Recursion Prevents Time Travel from Happening

Just a thought that popped into my head somehow.

Let's say that time travel was possible today and you won the lottery enabling you to afford a time machine. You would look back on your past and see that you didn't have the best life. In an effort to change your past you scrap together every last dime you have and travel back in time and give that money to yourself. You also leave yourself with the information ensuring you still win the lottery in the future.

When you once again win the lottery you travel back in time giving yourself all of your money, which is more this second time due to your first visit. In effect each time you travel back in time you would have more money. As a result, the instant you traveled back in time the first time, you would fill the universe with money from all your time travels.

Your first thought is that there's not that much money available. But if you are taking money from the future, you don't deplete the available funds in the past or affect anyone else but yourself. Even if you didn't bring anything with you , the result of all your time machines arriving at the same point in time would fill the universe with an infinite number of time machines. Even if it was only you who traveled back in time, say 5 min, what's to stop yourself from traveling back in time with yourself 5 min from now creating 3 persons in the universe. Once you start the cycle, recursion would 1. Destroy the universe, 2. Fill the universe.

I'm sure the alternate timeline theory would fix this problem, but let's say that there is only one time line. (which is just as good of a theory as the multi-time line theory) If there is only one time line, has the future already happened? Then we'd have to assume that time travel was not possible since a recursive time travel scenario hasn't destroyed the Universe. But then, that problem may not happen until time travel is discovered.

Well would time travel even be possible if there weren't multiple alternative timelines ?

But if you are taking money from the future, you don't deplete the available funds in the past or affect anyone else but yourself.

But would places take the "future money" or consider it counterfit?

There would have to be alternate timelines I would think

Well, if that's the case the there would be an infinite number of timelines, with an infinite number of possibilities. I don't see how you would know which one to travel to. I know that John Titor claims that they travel to similar timelines. Just how exactly do you know that it's similar? Are they arranged in a pattern with most similar nearest? The whole concept just seem preposterous.

My personal oppinion is that you can travel forwards in time (at a faster rate than normal) but not backwards. Too many problems with going back.

Theres only one form of time travel, some how traveling trillions of times the speed of light past the farthest light that has reached the end of universe and then turn around and look back, , bam, u just went 20 billion years back in time. Aside from that, you are no way going back to visit your childhood. Its a fanatsy dream that is impossible. If time travel was possible, it would mean that history has been mechaniocally preserved and the future written therefore we are not living within reality, but some form of recorded life.

Train

I don't think dbates was looking for debating on whether or not time travel is possible. dbates has given us a situation where there is only one time line and we repeat the step of going back into the past and giving our past self cash.

Once you start the cycle, recursion would 1. Destroy the universe, 2. Fill the universe.

If this was the case I would say the future has already happened and we would be destroyed already. So by default I guess the universe would fill up with dbates .
In my opinion neither would happen, you would just keep getting richer and richer maybe the universe would fill up with cash then.

Good concept but probably impossible to figure out the result. This exorcise has caused me to lean towards the multi-timeline theory .

Originally posted by dbates
Once you start the cycle, recursion would 1. Destroy the universe, 2. Fill the universe.

Interetsing. But why would that prevent time travel?

One expects the universe to, ultimately, be logical. Perhaps, simply, it is not, and time travel, amoung other things is possible, despite logical paradoxes like the grandfather paradox or this one.

I haven't heard this paradox before, I suspect that not only did you have a sudden thought, but that you had an original one.

Try not to do that so much.

I'm sure the alternate timeline theory would fix this problem

Thats just a cop out tho.

From what I understand, S Hawkings has stated that, in addition to the forward arrow of time, that there is 'orthoganal' time, time that runs 'across' regular time.

I have no idea what thats supposed to mean. But I think if i get a gieger counter and a radio transmitter i can probably make a time travel machine out of it. Either than or microsingularities, one of those two.

Thanks everyone. I just had this crazy thought (Too many Titor threads) and had this idea rolling around in my head. Talking about it seemed to be the only way to get rid of it. Sorry there's not really any scientific proof for this thought. I guess most of the subject of time travel is hypothetical. I'll try not to think so much in the future.

If this does work out to be half-way logical then let's start the experiment with Hedi Klum, or someone that we wouldn't mind having too much of.

Originally posted by dbates
Just a thought that popped into my head somehow.

Let's say that time travel was possible today and you won the lottery enabling you to afford a time machine. You would look back on your past and see that you didn't have the best life. In an effort to change your past you scrap together every last dime you have and travel back in time and give that money to yourself. You also leave yourself with the information ensuring you still win the lottery in the future.

When you once again win the lottery you travel back in time giving yourself all of your money, which is more this second time due to your first visit. In effect each time you travel back in time you would have more money. As a result, the instant you traveled back in time the first time, you would fill the universe with money from all your time travels.

Your first thought is that there's not that much money available. But if you are taking money from the future, you don't deplete the available funds in the past or affect anyone else but yourself. Even if you didn't bring anything with you , the result of all your time machines arriving at the same point in time would fill the universe with an infinite number of time machines. Even if it was only you who traveled back in time, say 5 min, what's to stop yourself from traveling back in time with yourself 5 min from now creating 3 persons in the universe. Once you start the cycle, recursion would 1. Destroy the universe, 2. Fill the universe.

I'm sure the alternate timeline theory would fix this problem, but let's say that there is only one time line. (which is just as good of a theory as the multi-time line theory) If there is only one time line, has the future already happened? Then we'd have to assume that time travel was not possible since a recursive time travel scenario hasn't destroyed the Universe. But then, that problem may not happen until time travel is discovered.

Isnt currency dated? You would not be able to bring money back. Jewels and metals, on the other hand you could..

I dont see how this would "fill up the universe" for if when you went back to your own time, you would ahve all the money you gave to your earler self, and this is where the alternative timelive theory would come into play because you would have new emotions by encountering yourself...

bizzare though .. strangely one i have thought before.

For every time you travel back in time to deliver your younger self some money, you will be changing the younger you's future. What happens if, just for argument's sake, you run over your younger you in a car, on the way to deliver some more money? You no longer exist to deliver your younger you money, ergo.....You cease to exist! Of course, just like everthing else, I might be wrong!

Just my $3.45

wouldnt that violate some sort of rule of nature...that the amount of matter in the universe is finite, even though the universe itself is not?
where would the matter to form your body come from?

Yeah when you have a time machine the biggest problem is making sure the money you spend is contemporary with where you are time traveling. For that matter if you had your own flying saucer time machine, who needs money, you are in the Gallactic Club when money is unnecessary. In fact money is the same thing in our stage of development as chains were to the Romans. When you can have everything, who needs money anyway. That is simply part of a system of thought control, ill suited to the highest technology and its proponents. Money is how you communicate with savages.

Isn't it only possible to travel forwards in time and not backwards? If you could fly into space and traveled at the speed of light(or really fast), time would pass more slowly for you than everyone else on Earth. You would be a few days, weeks, years, etc older while everyone else on Earth would be dead long ago, with only their descendants present. Therefore you could go forward in time, but how would backwards time-travel work?

My thoughts, as usual;

If it is possible to travel back in time then there's no way you could actually effect what is happening or even be perceived by anything existing in that time. It would be nothing more than a world of light.

I you believe some of those stories about physics helping detectives to solve crimes by remote viewing back in time, then you might consider such a mechanism does exist.

Originally posted by electric
My thoughts, as usual;

If it is possible to travel back in time then there's no way you could actually effect what is happening or even be perceived by anything existing in that time. It would be nothing more than a world of light.

I you believe some of those stories about physics helping detectives to solve crimes by remote viewing back in time, then you might consider such a mechanism does exist.

Could you explain your thoughts as to how no one could affect what is happening or be perceived by anything existing. Do you have inside knowledge about time, space, or physics that the rest of us are unaware of ?

I'm not trying to be facitious, it's just that we would like to have some references or links so that we could further research your ideas/hypothesis.

I have no inside information, no. I base my speculations on several things. Many of them would require too long an explanation for a post in this topic.

If the universe had a mechanism to go back in time physically, it would require that it store information about every single action/reaction that had ever occured within it. Then, if someone/something were to travel backward in time it would again have to rewrite every single action and reaction including the reversal actions taken by the time traveler.

There's absolutely nothing that has been observed by humans that would suggest the process of the universe as a whole is in any way reversible.

Now consider if there were also infinite available "world lines" and people were able to travel backwards and forwards between them.. we wouldn't have to worry about time travel because we'd already be doing it out there somewhere in infinity.

I consider this to be a more reasonable view on traveling backwards in time that might actually be attainable:

Consider you're already viewing the past right now. The Sun is about 8 light-minutes behind, so what you see is in the past. By the time you actually see any object a few microseconds may have passed between the light reflecting off the object and the light reaching your eyes. So, you're seeing the past yet you can't possibly influence it.

Viewing the past would require transmission greater than the speed of light. Of course, relativity theory does not allow anything to travel faster than the speed of light, but I believe it won't be too far off when a new type of high frequency radiation is discovered to travel faster than light/EM waves. Cosmic rays are a prime candidate for this, and it would explain why cosmic ray bursts are measured with no visible source.

Just a little note of interest:

There is an effect called Cerenkov radiation seen in Nuclear Reactors where photons (light) are emitted by the Plutonium in the reactor. These photons are created at light speed for a vacuum. But as the reactor is underwater they are travelling faster than the speed of light for the medium of which it is traveling. This is an example of something travelling faster than the speed of light (in a medium), the photons do not exist everywhere at once.

if you went back and time and did something, for what reason would you remember your action and be able to recognize the consequences of what you changed in the past?