Is Time Travel Possible?

[Froggy]

this thread hurts my brain

[Mr. Colby]

The pyramids weren't that hard to build... all they had to do was get like 150 people to pull the stone across a lubricated surface and then up ramps that they simply changed the angle of in order to get the next stone up

please explain how you could cut, transport, and place each of the two ton stones every 9 seconds.

why every 9 seconds i don't get it?

[The Snapshot]

Tangradi's skating rewinds time.

[Tico Rick]

What I find fun is ... let's assume that time-travel is possible sometime in the future. If someone comes back in time and changes history, we wouldn't know it, would we? We would just have our normal memories like we always do. But those memories are tied to history, which is being changed. The instant our history is changed by time-travel, our entire personal history is changed, without us knowing it.

Assuming time-travel in the future and future-folk changing history, we could have lived a million different lives in just the last few minutes. History changing in a flashing kaleidoscope that we can't see because we're in the kaleidoscope itself.

... If that makes sense.

Yes, but once the future people have gone back into the past and successfully changed history, they would have eliminated their reason for going back to the past, and thus would not have made the trip, which would keep the past the same as it had been.

[DocEmrick]

Watch the movie Primer, it explains everything in the language of science and math

[Froggy]

Watch the movie Primer, it explains everything in the language of science and math

That movie is extremely complicated

[pittsoccer33]

The pyramids weren't that hard to build... all they had to do was get like 150 people to pull the stone across a lubricated surface and then up ramps that they simply changed the angle of in order to get the next stone up

please explain how you could cut, transport, and place each of the two ton stones every 9 seconds.

why every 9 seconds i don't get it?

thats one of the numbers commonly thrown around. khufu's pyramid was built over 10-20 years and has an estimated 2,300,000 2+ ton stones. fact is they would need to be placed ridiculously quickly no matter who/how it was done.

[Rylan]

I honestly think we do live thousands / millions of lives. I don't think fantasies are anything more than a glimpse into another life of ours

[CERV96]

I honestly think we do live thousands / millions of lives. I don't think fantasies are anything more than a glimpse into another life of ours

If this holds true I can't wait!

[columbia]

Do you mean that I really am going to get stuck on a desert island with Rosanne Barr?

[ExPatriatePen]

I don't think fantasies are anything more than a glimpse into another life of ours

I must have been quite the stud in a prior life then...

[redwill]

Yes, but once the future people have gone back into the past and successfully changed history, they would have eliminated their reason for going back to the past, and thus would not have made the trip, which would keep the past the same as it had been.

One person's "success" is another's "failure." People would always be wanting to go back.

Moreover, changing history will be like going on an amusement park ride. Stand in line, pay your few bucks, and go back in time.

After all, history is no match for Disney.

[Rylan]

Haha yea. But in another life you are stuck on the island with your perfect companion. I like this outlook personally because it continuously leaves a world of wonder absent things such as karma or trying to attain a lifetime pass to Heaven's amusement park

[shafnutz05]

I don't think time travel is the ultimate answer. We need to develop a way where we can experience history by being sucked into our home satellite dishes and placed in the time period of the program we are watching.

[SoupOrSam]

Now: if you can manage to break down a human mass, disintegrate it into a near weightless state, propel it through time and space, and somehow put it back together at its destination, you just might be onto something there.

Problem with this is you might end up turning into one of these guys:

Spoiler:

[columbia]

I don't think time travel is the ultimate answer. We need to develop a way where we can experience history by being sucked into our home satellite dishes and placed in the time period of the program we are watching.

Spoiler:

[shafnutz05]

For the (very few I'm sure) people that did not get my reference:

Spoiler:

[CERV96]

For the (very few I'm sure) people that did not get my reference:

Spoiler:

NEEDS MORE BUTTER!

[Kraftster]

My problem with popcorn movie time travel has always been that there is not and cannot be any static "instant" in time at which someone could enter the scene. The instant in time that the DeLorean is set to does not exist as an instant in time, so I don't know how one enters into a dynamic, unfixed existence.

I guess it depends on how one defines time travel, but scientifically, time travel into the future is certainly possible. The closest we can get to time travel into the past is peering deep into space and seeing the past.

[Gaucho]

Problem with travelling into the past is there would be no way you could not in some way change it. Butterfly wings and all that.

[GJ]

I remember some poster on the old LGP board called Time Traveler. He said that Mario would buy the Pens and everyone said why would he do something so stupid?

[Kraftster]

The whole traveling into the past paradox thing doesn't really click for me. If such time travel is possible, time is clearly not linear, and therefore no paradox would exist.

[shafnutz05]

Problem with travelling into the past is there would be no way you could not in some way change it. Butterfly wings and all that.

I think the Butterfly Effect theory is crap, but that's just me. If you do something significant (murder someone), of course that will change the course of history on a noticeable level, and will probably branch out to multiple lives. If you step on a bug, nothing is going to be different.

[Pucks_and_Pols]

Problem with travelling into the past is there would be no way you could not in some way change it. Butterfly wings and all that.

I think the Butterfly Effect theory is crap, but that's just me. If you do something significant (murder someone), of course that will change the course of history on a noticeable level, and will probably branch out to multiple lives. If you step on a bug, nothing is going to be different.

Depends on the destiny of that bug. If it was just an ant that was destined to die a few moments later it probaly would not have a large affect.

But what if it was a mosquito carrying the malaria virus and was destined to bite a small child in a 3rd world nation who, if he lived after not getting the disease, would rise up through the military to become a brutal dictator? If you swatted that mosquito when you went back in time that would obviously have a hugely unintended consequence.

You also have to take the theory of evolution into account. What if you smashed a bug that was somehow genetically destined to reproduce and give rise to a whole different species over the millennia?

Even one small thread pulled out could unweave many things in the universe IF it were possible to go back and alter the past.

[Gaucho]

Problem with travelling into the past is there would be no way you could not in some way change it. Butterfly wings and all that.

I think the Butterfly Effect theory is crap, but that's just me. If you do something significant (murder someone), of course that will change the course of history on a noticeable level, and will probably branch out to multiple lives. If you step on a bug, nothing is going to be different.

Seems short-sighted. I'm not saying everything you do has a fundamental impact on whatever, but fact is that our existence is the sum of countless little actions and deeds and coincidences that all have their meaning and effect.