Time Travel

[Eyebiter]

Figure it's about time (heh) to answer a few questions about the nature of time travel. First of all you should understand the concept of a US Geological survey benchmark. Why is this important? This gives you a known location in time and space as a point of origin. The second is you can't just travel at will. There are rules. Without going into great detail the main thing to remember - you can only visit if you were invited. No one can go back and kill Hitler. That would change history. Instead you have to find someone unimportant, with a minimal impact on mainstream history. Why do you think the only people that see aliens and UFO's are trailer trash and nut jobs? There is a policy to only contact those who have no greater impact on the time stream. They can observe but the option to intervene in our affairs are very limited. With that said, there is some distension over the level of interference in the past. There are various...you would call them factions who disagree about changing the course of history. Without going into a long winded treatise, I would encourage you to visit Bebe Williams website for more information. http://www.artcomic.com/timetravel/intro.html End of line.

[krakenslayer]

It wouldn't matter how "minor" the people were that you visited, whether it's Julius Caesar or Betty and Barney Hill. It would still change time. For example: you abduct Billy Joe the redneck. As a result of his contact, he gets home late and has sex with his wife at a slightly different time, so a different sperm meets the egg, creating a child with a slightly different temperament than would otherwise have been born. As a result, the son, when grown up, decides not to have kids (whereas in your original time stream, Billy Joe would have many grandchildren). One of those kids would have grown up to be a mechanic who would make an error in repairing a bus engine, which would have broken down at the right time to allow for a chance meeting of two particle physicists, whose conversation about moebius strips by the side of the road while waiting for a tow truck would lead to a research paper that would later assist in developing time travel within the original time traveller's lifetime. None of this now happens, so the original guy never goes back and never makes contact. Paradox. This all might sound far fetched, but with waves of cause/effect spreading out in millions of directions with every single human action, such connections are inevitable.

[Rancid Carcass]

you can't just travel at will. Not unless you know a mad man with a box. No one can go back and kill Hitler. I'll say it again: Not unless you know a mad man with a box... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0844m...eature=related

[Legion2213]

I prefer the theory that you can do what the Hell you please and the consequences will simply bud off into a new timeline thingy bob. Kill Hitler if you want...WWII will still have happened in your past, the past you remember and nothing will change in your reality, but a new alternative reality will be created when you snuff old Adolf (hopefully while snarking some witty one-liner at him).

[JDFP]

I prefer the theory that you can do what the Hell you please and the consequences will simply bud off into a new timeline thingy bob. Kill Hitler if you want...WWII will still have happened in your past, the past you remember and nothing will change in your reality, but a new alternative reality will be created when you snuff old Adolf (hopefully while snarking some witty one-liner at him). Right on. If you go back in the past you can do whatever you want and change history (the whole: "You can't change what has already been" thing is partially correct, you can't change the past in your personal timeline because it's already done, but you can change the past and as soon as you step into the past it's automatically an alternative timeline). Even if you were to go back and kill your great-great grandparents before they ever conceived your great-grandparents you would still exist because they did have your great-grandparents in the timeline you came from. So, your alternate reality counterpart of you will cease to exist as he was never created but you did. Here's the issue: Even if someone were to go back in time there'd be no way for them to return to their timeline again after going back in time. The major issue wouldn't be traveling backwards so much as traveling forward. If you return back to the future again it's not your future you would be returning to but the future you created in the new parallel reality you are in, thus when you leave your original timeline for the new one your original timeline didn't cease to exist it's just that you ceased to exist in your original timeline. Starfleet and earth were destroyed by the whale-echo thing in STIV because Kirk and Co. couldn't have returned back to their original timeline again. So, they saved an alternate reality they created by abducting the whales to begin with and saved the alternative future they returned to in STIV with George and Gracie the whales. Their alternative future they returned to would have been 99.99% recognizable to them because they didn't make any dramatic changes, but it was still an alternative future. So, here's the fun question: If they set up an alternative reality by changing the events of the past, unless their changes were so dramatic to keep thesmelves from being born in the alternate reality they have created, wouldn't they run back into their alternative-self counterparts when they returned to the future? Or would their alternative self-counterparts also have traveled back in time to another alternative world as well? Time travel is entertaining as a subject because of the paradoxes. j.p.

[Eyebiter]

Here is the kicker... The technology for time travel has already been invented - in our future. From their perspective we are the past. As scientists they are curious about us and our time period. When you use the previously referenced instructions to set up a visit from a time traveler... they will visit you. However it will be in your past. Meaning that by the time you fill out the paperwork - the visit has already occurred, you just didn't realize it at the time.

[MikePizzoff]

Great scott!

[acealive1]

I prefer the theory that you can do what the Hell you please and the consequences will simply bud off into a new timeline thingy bob. Kill Hitler if you want...WWII will still have happened in your past, the past you remember and nothing will change in your reality, but a new alternative reality will be created when you snuff old Adolf (hopefully while snarking some witty one-liner at him). theres a twilight zone episode about this.

[Mike70]

*sigh* http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14289114 time travel into the future is highly possible. you need only be going fast enough for a decent amount of time dilation to kick in and you are in your own future. in fact, many cosmonauts and astronauts that have spent large amounts of time in space at orbital speed are a few milliseconds in their OWN future because of the way time runs slower the faster you are moving. time travel into the past requires a lot of pseudo-science bullshit about tachyons and other mumbo jumbo. to get right down to it: one must travel faster than light to recede into the past. so far, nothing, no even individual photons of light has been shown to exceed the 300,000KM/sec limit.

[acealive1]

*sigh* http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14289114 time travel into the future is highly possible. you need only be going fast enough for a decent amount of time dilation to kick in and you are in your own future. in fact, many cosmonauts and astronauts that have spent large amounts of time in space at orbital speed are a few milliseconds in their OWN future because of the way time runs slower the faster you are moving. time travel into the past requires a lot of pseudo-science bullshit about tachyons and other mumbo jumbo. to get right down to it: one must travel faster than light to recede into the past. so far, nothing, no even individual photons of light has been shown to exceed the 300,000KM/sec limit.