The Grandfather Clause

Any one who is in too Time Travel knows this. The "If you go back in time and kill your grandfather would you cease to exist? But if you cease to exist then you can't kill your grandfather and he lives so you can be born and go back in time..." Complicated as you can see. There are several theories out there, all as possible as the next. List style...

1. You can't change history. You would go back in time and try to kill the inventor of the gun. But since you can't change history you would miss, it would jam, or you'd be attacked before you could. Say you fire at him, miss, and he catches you and beats you up. As you're hauled away he picks up the strange object you had and... Invents the gun! Now that would suggest that you had to go back in time with the gun so you could shoot and miss, lose the gun, and have the inventor pick it up. So if you didn't go back in time... No gun to be found by the inventor. Would that mean that it was predetermined that you would go back in time and fail? That no matter what happened this was going to happen?

2. The Multiverse. Another theory says you could go back in time and kill the first mammal and then a new world will be created. Your timeline wouldn't be affected. So even if you went back in time and killed Hitler, Hitler would still have happened in your world just not another.

3. Cause and Effect Another is that if you went back in time and killed your grandfather you would poof out of existence. Now that means that what you did didn't affect you until you did it. So your grandfather's actions happened, your parent's actions happened, and your actions happened until you shot him. This one confuses me a little. I think it means that every thing happened until you change it. Which makes sense I guess. I mean, if you used a time machine to go back in time to kill Hitler... then he never did what he did and there would be no reason to go back in time to kill Hitler. So Hitler existed, his actions existed, until you went back in time and killed him. It isn't until you do this that the effect happens. Again this one makes my head hurt, badly.

So what do you think? Any other ideas out there I haven't heard? Any one else bleed from the ears thinking about the third one?

What you're suggesting is one of the many paradoxes associated with time travel (to the past).

It has been hypothesized that when/if time travel becomes possible, it will only be possible to go back to the point where the first time machine was made... any earlier and the machine itself would stop existing...

I'm more of a believer in Einstein's idea... He thought you could never go backwards in time... only forward...

With what we know about time/space and relativity, this would actually seem to be the case.

Hi GamerGal, nice post

I have a theory about time travel, but it only involves time and not space.

It goes like this..., I believe that it's easy to travel in time and many have done so, but to arrive in the same place on earth in another time you must also travel in space as the galxay, solarsystem and earth are all moving at incredible speeds. For example, if you travelled one hour into the past in time and not space, the earth would be about 65000km away and heading towards you.

It makes me chuckle thinking there are loads of time travellers in their machines frozen in orbit around the sun..... and every once in a while a shooting star could actually be the earth hitting an old time machine in it's path..



Peace

reply to post by nj2day


If that is true then when made... What would happen? Would the person who went back in time to when the machine was made already be there? What I mean is that when made would say a person 1,000 years in the future pop in to existence the second the machine is complete as they are travelling back in time to when it was made? Or would you actually have to wait a thousand years before sending some one back and... Wouldn't they just pop in to existence the second the machine is made so you wouldn't have to wait a 1,000 years... Ears and eyes bleeding now. Or imagine they could only send data, nothing organic. So say they send a message from 2119 warning us of a maniac that makes Hitler look like a boyscout. We then stop said maniac... then there is no message from the future warning us of the maniac so we don't stop him... I'm going too stop thinking now. Not because it's causing me to bleed from places I shouldn't but because my mind has collapsed in on itself.

Time is just measuring movement. In earths case the time it takes to move around the sun, and the earth to spin on its axis. You cannot step in the same river twice, the water has already passed, the river cannot run backwards. Time is the same, it cannot reverse. This would require all motion in the universe to somehow be placed into reverse for whatever amount the time travellor was hoping to revisit.... it cannot occur.
Time can pass slower for one individual than another, but that is relative time, not time travelling, neither has actually gone back thru time.
It makes for great thought provoking excersises...but the reality is we cannot change what has occured; the sun cannot reverse its course, and the earth cannot reverse its rotation.

It may be that one day we can create gravity wells strong enough to deflect nature....create some sort of sub space field that could affect the natural world around us enough to cause gravametric or magnetic fields powerful enough to create a wormhole and travel between space instead of thru it. But to travel thru time would require overcoming the motion of the Universe.

Originally posted by GamerGal
reply to post by nj2day

 

If that is true then when made... What would happen? Would the person who went back in time to when the machine was made already be there? What I mean is that when made would say a person 1,000 years in the future pop in to existence the second the machine is complete as they are travelling back in time to when it was made? Or would you actually have to wait a thousand years before sending some one back and... Wouldn't they just pop in to existence the second the machine is made so you wouldn't have to wait a 1,000 years... Ears and eyes bleeding now. Or imagine they could only send data, nothing organic. So say they send a message from 2119 warning us of a maniac that makes Hitler look like a boyscout. We then stop said maniac... then there is no message from the future warning us of the maniac so we don't stop him... I'm going too stop thinking now. Not because it's causing me to bleed from places I shouldn't but because my mind has collapsed in on itself.

There is a guy working on a time machine if you want to call it that to transmit data to the past when the machine is created.

What this means is when he realizes his time machine works he wants to send a specific signal to his time machine from the future when it is created correctly and that way he will know he just created a time machine.

In other words he sends signals through this little machine he created every so often as he works on it. If it all the sudden receives the signal he will then know it must work because his future self sent the signal. He just needs to remember to send the signal again after he receives it so he doesn't create a paradox because he just wants to know if it works.

Edit here's a link there is also a documentary about what he's doing still looking for that.

thephoenix.com...

[edit on 19-12-2008 by Darthorious]

actually as far as only being able to go back in time as far as the turning on of the first time machine, they have speculated that that may be when the hadron collider is fully functional. and at first it wouldn't be people coming through. more like bits of information. how would the people back in time (now) know what to look for? I suspect the person sending it back will send it back to himself. thus time travel at first might only be seconds or minutes back in time. but once that happens then it opens up all kinds of intersesting things. oh and cool hair!

Originally posted by Darthorious

Originally posted by GamerGal
reply to post by nj2day

 

There is a guy working on a time machine if you want to call it that to transmit data to the past when the machine is created.

What this means is when he realizes his time machine works he wants to send a specific signal to his time machine from the future when it is created correctly and that way he will know he just created a time machine.

In other words he sends signals through this little machine he created every so often as he works on it. If it all the sudden receives the signal he will then know it must work because his future self sent the signal. He just needs to remember to send the signal again after he receives it so he doesn't create a paradox because he just wants to know if it works.

Exactly!! this is precisely what I think will happen

Here's a youtube video clip of the guy apparently he has spent his whole life educating himself and studying science to be able to go back and try to save his dad from dieing. However if he does he enters paradox country.

www.youtube.com...

Edit I can't find the documentary anywhere now but it was entitled "space cowboy" appears to have been taken down.

[edit on 19-12-2008 by Darthorious]

Edit another video link

Link

[edit on 19-12-2008 by Darthorious]

reply to post by Darthorious


But if he can't go back farther then the machine was made... how would that work? or if it creates a Multiverse... there is no point. Or maybe he fails, why his father is still dead since if he invented it he would have gone back and saved him already. Which means he wouldn't need too, but then his father would die. Or the C&E theory would state his father would be dead until he invented it then when back and saved him.

Originally posted by GamerGal
reply to post by Darthorious

 

But if he can't go back farther then the machine was made... how would that work? or if it creates a Multiverse... there is no point. Or maybe he fails, why his father is still dead since if he invented it he would have gone back and saved him already. Which means he wouldn't need too, but then his father would die. Or the C&E theory would state his father would be dead until he invented it then when back and saved him.

He right now does not believe he could visit his father but states that was the driving force for learning everything he could about physics, Einstein etc.

So right now his sole purpose is to prove time travel is possible I just wish I could find the video about the data he send through. I'm posting another link on the post above for another interview he did with discovery channel.

Time could also be viewed as "pockets" of non-divisible moments that are exist in an amorphous state that are simply connected by virtue of the passage through them.

This relies heavily on the "every moment and every possibility already existed at the creation of the universe" theory.

Imagine an unbounded field of grass covered in stepping stones - time is the perceived passage as you jump between one stone and another. In general you happen to be going from one side of the field to the other but it doesn't really matter if your journey heads "forwards" or "backwards" as long as you just take a leap from one stone to another that is next to it.

This could mean that different journeys use the same stones and of course, other stones are never visited at all even though they still exist. It also means that all the stones exist at the same time but only become "realised2 as you leap onto them.

Also, you have to consider that each stone has no affect on any other stone. Sure, a stone and its immediate neighbours are kind of "grouped" and provide a fluidity to the journey, but what if you made a really big leap and missed out some others and jumped 3 or 4 at a time?

Worth thinking about!

Discovery channel did a pretty good documentary on alternate theories same one I have the clip from in the above post called "The First Time Machine"

Here's a part one to it on you tube you can just click on the other parts also if you haven't seen it before.

Part 1

I have thought about this, and I think your grandmother would of married someone else, so you would still exist. You may change your appearance and where you grew up, but you would still be here. My mother talks of a young man she knew and even told me if my father didn't ask her to marry, she would of married the old boyfriend. My father had many girlfriends back at home, and he would of married them. Who knows which one I would of come from? I think my mother because she always wanted a large family.

So the answer is yes, you can go back in time and kill an ancestor. Someone else will take the place, and many things will change, but you will still be here. (My theory.)

This guy crawled into his cabinet to repair a leaky pipe and ended up in the future, where he met his 70 year old grand-dad..
look they even have the same tattoos



[edit on 12/19/2008 by Kr0n0s]

reply to post by GamerGal


I think you can only travel forward in time, not back.

What if you travel back in time before the first timetravel-machine was build?

Maybe you can travel back but only to the point of where you very first ancestor was born?

Or maybe like what you said you kill your grandpa or father and then when you go back to your own time you end up in another dimension where he does exist?

What i also can not seem to coprehend is, if you travel back in time, it does not matter how much, in the future there will be a you that travels back, because you know, you traveled back.

This is very difficult to explain because english is not my first language, but lets say you travel back in time one day. Then one day later, you travel back in time. And then one day later, you travel back in time...And then one day later, you travel back in time... etcetera etcetera etcetera. Because from the moment where you travel back in time, in the future you will travel back too.
You guys get what im trying to explain here?

Or what if you, lets say travel back to the crucifying of Jesus christ. Then after you witnessed that you decide to go back to your own time. Then you return back in your own time just one minute before you actually traveled back in time. Then you could have never actually have traveled back to watch jesus die because you got back one minute before you time-traveled and so the travel did not happen because you returned one minute before you made the time-travel.


This is very very complex.

Nice hair btw

[edit on 20/12/08 by TheNetherlands]

so, if you go back in time and kill your grandfather you would not have been born so you could not kill your grandfather so you would be born and go back in time to kill your grandfather......so i can work more hours to make more money to buy more coke, so i can work more hours to make more money to buy more coke, so i can work more hours.....

The theory of "killing your grandfather so you never get born" relies on an absolute time line where one event is causal to another. There is a Latin phrase, post hoc ergo propter hoc, which sums this up. Translated it essentially means, "Since that event followed this one, that event must have been caused by this one."

Time is closely related to physical existence and movement, from atomic particles to your arms and legs, from the planets around the Sun to the galaxies that traverse their paths through space. Without time, it is difficult to ascertain how and when particles exist within the same dimensional space.

However, physicality is a "state" of existence and does not necessarily apply to all dimensional aspects, i.e. beyond X, Y, Z and T. Therefore, although it may be correct that travelling back in time means that you can never return to your original timeline (i.e. the one where you "didn't" affect your own family tree), there is no fact of impact for your own existence in your own spacial reality - You don't necessarily disappear like Marty McFly.

Time is no more a continuous stream than light is "just" a waveform. It appears as a series of "nodal" events that cause ripples that manifest as the physical events that we are able to witness, but, that doesn't mean that the events are fundamental or inevitable.

If you go back in time and prevent your father from impregnating your mother, sure, you won't be born in "that" timeline, but you were born in "your" timeline and the 2 are entirely abstracted and have no affect on each other. Why should they? There may be ripples that transcend the barriers between timelines but the events are specific to a particular flow.

Think of a freeway with 4 lanes of traffic. A crash happens in one lane and sure enough, can affect traffic in other lanes but the crash itself is specific to the lane it occurred on.

If you were to go forward in time from that point, it is unlikely that you would meet yourself, but, what do you expect if you never get born within that particular timeline?

The idea that synchronous parallel events affect each other is a logical fallacy, even if they coincide at some point. Yes, apparently unconnected events can combine to a common destiny, synchronicity, but it is the nodal destiny that becomes important since everything before has no designation as necessary to the final event.

BTW, don't try knocking off your ancestors just because you do happen to travel back in time some day... it just isn't very nice.

Three words:

Infinity is infinite.

Okay one more word:

Everywhere.

Okay a few more words:

Which means that every moment that ever happens down to the smallest particle reaction has infinite probability of happening differently.

The Grandfather paradox was written by someone who obviously has been staring at lines too much. Time/space/existence is not a line, but more like an infinitely budding pine cone.

The guy says in the clip that he met himself thats why they showed the tatoo to be evidence
that it was really his future self.

The clip is too short and I want to see it all, You would think he would have asked some questions
about his life, or that his old self would have told his young self a warning of something
not to do or given him a stock tip or something. This of course opens debate about what would
happen to his old self if his young self had done something differently.

Very interesting stuff But my biggest question to this guy (younger self)
How did he get back?? I mean if there is a portal to the future it would change everything.

Mabey it wasn't really a location mabey younger self was going to meet older self exactly
then no matter what.

Lots to think about here