How to Build a Time Machine - It wouldn't be easy, but it might be possible

Scientific American ^ | September 2002 issue | By Paul Davies

[TheBigB]

A valid point, but in the loop, we're assuming that the pair that Kirk sold is the -same- pair that McCoy bought. In other words, that particular pair of glasses did not "exist" in the 20th century until Kirk brought them back and pawned them. Then McCoy bought them in the future. Assuming these facts, the question still remains, who made that particular pair of glasses?

[strela]

No participating in D-day or Pickett's Charge

I don't know about Pickett's Charge. But it would have been interesting to provide about 25 hand grenades to A.P. Hill's corps trying to knock Joshua Chamberlain's 20th Maine off of the Little Round Top near Gettysburg. If the LRT had been taken by the Confederacy that day, the war might very well have been over and Lee would have been cooling his heels in Abe Lincoln's chair.

Or, take it back a few years - give WB Travis a couple of boxes of Claymore mines to place around the Alamo.

[Recovering_Democrat]

Let's go back to November of '92. Better yet, send me back to just before Microsoft's IPO was issued.

[asformeandformyhouse]

Yes, you did. And you will. Call it 'deja view'.

Good one. I couldn't immediately think of a way to use 'Deja Vu' in my response without sounding like Yogi Berra.

[andy_card]

All we have to do is find and stabilize a naturally occurring wormhole that exists in the deep past. Simple!

Yeah, but suppose you find one going back 5 billion years. What are you going to do for the next 4.999 billion years until, say, Pickett's Charge? Hang around?

[Sir Gawain]

That's what makes it fun.

[Dstorm]

Firesign Theater Bump "Don't Crush that dwarf hand me the pliers"

[jae471]

Yes, you did. And you will. Call it 'deja view'.

I thought deja view was when the same article gets posted to FR 15 times in the same day?

[AFreeBird]

In other words, that particular pair of glasses did not "exist" in the 20th century until Kirk brought them back and pawned them.

Of course they did! They were made in 1700's colonial America. So they had to exist in the 20th. So technically, two copies of the same pair actually existed in the 20th after Kirk came back and pawned them. Although one pair would have the original lenses still intact, and one pair would have a broken lens. One would assume then that McCoy found the pair with both original lenses still intact.

[TheBigB]

Hmmm. Maybe so; that's a good argument.

[Michael Barnes]

I thought deja view was when the same article gets posted to FR 15 times in the same day?

nah....that's just a slow news day..

[Savage Beast]

Remember that strange case reported in the newsmedia 30 years ago or so about the man in Chile or Peru who went to visit some strange lights in the mountains? When he came back a few hours later he had several days' growth of beard, and there was something funny about his watch? There was never any followup reporting. The story just dropped.

There have been several of these through the years.

CNN reported that a pottery and metal object from ancient Ur was found to be a battery.

And then there's that stone, glass, and ceramic relief map of part of Russia from over a million years ago.

[Prodigal Son]

If time travel into the past is theoretically possible, and if it will ever be done in the future, then that means that people that are here now may be from the future. We are currently in their past, so they could be coming back to change things here.

Well, I figure they'd lie low, you know? They'd probably just do the little things it took for them to be the richest person in the world. Geesh, if that's the case, you'd think that a man from the future could've invented a better OS than Windows ;-)

I agree with you BTW. Where the hell are they? If it is possible- where are all the people from the future? They ought to be here by now- heck, they ought to have been here a long time ago and sorted things out when it would've been a lot easier to do so.

Then again, maybe they realize that anything they do would invalidate the science that brought them here and they'd be stranded. Perhaps the biggest tourism industry in the future is to travel back in time- clandestinely- they come, mix with us but don't interfere. They go back and bore everybody with there slide shows...

You know- I think I have just invented myself a great BS line to try to pick up on dumb blondes with. You'd just go up to the nearest ditzy (but sexy) blonde in the pub and explain the paradoxes involved with time travel. You'd have to juice it up a little to make it sound like you were a big authority on the subject. Then go on to explain that "anyway, in the 36th Century, it is generally agreed that You madame, are the most desirable woman that has ever lived and I've spent my life's savings to travel back in time for one night only to see if I can't buy you a drink..."

No offense to blondes- I'm married to one- a smart one though- d'oh!

[William McKinley]

What a very cool article!

[William McKinley]

Isn't gravity related to density? So that immense denseness would imply immense gravity?

Where is murrymom when you need her?