26 replies to this topic

[Ragamuffin]

Don't forget the grandfather paradox.Also, it is (theoretically) possible to accelerate time using a tl;dr explanation.But who knows, 200 years ago people said it'd take us 1,000 years to even attempt flight. Hell, we've even successfully used teleportation (though it was only the size of a virus and was only teleported about a meter, but still.)

[Sakura D]

i think its limited. i think you could go back, and alter certain things, but nothing that would ultimately result in your not going back in time. as long as it didnt affect you, you could change it. that being said, you wouldnt really have much of a reason to change time in the first place then, huh?

[Sakura D]

but you know, thats assuming that going into the past doesnt already change it... if you go back in time, you, in essence, remove yourself from the timeline, effectively ending your existence and life's hold over you. but then you re-emerge somewhere else... it could be said that in that instant, you are reborn, in a manner of speaking... and become an entirely different piece of reality... that being said, if you went back in time, and then back to the future, without changing anything... would it be the same reality you return to? if everything happens for a reason, then time cannot be changed.. but if chaos theory holds true, then merely going back in time would change everything and anything simultaneously. basically, you'd be "re-rolling" life.but of course, thats also assuming that when you travel through time, your OWN timeline isnt affected... your own life. would your body reverse age? i seem to be rambling now... but i might just come back here. but i;ve always said this... what if you went back in time and stopped your own birth. the answer i always get is grandfather paradox...

[Wolf O'Donnell]

There is the multiverse explanation. You could change the past, but when you return to the future, you aren't returning to the Universe you came from. You're returning to the future of a different Universe, one where let's say Hitler never existed.May I just make one point that I came across when thinking about alternate Universes. Let's say you could go back in time and change an outcome and then return to your present and see the changes. There are some things that just won't change. For example, I've seen many an American cartoon or American show that somehow think that if the Americans never won the War of Independence, they'd still be under British rule today. But if you look at other nations that used to be under British rule, you'll realise that this isn't the case. After World War II, British colonial rule became more unstable and financially difficult. Many nations were granted independence. I do believe that if you go back in time and prevented America from winning the War then that would only delay America's independence, not prevent it.And that illustrates the next point I wanted to come up with.The world is so complex with so many things happening, I doubt you'd be able to change anything. You stop Hitler from being born. Fine. That doesn't stop the anti-Semites from existing. Heck, that doesn't even stop the Nazi eugenics agenda, because America was practising eugenics long before Nazi Germany was. Change one thing nad something else might happen that would return the timeline to reasonably normal. Sure, nobody might have heard of Hitler, but a Glöder might have risen to power (a nod to Stephen Fry's book Making History) might have risen to power and he might have been worse or just the same.

[Ragamuffin]

Time travel is a new concept, and it can be harmful and beneficial in many ways. A good person can probably stop, for example, Lincoln's assassination, while a bad person could probably kill a famous leader. As mentioned in "The Twilight Zone," time only allows certain aspects of it to be changed, but not huge life-changing changes. For example, you can't stop John Wilkes Booth from assassinating Abraham Lincoln, because this is a big part of our history, and doing so will set back the events that would come. But helping an insignificant person from the past, could be done, since this is a minor change, something that wouldn't drastically change the future.So, I wouldn't touch time travel. Who knows what problems might happen if I went back? What if I accidentally stop my great-great-grandfather from meeting my great-great-grandmother? And that's where the problem arises.

Depending on which time travel theory you subscribe to, traveling back in time opens up an alternate reality. According to one theory, there exist an infinite amount of alternate universes made from every outcome to every choice by every creature to ever exist. So, assuming backward time travel is possible, you would actually end up in a parallel universe, so any changes you made would affect that universe rather than your own. This would also answer the question "If backwards time travel was possible, then how come nobody from the future has ever been here?"Of course, this raises several questions. Would another you be "you" in a given parallel universe, or would you only come into existence when you arrived? How would you get back to your own reality, since many forward time travel theories rely on time dilation rather than an alternate universe theory? How would you know which reality was the one you wanted to go to? What would the power requirements be to travel to another universe?There are dozens of theories on backwards time travel, but none of them are even close to solid, and all depend on many other, for the time being, unprovable theories.

[The Creator]

In my own opinion, changing the past could result in a timeline fusion. In other words as I see it, going back will bring everything with it. Thus creating two of everything, everything being in the location it was at the time before merging. However, I know that is flawed as we don't know a precise result of sending things to the past.GPs were deducted for this post, please read the rules! - jamzemu