Time Trip - questions and answers (How widely accepted is the theory that we can travel in time?)

BBC ^ | Friday, December 26, 2003 | BBC

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Tango??

[ffusco]

What was the name of Pike's horse and the combo to Kirk's safe? I did not read that in any Starfleet Technical Manauals!

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Now your turn:

What type of rays were responsible for Captain Pike's condition ?

[ffusco]

trick question, wasn't it a phaser coolant or engineering mishap. Or was it Bertold rays?

[Reaganwuzthebest]

I think it was delta rays.

[x]

Just saw the preview of a new movie, The Butterfly Effect. In the movie Ashton Kutcher goes back in time to prevent his girlfriend from ruining her life. The flaw in the movie: if time travel existed, parents would already have gone back in time to prevent their daughters from ruining their lives by preventing them from ever meeting Ashton Kutcher (and some children would have done the same for their mothers). So the premise of the film is logically impossible.

Time travel has such facination, though, that whether or not we will in fact be able to do it, there will be a virtual reality time travel and tourism business in the future. You might indeed "wake up" in the 18th century, or back in high school or on Mars, and find that it was a trip your family bought for you. Here's hoping their check cleared for the return trip ...

[BudgieRamone]

I have a theory about that. What if we have had time travellers from the future. And I don't mean an alien civilization. Take for a minute that all folklore and tall tales have in them a tiny grain of truth someplace within the story. Then think for a minute about mythology... A specific example (this came from a story I read once and would like to give credit to the author, so If any of you know who wrote it please let me know) A person well versed in the mythos of a certain culture could feasibly call themselves, for example, Thor...He carries a pistol, or as he refers to it a "hammer" knowing that this would likely be accepted. OK, throw in a few events where said hammer is fired BANG (flash) and its "returned" to his hand. and enemy drops dead before the warrior....legend of mjolnir is born and our time traveller has just created the very legend he is using as a cover.

Ok Im done with the sci-fi thing. Its far too late for this stuff.

Oh and as an added note, if a time traveller altered something in the past I believe we in the present would never know, It would be our known history. To us it never existed any other way

[Desron13]

"Maybe they don't want to 'come back'...

This being Christmas and all, I would most certainly want to go back and talk to Jesus Christ. In my mind he has allot of splainin to do. Just think of the possibilities!

[fso301]

Bump

I'll read this yesterday

[birg]

Oh and as an added note, if a time traveller altered something in the past I believe we in the present would never know, It would be our known history. To us it
never existed any other way

---

Hmm.... that is the crux of the issue. Can the ALTERED past
being ALREADY PAST relative to our local space-time dimension, have any effect whatsoever on us in the present?
Would there be any effect on our present time domain, if someone went into the past and changed something?

It is ALREADY past...... is it not?
Or does the EXPIRED past STILL have the capability of influencing the ongoing present linked to the future???

[Qwinn]

I was about to post Niven's theory on Time Travel, but I see you beat me to it.

I believe he phrased it thus (paraphrased): "If it is possible to build a time machine that allows travel into the past, and it is also possible to alter the past, then the time machine will never be invented."

I find it impossible to make a consistent argument against his logic. He's right. Eventually, someone would go back in the past and alter history in such a way that the time machine is never invented, and once that happens, it can never be altered again. We'd be "stuck" in that universe where time-travel was not technically impossible but human history had been aligned in such a way that no one ever actually discovers how to do it.

What I find most disconcerting about that is that the simplest and most probable way that an altered history could result in a future where time travel is never invented is a history where the human race, prior to reaching a level of technology where the time machine's invention is possible, is completely wiped out.

Qwinn

[Qwinn]

Something else did just occur to me though. There is one possible method of time travel that could alter the past that could still exist - in our future.

I can't quite recall where I read it, but the gist of the idea was that, when time travel was invented, it required the existence of a time machine to already exist at that point in time.

So, for example, if the time machine is invented in 2008, then future generations living in 3508 could go back in time as far as 2008. The "past" time machine already has to exist in order to provide a destination for the "future" time machine to operate on.

Not that wacky an idea. I wouldn't be surprised at all if teleportation was possible but -required- a receiver on the other side. This would be essentially the same idea.

In that scenario, one could never go back into the past "beyond" the first invention of the time machine, so one could never "undo" it's invention altogether. But that theory does generally mean that history up until this point is pretty much "written in stone".

Qwinn

[balrog666]

You're driving me crazy! I remember that story but I can't remember the author or title.

Arrrghhhhhhhhh!

[exile]

Trek, bah. Everyone knows Star Trek is for little girls and old ladies. If you want the best television program of all time, it would have to be "Doctor Who."

As for the whole time travel thing, all we need is a Tardis.

[Reaganwuzthebest]

Trek, bah. Everyone knows Star Trek is for little girls and old ladies.

Well I dare you to say that to Spock... one squeeze to the neck and you're out cold lol.

If you want the best television program of all time, it would have to be "Doctor Who."

Yes I've caught that on PBS a few times; not bad but there's nothing like Kirk, Spock and Bones.

[RightWhale]

Professor Richard Gott is right and has been amusing colleagues for decades with this. Seems it is possible without violating laws of physics, but it would be well to send graduate students on the time trip rather than the prof himself.

[balrog666]

... but there's nothing like Kirk, Spock and Bones.

I take you have yet to see "Farscape" in reruns?

And, perhaps, you didn't like "Babylon 5"? Or "Lexx"?

[thrcanbonly1]

I think it was "The Lightning Road" by Dean R. Koontz

[bk1000]

"I already posted this article tomorrow.

LOL and I've already read it..."

But it hasn't been written yet!

[Reaganwuzthebest]

There's a ton of good sci-fi shows, but the older ones like Star Trek and The Twilight Zone didn't have the kind of technology and gadgetry added in like they do today.

The result was to keep them interesting writers were forced to put more effort into dialogue and scripts. That's why I was not impressed with Star Trek: The Next Generation or the rest of them because so many of the plots were remakes of the original, only fancier.