What happens to my "other" self if i go back in time?

This is a question that I have always wondered about.
What happens to my "other" self if I was to travel back in time to change an occurence to better my present life?
Example Given: Lets say that I was Privy to a device that would let me go back up to three years in time to change an accident that severely disabled me in the present. Would my previous self occupy the same relative dimension that my future self came back to? And would my future self be gone entirely, or would he still be there, but I would not be cognizant of him? And if my future self and my past self occupied the same "time" would anything I did to my past self alter the future if he were to die but my future self who is occupying the same time did not?

reply to post by Stumpy1


Well first up let me say that the old 'grandfather paradox' seems to dismiss the chances of you ever doing it in the first place.

Outside of that I suppose there are theories on multiple timelines, or even the possibility that if you travelled back you'd replace yourself (so you'd be older when compared with your original age in that time before) or there'd be two of you... and you'd have to live out your life as you want all over again. Doesn't sound too fun to me though.

I'm no expert however. I generally think travel back is impossible and forward, while possible isn't practical or even possible at this time.

[edit on 30/3/08 by Duality]

I believe traveling back in time is impossible as well, at least for now I just always wondered what others thought would happen to their former self if it ever did happen. I know in some of my dreams when I traveled back there were two of me and if I was to get anything done i would have had to kill the other, but I was never sure what impact that would have on my future self. If I killed the other self would my future self cease to exists and thusly would my time traveled self simply cease to exist as well leaving me dead forever?

reply to post by Stumpy1


Stumpy, there was a comment on another ATS thread, sorry I can't remember which, I see so many, and late at night, my head goes foggy...

I've been fascinated by time travel for a long time, avid Science Fiction reader that I am...anyway, the theory proposed was: Time Travel 'backwards' wouldn't be possible beyond the 'time' that the machine was invented. So, seemed unworkable, when seen by Earthly terms. BUT, what if, was postulated, another species built a Time Machine centuries ago, by our calendar? AND, we had access to that machine?

That was the premise, not sure how realistic, but interesting nonetheless!

Second answer, re: The other self...that brings us into the possiblility of alternate, parallel, yet slightly different universes co-existing side-by-side. Again, slightly beyond our capacity to detect, but we can imagine!

Originally posted by Stumpy1
This is a question that I have always wondered about.
What happens to my "other" self if I was to travel back in time to change an occurence to better my present life?

How this would be answered might depend upon the nature of reality. If you were existing in a holographic matrix, even some omnipotent deity's matrix, you really wouldn't be traveling anywhere because there really is no anywhere. Rather, the holodeck program you were virtually experiencing would simply be swapped out for another. Time traveling here may be no different than time traveling in a dream.

reply to post by Divinorumus


Is that really the case though? You could say that our world is potentially 'fake', but to us it is totally real and we obey what we see to be the laws of physics here and when we try to travel through time, we really do travel through time, from our perspective anyway.

As long as it's the only universe we know and we have no idea of what is outside our 'box' then it's almost irrelevant. @_@ I hope that made sense.

I loved the "holodeck" on star trek the next generation....But i am talking about a real life situation.

From what I was told, by someone who was relating experiences from during the Montague Experiments, meeting yourself appears to be fatal. During the experiments they always tried to avoid this, not knowing what would happen, but at one point it did indeed occur right there in front of witnesses at the site. The "two" saw themself, gasped, and desintegrated as though through spontaneous combustion, leaving only a pile of ash.

EDIT for spelling.

[edit on 3/30/0808 by jackinthebox]

reply to post by jackinthebox


jack, did you mean to spell it 'Montague'? I did a Google search, and only found info about dream telepathy...not time travel.

Any suggestions?

[edit on 30-3-2008 by weedwhacker]

That sounds like a situation I would want to avoid.. How could my "present" self avoid an accident my "other" self was going to get into w/o killing him or sabotoging his car? Or would this be necessary consdidering the fact that my future self would have a machine capable of taking him back to the future (although what would be different would be unknown to him) after the occurence was taken care of?

Do you accept educated guess'?

I would think if you went back into time and changed the past so your past self wasn't in the accident, then you, the one who traveled back in time, would either cease to exist or you'd return to exactly where you came from and your new altered ego would continue on a totally seperate path... So "you", the one who traveled back in time would not see any of the benefits or you could possibly disappear and cease to exist altogether while your new you takes your place... Whether you would be conscience of this or not, who knows... There is only 1 of you so chances are it wouldn't be "you" when you got back.. make sense?

I'd put my money on my first guess... I'd say you'd return to your dimension or frequency of time while your altered ego would move on in a seperate dimension or on a new frequency and you and your new you wouldn't know the other existed...

This subject could get real deep! cudo's

reply to post by weedwhacker


I find it curious that I don't find anything relevent in Google search either. My own material is not online to link to. If I come across anything though, I will be sure to post it.

that is kind of what I THOUGHT well, but there is always a what if..If I was to meet my other self and kill him then I would be the only one to change things and that would be controlling my future..but if I was to sabotage the vehicle he was going to drive to put me in the place I was and did not kill him then I am not sure what to believe seeing how I would be disabled at the time of the occurrence that left me so......WOuld I ceas being handicapped? or would the handicap leave the second he evaded the situation that originally created the situation?

For fun I would say YOU would disappear from that future you just left. Noone that would continue on would have a clue as to who you are until you caught back up with yourself.....

Basically TIME TRAVEL IS IMPOSSIBLE!!! Maybe it is by TIME...like measuring it in seconds or minutes, but the physical idea of going back in time isn't ever going to happen....would be great though, I got a few things I would change...

My 3 guesses are:

1) if you went back in time, you would simply be rewinding your reality and replaying the same time-line all over again. In other words, if you were 40 years old and went back in time 30 years within your same time-line, you would simply be 10 years old again and relive the next 30 years exactly the same as before, thus condemning us all to a 30 year long repeating causality loop forever and ever. (hey, that might explain déjà vu)

2) if you went back in time, you would be in a different reality/time-line than the one you just left, because you weren't there back in time the first time through. In other words, if you were 40 years old and went back in time to meet yourself when you were 10 years old, you should have met your 40 year old self when you were 10 years old and 30 years before you had decided to ever take that trip when you reached 40 years of age.

3) reality is virtual and anything logically possible is programmable.

Originally posted by rcwj75
For fun I would say YOU would disappear from that future you just left. Noone that would continue on would have a clue as to who you are until you caught back up with yourself.....

Basically TIME TRAVEL IS IMPOSSIBLE!!! Maybe it is by TIME...like measuring it in seconds or minutes, but the physical idea of going back in time isn't ever going to happen....would be great though, I got a few things I would change...

I know that time travel is impossible ..but since I have got you here...From a law enforcement point of view lets say that you came upon a body and the killer was present but they had the exact same prints hair and ect... what would be done then? would you throw someone in jail for killing themselves even though they really did not?

If I've learned anything, it is that anything is possible.

Time travel is possible and it is very complex.

The one thing I don't undertstand about time travel is that everything is swapped out, reality is changed. It boggles my mind actually. How does reality change if it already happened?

HOW DOES SOMETHING CHANGE IF IT ALREADY HAPPENED?

WOULDN'T IT HAVE NEVER HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE?

WHERE IS THE POINT WHERE WHAT HAPPENS.......HAPPENS BUT IS ADJUSTED AND CHANGED?

WHY CAN'T IT BE CHANGED BEFORE IT HAPPENS?

reply to post by Stumpy1


Well I have run into people with the same prints, and those are Identicle twins...now if they have all the other matching traits such as DNA (hair, blood, etc) NOW we have something that would completly throw us into a whirlwind.

Im trying to even think of how we could handle that. I am even looking at my crimes code book under murder and its basically one person vs another person. Then you have suicide if you kill yourself. So what is it if you kill yourself/other self...lol. It's actually the act of murder since your both occupying different spaces...but since its YOU that your killing then what...and my books got nothing........ Ummm...I'm thinking I'd bring him in a question him till I was blue in the fase to find out how in the hell he got back here!!!! All while drinking a cold one...lol..on the job or not at that point wouldn't matter.....

It is definitly a neat idea to ponder....

Originally posted by Societalgnorance
If I've learned anything, it is that anything is possible.

Time travel is possible and it is very complex.

Like I said I think it MAY be possible in the context of time. Meaning time as we know it...measured in seconds, minutes, hours etc....

There is no way to travel back and have reality there. Meaning the buildings, people, etc...its IMPOSSIBLE! That would basically be saying time never ends, it rather repeats itself somewhere other then here on earth. Like the civil war is actually still going on somewhere....or columbus is sailing the ocean blue as we type about this....

As cool as it would be....I'd be headed back to either the sacrifice of Christ or the Medieval era....see what it was really like to be a Knight...lol

[edit on 3/30/2008 by rcwj75]

Physics tells us that if you did go back in time the universe would explode.