people's knowledge of history will adjust accordingly.

Say hypothetically you go back in time and steal somebodies car (and don't get caught in the future), the events after that person comes back to their car will be different from the original set of events. It's small, yet it changes course.



If you return in time, make an alteration which doe effect your 'future' existance, it will NOT occur.

Say hypothetically, you return to your place of birth and execute yourself, it is NOT possible due to the fact that you were not born, therefore it would not be possible for you to execute yourself in the future due to your temporary 'non existance'. It works on a cycle, you can not kill yourself or therefore close variants.



The 'Future'
The future has not occured yet, the 'time' is there, as time is a infinite straight line, yet, your actions have not yet been 'written'. Your decisions and choices are what make the 'future'. There are so many variations to the future, so many paths to take, the future is what you make it.




It's 2:30AM here in Australia, I'm going to sleep.