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Old 05-27-2009, 09:14 PM   #1
deoxys
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Why Time Travel (to the past at least) will never happen.

I was thinking about it the other day, and I realized time travelling to the past will never happen. Why? Well, the answer is very simple. But the answer is a question: If time travelling to the past was to ever be possible, wouldn't we have seen the results already? Surely, someone would have come back to (around) this time period.

But no evidence of anyone doing so has been seen. So at this point, you realize time travel to the past is never going to happen, unless:

A. The time traveler didn't ever make himself known and just appeared to be a normal person.
B. Time travelling to the past actually opens up a new time line, a la future Trunks in DBZ.

I think the closest to that we'll ever get is recreating a physical environment from a memory, like in Assassin's Creed.

Discuss (in before someone mentions John Titor).
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Old 05-27-2009, 09:21 PM   #2
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Maybe they're just really good at not getting caught.
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Old 05-27-2009, 09:27 PM   #3
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People to the past, then other people go back to just before they arrived and drag them back to the future before they can change anything.
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Old 05-27-2009, 09:39 PM   #4
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People to the past, then other people go back to just before they arrived and drag them back to the future before they can change anything.
Whoa. That's... profound. Like time police :o
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Old 05-27-2009, 09:46 PM   #5
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There was a fossilized shoeprint found in a canyon alongside dino fossils.

Maybe there are laws? Like, to keep time from changing?
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Old 05-27-2009, 09:52 PM   #6
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The energy you'd have to use to punch a hole in the fabric of the ttime-space continuum would be that of a star. IF it could ever be done, it'd have to be a long time away.
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Old 05-27-2009, 09:55 PM   #7
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There was a fossilized shoeprint found in a canyon alongside dino fossils.

Maybe there are laws? Like, to keep time from changing?
A lot of people speculate men wore shoes 200 million years ago, believe it or not
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Old 05-27-2009, 10:00 PM   #8
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Cavemen were clever enough to invent the wheel and create fire, i'm sure they'd become clever enough to put something on their feet to stop rocks peircing and injuring them.
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Old 05-27-2009, 10:29 PM   #9
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Of course, humans have only been around for a million years.
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Old 05-27-2009, 10:48 PM   #10
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http://www.abyssandapex.com/200710-wikihistory.html

Obligatory
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Old 05-27-2009, 11:08 PM   #11
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The new timeline theory shouldn't be discounted. Multiple timelines would explain a lot of the weirdness shown by quantum mechanics.

There are also models of time machines that can't take you to any time before the time machine was created.
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Old 05-27-2009, 11:47 PM   #12
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Holy shit it's HH where did you come from.
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Old 05-28-2009, 12:56 AM   #13
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If I went back in time to change the past, that means in the future the event will not have had happened and as such, I would not have gone back in time to change said past, and thus a paradox is created.
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Old 05-28-2009, 04:13 AM   #14
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There was one episode of Lilo & Stitch where the protagonists use a time machine that already comes with its paradox elimination switch, allowing them to repeatedly go through a scenario without paradox-incurred consequences. Considering that paradoxes ultimately feature in time-travel discussion, assuming the technology becomes possible it'll be a huge factor in the design.
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Old 05-28-2009, 08:02 AM   #15
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If you go back in time and kill your grandfather...

...did you really do it? :o
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Old 05-28-2009, 09:13 AM   #16
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You travel fastest through time when you travel slowest through space, and vice versa.

The world around you (relative to you) travels fastest through time when you travel fastest through space, and vice versa.

I imagine that this would be the key, but the problem is in the math: in order to go backwards through time, you'd need to go backwards through space. But conventionally "going backwards through space" is simply "going forwards through space but in the opposite direction," and time still flows forward whether you're backtracking your own path or not. In order to truly, truly go "backwards through space," it would require (a) movement we've yet to conceptualize but more importantly (b) a way to get around the math. Because, as mention, you personally travel fastest through time when you travel slowest through space, and because of that, it would create a paradox if traveling through space at speed = 0 resulted in both your traveling fastest through forward-time and fastest through backwards-time. Similarly, it doesn't hold up if we argue that 0 through positive infinity are the forwards-time numbers and negative infinity through -0.0000000000000000000[...]1 are the backwards-time numbers. Why should backwards not get to share in zero? More importantly, why should forwards have access to zero when backwards does not? You'd think 0 would either be shared or would be inaccessible to both parties.
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Last edited by Vran; 05-28-2009 at 09:35 AM.
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Old 05-28-2009, 12:30 PM   #17
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I have heard of the multiple world theory which states that basically an alternate universe is created for every possible quantum decision you can make. So, if you did go back in time to kill your grandfather, it wouldn't affect you, because the outcome happens in another universe, not the one you live in.
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Old 05-28-2009, 12:35 PM   #18
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Leibniz would say that if you went back in time it was always part of your essential self that you would have gone back in time, and we wouldn't notice a change, because it simply always had been.

But then again, he said that even though everything that you are and will do is already a part of you and is unchangable that we still have free will. So disregard.
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Old 05-28-2009, 01:08 PM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Holy Emperor View Post
Holy shit it's HH where did you come from.
The future.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyranidos View Post
If you go back in time and kill your grandfather...

...did you really do it? :o
Nope, Time Line police would catch you and kill you.

KAZAM!
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Old 05-29-2009, 02:06 AM   #20
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The future.



Nope, Time Line police would catch you and kill you.

KAZAM!
Correct.
On both accounts.

Crap, they're after me.
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Old 05-29-2009, 07:36 AM   #21
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But if you killed your grandfather, you would be dead because he was your grandfather. If you were dead, were you really there to kill him in the first place?
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Old 05-29-2009, 07:39 AM   #22
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Well said.
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Old 05-29-2009, 08:20 AM   #23
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But if you killed your grandfather, you would be dead because he was your grandfather. If you were dead, were you really there to kill him in the first place?
Once again, this only holds true under certain circumstances and not all circumstances. One scenario for which this doesn't hold true is the multiple timelines theory.

If you've seen Back to the Future before, then you should understand what this means. If not, click the spoiler below. Click it anyway if you want to see what I wrote, but keep in mind that it's written for someone who's never seen the film and yet spoils the film all the same.
Spoiler: show
This theory was explored in the popular film series Back to the Future, although admittedly the film ignores several of the theories unknowns or flaws in favor of Hollywood hand-waving magic. ;) In these films, a boy from World #001 goes back in time to 30 years ago in that same World #001. Specifically, he travels back in time from 1985 to 1955. His early interactions with the people of that world (his world circa 1955) already set him on course to never return to World #001 circa 1985. He can return to 1985, sure, but he'll never again be able to go back to World #001 in 1985. Even if the only change he did was to step on a cricket, and so then even if the World #002 to which he returned was indeterminably different from his original world, it would still be a different world. The only real question is how radically different the world he "goes home to" will be from the world he left.

[spoiler for a 24-year-old movie] When he arrives back home, there are many things which have returned to the way he knew them to be -- things which his foray into the past proved incapable of altering too greatly, things like the advent of audio cassettes or of the newest line of automobiles -- but the lives and conditions of the people with whom he directly interacted are altered, sometimes minorly and sometimes very majorly. At this point, he is in World #002.

[spoiler for another 20+year old movie] In the second film, he travels from World #002 1985 to World #002 2015. So far, so good. Any changes he does in the future should not affect his own past. But while in the future, a villain seizes his time machine and returns to World #002's 1955 and drastically alters history for the boy's hometown. When the boy returns to what he expects will be World #002 1985, he instead arrives in World #003 1985. (Don't ask why. This is one of those hand-waving moments where the screenplay writers temporarily argue in reverse -- for a unified timeline theory of time travel -- in order to liven up the plot. lol) Horrified by World #003, the boy goes back in time to World #003 1955. Specifically, he goes far enough back in time in 1955 that he reaches a point at which Worlds #002 and #003 had not yet diverged (although Worlds #001 and #002 had). This way, he is hopeful that he can thwart the villain and the villain's accomplice in 1955 and return to a World #004 which will not be all too different from World #002 (which he greatly preferred to World #001). He succeeds, and he returns to World #004 1985 -- which is practically indistinguishable from World #002 1985 -- but for the sake of simplicity the screenplay suggests that he's returned to World #002. (Can't confuse the home audience, now can we?)
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Old 05-29-2009, 10:22 AM   #24
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Or in a theory from a better series, you will sleep with your grandmother and become your own grandfather. If it doesn't destroy spacetime, who are we to judge?
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Old 05-29-2009, 10:34 AM   #25
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But if you killed your grandfather, you would be dead because he was your grandfather. If you were dead, were you really there to kill him in the first place?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vran View Post
Once again, this only holds true under certain circumstances and not all circumstances. One scenario for which this doesn't hold true is the multiple timelines theory.
Quote:
Originally Posted by deoxys View Post
I have heard of the multiple world theory which states that basically an alternate universe is created for every possible quantum decision you can make. So, if you did go back in time to kill your grandfather, it wouldn't affect you, because the outcome happens in another universe, not the one you live in.
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Or in a theory from a better series, you will sleep with your grandmother and become your own grandfather. If it doesn't destroy spacetime, who are we to judge?
Futurama FTW
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