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The paradox of popping back in time
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150216-the-truth-about-movie-time-travel ^

Posted on 02/17/2015 6:11:33 AM PST by BenLurkin

One of the fundamentals that underpins not just physics but every aspect of existence is the law of cause and effect, always in that order. Changing the past would violate that: your actions would affect what caused you to go back in the first place – so if you did manage to kill Hitler he wouldn’t have done what led you to go back and kill him.

That doesn’t stop filmmakers exploring the consequences if you could somehow drop in on history. For Hollywood, applause and special effects are more important than cause and effect, and time travel offers unlimited opportunities to push both imagination and CGI to their limits. Hence screen time machines have included a police box (Dr Who), a phone booth (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure), a DeLorean sports car (Back to the Future) and a big nudes-only energy ball (Terminator).

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...


TOPICS: Science
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To: GreenHornet
Realizing what he’s done, the impersonator tells himself that there cannot be a world without Elvis Presley in it,

Indeed. I shudder to think of a world without Elvis. :-)

41 posted on 02/17/2015 10:11:04 AM PST by zeugma (The act of observing disturbs the observed.)
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To: BenLurkin

A Sci-Fi story that I don’t remember the title. A guy goes into some small cinema and watches a Roman army fighting a gory battle - and it IS gory, heads, arms, legs getting lopped off everywhere. He realizes he is actually watching a film of the real centuries old battle.

It turns out some guy has invented a time machine in the sense he can go back to any point in history and record it in real time, and the best thing he can think to do with it is to record the events, run it as a movie, and sell tickets.

Enter our hero, who proceeds to go back and record the events leading up to Pearl Harbor (along the line that Roosevelt knew and let it happen), the crucifixion of Christ, etc. - you name it - all the turning points in history. He then blabs his findings to the public and causes all kinds of Hell.

Soon he is being chased by “Them” and no matter what he does, they are always seconds behind him. Figuring he was going to be caught, he sends out (via YouTube? :-)) the instructions on how to build the machine as his last act of defiance.

“They” catch up to him but instead of killing him, ask him what he considers “the past”. He comes up with all kinds of historical dates. “They” remind him “the past” can be as short as a few seconds ago (which allows anybody anywhere to look into anyone’s life and see all the skeletons in the closet).

Then they let him go to a Brave New World where everyone can view your past - in detail.

Funny thing is that I thought as he did - “the past” was long ago, not everything up until the last second. Man, if everybody could look into my past . . . :-)


42 posted on 02/17/2015 1:50:49 PM PST by Oatka (This is America. Assimilate or evaporate.)
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To: BenLurkin

After I read Psychoshop I don’t believe in paradoxes anymore. The argument against it being an issue in there is size, given the over all size of the universe little “impossibilities” in Earth’s history really just don’t matter.


43 posted on 02/17/2015 2:00:14 PM PST by discostu (The albatross begins with its vengeance A terrible curse a thirst has begun)
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To: zeugma
"The computation required just to find your way home would be ... astronomical."

Relativity. There is no base reference. All of that motion is relative.

44 posted on 02/17/2015 2:11:31 PM PST by mlo
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To: GreenHornet

“The Once and Future King” was a Twilight Zone episode in 1986.

Good episode.


45 posted on 02/17/2015 3:19:34 PM PST by chaosagent (Remember, no matter how you slice it, forbidden fruit still tastes the sweetest!)
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To: chaosagent
“The Once and Future King” was a Twilight Zone episode in 1986. Good episode.

Thanks for the clarification. (At least I remember seeing it!)

46 posted on 02/17/2015 3:29:48 PM PST by GreenHornet
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To: mlo
The article says: "The greatest of them is Sergei Krikalev, a cosmonaut now also a chrononaut by virtue of having spent so long in space that it’s been calculated he’s travelled into his own future by about 1/200ths of a second.

OK, it’s not much. But it’s still enough to be tricky to get your head round. It’s all down to time dilation, something predicted by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity but which we can measure, whereby the faster someone goes (and Sergei spent over two years in orbit on Mir and the International Space Station travelling at over 17,000mph) the slower their clock goes relative to those back down on Earth. It’s more complicated than this because gravity is also involved, but Sergei has aged fractionally less than he would have if he’d not gone into space."

This is almost as much BS as something Jen Psaki might say.

47 posted on 02/17/2015 3:38:30 PM PST by kjam22 (my music video "If My People" at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74b20RjILy4)
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To: BenLurkin
Robert Heinlein had fun with all these paradoxes in several stories: All You Zombies, By His Bootstraps, and The Door Into Summer. All worth reading.

Regarding that last one, Heinlein used to call me every year to sign me up for the blood drive at the WorldCon. He called once when I wasn't home and my youngest son took the call. Heinlein chatted with him, and described to him the plot of the story he was then writing, which turned out to be Door.

Another good one is David Gerrold's The Man Who Folded Himself.

I'm currently writing a novel about time travel, and one of the key issues is, would you try to change the past? In the novel, that's called "time crime," and the penalties for trying it are very severe. My main character is sorely tempted once to try it, but decides against changing the past.

48 posted on 02/17/2015 4:50:13 PM PST by JoeFromSidney (Book RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY, available from Amazon.)
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To: edpc

well, a more competent guy did win WWII and killed millions more than Hitler. his name was Josef Stalin


49 posted on 02/18/2015 1:00:38 AM PST by Cronos (ObamaÂ’s dislike of Assad is not based on AssadÂ’s brutality but that he isn't a jihadi Moslem)
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To: mlo
Relativity. There is no base reference. All of that motion is relative.

Which would actually make it a bigger computational problem.

50 posted on 02/18/2015 6:55:33 AM PST by zeugma (The act of observing disturbs the observed.)
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To: JoeFromSidney

All You Zombies?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDKjK1DXhmE


51 posted on 02/18/2015 7:51:18 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: BenLurkin
All You Zombies?

Yes. http://cla.calpoly.edu/~lcall/303/heinlein_all_you_zombies.pdf

52 posted on 02/18/2015 9:18:12 AM PST by JoeFromSidney (Book RESISTANCE TO TYRANNY, available from Amazon.)
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To: JoeFromSidney

Nice!

http://cla.calpoly.edu/~lcall/303/heinlein_all_you_zombies.pdf


53 posted on 02/18/2015 9:19:28 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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