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Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 2582
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, June 17, 2005 - 12:47 pm: | 
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if you went back in time you couldn't kill your infant father (not that youd want to of course!!)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4097258.stm
i dont get all of it i confess!!
"be just and fear not"
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Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4564
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, June 17, 2005 - 12:56 pm: |
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I would have thought that whatever you did, you'd change something tiny and insignificant about the present, even if you avoided the major changes.
Robert |
Dan Norder
Chief Inspector
Username: Dannorder
Post Number: 729
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Friday, June 17, 2005 - 3:05 pm: |
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Hi Jenni,
It's pretty apparent that the reporter and the alleged expert interviewed don't get all of it either. These things have been discussed for decades by other physicists, but all it is right now is just philosophy and not science. From the story it looks like it's just this guy saying something because, in his head, it's "obvious" -- yet with no way to actually test it. That's bad science, especially with a number of others saying that it's "obvious" to them that it's just the opposite.
Dan Norder, Editor
Ripper Notes: The International Journal for Ripper Studies
 Profile  Email  Dissertations  Website
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Lindsey Millar
Inspector
Username: Lindsey
Post Number: 425
Registered: 9-2004
| | Posted on Friday, June 17, 2005 - 11:50 pm: |
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Quote from the article:
"In other words, you can pop back in time and have a look around, but you cannot do anything that will alter the present you left behind."
What on Earth is the good of that?!
Dang!!
Love,
Lyn xxxx
"When a man grows tired of London, he grows tired of life" (or summat like that)
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Phil Hill
Chief Inspector
Username: Phil
Post Number: 690
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, June 18, 2005 - 1:48 am: |
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But simply BEING in the past would change things.
The problem with time travel is that, as far as I can see, there are no obvious instances of people cropping up in the past, or in our day, who clearly came from another time. If it will happen, then it should have happened, as it were.
One can, I suppose, make a case for jesus, Buddha etc as having come from their future. Some past technology leaps could be explained as the result of time travellers.
magic has been described as just technology ahead of that to which we are used - a light-bulb or a razor blade, a revolver/automatic weapon or a film projector might be "magical" to a Roman. But one would suspect some clue.
Even the ancientr astronauts, UFO arguments advanced by von Daniken and co have been exploded.
So - if there is to be time travel, where's the evidence it has taken place?
phil |
Andrew Spallek
Chief Inspector
Username: Aspallek
Post Number: 857
Registered: 5-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, June 18, 2005 - 2:32 am: |
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But, Phil, if they can't change anything then they wouldn't be able to tell us they were from the future -- because that knowledge would change something! So, maybe there are folks from the future wandering among us and we don't know it. Maybe the time-travelers themselves don't know it! But maybe they'd remember what they had seen when they returned to their own time. So, maybe we could go back to 1888 and happen to find the Ripper and discover who he is. As long as we didn't prevent him from his murders or tell anyone who he is we wouldn't be changing anything that we now know to have happened. Then, when we return to our time, we can write the lasted bestseller revealing the identity of Jack the Ripper -- which no one would believe is true.
Of course, I don't believe a word of what I am saying!
Andy S. |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 2583
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, June 18, 2005 - 4:50 am: |
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of course technically if you travel back in time and are in the past, were you always in the past.
I mean therefore in theory you wouldnt change anything since you were already there....
"be just and fear not"
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Phil Hill
Chief Inspector
Username: Phil
Post Number: 692
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Saturday, June 18, 2005 - 8:28 am: |
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Andy - that rather came across!!!
Jenni - but wouldn't that mean you had to be BORN in the past - which isn't what most people think of as time travel?
phil |
Jennifer D. Pegg
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Jdpegg
Post Number: 2584
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Sunday, June 19, 2005 - 5:13 am: |
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Phil,
you misunderstand my rambles. I just mean, if i were to get into my time machine and travel back in time, i would be in the past.
I am just saying would that be new or would I have always been traveling back in time to the past and be in the past. In other words,
my brain hurts!
"be just and fear not"
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Maria Giordano
Inspector
Username: Mariag
Post Number: 435
Registered: 4-2004
| | Posted on Sunday, June 19, 2005 - 1:14 pm: |
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I understand what you're saying, Jenni, it's very hard to write.
I read a SF story many years ago where the time travellers were actually in some sort of parallel dimension to the thing they were visiting and as long as they stayed in their area they couldn't affect the "real" happenings.
Of course, some wiseguy stepped off the path and crushed a butterfly...
Mags
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Diana
Chief Inspector
Username: Diana
Post Number: 657
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 20, 2005 - 1:05 pm: |
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If there was a non interactive time machine we still wouldn't know his name. We could post ourselves to catch him in the act and see his face but it wouldn't necessarily be possible to find out who he was. |
Robert Charles Linford
Assistant Commissioner
Username: Robert
Post Number: 4574
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 20, 2005 - 4:45 pm: |
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Diana, even to see his face your eyes would have to interact with photons, surely?
Robert |
Phil Hill
Chief Inspector
Username: Phil
Post Number: 704
Registered: 1-2005
| | Posted on Monday, June 20, 2005 - 5:30 pm: |
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The distinction is surely between being "in" the past and "of" the past?
If one were of the past - ie born into it there is no change - you are part of events. To go back and be in a past time without having been born in it, something has been added.
Such a theory also seems to me to rely on pre-ordination. To reach the present moment things had to happen. At the very least there is a belief in cause and effect. But most of us living today (unless we believe in God) would be pretty uncomfortable with the idea that everything each of us will do is pre-set and we have no control over it. That is, you must marry the spouse who will be ancestor to his and you descendents, because otherwise you would be genetically different to the person you are!!
An alternative that might allow time travel, is that people will travel back in time, but their arrival there creates a "fork" or "branch" in time, an alternative timeline in which all things are possible. You could stop Abraham lincoln being assassinated; kill Hitler in 1918; warn JtR's victims; make love to Helen of Troy; kill a butterfly; and not change today, because you would be participating in a timeline that would end up radically different to our own.
Hope this makes some sort of sense,
Phil |
Dan L. Hollifield
Sergeant
Username: Vila
Post Number: 44
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 27, 2005 - 12:01 pm: |
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Time travel is one of those fun subjects that folks like to argue about. A lot of the trouble with time loops and the granfather paradox, etc. is that they are still just word games. A lot of the logical-looking "it *must* be this way" arguments seem to require an outside observer. From the inside of the paradox, the POV would appear almost normal-- I think. LOL! All the elements of paradox look to me to depend of a conflict between the POV of the time traveler, the POVs of those left behind in the present, and the POVs of the people in the destination time.
Oh, my personal take on changing the past and creating new alternate timelines? Sorry, I can't buy it. The very nature of alternate timelines requires them to already exist, complete and entire. Any number of alternate times between 1 and infinity -1 is sort of silly from a physics standpoint. There's no problem with having only one timeline, but as soon as a second one is discovered, there ought to be infinity more timelines as well. There may be a limit on how far sideways your time machine can go, but it'll probably be something in the design of the machine rather than the physics of sideways time travel.
I suspect that the problem of time travel into the future might be akin to the problem of going faster than light. Maybe that takes infinite energy too. Going into the past, by rights, ought to be just as difficult, but that just my opinion based on some of the symmetry in other physical laws.
Perhaps there's some way around all of it. The speculation is fun, though.
Vila
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Kris Law
Inspector
Username: Kris
Post Number: 476
Registered: 12-2003
| | Posted on Monday, June 27, 2005 - 4:36 pm: |
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Dan,
I think the point is supposed to be that the two timelines were one timeline until a certain event happened. Like imagining a highway with a turn-off. Time flows freely until a situation pops up which requires a decision... when the decision is made the new timeline opens up, because in one situation option A was chosen, and in the other situation option B was chosen. The second timeline only differs from the first at the decision point, so until then they are identical.
Did I misunderstand your point?
-K
I'll see you in time . . .
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