The Catastrophic Effects Of Time Travel

[Jelly]

Well, I don't know much about the topic really, so please don't have a go at me.  ;) :D

 

If Time Travel was possible, which of course it may be, what would happen? Everyone would have things about their lives they were not happy about, things they regretted, things they wish they could have changed. As soon as people had this chance to go back and change it, they would take it without a second thought.

That's all well and good, but there's many issues.

Here's an example:

Someone had a teddy bear that they loved. One day they left it outside, and never saw it again.

This person goes back in time, and puts the teddy bear back in the house.

What could be the effects?

When this person had lost their teddy bear, they were upset for a while, and then got a new one. They loved it almost as much as the old one. They then gave it to their children when they were an adult.

If this never happened, then the child may have not learned from the mistake, and lost it at some other time anyway. At that time they may not have been able to get another, and grown up without it. They then would not have a teddy bear to give to their children.

When this person comes back to our time, if they even can, what are they going to remember after putting the teddy bear back? Are they going to remember going back in time and doing it, or are they going to remember never having lost that teddy bear at that time, and have their past rewritten? Are their parents going to remember it? The family?

There's so many possibilities. People might decide to change bigger things than teddy bears, which result in bigger changes. What if someone completely changed history? Would we all still be here?

Some of us want time travel so much, and it is a good idea, but it seems extremely dangerous.

Then again, the governments/rulers could make laws. They could say people could only go to have a look, things like that. But people would not be satisfied with that, and figure out a way to do what they want anyway. There could be wars started over it.

 

Have these problems been considered, and is there solutions? I admit I know very little about the topic as I said.

 

 

(Sorry if this has been done before)

[Thorum]

Going forward is possible. If you go somewhere with a high enough speed, you arrive in less time than in reality has passed.

 

Why?

 

Einstein:

Take a lightbeam in a train (in the opposite direction of the ride). Light goes at the same speed ALWAYS and for EVERYONE (at whatever speed you're moving). Of course, this lightbeam in the train covers less distance than one on the ground.

 

Because speed = distance / time, if speed stays equal, and distance is larger for the 'static' person, so is time.

 

If we supposed a human, travelling with that lightbeam (same speed), he would experience less time has passed than for someone who wasn't on that train. It's some kind of "quickening" the time. This also works at near-light speeds, and if you really wanna "jump" in time, that could be done by spacecrafts.

 

So, forward timetravelling is possible.

 

Backwards isn't yet. Well, in my opinion, it'll never happen. Why? Where are those that travelled back in time?

[Jelly]

Well, if it is possible then surely nothing can be changed? They wouldn't be able to touch things or move them. If they could change something...that would make the future shown false..wouldn't it?

What I mean is, it wouldn't then be considered time 'travel' because the physical body could not be there if nothing could be changed.

[Jarred Darque]

Jelly, what you are describing is called the grandfather paradox.

 

Basically, if you where to travel back in time and shoot your grandfather before he met your grandma,

 

He never woulda had your dad...which means that you never existed...which means that you wouldn't have been able to go back in time and shoot him.

 

i.e.

the only ay that time travel could be used other than mere observation would be to travel back in time, and ensure that something that did happen does happen.

 

Anne McCaffrey wrote a series of books that had time travel in it.  she did a respectable job of showing what would actually be possible if time travel where possible.

 

So basically, you could go back in time and see who shot Kennedy...you could go back in time and shoot Kennedy (the grassy knoll thing ya know), but you cannot go back in time and stop Kennedy from being shot.

[CUBAREY]

Does not Quantum Mechanics at least partially refute (or more correctly question) Einstien's assertion that light always goes at the same speed or that nothing can travel faster then the speed of light?

[Thorum]

not that I know.

 

Light always goes at the same speed (it's taken as a constant in physics). It's something like a shortcut through another dimension, or something like that (like, if you wanna go from one point on a sphere to another, you can follow the sphere (stay in the same dimension); or go through the inner of the sphere (another dimension). For someone on the sphere, it would look like the same.

[BrainFireBob]

The speed of light in a vacuum is the same in all reference frames, as I recall the exact formulation.

 

Reality is defined by "light cones"- all reality must exist within boundaries defined by the speed of light in a vacuum- it has to do with the interconnections between absolute internal energy and the speed of light.

 

Quantum physics doesn't question this- what it does is question the common conception, because terms like "speed of light" have very specific meanings to a physicist.

[loki redfern]

Jelly, what you are describing is called the grandfather paradox.

 

Basically, if you where to travel back in time and shoot your grandfather before he met your grandma,

 

He never woulda had your dad...which means that you never existed...which means that you wouldn't have been able to go back in time and shoot him.

 

i.e.

the only ay that time travel could be used other than mere observation would be to travel back in time, and ensure that something that did happen does happen.

 

Anne McCaffrey wrote a series of books that had time travel in it.  she did a respectable job of showing what would actually be possible if time travel where possible.

 

So basically, you could go back in time and see who shot Kennedy...you could go back in time and shoot Kennedy (the grassy knoll thing ya know), but you cannot go back in time and stop Kennedy from being shot.

one of the ways to resolve the grandfather paradox is the existance of paralell universes, ie if you could travel back in time you would travel back to an identical-up-until-that-point (the point that you travelled back to) universe, shoot your grandfather or whatever but still exist to do it, while in the 'original' universe your grandfather would survive to give birth to your father/mother and then to you who would travel back to the 'past' . i think its kinda like the worlds of if when rand travels through the portal stones, and he goes to the world where the trollocs won and overan randland at some point i forget which.

[Lord_Naryb]

Assuming of course that time travel is possible...

 

time is a single stream, what has happened is the only possible course of action, because it has already happened. We cannot alter history, take for example Lincoln's assassination. you could not go back in time and prevent that from happening, because we already know that it happened. If it had been prevented we would see that in all the history books.

[Thorum]

and, if you go VERY far on this, time is circular. So everything we'll do has already happened as well.

 

And no, this is no way to travel "back" in time (very far in the future), because there is the tiny problem of Big Bang

[TurboZ]

Temporal Prime Directive

The Temporal Prime Directive is intended to prevent a time traveler from interfering in the natural development of a timeline. This can include altering events or informing those in the past prematurely to change an outcome. It can also be interpreted as a directive to maintain the timeline that the time traveler originates from--i.e., requiring that the time traveler prevent other, non-Starfleet individuals from altering that timeline as well as avoiding doing so themselves.

 

The TPD was formally created at least as early as the 2370s, and was enforced through an agency of Starfleet called Temporal Investigations. By the 29th century, this body became the Temporal Integrity Commission, which monitored and restricted deviations from the natural flow of history.

 

As time travel technology became practical, the Temporal Accords were held, so that beings on a large scale would adopt the principle of the TPD. It was in direct opposition to this that the Temporal Cold War started.