New model 'permits time travel'

BBC ^ | 6/17/05 | Julianna Kettlewell

[LibWhacker]

LOL

[mysterio]

No. If at some time in the future you are going to go into the past, then at this moment, you have already been in the past. You can't change anything.

[gridlock]

I am not going to let some pencil necked geek
tell me what I can and can not do in the past...

[arkham]

Gibberish...

[Larry Lucido]

Does this mean I can travel back in time to 1980, to the night I met my ex-wife, and yell at myself "RUN, YOU IDIOT! RUN!"

Maybe it was better you met her then, rather than meeting and marrying her 10 years from now, right before you clear $5 million investing in an upstart anti-graviton manufacturer.

[CMOTB]

Like the scientist said on the TV show Seven Days. There can't be parallel universes or as he said "Thats why they call it a UNI-Verse" :)

[blabs]

The article fails to mention one aspect, which could derail their entire premise. That aspect is "Are you visible to others when you go back in time"?

If you are visible to others when going back in time, then the whole concept is flawed, as simply a reaction to your appearance from an individual could set off an unknown sequence of events.

Hypothetically speaking, "I appear back in time to see a street I lived on, and a driver sees me appear. He slams his brakes, and loses control of his car, which careens into a house where my neighbor lives, killing the daughter of the family, who by the way was my fathers future wife who conceived me."

Elaborate on that!

[JCEccles]

Science has now proved predestination... but there's still no god.

In your case, perhaps that's what God wants you to believe.

[edsheppa]

Say what? What a stupid article.

Usually, if you can't understand something, it's not that thing that's stupid.

[RegulatorCountry]

"In your case, perhaps that's what God wants you to believe."

Perhaps. What does that say about what God wants you to believe, though?

[plain talk]

"not that thing that's stupid". A bit grammatically challenged, are you? There was nothing of substance in that article.

[glorgau]

No, but I plan on going back and buying stock of an upstart company called Wal-Mart.

If you aren't rich in Wal-Mart stock today, then according to this model, you wouldn't be able to go back and buy Wal-Mart stock. "Something" would prevent that.

[The KG9 Kid]

So much for killing Hitler and Karl Marx.

Back to the drawing board.

[SoothingDave]

If you are visible to others when going back in time, then the whole concept is flawed, as simply a reaction to your appearance from an individual could set off an unknown sequence of events.

The proposition put forth is that the fact of your existence makes it impossible to alter the past in such a way as to make your existence cease. That is, since you are here now, you are here and there is no way that the past exists which makes you not be here. Cause here you are.

To put it another way, it is impossible for you to have the desire or ability to go back and kill your father, because you obviously didn't, cause you're here.

SD

[NoClones]

these idiots are always forgetting that forms of matter cannot be destroyed, it only changes form...

for example, the elements and molecules that made up michael fox in 1980 were somewheres else 100 years earlier and will be somewheres else 100 years from now...

for better or worse, we are essentially creatures limited to the 'here and now'

[expat_panama]

WHOOAAA

Hey people, I just tried it and this article is baloney.  What happens is you get thrown into a parallel alternate universe that exists by virtue of your meddling.

I don't think I'll miss my original universe though-- I mean, I can live without President Gore and the Pope divorcing her third husband.

[blabs]

"In other words, you can pop back in time and have a look around, but you cannot do anything that will alter the present you left behind."

The article goes on to state not just your presence but change anything. So if my hypothetical argument did not have anything to do with my existence, lets say that instead of careening in the house, the person became famous, built a museum, started a ghost hunting service, and created a legend. Either way, a change has been made based on the premise that "I was visible".

Ultimately, if you are visible, then your mere presence could trigger a chain of unknown events, whether for the best or the worst.

[Loyalist]

Maybe they weren't trying to fix things but they just got worse each time they tried and that's why we got Stalin, Mao and Hitler...

How do we know that killing them as infants would not lead to even worse horrors arising in their place?

[RegulatorCountry]

" But then by simply going into the past you would be changing something, the air you breathe ?"

Oh... sort of like the old butterfly flapping it's wings in China thing, any change -no matter how minor- will affect a chaotic system in seemingly unpredictable and increasingly complex ways? You do have a point. Not sure that it would preclude time travel into the past, but this would make it seemingly much more difficult, close to impossible.

[rattrap]

You mean this model?

I thought they had been discontinued.