If you could travel through time, what would you do? Is it possible?

Discussion in 'Science' started by Condor060, Aug 17, 2020.

  1. Condor060

    Condor060 Banned Donor

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    I have been interested in time travel since I was a kid. I think I have seen just about every movie on the subject.

    Somewhere in Time, Terminator, Star Trek, Back to the Future, Interstellar, even hot tub time machine. lol

    Just fascinates me to no end. So according to the science (some) if you were to travel through time it would be a one way trip. No return given the fact you even survived.

    Ok, so this is for fun. So given those attributes, (going forward or back) where would you go and do you think it is or will be possible?

    First off, I would never leave my wife and kids to do this, but just for conversation, if you had nothing to leave behind, what would be your destination?

    My wife an I decided if we went together, we would be 18 years old in 1940s. I would want to be in the US Army Air corps training to fly the P51 mustang. There were only about 1/3 the amount of people on the planet, life was pretty simple, and I would be able to tap into some of the greatest aviation moments in history.

    My wife loves the ruby red lipstick, the music, and the clothing of the times. I would have a few dates recorded for investments so money wouldn't be an issue, own a couple of my favorite aircraft, and a working ranch somewhere in Colorado.

    What would you do?
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2020
  2. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

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  3. Patricio Da Silva

    Patricio Da Silva Well-Known Member Donor

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    I'd love nothing more than to go back to the 60s. But......

    However, I believe time travel is a myth.

    Why? Because the past doesn't exist, nor does the future. To travel in time assumes that the past and future exist.

    Now, if they did exist, they wouldn't be the past nor the future, they would be some place that looks like our past, and looks like our future.

    In fact, the only place that the past and future exists in, is in the abstract, it exists as memories or imagination, past and future respectively.

    How does one travel to a memory or a mental image?

    Now, they are saying if you travel at the speed of light, say, for X years, and come back, you'll be in the future.

    But that isn't reversing time, it's a relativity thing taht isn't time travel as often done in sci fi. But, if you warped space/ time to travel to some astronomically distant point, and came back the same way, nothing would change. Relativity only kicks if you travel in space in a linear fashion, and traveling at the speed of light is impossible, they say.

    Now, I'm no physicist, and I really don't know about such things. So, feel free to punch holes in the above.
     
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  4. joesnagg

    joesnagg Banned

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    I'm not either, but it sounds right. If it WERE possible I'd be more of a tourist, popping in and out of different eras to see if historians were right or not.
    .
     
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  5. Lil Mike

    Lil Mike Well-Known Member

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    I'm not interested in being a time tourist, although if others wanted to go back and explore some of histories biggest mysteries, that would be great. It would be a wonderful thing to get a copy of all of the works in the library of Alexandria for example.

    If anything I'd be interested in changing history, just to see how things would work out. For example, stopping the assassinations of Lincoln, Archduke Franz Ferdinand , and JFK could produce so interesting changes.
     
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  6. GrayMan

    GrayMan Well-Known Member

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    If cryogenics was invented, I would go to the future. Then I would travel to the past (today)! My only interest in the past is where it will take us in the future.
     
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  7. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    As far as the laws of physics can tell causality cannot be broke. Which means no time travel unless it also involves an equal amount of travel in distance. So a trip back 50 years in time also means a trip of 50 light years in distance from the travelers start point - meaning nothing the traveler can do will ever interfere with their point of origin.
     
  8. FatBack

    FatBack Well-Known Member

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    Travel back to the day before some of the worst choices I ever made, give myself a swift kick in the ass and say "hey dummy, that thing you are thinking about doing tomorrow, DONT DO IT!"
     
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  9. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I would want to see the past, but not go there. I think changing the past might break the universe.

    ...at least prior to the point in time where time travel became possible (because changing things might make time travel impossible again).

    I would totally be willing to sit on my time machine and wait for something to happen that needs correction and then go back snd see if fixing it actually fixes it.
     
  10. modernpaladin

    modernpaladin Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Have you seen 'The History of Time Travel'? Its a comedy (I think) in the form of a documentary that keeps changing as they document the travellers going back in time and changing things. It gets pretty confusing, but I found it highly entertaining. Definitely low budget.

    https://m.imdb.com/title/tt3727120/
     
    Last edited: Sep 21, 2020
  11. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    Possibly the best concept of Time Travel I ever saw was Jack Finney's Time and Again. There he explored what might happen if Roger Penrose's ( I think it was his) ideas on Time Travel were true Penrose believes that Time really doesn't exist, that it's a construct we make up. People can time travel by just changing their environment enough to convince themselves they are in another era and they will be there. Or kinda, time travel is never easy or simple.

    Another is Julian May's Saga of Pliocene Exile
     
  12. FatBack

    FatBack Well-Known Member

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    Time really is a mental construct. No matter where or when you are, the time is always the present.
     
  13. James California

    James California Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    ~ I would go back to the early 1960's with my Mom, Dad and brother ( all deceased ) - maybe a trip to the beach or the canyon wash with sandwiches and 'soda pop '. :aww:
    Time travel is possible in dreams - if you are lucky.
    414l6gIkaQL._AC_SY400_.jpg
     
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  14. Pycckia

    Pycckia Well-Known Member

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    I would smother Karl Marx in his crib.
     
  15. Pneuma

    Pneuma Newly Registered

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    https://futurism.com/astrophysicist-build-time-machine-past

    This conversation let me to remember this posted article I once read. Its interesting to consider keeping a time capsule sustained in a massive gravity flux manipulated by lasers that creates a point in time that could later be revisited with minimal time change to the capsul.

    I suppose if it was me diving into the gravity well, I would probably stay in the shadows until I got the lay of the land (unless breathable air was an issue, at which point I would probably reach for the hopefully well placed oxygen supply, or crumble into a trembling body while hypoxia finished my time traveling adventure....). Would be really cool to have a look at the change in nature, our species, and the relationship between both of those things. What an interesting world that could be....Cool question. Thanks for the imaginative time travel trip!
     
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  16. wgabrie

    wgabrie Well-Known Member Donor

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  17. Injeun

    Injeun Well-Known Member

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    The past is gone and the future is yet to be. So neither one exists beyond being rolled up or inherent in the present, which is all there ever is. One can imagine, prepare and predict but not actualize anything beyond now. That said, were such a thing possible, I'd most like to hear Jesus voice and see him. I'd like to see the alleged great flood. I'd like to meet Abraham and Moses, even if in only passing, and watch how they carried themselves and spoke. I'd like to see how the Egyptians built the pyramids. I'd like to see King Leonidas with his 300 Spartans face the Persians at Thermopylae. I'd like to visit ancient native Americans and see how they lived. I'd want to meet Crazy Horse and Geronimo. I'd like to see us exploring space and galaxies for hundreds or thousands of years to come. In short, I'd like to have participated in the entire history and future of mankind, from beginning to end. But I'm afraid I couldn't bear such sorrow and heartbreak of the deaths and catastrophes and wars or see my progenitors joys sorrows and passings. I'm afraid that I would fall completely in love with all of them and never recover from their passing. It is good they are but a whisper. Only God who lives forever can know and bear and testify to the intimate details of every life ever lived....and possibly present it in song and revelation to a most exclusive audience. While this posted thought was the future, it is now history, and future and history. Such is the present. Well, I'm off to the future. Wish me luck in the past.
     
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  18. Chrizton

    Chrizton Well-Known Member

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    Go back before Microsoft's IPO, amass as much cash as possible, and make future me rich as Croesus
     
  19. DavidMK

    DavidMK Well-Known Member

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    Please don't tell me you think he invented socialism...
     
  20. (original)late

    (original)late Banned

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    That's a great point, but we wouldn't travel 50 lights years in distance unless we are moving at the speed of light.

    However, we are moving crazy fast, and in a weird corkscrew pattern, and somehow you would have to create something like a wormhole to tie the two points together. By today's thinking, that's flat impossible, and I agree with that.

    But who knows, a million years from now, stoners may be showing up at the Revolutionary war [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2020
  21. Pycckia

    Pycckia Well-Known Member

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    He invented Marxism (scientific socialism, so-called) which has wreaked unfathomable suffering.
     
  22. Cybred

    Cybred Well-Known Member

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    Except that marxism has never been implimented.
     
  23. Pycckia

    Pycckia Well-Known Member

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    Of course not. Marxism is so rife with contradictions and fallacies it never can be implemented.

    Attempts to do so create totalitarian nightmares as leaders try to jam the round peg of humanity into the square hole of marxism.
     
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  24. Monash

    Monash Well-Known Member

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    From my reading the only way to travel back in time is to travel faster than light, and the only way to do that is to somehow 'bypass' normal space/time while doing so because you can't physically exceed C in normal space. So the only way it would work would be to 'jump' from point A to point B without transiting the distance in between . No outside observer would 'see' you travel and likewise you couldn't interact with the outside universe while traveling - and causality is preserved.

    There was however a recent paper on quantum space time that modeled time travel as being permissible. From the summary I read and it was only a summary it didn't help much. You can go back in time and kill Hitler but someone automatically takes his place and the same events unfold.

    Alternately it is possible and is happening all the time but no-one notices because 'reality' post the action taken by the time traveler is what everyone else remembers. So we all woke up this morning 'knowing' Hitler started WWII because a time traveler went back and prevented someone else from starting "WWII" on anther date at another location. And we all will right up until someone else goes back and changes things again.

    Discussing time travel is painful.
     
    Last edited: Oct 2, 2020
  25. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Pretty interesting. This has implications that there may be something bigger driving events in time overall than causality.

    But there is still a big difference between the quantum world and the macro world, and it remains to be seen whether these quantum type effects could show up statistically in a flow of time overall.
     
    Last edited: Oct 3, 2020

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