I have an idear!

I think I have a way to prove or disprove time travel occurring within the next few hundred years, right now. Now, admittedly I was not sober when I came up with this, but that's beside the point I've never heard of anyone putting this forward as an idea, so at the very least, even if it's not realistic, it's an interesting concept to consider.

Ok, I put to you all an experiment in which we can all participate in.

Everyone who reads this thread (hopefully at least a few 100 people), stop and seriously give this proposition some thought, it will only work if you completely 100% intend to make it so.

I want you to all first convince yourself of one thing. That if a method of time travel is discovered within your lifetime, that you will, without any doubt what so ever, find a way to involve yourself with that technology so that you may come back in time and make contact with yourself in 2008. Now here's the second part.

Seeing as it's doubtful that a time travel device capable of sending back a human in time will be invented within our life times, you must also "promise yourself" that you will pass this proposition on to your children and have them also pass it on to their children, and so on and so on.

Tell them if it's their generation that it becomes possible, to then go back in time to meet their then long dead ancestor in 2008. I think it's safe to assume at first time travel would be highly restricted but as time past I'm sure more people would go. Even if it takes 10 generations, eventually someone should find it accessible.

In theory, if enough of us do this, one of our distant ancestors should pop up at one point or another to let us know we were correct and time travel is possible. If no one shows up, then either none of you kept your promise, or time travel is not possible.

I, AnoNyMiKE, swear to do whatever I can, to procure passage into the past to 2008, in order to inform myself that time travel is indeed possible. If time travel is not possible within my life time, I swear to pass this on to my children and ask of them to do the same with their children until it becomes possible.

Thoughts?

Excellent Idea bro. However for it to work you will have to assume that time travel would be somehow a common thing available to the general public, this is something i can never see happening due to the history altering effects that it would possibly create. Nice idea though!

Hey! Guess who came to visit me yesterday and told me to look out for this thread today.

Amazing.

Well yes, the idea is fantastic, but I hope you have seen the movie 'Back To The Future', you will realise the confusion it will cause in entire timeline, for example if you go the past and for example visited yourself in your current career, you might feel that if you had taken this career your life would have been better and you would request your past self to change the career and not only will that change your life and you will change to somewhere in the future.

Confused

Yes, I am also a bit dazed by the possibilities, thats what physics and mathematics brings us.

you make some very valid points but as of right now mallet is as good as it gets im afraid.... but like you said "who's to say" in the case of time and time travel all we can do is speculate and there is always what i like to call the "what if" factor.... makes for some great theories and reading

on a side note i find that time is best described as a collection of ordered instances the present is fleeting the future is speculative and the past is lost to us atleast for now

[edit on 8-9-2008 by constantwonder]

Time and space as one knows it are simply truncated perceptions of ones universal mind.
Yes pure and simple perceptions. Hence why when one does a percieved activity of having fun and enjoyment that time seems to go faster than when one is at work typing up some perceived meaningless figures in to a database.
Change your minds perception of what time is in linear fashion and you will ultimately change the time now for you.
To properly understand how to build a Time machine one has to understand what is the reality of time itself as time is not some boxed up sequential events of every second, minute, hours, days and years etc.
Time is what you percieve it to be in your own universe of understanding.
Hence why interacting with an indigenous culture is so different in their view of what time is. Which can be such a variance to what the perceived societal reality of what time is.

What if making contact with your past self causes some kind of terrible thing to happen? Or... what if it causes the whole event to have never happened? You see your past self and then it's as if the time traveling wasn't a success at all. Just a random though I came up with now. I don't know how likely it is to be real. We really don't know for sure how time works though. Some people say it may just be a human-created concept.

[edit on 8-9-2008 by GrayFox]

This must be one of the best reasoning on time travel that I have ever encountered online. It almost makes me to claim that it is indeed a valid point and that it must neccessarily prove beyond doubt that it does exist.

To prove that I have encountered myself is something that I cannot prove, though. I also couldn't prove that I have ordered my children to place a certain object in a certain place on September 09, 2008. I would only have to go and get it.

The thing is.. It is not gonna happen. Reason for this is that I need a woman to actually prove this. I also need a child. I have a girlfriend allright but it isn't as simple as that.

Because we need women to do this, your theory will fail. Just an observation.

I'm also joking, but your idea seems valid to me.

It does not however take into account that there is a possibility that time travel does exist but that it will be banned and people who know about it get burned because it would destroy their own world.

But, you asked to play along, and I will. Therefore, I think it is valid. Somebody want's a debate? :-)

I do not think this experiment could work. Because from my own understanding the simple fact that being in a superposition state one can only change the future and past in the "now." Hence one would only have a percentage of accuracy of approximately 10% in going back to the exact past of what one would experience as a present moment in time and space.

Because there would be manifold variances in each sequence of time there after from the initial state of superposition. At which point a determined brane from the multipicities of all and varied Brane universes would be transposed accordingly to each branch off the nexus point of determination in intent of purpose in that accorded moment in time and space forthwith.

To further understand each thought/idea which then is put into an action(a butterfly affect if you may) then effects both your multiplicity of possible muliverses of futures and pasts.

I just don't see time travel as a possibility because i don't think that time remains. once it passes it is over never to be seen again kinda like blowing a candle out where is the flame gone and you can never have that same flame again if you relight it, it would be a new flame. And as far as going into the future this is an even bigger improbability because that time does not even exist yet so therefore one could not go to it and even if you could go into the future it would be just a minute in time that may or may not even happen because to go forward would be on the assumption that you as the time traveler exist in this future time but what if you don't then how could you exist at all in that time line one would cease to exist and not be able to come back to the original time you left in the first place. Just my opinion of course.

That's hard to debate away. You are basically saying that since time is not energy, and there is no energy in time, there is therefore nothing at all that we can put into an equation in an attempt to change it?

That would put an end to a dream of time travel.

Oh well.. # happens.

Hrm.

No one's shown up yet, I don't think you guys are trying hard enough

I've convinced myself that if I heard a knock at the door and I opened it to find myself looking back at me, I wouldn't totally lose my mind

Just because in the future, I figure that would be on my mind. If meeting myself would cause me to freak the hell out, so now, knowing that I won't, maybe I'm more likely to visit myself...

I also wrote down a note to myself in a book I write in, a reminder to pass this on to my kids when I have them sometime in the future... as long as I don't lose it at some point, or forget, I will tell them to remember as well.

[edit on 13-9-2008 by ANoNyMiKE]

Originally posted by ANoNyMiKE
No one's shown up yet, I don't think you guys are trying hard enough

I've convinced myself that if I heard a knock at the door and I opened it to find myself looking back at me, I wouldn't totally lose my mind

Just because in the future, I figure that would be on my mind. If meeting myself would cause me to freak the hell out, so now, knowing that I won't, maybe I'm more likely to visit myself...

I also wrote down a note to myself in a book I write in, a reminder to pass this on to my kids when I have them sometime in the future... as long as I don't lose it at some point, or forget, I will tell them to remember as well.

[edit on 13-9-2008 by ANoNyMiKE]

I would have to ask here? Does one not have these scenarios in a dream squence etc?

I heard once that sombody, possibly Einstein, had said that all moments of existence are actually occuring simultaneously everywhere, and we are simply experiencing them in the linear way we do.

Using this, and my personal beleif that your own personal history cannot be changed, for you have already experienced the world it was part of, I see time as an ocean. We chart our course from one edge to the other, simply because as linear beings, thats what we do. All the other possible courses through the ocean represnt the parallel lives we could have lived (and another you is infact living). If you were to travel in the time ocean in a nonlinear capacity, you would find yourself in a past (or an alternate present) that is not your time line and you can interact with it and change it as you wish, because you are simply becoming part of their history, not changing the one you are from. On the idea of travelling to the future, in this analogy it could indeed be your own future of the timeline you are from, and when you returned to your normal life (assuming you could, or would) you could then participate in that same series of events in the normal linear fashion, meeting your past self in what is, linerally speaking, your own future.

I should really draw up some diagrams to illusrtae this idea at some point for future use...