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Time Travel

Discussion in 'Mature Discussion' started by Desert Warrior, Oct 1, 2008.

Page 1 of 3
  1. Oct 1, 2008 #1
    Desert Warrior

    Desert Warrior Well-Known Member

    This one is fun to talk about. Everybody knows that it is not possible right now, so this debate is about different paradoxes that have been thought up about time traveling: Predestination Paradox, Ontological Paradox, and Grandfather Paradox. Which one do you think is more likely?

    If you don't know what these two things are, let me explain.

    The Predestination Paradox is when a time traveller is caught in a loop of events that "predestines" him or her to travel back in time. Because of the possibility of influencing the past while time traveling, one way of explaining why history does not change is by saying that whatever has happened was meant to happen. A time traveller attempting to alter the past in this model, intentionally or not, would only be fulfilling his role in creating history as we know it, not changing it. Effectively, it means this: the time traveller is in the past, which means he/she was in the past before. Therefore, his/her presence is vital to the future, and he/she does something that causes the future to happen the way it happened. It is very closely related to the ontological paradox and usually occurs at the same time.

    The Ontological Paradox is one way of explaining why history does not change is by saying that whatever has happened was meant to happen. A time traveler attempting to alter the past in this model, intentionally or not, would only be fulfilling his role in creating history, not changing it. However, a scenario can occur where items or information are passed from the future to the past, which then become the same items or information that are subsequently passed back. This not only creates a loop, but a situation where these items have no discernible origin. Physical items are even more problematic than pieces of information, since they should ordinarily age and increase in entropy according to the Second law of thermodynamics. But if they age by any nonzero amount at each cycle, they cannot be the same item to be sent back in time, creating a contradiction unless it is a reproduced item such as a seed, spore, etc. The paradox raises the ontological questions of where, when and by whom the items were created or the information derived. Time loop logic operates on similar principles, sending the solutions to computation problems back in time to be checked for correctness without ever being computed "originally."

    The Grandfather Paradox is best given an example: suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveller's grandmother. As a result, one of the traveller's parents (and by extension, the traveller himself) would never have been conceived. This would imply that he could not have travelled back in time after all, which in turn implies the grandfather would still be alive, and the traveller would have been conceived, allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather. Thus each possibility seems to imply its own negation, a type of logical paradox.

    The grandfather paradox has been used to argue that backwards time travel must be impossible. However, a number of possible ways of avoiding the paradox have been proposed, such as the idea that the timeline is fixed and unchangeable, or the idea that the time traveler will end up in a parallel timeline, while the timeline in which the traveler was born remains independent.
     
  2. Oct 3, 2008 #2
    Mythril Roxas

    Mythril Roxas New Member

    hmmmmmm?

    In my opinon, time travel is most likely imposssible....or at least for us humans. Only God could "time travel", but he doesn't exist in the realm of matter, so the only other deity that could hold such a godly power as time warp would be the Lucifer. Does he have his godly powers here in the realm of matter? Or have they been stripped away from his imperfcet body? That I do not know.
     
  3. Oct 13, 2008 #3
    Chocobo Dyl

    Chocobo Dyl New Member

    Okay I came prepared with no looked up facts whatsoever.

    So,first of all you say that this cannot be acheived,I in a way disagree.
    Ever since I learned more about the 9/11 bombings I've always wondered one thing,there was a guy who said that it would happen,he said this before the bombings,is it possible that this man as if he had a deformity, had travelled in time and saw this(If you watched the first season of Heroes you'll know what I mean.) and then told the goverment.

    When I say deformity I mean a gift in a way.I remember reading about a person that could remember events,the days they happened and he was also a human calender.People tested him and asked things like "On what day will October the 12th 2010 be?" He would think for two seconds and answer correctly.I can give more examples but I can't be bothered.
     
  4. Oct 13, 2008 #4
    Mythril Roxas

    Mythril Roxas New Member

    ....

    Interesting thing about 9/11. Tell me the guys name please. But along with that, there are a lot of signs that 9/11 was coming, and it was planned by our own government. Heres a picture from a board game about government conspiracy....a little dumb, but it predicts the Pentagon attack and the attack on the twin towers in 1996.

    [​IMG]Heres a site with more info on the board game. Its pretty kreepy.....if it all continues to occur in order.
    GrazingSheep.com - Illuminati: What Do They Know?
     
  5. Oct 13, 2008 #5
    Desert Warrior

    Desert Warrior Well-Known Member

    Well that could also be an example of him being part of the history that he tried to stop, like in an Ontological Paradox. Say he did see this and he warned the government. Then, a terrorist might have somehow heard what this man said. Then he could have gone to wherever 9/11 was planned, and tell the other terrorists what he heard. In that case, the terrorists would then plan 9/11 knowing that it would work, and then go through with it. That way, the original person would have helped cause 9/11.

    Another example would be somebody trying to stop President Lincon's assasination. He could go and tell the guards to guard the entrance to Lincon's booth, because somebody could easily sneak in. John Wilkes Booth hears this, and then goes to kill President Lincon because he knows how easy it was to get in.

    I like Heroes, which brings up another example. When Hiro Nakamura travels back in time to feudal Japan, he meets his hero, Takezo Kensei. But as it turns out, Hiro himself becomes Takezo Kensei, and has the stories that he heard as a child to be told and become legend.
     
  6. Oct 14, 2008 #6
    worbs

    worbs New Member

    i don't know really. the idea of traviling in time is somewhat wierd. however i would like to if i could
     
  7. Oct 14, 2008 #7
    Mythril Roxas

    Mythril Roxas New Member

    If time travel is real, this is what it would be like. Your absolutely right Desert WArrior. You see, when applying the unthinkable to normal life you have to consider a lot of real life to occur. Life is ugly.
     
  8. Oct 17, 2008 #8
    Chocobo Dyl

    Chocobo Dyl New Member

    Far too spammy for my liking,I mean this is a bloody debate not a chat room (sorry bout that but you have to know.) I didn't watch season 2 of Heroes sorry but I do remember seing when The Japenese dude hereo thing person is actually just a lazy idiot.

    However if somebody heard about the bombings and told the bombers then yes that would happen you are right,I guess the heart of this debate is really whether our lives are already planned for us or whether we make our lives as they are.Sorry I cannot remember who the guys name is and also I must make the point that I am English so I don't know too much about it.
     
  9. Oct 17, 2008 #9
    Desert Warrior

    Desert Warrior Well-Known Member

    Hey, I like Hiro.

    And yeah, it does make you wonder if we really do have control over our destinies or fate or whatever you want to call it. I honestly don't think we do, because in the end, we did what we were supposed to do in our lives.
     
  10. Oct 18, 2008 #10
    Chocobo Dyl

    Chocobo Dyl New Member

    Sorry to cause offense but I did not mean Hiro I meant the guy that was supposed to be a hero but really Hiro became the Hero.

    Destiny is a touchy subject,I personally don't know what to beleive.
     
  11. Nov 9, 2008 #11
    Zerieth

    Zerieth Head Game Reviewer

    The only issue with time travel is that anything you change makes it so you never needed to change it, so you don't do it yet now it needed to be changed so you go back in time to change it but you didn't need to because you already changed it so you don't and Wow that is confusing. In the end time goes really weird and the space time continum goes BOOM and we all die :p. Time travelers oughta leave well enough alone.
     
  12. Nov 14, 2008 #12
    Chocobo Dyl

    Chocobo Dyl New Member

    Wouldn't time travel just cancel itself out or blow up or something. I mean you change something which means that it never needed to be changed which means that you never changed it meaning it needs to be changed,Yeah I pritty much just said what the above person said.
     
  13. Nov 14, 2008 #13
    Desert Warrior

    Desert Warrior Well-Known Member

    Yeah, no kidding.

    Anyways, if you were to go and try to change something, that just might mean that the thing you were going to change would happen, and things go as normally. Just a thought. Can't prove it right or wrong.
     
  14. Nov 18, 2008 #14
    Figure.09

    Figure.09 New Member

    Mythril, you should probably stop spamming. lol =)

    Recently I had a different perspective on Time Travel. Let's suppose you go back in time to change the elements of a certain event... (by that I mean what happened). Suppose you execute this time travel in such a way where no one could possibly know someone had come from the future. Now, let's suppose there's a future for humans where we realize this, and only go back in time knowing no one could ever find out it was someone from the future. Wouldn't our perceptions of what time travel is not make any sense because we have yet to find it? Maybe we won't know until we catch someone coming back from the future? And maybe that will spark an investigation spanning several dozen years before we finally get it right, so events unfold after that and slowly but surely we realize all the strange events of the past made sense after all. Ahhh Kennedy assassination! (but we all know that was a government inside job. ;]]) xD

    But before we can do that parasites eat our brains, of course.

    /rant
     
  15. Nov 18, 2008 #15
    Mythril Roxas

    Mythril Roxas New Member

    Yep, ones eating my brain right know ^_^ (*slurp* *slurp*)....lol

    Time Travel could never exist in my opinion.There are interesting elements that few in our history have discovered, but Time Travel isn't one of those such powerz.
     
  16. Nov 18, 2008 #16
    Mike

    Mike Member

    The debate is largely tied into the 'shape of the universe' problem.

    -Is spacetime linear? Then time travel is impossible.
    -Is spacetime a torus (ie. donut) or torus-like in behaviour? Then time is repeating, and we ultimately play no role in our destiny. (It's like a movie playing through)
    -Is spacetime a web? Then time travel is a very real phenomenon, in which we can alter the past and spawn new 'branches' or alternate realities.


    We'll never know which is infact the truth...although it is 'possible' because of something known as the "Remarkable Theorem of Gauss" (Theorema Egregium).
     
  17. Nov 24, 2008 #17
    Mythril Roxas

    Mythril Roxas New Member

    I think spacetime is like a big circle, or a never ending cycle of life. "the circle of life" kinda sorta (and no its not because I've been watching Lion King to much lol^_^). There are ways to get out of the cycle though, then you enter the "other realm", the spirit realm which is a place none can even theorize about because were to far away from it to even begin to think of their time.
     
  18. Nov 30, 2008 #18
    Avalantos

    Avalantos Mr. Detective

    Time Travel is technically possible. All you need to do is travel faster than light, you can look back at the point you traveled from and still see yourself there. Thus its only possible to 'Travel' to the 'Future'
     
  19. Nov 30, 2008 #19
    Desert Warrior

    Desert Warrior Well-Known Member

    Although, I think it's impossible to travel faster than light. To travel at the speed of light, you would need infinite mass because as energy increases, mass would too. I'm not 100% sure about this. I just remember asking my science teacher about traveling at the speed of light.
     
  20. Nov 30, 2008 #20
    Avalantos

    Avalantos Mr. Detective

    Yeh, its something along those lines. It is possible, we just don't have the means to do it.
     
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