If time travel were possible and you could travel back in time, where would you go and what would you do?
Perhaps. But pretty much every discussion on time travel ends with the debate about paradoxes like killing your own father before you were born, etc. I'd really like to avoid those dead end arguments here. What I want to encourage is a discussion of what people would really do and 'when' they would go and why. Perhaps as part of that there would be significant implications. For example - killing hitler before WWII, and what happens to the world if there was no war. You might conclude that the evil of Hitler is found eventually to be of benefit to the world since wars often push technology to the limits. Religious people might want to visit the beginnings of their religions. How about being able to view the formation of the planets or a big bang? But really consider how could history be re-engineered to produce different effects in the future. Cris
the way i feel today? i would go buy a lottery guide, and a sports almanac, and go back aoubt 50 years. " BACK TO THE FUTURE". ring a bell?
Personal greed and profit huh? Perfectly understandable. So would you stay in the past and enjoy the new wealth then, or leave it somewhere so you could use it when you returned to the future? I never understood why the old Biff gave the almanac to his younger self, since he was not going to have any personal benefit. Cris
I would love to time travel. Assuming that I could go absolutely anywhere at anytime, and I was practically invisible to everyone else. There would be a tone of places to go. First I would visit Pearl Harbor, when it was being attacked by the Japanese. Of course I wouldn't be anywhere to dangerous. I would also have to show up at Normandy on D-Day, and on the Missouri to see Hirohito surrender to Nimitz. And then the criminal trial at Nuremburg. Aside from WWII, I would go to FDR's, and JFK's inaugurations. Be pretty interesting to see them, I would have to see Winston Churchill at some point in his time as PM of the Britain. I would go see Hitler, at the Nuremburg rallies. I've always wondered what he sounded like. I'd see Lincoln and Kennedy's assassinations, maybe the Hinkley attempt on Regain too. I think going to the UN during the Cuban Missile crisis, and to finish off world events I'd go to Berlin, when the wall fell. Personally I'd visit my grandparent's wedding. I'd also like to see my grandfather when he was in the Italian carribaneri, right before the world, (he left in September 1939 to come to the US). I also think it would be interesting to see my birth, wonder what that looked like? Screw an Alaskan cruise, this would be my ultimate vacation. I'd have to bring a lot of film, and a damn good map.
Re-living your own life. Curly, This probably applies more to older members but would you consider visiting your younger self and providing advice so as to avoid future disasters or embarrasments? This is perhaps less about time travel as I've stated, but I'd love to go back and re-live my life, but with the knowledge I currently have. Starting with being born with full adult memories. Now that could make for an interesting life. Of course I wouldn't make the same mistakes as I did the first time through, but I'd probably screw up somewhere else. I guess the lesson here is that if you have the tendency to screw up then no matter how many times you re-live your life you will still screw up. I am now old enough to know my limitations and and know when to avoid the potentially dangerous situations. And I have achieved that through making so many mistakes in the past. Oh well, I'd still like to go back with perfect memory and see what happens. Should become fairly wealthy pretty quickly since I would know what was going to happen next. Cris
Cris, Great minds think alike. Oneday, me and my better half were talking about that - we thought what would happen if suddenly your present memory gets imprinted in to yourself when you were in high school? This really happend to me in reverse. I had a lucid dream that I was camping one night on the Oregon trail in Kemmer, Wyoming. The details that was unknown to me before - upon discussion with locals found to be true. Can information travel through time? It may be that we coexist in time with a phase shift. I have a friend who can see auras in people. I don't. So many unanswered questions and time is so short....time....time....
I did consider that but... Trust me being alive for a decade and a half there are things that I'd like to fix or make better. I'd tell my parents to buy some keen stocks and sell them in '99. But back to the subject at hand, if you could change the past (which is open to scientific debate, i.e. the grandfather paradox), I believe that those hardships I have encountered in the past have made me a better person. Mistakes and fallablities are what make us truly human, without them I think the world would be a very boring 1-D world. Things have been on the upswing for me in the past year, you sometimes have to experience bad things to really appreaceate your present situation, which may be better than you think. Just something to think about guys, stay positive. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
shrike rescued this thread! I'd like to go back and meet all the friends I know when they were little, like six years old, then I'd look at myself and watch myself over the years. Then I'd go to the end of time and see how things work'd out, and maybe backtrack to see how they came to be. I'd leave my own future fate alone but would correct several mistakes I've made before.
Paradoxes aside, I would go back 3 months, with all of the information to date on the Sept. 11 attacks, and then send it the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA. I would wait until Sept. 9th and then send it to every major news media in the world. Maybe that way, at least 5000 people would be alive here and the civilians dying right now in afgahnistan wouldn't be.
Id start with visiting russia for the revoloution in 1917, then id go and visit enstien and have a conversaion over tea and buiscuits. I go back to the 1940's and wonder around roswell see if a ufo did crash then id rent a boat sit a few thousand miles of christmas island then watch them nuke it, thats something i think you would have to see to appricate, on film it doesnt look real. I deffinatly go to dallas for jfk's assination then onto cuba for the revolution. After the 60's it all gets rather boring so id have to go back to the future then, one thing id never do is try and talk to myself of any other member of my family, i wouldent try to kill hitler or stalin because if you kill these people someone else will just take there place. I would be quite content just watching the events that have significance and being able to report the truth, what really happened.
You think for one second that any of them would belive you? If you did that one of two things would happen, 1.They'd send you to a mental institution, where you'd proberbly spend the rest of your life. 2.They'd take no action then after september the 11th they'd arrest you and proberbly send you to prison for the rest of your life. Event's that have happened will happen, you can change names and dates but the end result is still the same.
Huh? How, you being branded as a crackpot before Sept 11 will make 5000 people alive? No one will believe you and will put you in a padded cell. Everything happens for a reason. Time is neither good or evil. However, there is this free will thing. We learn and we take action. Some will do nothing. You would think that the Insurance companies will wise up and protect their interest by investing money to prevent man made disasters. But historically that usually does not happen.
I would travel back to the beginning of the Universe. I would walk up to the particle of infinite mass and energy just before it explodes in the big band. I would grab the particle and put it in my pocket, then I would go back to my own time (now) and tell everybody I got the Universe in my pocket. Seriously, I really don't know if I want to achieve anything in the past, perhaps I would visit Leonardo da Vinci a couple of times and I probably would like to se if there really was a Jesus, Buddha and so on. What would be really interesting though, is to se the future of man kind. To behold what we are in a distant future. For better or for worse that is what I want to know.
Contradiction Didn't Einstein say that the mass/energy ratio was constant? That means that a bigger mass => less energy for a given corpse? E=mc^2 ? Therefore, that first particle had to be of infinite energy and no mass Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Then, assuming that anyone would travel back to the beggining, wouldn't he\she spoil the birth of the universe? Could anyone give me an answer pls?
Ok! I should have written infinite mass or energy probably. It was just an attempted joke. That is an interesting question. If the big bang energy contained all energy (mass) in the whole universe, what would happen if you got there and therefore introduced your own mass/energy to the universe again (its already there). But this would be true for all time past. If you travel back you add to the total energy of the universe at that point, due to the fact that you already exist in some other form of matter or energy. But this is another discussion, perhaps another thread?
More... By the way everyone you're welcome for me rescuing this thread, it was on the very end of the list. I should do that more often... -Wouldn't taking a piece of the pre-universe mean that you actually took a gigantic chunk of it and possibly our portion of it? Just a thought. -I would spend years observing dinasaurs, and if I could travel to an alternate universe I would see if utahraptors became the sentient species of the planet (it was around the last million years or so as was quite intelligent, much more intelligent and basically better than the common velociraptor). It'd be REALLY cool if humans and raptors co-existed in a hostile environment, now that would be something fun to watch behind the screen of a time traveller thingy device. -I'd see if Al Gore really did invent the internet (or was impartial to its creation or something). -I'd exist behind-the-scenes of a few peoples mind for a day or two, just to really see how they function and operate. That's not really time travel but there are some really wacky and incredible people that I know that I'd like to REALLY know. I'd also want to know what they REALLY thought of me, but I probably already do. -I'd travel across the universe for a very, very long time just observing cosmic phenomena and other sentient forms. I'd get a feel for their culture. -I would watch Osama bin Laden for a day or two, maybe see inside his mind for the same amount of time, and find out if he really truly was behind the wtc attacks. Observing many things is what I yearn to do.
I'd go back and mess up everyones lives by peeing in the Protozoac soup. Yes, you know what that would mean... All life forms on this planet evolved from a can of bud working it way through my biological system. Of course some might say that's taking the Pee. Perhaps dropping a transistor in in 1947 with a little help from a genetic hybrid (coughcough) The reason is well to have the computers we have now Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! In reality the fact is that if timetravel was possible any interaction you make within a timeline that you weren't suppose to be in causes parallels. It's like the grandfather paradox. namely going back to when your Grandfather met your Grandmother and making him meet someone else, This would mean that you didn't exist, because on of your parents didn't exist. Infact you could say that perhaps a preportion of your genes would exist but not the whole of you. (Of course you would be from a seperate timeline and you would be uneffected, but you could find yourself lost in parallels as much as time.)
I went back in time. In my dream last night. I met a past version of myself, another incarnation. It was a finnish little 7-year old girl. She had very strong psychic abilities and wasn´t liked by many. She drowned in a fountain in Helsinki, and is now my spiritual helper. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Her name was/is Alvina. We can all go back , or remember( and make appropriate wanted changes in our minds) it´s the same thing. There is no paradox either, because the changes you make doesn´t aplly to this dimension. By changing it you would create a new one. But , I´m always up to having some fun, so I will engage myself in the game. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! So, "if" I could go back in time I would also want to meet Jesus, or my previous incarnations in the flesh. Touch a dinosaur, ride on a unicorn and have a long conversation with the old philosophers as Socrates and Demenokles. But then, I already did this, right now, because what is time but a linear construction , viewed as an illusion to keep us focused on the physical world we inhabit? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
