I am basing this question (actually 2) using the theory that time, in reality, is really an infinite series of probabilities, each one existing separately and parallel, with each probability based on all possible outcomes of ANY event which can have more than one outcome.
My question. If, in theory, it is possible to "travel" in time, would one then "wobble" across probability lines as one traveled? Any venture into the past could therefore wind up on any parallel timeline just as it could our own. The traveler would not notice the difference until he arrived, then, literally be stuck on that timeline, with his return to the "present" being a crapshoot on which probability timeline he ended up? Given the "powered from the present" technology described, could there then be a possibility of "wobbling" into a timeline on which this process was not invented? Would our "traveler" then be either stuck, or non existent?
Sorry, Physicist, but this happens to be one of my more esoteric interests, and the various theories about travel (Blame Tipler's "Closed Timelike Loops" for my interest ;-) have fascinated me for a LONG time. Thanks much for any input here.
Greg
My suspicion regarding any contradictions from time travel is: All contradictions do get resolved ("nature abhors a contradiction", to coin a phrase), but the annihilation of the contradiction gets played out at the same speed at which the original timeline got "written". So, the time traveler would never see the consequences of the contradiction. I'd simply live out my life in the past, free to change history as I saw fit.