Time Travel - Page 3 - Political Forum

emptypepsi · #21 (**permalink**) 12-28-2006, 01:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FRYandBENDER

I thought that the new Biff (with almanac) was changed. Didn't he have a ton of money. It has been a while since I've seen the movie, but I thought things did change. As far as the article I read goes, the guy was saying that when Biff went back and gave himself the almanac, he created another dimension. He would return to his unchanged present, but the Biff with the Almanac would exist in a different dimension where he was rich from winning all the bets. I'm pretty sure that if someone did figure out time travel, we wouldn't hear about it anyways. The government would keep it secret, in the interest of national security, and then run amuck with it.

I see, but the second he handed that almanac to Biff in the past -- he had already changed the future no matter how you slice it. Since the future had changed, how can he return to the future from which he came? It no longer exists after he gave Biff the book. If he returns to the future it would be the one of THAT new reality. AY...time travel.

drgoodtrips · #22 (**permalink**) 12-29-2006, 01:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by francois60

Say you go back in time and run over a cat on accident. That sets off a chain of events, and so on. Now, if you go back in time and kill yourself before you run the cat over but somebody sees you do this, it sets off another chain (though you arguably "fixed" the problem).

Naw, what I'm saying is let's say a cat jumps in front of your car. Two timelines exist already(and presumably always existed since the Big Bang). One in which you hit the cat and one in which you don't. You will go down one of those timelines and continue on, just as if you chose the right fork in a road. If you go back in time, you can choose the left fork, but you haven't changed anything but your own direction. The road never changed.

Let's say that instead of running the cat over, you place him in a box with a bag of poison that, in any given second, has a tiny probability of opening and killing the cat. There you sit, looking at that box, not knowing what's going on inside. Is your cat alive or dead?

drgoodtrips · #23 (**permalink**) 12-29-2006, 01:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bugler

My apologies. I did a search and time travel came up negative. Since every other board I visit has one of these sooner or later....

I read a SF story about a man who built a TT device.
He set it for one million years in the past, and materialized in interstellar space, having travelled to where Earth had been a million years before. So to return to a past time you'd have to transport the entire solar system with you; but it still wouldn't be the place that was.

If you use a TT device, say to take you back 24 hours; first move to a different spot in the room you were in.
Now there are two of you in that room, looking at each other.
Where did the matter for the extra you come from?

I've never encountered this simple explanation in all of the TT threads I've waded through. Neither have I gotten a credible counter-explanation for it.

Enjoy.

I think that this premise can be explained simply enough. Space and time are not independent entities - they are linked (thanks to Einstein and general relativity). The 'extra' matter would simply arrive at its destination by moving through spacetime, the way that I would provide extra matter in a different time (a few seconds in the future) by getting up from my computer and walking into my bedroom. "Time travel" currently exists in the every day world to a tiny degree. People living close to the Earth or travelling at high speeds experience time passing more slowly than their stationary, mountain dwelling peers. This is a form of defacto time travel that is simply too small to notice, but existent nonetheless. But, there is no talk of 'extra' mass. Assuming that we were to devise some scheme for bending spacetime in a way that would allow time travel into the past, the same principle would apply. You would still be moving through spacetime.

Bugler · #24 (**permalink**) 12-29-2006, 11:00 AM

You could build extra past selves from any matter the Langoliers miss - like the airliner that vanished in the swirly-thing or Bronson Pinchot.