posted on May, 8 2005 @ 06:08 AM
I get back to that Hitler example to illustrate what I think of time, and why it may be possible to travel in time, forward but likely not
backward...
Case 1
Let's say that I was born before Hitler came to power.
At some point in my then-future, somebody decides to come back in time and do whatever it takes to, to prevent Hitler from being elected. At that
point in time are created two different branches of the time tree: one where time goes on as I presently know it, and another one where things
happened differently. On each of those two different branches on time, there is one copy of me (and everything else also...), each copy living in a
different time branch, and each one totally unaware of the other.
If then that happened, my present self, the one SpookyVince writing this text now, doesn't know of the other one. I stay in my own reality. The other
SpookyVince is unaware of my own presence here and now, may be dead already, may be totally different, in another place or whatever one can think
of.
Case 2
Let's say that I am born after Hitler. This is actually the case.
Then, after reading the case 1, it is simply possible that it was done in the same way, and then in that other time branch I simply don't exist
because the events have happened in a different manner!
Case 3
I personnally go there and then, and kill Hitler somehow before he comes into power, would I be born before or after is of no importance.
Then, at the instant in this time branch that I go back in time, I create two branches: one in which I don't do it for any reason, and I continue to
live in this present way, knowing of the holocaust and WWII and so on.
The second branch that I create is the one that is interesting: I basically start a new branch of time in which I can return after having killed that
person, and live with a memory of past history that has instantly changed...
Paradox! Now, and this is the same as case 2: what if I modify my own past? Maybe I simply don't exist anymore... I would even say I very likely
don't exist anymore... This is the worldly known paradox about time traveling in the past: if I perform some action that can induce my non existence
in its future, then I may not come back in time, thus I didn't do it! Wow...
So that is, traveling back in time, if possible, is unknown to the one doing it!
Traveling in the future, I think is no problem, because according to my view of time as a tree, you can only travel into some descendant branch that
has not happened yet, and if you then come back, you didn't modify the past, thus you didn't modify yourself.
Hope it is not too long and too boring!