Time Travel Poll

[thom1102]

If you could travel through time, but only once, in one direction, where would you go?

[Pale Blue Dot]

1. I'd go back about 40 years

And position myself in such a way as to solve the JFK assasination once and for all.

[david_vincent]

7. Hey Finnfan

you should check out the December issue of Fortean Times. The cover story is a very convincing piece arguing - in fact, practically demonstrating - that LBJ and his bunch of homegrown Texas mafiosi was behind it. The night before the assassination, there was a party at Clint Murchison's house. The guest of honor was J. Edgar Hoover. LBJ and all of his friends were there; curiously, so was Nixon. THAT NIGHT, LBJ said to his mistress, "After tomorrow those damn Kennedys will never embarrass me again!"
Seriously. Check it out. Oh, and BTW, thanks for correcting me on the Syndicate of Sound song!

[7th_Sephiroth]

46. back to the 80's with 80's currency

so i can make a killing with microsoft stock, enjoy the old cartoons, and politically sabotage bush

[Nlighten1]

12. Be on the grassy knoll.

with a 2x4 and some hand-cuffs.

[NoMoreRedInk]

31. That would be cool****

nm

[Beaker]

36. Say "hi" to george h.w. bush(poppa smirk) when you're there.

then whack him with the 2x4, knock the gun out of his hands, and slap the cuffs on the punk.

[Catch22Dem]

2. I'm thinkin' H.G. Wells

I'd go several hundred thousand years into the future.

[TrogL]

3. Sometime around 1720 in Germany

Bach would have been at his prime.

[Minstrel Boy]

4. Ahead a hundred or two hundred years,

so I could take a good, hard look and say "I KNEW it!"

[NoMoreRedInk]

32. Or I'd go back 30 years and be an investor/gambler and pay taxes....

like a republican and vote like a democrat. what fun?

[thom1102]

5. You know,

quantum mechanics is an interesting field because of the paradox phenomenon (you know, If I go back in time, and shoot my own dad before I am conceived, then how could I have gone back in time to kill him if I was never born?). There are some interesting theories.

One is there are alternate timelines parallel to our own and the everytime we make a decision a new timeline appears following the other path we didn't choose (I would kill my dad, but only my dad in this timeline, back in my timeline, he would still go on ot conceive me and I would be born. etc).

Another is that there is only one timeline, but the universe conspires to maintain the timeline intact (if I went back in time to kill my dad, when I got there events would conspire to prevent me from killing him (I wouldn't find him, the gun wouldn't work, I'd get hit by a bus, etc). Sort of an HG Wells Time Machine (the movie version with Guy Pearce, where he can't prevent Emma's death))

Then there is the third which says a time machine would only be able to go back to the point at which it was created. Essentially you could go forward in time, and then back to your own time, but not back in time.

Creating this poll got me thinking about this stuff. The curse of a Physics Education major! What do you all think?

[TreasonousBastard]

6. Then you have heard the question...

if time travel is possible, where are all the tourists from the future?

[arwalden]

8. Perhaps Time Travel To This Period Is FORBIDDEN...

I have always enjoyed the Outer Limits (new ones) series of episodes with the time traveler who visited Nazi Germany. Especially the one where he rescued that little girl and brought her back to the present.

-- Allen

[thom1102]

19. or like in Star Trek Voyager, where they have

the time police from the 29th century who try to keep the timeline pure.

[Seneca]

10. that's part of the paradox

The future hasn't happened yet. The future tourists don't exist. When they do, and if time travel to the past could occur, then our present will be altered. Maybe. But only when the future gets here. Don't mind me, I like making my head spin without drinking.

I am actually from the future (next Tuesday) but my watch is real slow so I keep getting stuck back about 3 days or so. :-)

[kathee]

13. But

if they told you they were from the future, would you believe them?

Also, maybe they are what ya call ghosts, apparitions, or even aliens in ships that cant mess with our present world because of a chance for a paradox to happen.

Or, who knows?

[Maple]

42. How do you know

they aren't here... wandering around and gawking?

[foo_bar]

15. relativity is relative

One is there are alternate timelines parallel to our own and the everytime we make a decision a new timeline appears following the other path we didn't choose

Did Schrodinger's cat live and die in parallel realities? It's a nifty thought experiment, but your road-not-taken example presupposes free will. A parallel timeline for every neuron fire that didn't take place is as needlessly complex as geocentrism. Otherwise there's a universe for each time I edited a spelling mistake, or failed to, times the number of universes I chose to drink coffee first, ...

Another is that there is only one timeline, but the universe conspires to maintain the timeline intact

That's a play on Greek fatalism, summoning a deus ex machina to resolve narrative paradoxes. Marty McFly can't sleep with his mother for lots of other reasons, so the universe of storytellers conspire to drop Aphrodite (or the law of unintended consequences) before anything gross happens. It's meant to simply avoid the deeper questions about divergent timelines.

Then there is the third which says a time machine would only be able to go back to the point at which it was created. Essentially you could go forward in time, and then back to your own time, but not back in time.

Like a VCR? Would the time machine have to live in the same place at both ends?

[thom1102]

17. I wasn't advocating these, and am not advanced enough to

argue the points, just merely pointing out the theories that I remember, that I found most interesting. I agree, that the multiple universes theory fails the Okcham Razor test, and the second theory, about the universe righting itself, brings up the whole question of religion into science (if so, then who is guiding the universe?), but it is interesting to ponder the theories. Do you have a personal favorite?

[foo_bar]

24. tortoises all the way down

I see religion and drama as the same impulse, distilling sense in an unknowable universe (hell is always comedy). The Hebrew God was the greatest theatrical device of its time, H/he retroactively vaporized all plot inconsistencies in their oral tradition. Kind of the Scooby Doo ending where the false god is unmasked and there's a perfectly monotheistic explanation for it.

My personal favorite is dreaming.

[Beaker]

16. Wouldn't it have to be time & space travel?

Since the Earth, the solar system, the milky way, and the universe itself are all in constant motion, in order to travel back in time, you'd have to get yourself physically to the exact point in the cosmos that the actual planet was at the same time-
and since there is no fixed point to navigate by, wouldn't it be pretty much impossible to determine where the earth was?

[thom1102]

18. good point... unless, again, referring to the Guy Pearce

HG Wells movie, the machine moves along with the original frame of reference.

[Beaker]

28. But if that's the case, How does one go backwards?

The earth and time don't move that way.

By travelling at near light speed, "time travel" to the future may be possible(although, again- how do you keep from running into things, and how do you know where the the place you are going will be when you get there, and where earth will be when/if you return?

I'll go take another bong hit, and wait for an answer.

[thom1102]

48. Well, it is hypothesized that travel in excess of the

speed of light will cause time to reverse and go backward.

[brokensymmetry]

38. I question the fundamental possibility of time travel.

I voted for the distant future, BTW.

But with time travel, what does one do about the conservation of mass/energy problem? If I go to some other time, I violate conservation of mass in the here and now, then go on to violate it elsewhen.

So the only possibility would be to exchange equivalent mass between the two points in space-time...assuming, of course, that conservation of mass is required.

The mechanics of such an exchange seem pretty daunting....

[MUAD_DIB]

40. I have read about the first theory, but I have

not heard about the other two.

Does this time machine need a Heisenberg compensator?

[fortyfeetunder]

9. going backward wouldn' t help me

my ancestors were slaves. Definitely going forward, probably on some spaceship, chilling out on a holodeck in my leisure time.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

11. I'll take the here and now.

If it's a one way trip.

[thom1102]

14. Exactly, a one way trip...

That means, if you go into the future, then you wouldn't know what you are getting yourself into. The future may be pretty bleak: toxic waste dumps everywhere, no ozone layer, no potable water. But if you go into the past you know what's there, and even have a chance to cash in on your foreknowledge. Hell, imagine how set for life you would be if your laymans knowledge of how an airplane works would enable you to build one 100 years before the Wright Brothers? Or if you laid a claim to much of the shorefront property in NJ or CA?

[AntiCoup2K4]

20. Though normally violence isn't my first choice...

...How much evil could be avoided if someone could go back to about 1925 and push Prescott Bush in front of a speeding bus??

[Beaker]

29. That wold be cool!...heh-heh...

[7th_Sephiroth]

47. good luck with that one

he had a friggin limo, you'd have hat to take a tommy gun to him

[Swede]

21. Ray Kurzweil says we are at an event horizon,

when artificial intelligence is created. After that all bets are off,so I would like to see earth in 100 years.

[thom1102]

22. You know, it's funny..

I was just listening to "The Next Big Thing" on NPR, and they interviewed Arthur C Clarke (or had a recording of him talking about this) about the same thing. He postulates that mankind is a bridge, God's way of creating Artificial Intelligence. I have heard other people say (jokingly... I think it was George Carlin) that the only reason man is here was because the earth wanted plastic, and now that it has it, it has no need for us.

[flamingyouth]

23. I'd like to visit 1927

I don't really know why exactly, I'm just fascinated with the '20s.

Actually, I'd also love to go back a couple of years earlier and see some Valentino films when they were first released.

[arwalden]

25. Did You Ever See Bruce Willis In "Twelve Monkeys"?

That was some weird time-traveling.

[FDRrocks]

43. Good movie!

Well written, well acted. The end was a blow to your typical endings. Though for end of the world (well... life as we know it) movies 'The Stand' rises above, cept for the shoddy ending.

Though I don't like that Bruce had to go over to Iraq and torture the troops with his band.

[populistmom]

26. Probably within the past hundred years

I'm wimp and honestly knowing too much about the future would scare me because my hopes for this planet are greater than my realistic expectations that we won't blow each other to smithereens. I just wouldn't want to know something like that. At least within the past hundered years I could have some relatively culturally familiar adventure perhaps. I think I'd be pretty cautious beyond simple experiences because of timeline issues (i.e. just have fun in Paris in the 20's with Hemmingway or go to Woodstock in 1969, not trying to kill Hitler or Pol Pot or something).

[Dr Fate]

27. Babylon would be a trip...

But I dont speak the language! (get it?)

[NoMoreRedInk]

30. I'd be a sooner in the OK land rush*****

nm

[Beaker]

35. can I take a motorcycle with me?

nt

[Piperay]

33. I 'd go back to the 1940s...

that time period seems much more civil and polite.

[TennesseeWalker]

34. WWII was probably the most polite part of the 1940s.

[Rooktoven]

37. Instant negation.

I like the idea that going back somehow destroys your own conception. You meet someone who meets someone who (through several iterations) prevents some ancestor from conceiving with another ancestor at the time they normally would have, thus changing the identity of any ancestor, thus negating your existence.

And if you negate the time machine _builder's_ existence, the time machine ceases to exist, and so do you.

"Hey everyone! you wouldn't believe what 18th century Paris is like--"

<POOF!>

(You never existed to go back...)

Instant negation is time's method of self-preservation.

[Guaranteed]

49. So there's the answer

for those who would ask where all the time-tourists are!
Maybe someone really HAS created a time machine.....

[Cat Atomic]

39. I'd go back 10 months and say goodbye to my dad.

Or better yet, I'd go back 5 years and MAKE him get his heart checked. :/

[FDRrocks]

41. The distant past... but not so distant...

Either around the era of the civil war... or around 1900. The former for an utterly interesting era (although in a bad way), and the latter for the progressive era. I would be striking like a mofo and find the then accesible FDR and be like, "Yo dude, you are going to do great things. Words of advice: Don't try to shuffle the Supreme Court (you can influence the judges), embargo Germany and take aggressive action to stop the arms buildup post haste (despite isolationist tendancies, you can go the roundabout way, its for the greater good), Winston and Joe are gonna make an imperial backhanded deal, and don't trust any word out of Joe's mouth at Tehran or Yalta! Right on Frank!"

... or something like that.

edit: Maybe the mid-20th so that I, in my small capacity, could try to change the whole Malcom-Martin Luther-Kennedys deal.

I used to love Quantum Leap btw... too bad he couldn't change crap :( Not like changing anything back then could fuck things up worse than they are now.

[Philosophy]

44. One hour into the past

I just turned my clocks back :think:

[MrScorpio]

45. I want to go back to the late Sixties

I missed out on all of that free sex.

I want mine, dammit!!

[brainshrub]

50. But today you get free porn!

same feeling, less hassle.

[Speck Tater]

51. Back 10 years, clean up on Wall Street and become a Republican.

Just kidding about the Republican part ;)