Time Travel!

[FurryPanda]

I know that time travel is not possible now, nor does it look like it would possible at any point in the near future. But if it were what would you do about it?

Would you just accept this as another new and awesome technology? Would you be so paranoid about casuing a paradox that you'd avoid any mention of time travel at all? Would you want the government to regulate it? Would you do what you could to get rid of it as a dangerous thing?

This is such a fascinating topic, tell me what you think!

[crocobaura]

I think that would be fun! Not sure how practical though, especially if it were a free for all thing. I mean, you'd get to travel to the past, or the future just like that, and people would no longer have a standard time refrence. Might be nice though to have the opportunity to travel to ancients times or the space travel future, see other people and galaxies. But it might create a mess.

[Night Revenant]

If time travel was possible . . .I'd never have to work a day in my life! I would go back in time, bring back antiques with me and sell them for a pretty profit!

Seriously though, I'd be afraid of doing something that could effect my future and I'm reminded of that Treehouse of Horror episode when Homer "fixes" his toaster and it becomes a time traveling mechanism and what all happened in his attempt to -not- touch anything. If time travel was possible, I don't think I would risk it, even as a silent observer since too many things could happen in a short amount of time. You blink, the universe implodes.

[nixie_SC]

I'd book myself a trip to see my grandparents :) and find out who dog-napped my bobo. i think time travel would be very cool, i'd probably do "bad things" with it too. like go forward find out what lottery numbers are the winning numbers and go back in time and tell myself the numbers. :) or maybe can buy commodities and get actively involve in the shares market.

[Haylifer]

But if we could time-travel at some point in the future, we'd already know we could because we'd have seen ourselves coming back to see us again.. blahh.. I mean like, we'd have already met people from the future who are time travelling to our time or a time before.

[FurryPanda]

But if we could time-travel at some point in the future, we'd already know we could because we'd have seen ourselves coming back to see us again.. blahh.. I mean like, we'd have already met people from the future who are time travelling to our time or a time before.

I think what would happen with that is that a paradox WOULD form for hte people of the future and whatever present it was. Then people would see what kind of awful junk had occured with time travel and they would pass scary strict laws that you could only travel to a point in the past where time travel had already been invented, unless it was a government agency doing it for somewhat nobel purposes. If that made any sense.

If I could time travel, I'd go to the future and get a complete list of sports winners for soem fifty years, like in back to the future. Nice way of making a few bucks on the side.

[urisStar]

I'd book myself a trip to see my grandparents :) and find out who dog-napped my bobo. i think time travel would be very cool, i'd probably do "bad things" with it too. like go forward find out what lottery numbers are the winning numbers and go back in time and tell myself the numbers. :) or maybe can buy commodities and get actively involve in the shares market.

:laugh: I am with you nixie, I would find a location where there is no religion, politicians, scientist and the stuff around the trees are not called bush or bushes. A place where I can just be without having to pay for water that is so polluted you want to put anything else into it to cut the taste and kill/get rid of a few small invisible bugs. :bag: :laugh: I would not be returning to 2007 for all the money in the world! :handbag: :mrpantha: :lol:

[davious]

I think we all would be tempted to pull a "Biff Tannen" maneuver. However, instead of gambling, I think I would prefer a safer route to becoming a billionaire many times over...investments...seriously, if you could go back in time to the late 70s, who here WOULDN'T invest heavily in Microsoft? Or go back in time a little further, earlier in the century...invest in AT&T, IBM, Coca Cola, at their earliest stages of development...by the time you get back to 2007, your stocks would be worth billions...without the hassle of having to place bets every week.

Ok, thats the fun answer...the truth is, we see the past every night when we look at the stars, so we can at least view the past, if not alter it. If you were far enough away from Earth, with the means to view our planet, you would be seeing it as it was, not as it is. Technically speaking, you are viewing the past every time you watch a live TV broadcast. Its not instantaneous, you are seeing the events as they happened, minus the time it takes for the camera to break the signal down, transmit it to the broadcast van, upload it to the satellite, and then for your TV to receive the signal. It could be only a matter of 1 or 2 seconds altogether, but you are still seeing the past.

[Haylifer]

Ok, thats the fun answer...the truth is, we see the past every night when we look at the stars, so we can at least view the past, if not alter it. If you were far enough away from Earth, with the means to view our planet, you would be seeing it as it was, not as it is. Technically speaking, you are viewing the past every time you watch a live TV broadcast. Its not instantaneous, you are seeing the events as they happened, minus the time it takes for the camera to break the signal down, transmit it to the broadcast van, upload it to the satellite, and then for your TV to receive the signal. It could be only a matter of 1 or 2 seconds altogether, but you are still seeing the past.


That reminded me of The Lion King for some bizarre reason! Maybe it's when Timon, Pumba and Simba are looking at the stars... Who knows what goes on in my mind?

Anyway, I'm more interested in FTL space travel than time travel. We already know about us and Earth, I want to know about aliens! The problem is, FTL travel defies the laws of physics so is impossible :(

[davious]

yep...however, there is a difference between faster than light travel and say, warp, or using wormholes or something. There is still hope that even if we can't go faster than light, we can cheat, and bend space/time around us. I would love to still be alive the day scientists announce such a feat is possible...

[nekochanpurr_SC]

I think it would be cool.. But only if we could go as 'ghosts'. I know its hard to understand, but please bare with me (i'm not the brightest crayon in the box..). More like we could go back and watch things happen, but not actually affect anything or talk to anyone. Sort of like watching a movie you could move around in. I don't know if something would be possible like that though.

[Rabid]

I think it would be a wonderful opportunity to repair the human race's past mistakes and to reconnect with dead ancestors, but there are precautions to consider. Who is to judge what was folly and what was triumph? And, how do we know that our actions in the past will or will not have an effect on the future (what we know as the present)? To me, this pertains to the Chaos Theory- one flutter of a butterfly's wing can cause a typhoon halfway across the world, if I remember correctly. One small mistake in the past could change the future more dramatically than we expect; so dramatically that it's possible we wouldn't be able to go back in time and stop the reparing of the original mistake, if that makes any sense.

And, what about like in science fiction, where the protagonist travels into the past and meets up with their former self? Should this be possible, how do we know that it won't cause a glitch in Earth's natural order? Or perhaps it would be like Timeline, where traveling into the past so many times causes the human body to glitch up, not be able to withstand another trip, and ultimately die. Perhaps I've just been scared stiff by all of the science fiction I've read, but it's something to consider, for certain.

We could do so many wonderful things, but yet again we could do so many terrible things. We would have to be cautious and not abuse the privilege, or else our world could get irrepairably out of sync.

[davious]

RabidAngel, go rent the movie "Final Countdown" starring Kirk Douglas...1980s nuclear aircraft carrier gets teleported to December 6, 1941, Honolulu...less than a day before the attacks on Pearl Harbor...do they interfere? Does their status as a US Naval vessel in a time of war override considerations to the timeline? IE, because they are a US Naval vessel, are they duty bound to defend Pearl Harbor, regardless of what else might happen, should they inform Pearl Harbor of the attack, allow it to happen as history remembers, etc. They struggle with those questions in an intelligent manner.

[Black_Barook!]

Really? Time Travel? Do we need to fu*k up the world even more then it is?

[davious]

I dunno, I have to admit, it would be fun to go back in time to say, Sept 11, 2001, and arrest the terrorists who would use the planes as missiles, as they were arriving at the airports...That would give Bin Laden something to think about...Would have prevented a lot of grief in the ensuing years...I understand the need to maintain the space-time continuity, and the importance of not messing with the past. Overall, I believe what has happened, has happened, and its best not to change that...however, I can also understand the appeal of being able to change the past, to right wrongs before they ever happen...I am heavily influenced by Quantum Leap, what can I say?

[FurryPanda]

I think it would be a wonderful opportunity to repair the human race's past mistakes and to reconnect with dead ancestors, but there are precautions to consider. Who is to judge what was folly and what was triumph? And, how do we know that our actions in the past will or will not have an effect on the future (what we know as the present)? To me, this pertains to the Chaos Theory- one flutter of a butterfly's wing can cause a typhoon halfway across the world, if I remember correctly. One small mistake in the past could change the future more dramatically than we expect; so dramatically that it's possible we wouldn't be able to go back in time and stop the reparing of the original mistake, if that makes any sense.

And, what about like in science fiction, where the protagonist travels into the past and meets up with their former self? Should this be possible, how do we know that it won't cause a glitch in Earth's natural order? Or perhaps it would be like Timeline, where traveling into the past so many times causes the human body to glitch up, not be able to withstand another trip, and ultimately die. Perhaps I've just been scared stiff by all of the science fiction I've read, but it's something to consider, for certain.

We could do so many wonderful things, but yet again we could do so many terrible things. We would have to be cautious and not abuse the privilege, or else our world could get irrepairably out of sync.


Oh my no, I would never ever ever want to change the past. For example, big awful tragedy we can all agree on: Titanic. If the titanic had never sank and killed all those people, there would never be the rules there are now about having enough life boats, and having to explain safety procedures to passengers on cruises and so on. Then a ship would eventually sink (acting under the law of averages), and more people would die and the crummy system for establishing new laws upon private industry would prevent the rules we have now from being established for ages upon ages (citing Murphy's Law).

As to what davious was saying with september 11, I would be even more wary of preventing that. How do we, right now, know that the War on Terror and similar crap isn't going to eventually be a good thing? We don't, so we shouldn't interfere until we do know.

And who decides what we get to interfere with? What may be a good thing for some pwople could be a bad thing for others. Say, abortion, or even an AIDS cure. What stops fundamentalists from going back in time and killing off the technology? It would only take one nutcase to alter life as we know it, and I'm wary of making this kind of power available to someone who is, has been, or might become, a nutcase.

[davious]

whoever had possession of the time machine would be the one deciding...the rest of us would have no idea the timeline was ever altered...for all we know, it has been, we wouldn't know the difference, as our memories would change to accomodate the altered events...

[cary123]

I KNOW we will never find a way to travel back in time. cause if we will some fuck up would of already damaged the past serverly. so sense I'm living and the time line isnt fucked up, well we wont invent one.

[nekochanpurr_SC]

RabidAngel, go rent the movie "Final Countdown" starring Kirk Douglas...1980s nuclear aircraft carrier gets teleported to December 6, 1941, Honolulu...less than a day before the attacks on Pearl Harbor...do they interfere? Does their status as a US Naval vessel in a time of war override considerations to the timeline? IE, because they are a US Naval vessel, are they duty bound to defend Pearl Harbor, regardless of what else might happen, should they inform Pearl Harbor of the attack, allow it to happen as history remembers, etc. They struggle with those questions in an intelligent manner.

This reminded me (i don't know how though, lol). 'The time travelers wife' is good book that centers around time travel..
http://www.amazon.com/Time-Travelers-Wife-Audrey-Niffenegger/dp/015602943X

[babicatz05]

If the past could be changed don't you think it already would be? We wouldn't know about it so we can't tell. If time machines are possible then that is possible too.

[georgiababe]

Hmmm...well, I'd like to go back and look at the dinosaurs. But I would DEFINITELY want to be invisible - I just think of a particularly gruesome scene from Jurassic Park and shudder. And I would like to find out exactly how the earth started - is the Bible correct? Was the Big Bang solely responsible? Or was it a combination of both? I would want to go back and see (possibly meet, but maybe not) many historical figures - the Egyptian Kings/Pharaohs/Queens (Ramses II, King Tut, Cleopatra), William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, Leonardo DaVinci, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, George Washington, Queen Elizabeth I, King Henry VIII, Queen Victoria, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joan of Arc, Ghandi, Anne Frank, Galileo Galilei, Louis Pasteur, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Sigmund Freud, Nicolaus Copernicus, Nicolo Machiavelli, the Wright brothers, Abe Lincoln, Elvis Presley, Walt Disney, Marlon Brando, John Lennon, Picasso, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Rosa Parks, Princess Diana and many other artists, scientists, philosophers, scholars, leaders and revolutionaries who have made the world the way it is. I would want to find out what happened to Amelia Earhart, who killed JonBenet Ramsay, what really happened to Marilyn Monroe and whether or not Anastasia Romanov and her brother Alexei did indeed escape somehow from the execution that took the rest of their family. I would want to go with Christopher Columbus on his journey, watch works of art be painted or sculpted (like the Sistine Chapel or the Mona Lisa) and be witness to some of the greatest events (battles, discoveries etc.) in human history, as well as some of the more horrible things, like the sinking of the Titanic and the Salem Witch Trials.

There are so many things that I would like to do if I could travel through time, I probably can't list them all. I'm not sure if I'd want to go into the future. My boyfriend and I have spoken seriously about getting married someday and I wouldn't really want to go into the future and find out that I didn't marry him - it would influence my life today too much.

I would also love to do things that would change the course of history - tell Princess Diana not to get into that car, convince Abe Lincoln not to go to the theatre that evening, assassinate Adolf Hitler, ground the flights that were meant to fly into the Twin Towers and subsequently arrest the terrorists responsible etc.

But whether that is a good idea or not, I am not sure. I'm sure that Princes William and Harry would love that their mother be alive today, but who can say what the world would be like if these events hadn't happened. You could never really know...

[davious]

Mmhmm, sometimes its better to let bad things happen. There was an episode of Star Trek called "City on the Edge of Forever", where Kirk, Spock and McCoy get transported back to the 1930s, and by saving a woman from being killed (Edith Keeler, played by Joan Collins) they end up making their own timeline much worse, because Edith Keeler, by not dying, becomes a peace activist who convinces FDR to delay going into WWII, giving Hitler the time to develop the nuclear bomb, etc, Federation of Planets no longer exists...

Its Science Fiction, but, it does raise the point about just because you can change history, should you? That even if you think you will be doing good, you could be changing things for the worse in unforeseen ways. Basically, don't mess with the timeline.

[Doddibot]

I know that time travel is not possible now, nor does it look like it would possible at any point in the near future.
No, actually it currently looks like it won't be possible EVER.

But then again, perhaps we were wrong on the laws of physics. It's certainly possible that we don't quite understand time, so maybe it could be possible. Just at the moment, it contradicts known physical laws.

(By the way, I'm talking about travel BACK in time. Travelling forward is likely possible).

[sabrown100]

I remember in an episode of Red Dwarf - Tikka To Ride when the crew of the space ship go back in time for a trivial reason and end up causing huge chaos.

[georgiababe]

Mmhmm, sometimes its better to let bad things happen.

Which is why nobody should really be allowed to travel through time. Even though scientists could warn us about messing with time, somebody, somewhere along the line, is going to screw something up, whether inadvertently or purposely. I would love to travel through time, but honestly, I think it would spell trouble in the end.

It would be super cool though.

[davious]

I think I would still go back in time and do stupid stuff that won't alter the timeline though...like, it would be reallllllly sweet to go to Vegas in the 70s and go see Elvis in concert or something.

[Tjaames]

I don't think it should be done. Let the past be the past. It would be nifty to see the future though :).

But if we only make it to 2012, we probably won't have enough time
(*Twilight zone music plays in the backround and your computer screen starts spinning and warps itself) Doo dooo dooo doo dooo dooo dooo doo

[Mark2512]

Scientists have already made theories for time travel, and maybe even tried to implement them. So Ive heard the theory revolves solely around speed. For example if you had one of those astronaut flight trainer spinny things. It is fessible that you could spin the object so fast it would arrive at a destination before it actually left, jumping into the future mere factions of a millisecond. What the required speed is and the materials to withstand the forces are probably not known tho.

Therefore I think technically time travel is possible, but only in tiny amounts of time and only forwards. I think the past is closed, and even then i wouldnt want to stop any evil from happen even something as bad as the holocaust as this could lead to even worst things from happening.

[ElZorro]

Would you do what you could to get rid of it as a dangerous thing?

Do you mean like go back in time and try to kill the inventor as a baby?

Then of course the pro-time travel faction might try to go back in time and kill me as a baby.

Hmmmm.

[kinneer_SC]

If time travel were to become possible, society as we know it would fall apart. As several people already mentioned, they would either

A, travel back in time, bring back some antique and sell it for a profit.

B, travel to the future, find out next week's lottery numbers and come back to hit the jackpot.

Everybody would do this so everything would lose it values. Once that happens, the economy would collapse followed by the society since there is no more tangible wealth in any thing.

There is also the problem of attempt to accelerate our own development as a species. We might try to bring back future tech and use it in the present. But for that technology to exist, we must have developed it somewhere in between. But since that will no longer happen, who really developed it and when? The same also apply bringing existing tech back in time to accelerate the development in the past.

Just my opinion.

[jhd1189]

Oh no... I don't think the past is something to be messed around with. I might go into the past of my own life and give younger versions of myself advice on what to do to make life better for both of us, but I wouldn't do anything more drastic than that. I'd be afraid that I might do something that would cause people I know in the present to cease existing, or worse yet, something that might cause me to cease existing.

[davious]

jhd1189, what if that advice you gave your younger self caused you to not be in a position to go back in time to give yourself advice? LOL Time travel paradoxes are FUN!

[Psy10]

Really? Time Travel? Do we need to fu*k up the world even more then it is?
Seriously. Although, I would like to make a few stock investments. :anime:

[davious]

Coca-Cola, AT&T & IBM back in the day...followed by a heavy capital investment in Microsoft, say, around 1979?

[Peshamban]

I definetly think time travel is possible. I mean think about it, a thousand years ago it was impossible to fly in airplanes, and talking to people without being face to face or writing to them was out of the question.

But i wouldnt do anything too drastic if i went back in time, Id probably just watch myself and laugh along with all the happy moments Ive had and cover my face when i said/did something embarrassing. :doh

[Psy10]

Coca-Cola, AT&T & IBM back in the day...followed by a heavy capital investment in Microsoft, say, around 1979?

:) You know it. :evilnod: Those are exactly the companies I was thinking about. I'd buy some Home Depot stock as well but then sell it quickly right after Bob Nardelli left or before Bernie and Arthur left. Oh and let's not forget that I invented Google. :lol:

[grayx3eyedsoul]

I've thought a lot about Time Travel, and it confuses me. So, I'll put them here to confuse you.

Okay;

If you could go back in time, what are people in the past doing? Is it like, pardon my Harry Potter analogy, but is every second, minute, or even hour in time like a moving photograph? Are they repeating themselves? And if they are repeating their actions, how are they moving forward, and how are WE doing what we are now? Am I always repeating typing this paragraph subconsciously while going forward in time at the same time?

And then, say you can go back in time. Wouldn't your very being there, ruin the timeline? You could bump into George Washington’s parents and kill them or something. Your very being would ruin the ENTIRE future.

You can see why my head hurts, most of the time.

[Ferret II]

No, actually it currently looks like it won't be possible EVER.

But then again, perhaps we were wrong on the laws of physics. It's certainly possible that we don't quite understand time, so maybe it could be possible. Just at the moment, it contradicts known physical laws.

(By the way, I'm talking about travel BACK in time. Travelling forward is likely possible).


Very true. It is impossible to travel back in time, but it is possible to travel forward. I think it has something to do with how fast you travel. You'd have to travel faster than the speed of light, which would make basically mess up your particles and you would turn into a gas. Or something.

I'm only a 15 year old GCSE student. So I'm not very good at this kind of stuff :lol:

Okay, just found this which is basically what I ment:

The probability of a macroscopic object--like a human--doing this trick is infinitesimal. But thanks to Albert Einstein we know that time travel of a different sort does happen in the macroscopic world. As he showed back in 1905 with his special theory of relativity, time slows down for objects moving close to the speed of light, at least from the viewpoint of a stationary observer. You want to visit the earth 1,000 years from now? Just travel to a star 500 light-years away and return, going both ways at 99.995% the speed of light. When you return, the earth will be 1,000 years older, but you'll have aged only 10 years.

[ElZorro]

Very true. It is impossible to travel back in time, but it is possible to travel forward.

I am time traveling right now at the rate of 1 second per second into the future. :)

[muffinator]

It is impossible to travel back in time, but it is possible to travel forward.

In which case you would now be stuck in the new time period you visited and things could be messed up. For instance, would you be listed as a missing person? Would future generations be messed up by your disappearing in your time line? etc.

Things are moving quite fast enough for me- I mean heck, when I was in grade school (not even that long ago) we didn't even use computers! I would hate to miss something important happening, like Google! :D

[stariscool]

Time travel is a wierd thing, and I don't think that anybody should ever try it if it was ever even possible. Messing up the past, and corrupting the future isn't something we should be doing, especially with the plannet the way it is after our non-time travelling actions. Going back to the past, and accidently crushing an ant, only to find it kills everybody in the future, or spawns giant, man-eating ants isn't good. I do however think it would be fun, if there were no risks involved, to go back and see myself, my relatives, other interesting things I wasn't alive to see. Seeing into the future would be amazing. I sometimes wish I could relive days, such as in Tru Calling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tru_Calling). In that programme, the main character Tru relives days to help save the lives of people who die and ask for her help. Along the way, she corrects little hiccups in her day, and that could be really good to be able to do. Whenever I try something that goes wrong, it'd be great to rewind and do the day again, to avoid the mistake, and have a better day.

[Ferret II]

In which case you would now be stuck in the new time period you visited and things could be messed up.

It would suck if you went forward then realised that you hated the future... you couldn't go back.

[ElZorro]

It would suck if you went forward then realised that you hated the future... you couldn't go back.

Maybe then you should just keep going forward looking for a future that you'd like. I suppose that would work unless the future was limited by something like a global nuclear holocaust.

[simsample]

Time travel sounds scary, and if it existed I'd be in The Campaign For Real Time. Take for example the Cathedral of Chalesm:
"not only had the great Cathedral of Chalesm been pulled down in order to build a new ion refinery, but that the construction of the refinery had taken so long, and had had to extend so far back into the past in order to allow ion production to start on time, that the Cathedral of Chalesm had now never been built in the first place. Picture postcards of the cathedral suddenly became immensely valuable."
But seriously, if it were possible to travel back in time, wouldn't we be visited by people from the future? I think it's more likely to be possible to travel forward in time than back.

[ElZorro]

But seriously, if it were possible to travel back in time, wouldn't we be visited by people from the future? I think it's more likely to be possible to travel forward in time than back.

I heard a news story once about people who wanted to meet time travelers, and so they were going around to archival libraries putting invitations on acid free paper into books they'd figure would be around for a long time. The invitation specified a time and a place for a time traveler's convention. The time for the convention came and went and no time travelers (that we know of) attended.

[Haylifer]

New idea for the future.

Hopping in a time machine could be potentially fatal, so if any of your friends ask you to test it out first, JUST SAY NO. The idea of dematerializing yourself then reconstructing it elsewhere alone should sound alarm bells. Here is why. It is destroying you then creating you. Now, does that creation of you still contain the original 'essence of you' that you are feeling right now? Or do you just die, and an identical copy of you gets created? The identical copy thinks it is you, has your memories and from a third-person point of view, it is you. But if you believe in the soul, then where does your real soul go? Of course, if you're a stark biologist with no spritualosity then it's perfectly risk-free, GFI. :)

Hmmmm philosophical.

[WorkYourMagic]

but what if when you time travel, a parallel, identical dimmension is created, so the guy that goes in time can't change nothing...?

[ElZorro]

but what if when you time travel, a parallel, identical dimmension is created, so the guy that goes in time can't change nothing...?

Dr. Bob Smith invents what he calls a time machine. He demonstrates it by setting the controls for 2226 AD and pressing the start button. He (and perhaps the machine too) disappears. *Poof*.

Now you are suggesting that Smith leaves this universe, let's call it universe A, and jumps over to a duplicate universe that's 218 years farther along than ours is. Let's call that one universe B. Then at some point Smith decides he is tired of the future, gets in his time machine again and *poof*, he disappears from year 2226 AD in universe B and reappears in 2008 AD. But we have hypothesized that the machine transfers the operator to a new universe, so Smith is now in universe C in the year 2008.

The problem is that from the point of view of universe A, where we are, Smith just disappeared and never came back. We would see the time machine as a disintegration booth. From our perspective, time travel would be impossible.

[davious]

I am inclined to agree...the multiple universe model seems unfulfilling for the reasons ElZorro points out. Personally, and probably because its really not complicated to understand, I go with the Back to the Future model. I go back in time, alter something, my present gets changed, so that if I return to that present from the past, its an altered one. But, if I can go back in time to the moment the alteration happened, I can restore it. Throwing in multiple universes and dimensions just makes it far too convoluted.

[WorkYourMagic]

mm... maybe have it be programmed to make only 1 universe at a time dunno...

[Alissa888]

I read an article a while back that reported that a new particle accelerator was capable of facilitating time travel (when technology is further developed), but only back to any point in the time scale until the moment the particle accelerator was switched on?
It was published on New Scientist, I'll try find it

EDIT: Here we go (http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg19726421.700?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg19726421.700)

[sayyadina_SC]

I think time is vertical, and most archeologist's seems to agree. One has to dig to get there.

With books on history and books on the future (SF), movies and documentaries exploring all possible times we can come up with, and also our imagination, its fairly simple to "travel" in ones mind to any given moment. Or visit a museum. What remains on the surface of time, is relics, skeletons and broken objects. Change, death and decay surely has something to do with it...
What makes it all so impossible to imagine (time travel) is that no moment is entirely static and always depends on the surrounding moments. Yet, I think time-travel would be harmful to the universe as we know it, and not a very good idea.

Personally, if I could travel in time, I would revisit second grade and make a different choice regarding an insignificant, tiny detail. I'm pretty sure something meaningless like that influenced everything that happened to me after that, and still does, for the rest of my life. It would be awful however to discover it was (important), cause I wouldn't know who I was when I returned to this time, I would have no (to me) known history. Hopefully I would have kept a diary and some photographs, at least.

When I was a kid (about 5) I had a vision of a much older lady who watched over me from a distance. Her appearance seemed familiar. I later understood it was myself, looking back at myself. Strange thing is I actually looked into the future to see me/her there. Questions arise. Of course I can remember the past. But can I remember the future? It all seemed very natural to my 5 year-old perception of reality, but how can it be explained? I must have been 40 at the time, so when I thought about it (age 40), i wondered if myself as 5 was still left somewhere in the past, looking at me in the future? In that case, time-travel could be possible sort of...Like in the article posted before my post, time-travel could only be possible if there is a point of reference to hold onto, like the machine itself, or in my case, my own body. Ive spent thirty years thinking about it, but I haven't got a clue.

Anyway, I'm careful now on how I remember things. Memories might be more than memories, and changing them may affect what really happened, same way they say "be careful what you ask for". Wicked!

[ToxicBritneyfan]

I was watching this thing on the History Channel and it was talking about Time Travel and how they are working on making a time machine, and it could be finished within 100 years. They were talking about how if its made that it would probably only be able to go back no further than when it was turned on.

[JanePstar]

Wow, I think that would be so much fun! Just traveling in time. How exciting! :D

I wouldn't go back in time to fix any of my old problems, Because you learn from your mistakes. :)

[Ferret II]

Wow, I think that would be so much fun! Just traveling in time. How exciting! :D

I wouldn't go back in time to fix any of my old problems, Because you learn from your mistakes. :)

But if you went back in time and fixed your problems, you wouldn't have the problems in the first place so therefore you couldn't go back in time and fix them.

[simsample]

But if you went back in time and fixed your problems, you wouldn't have the problems in the first place so therefore you couldn't go back in time and fix them.
Like for example, the Cathedral of Chalesm:
http://forums.sims2community.com/showpost.php?p=1207332&postcount=44
Notice how I travelled through a wormhole in the forum space-time continuum to get to that message? Join the Campaign for Real Time today!