Posted By: bufar

I'm too lazy to read this whole thing, but I feel like I should post something anyway. My explanation is so simple a five year old could understand it. Here goes:
_________
Time Travel is impossible. If they ever developed a time traveling machine, would it go both forward and back in time? Hopefully, otherwise whenever you used it you could never go back to the time you came from. Just further away. Also, if they did make this machine, would they use it? Of course they would, otherwise no one would believe them.
Now we have established two things: If they ever build a time machine it will go both ways in time and they will use it. Assuming that they traveled back to a time before right now, we know that time machines are never going to be invented. This is because somebody would have noticed it and told someone. It would be all over the press if people came from the future. Since people have never came from the future in a time machine, we can conclude that Time Travel will never happen on this earth." alt="" src="/extensions/Vanillacons/smilies/stolen/old-owned.gif">

Like Trance said, even if they had, nobody would believe them. And even if someone did believe them, they would never be able to convince enough people to make it publicly accepted. Just like I could ask you if you know that aliens exist, at this point it's such a contradictory debate that even fully tested proof that exists is doubted. And if the government gets a hold of information such as a time traveler, you really think they would be prone to announce it?

"If I haven't seen it, it's impossible." is a very silly philosophy.

@ Trance (it won't let me quote): By your logic, If the steel went back to the mill, wouldn't you go back into your parents?

Posted By: Fizzer

"If I haven't seen it, it's impossible." is a very silly philosophy.

That's not my philosophy. I have never seen the Eiffle tower, yet I believe that it is there. My point was that if somebody had popped up at any point in time and they had a time machine, word would have spread, and we would not be having this argument right now.

There's always a crazy one that will proclaim himself from the future and give proof. Or bring an invetion from the future and get increadably rich selling it.

I am too. I'm currently moving at a (presumably) steady pace through time and the earth is hurtling through space.

I've thought of that on many occasions.

Where's the irony?

That reminded me of a vivid dream I had years ago that I took the time to write down and flesh out a bit...

PART ONE: CHILDHOOD

The main character, Chris, is easily identified with, as he (or she?) grows up in a matter befitting any geek. The science fiction stories, the typical school experiences, and so on. I'm not sure how necessary any of this is, other than to give a common foundation to Parts Two and Three.

He becomes obsessed with time travel. It seems logically possible to him, but yet is obsessed with one problem that he can't explain away. If time travel into the past is possible, then why hasn't he (or apparently anyone else) noticed anyone from the future?

He feels that if anyone can create a time machine, it would be him. At the very least, he was sure that he could be in the right place at the right time to at least be part of such a project.

And if that were the case, he could send himself a message from the future! But why hasn't he yet received such a message? After considering all of the possibilities, he feels that his future self has no way of knowing the time and place that his current self is.

So he constructs a "perfect" experiment. He will be at a certain place and time, record all of this information for the future, and then it should be a simple matter for his future self to send some sort of a sign to him.

He picks a place and time that is easily determined from the future: the Northern corner of the Washington Monument at the moment of the equinox. (Noon at sometime in March?) He doesn't know what sort of time travel will turn out to be possible, so he picks a few different possibilities. One is that he would try to send back a baseball with a manufactured date from that future year.

He records this information indelibly into his memory -- how could he possibly forget this moment for the rest of his life?

Then the exact moment comes...

PART TWO: FAILURE

... and nothing happens in front of 23-year-old Chris.

He waits for hours, but does finally give up and go home.

However, this seemingly convincing failure actually spurs him on to pursue his dream directly. He knows that someday a time machine will be built, but apparently not by him, or at least not one that can go into the past. Or perhaps it won't be invented in his lifetime, and at least he can contribute the basic work.

Thirty years pass.

He becomes one of the technical leaders on a time machine project. They have built a machine that can send objects into the past. But that is all it can do. It is essentially a parlor trick at this point -- they send fruit months into the past and behind a co-worker bookshelf, only to be discovered in the present, rotten and smelly.

They thus know that they can change the past -- after all, they find the rotten fruit -- but are wary about changing it in any significant way. But they haven't come up with any way of catgorically testing such a significant change -- after all, how could they change history by placing the right thing at the right time? There's been proposals to send letters which warn of impending assassination to past U.S. Presidents, but no one has been brave enough to risk the outcome -- after all, would the world truly be a better place, and would they even exist?

Reluctantly, he decides to replicate the failure that lead him down this path. He's curious why it was a failure, however, since he is sure that he can send a baseball back to that point in time.

He curses his past self, however. While they can send these objects back easily, they must be approximately at the same point in space. This is simply that the relative points must be the same. From the perspective of this point in space, the objects around it -- the revolution of the Earth, the planets, the stars -- have moved around it. Thus, to send a baseball back to the Washington Monument, they must put their machinery near there.

At 5 tons, including the power and cooling equipment, the time machine is not very portable. However, they did once transport it when they moved into their new offices.

They rented a large moving truck, and went on a road trip. Arriving at the Monument, the only available parking that was close enough to where he has once been standing was three adjacent handicapped parking spaces. Since it wouldn't take long, they decided to risk the ticket.

He didn't feel much excitement as they sent the baseball into the past, after all, he already knew that the experiment was a failure.

Just to be sure, he reminded everyone that he had no memory of a baseball appearing to him.

They ran the time travel program. The baseball disappeared from their time, seemingly into the time stream.

He again told everyone that his memory was the same; no baseball had appeared to him in the past.

Unsurprised, the experiment was a failure, so they started on their trip back home.

PART THREE: DESTINY

... and the baseball appears in front of 23-year old Chris.

It seems to appear about four feet in the air, and then falls normally to the ground. He quickly picks it up: "Rawlings, made in U.S.A., 2031/12/11". [A baseball probably isn't the right object since they probably don't have date stamps on them, but a baseball is a nice image.]

He knew that this moment would come. He had just proven that time travel is possible, and more importantly, he would be the person to invent it!

More importantly, this showed that there was a single timeline. He would invent the time machine because, in the future, he had already invented the time machine. This was his destiny.

Thirty years pass.

He has done nothing with his life. He goes from one simple job to another; just enough income to eat and sleep without too much discomfort.

He can't understand why these big things never happen to him. They were supposed to happen to him. They must happen. It was his destiny.

[I'm not sure if he should be an asshole or an object of pity. It should probably loosely follow his life until he dies.]

PART FOUR: EPILOGUE

... and nothing happens.

I can't believe I read all of that!

Taed is a good writer.
Yo Taed, I want you to be my divorce lawyer in the future, please?

I remember reading something about an EU lab that caused a rice grain to travel backwards in a short amount of time, but they lost funding because they couldn't make it teleport across space. Obviously time travel without teleportation is useless, since the earth is in constant motion. Did anyone else see the article? I can't seem to access it with google anymore.

If you made a time machine that was stationary, that instead of travelling through time, just sped it up, you could overcome that transport issue.

I don't know much about physics just yet, so I'll not contradict that directly...

How do you know it's a wavelength?

My memory doesn't serve me.

Posted By: cmseagle

Posted By: 5010

I remember reading something about an EU lab that caused a rice grain to travel backwards in a short amount of time, but they lost funding because they couldn't make it teleport across space. Obviously time travel without teleportation is useless, since the earth is in constant motion. Did anyone else see the article? I can't seem to access it with google anymore.

Well, not necessarily. I mean, if you look back at to march 13 2006, the earth is in the exact same position. So if you want to go back to December 25 0000, then you just go back 2007 years on december 25.

I don't think thats true, I read in some article that the earth has been knocked slightly off it's old course each time a big explosion such as a nuke (testing or otherwise) has gone off. Also when impacts from space have hit us. Gee I hope that wasn't a gullible.info fact... hehe.

That's true...

The earth's orbit, however, is constantly making slight changes due to the precession of the equinoxes. This planet is not in the exact same place it was 1 year ago.

Fizzer, what realm are you on? I play on Eredar.

The brotherhood prohibits us mentioning it.

The icon that he uses is for Mark of the Wild, a skill from druids in World of Warcraft. I thought I was the most hardcore player. Guess I haven't seen enough.

ZOMG an RP server. That kind of puts you down 1 level.

Has anyone googled "the answer to life the universe and everything"?

Posted By: Trance

If you made a time machine that was stationary, that instead of travelling through time, just sped it up, you could overcome that transport issue.

If you traveled that fast you would be going faster that the speed of light, if you weren't dead already, you could never die because you're going so fast that anything that touches you will disintegrate including bullets, knives, etc. So you would eventually die of starvation.

If your theory (also known as the parallel universe theory) is correct, what is between the membranes?
Hell? Who knows?

Posted By: chanson

I equate dimensions as being similar to self replicating organisms. exact replicas, reproduced. Our universe is a cell in a body of a creature on a planet in a universe so on and so on. We look at time travel as a self centered travel like experience. Other exact universes are out there but you would have to go out really far, though a membrane and back into another, find where you were and land. The process is larger then anything you would find there.

My. Finally something that makes sense.

Posted By: Cody56

Posted By: Trance

If you made a time machine that was stationary, that instead of travelling through time, just sped it up, you could overcome that transport issue.

If you traveled that fast you would be going faster that the speed of light, if you weren't dead already, you could never die because you're going so fast that anything that touches you will disintegrate including bullets, knives, etc. So you would eventually die of starvation.

Is there a reson you can't slow down or something?

Posted By: legatissimo

Taed: Your story reminds me of a note I wrote in one of my little notebooks a while ago. I can't find the note right now, so I'm recreating from memory, but it was after an episode of LOST and I really wanted to know what happened in the next week, so I said that if time travel was ever possible, I would come back and take myself forward a week. A few minutes tensely passed, and nothing happened.

Very shortly thereafter, I realized that I probably had come back in time, and then erased my own memory. I concluded that my own success was predicated on the assumption of the failure (and a subsequent disdain) of "future-me".

I'll dig around tonight for the note about the incident. I seem to remember it being somewhat interestingly worded.

I'd very much like to see that, nice story.

The note stole scotch from you?

The scotch stole the note from you?