Is time travel possible?

[fury]

I think I understand where you're coming from, but I still don't think the person from 1980 would ever remember having been talked to by the time traveller, because when the war was prevented, the traveller would've had no reason to go back in time, thus they didn't go back in time... It's a little hard to comprehend unless you think of time as being non-linear, because it really isn't linear, because events in time don't happen one by one. One event can affect any amount of other events much like putting an object in a bucket of water affects the placement of many molecules of water. That was a horrible analogy.

 

[krusty]

I like fury...he's my friend

 

[Pradeep]

The problem with backwards time travel is for example imagine you are in the Tardis in Dr. Who. You set the Tardis to go back 30 mins in time. It starts to go back and immediately collides with itself from 1 sec before you left. Also say u go back 1000 years. How does the machine you step out of in 1001 A.D. come to be there?

This could be avoided by using closed time-like curves, which enable you to leave and then appear in another time, without having to stay fixed in one spot while the world around you moves backwards.

Also it depends on what you view of time is. Is it like a big field, with the past fixed and grayed out in the past over at one end, the present where you are now, and the future open to possibilities. If that is what you believe then when you go back surely you will not be able to change anything, but merely observe? Or perhaps you believe that the future is already predetemined, in which case no matter what you do the course of the future will not be affected.

The grandfather paradox can be rebutted by using the banana skin possibility. That is, at the moment that you are about to shoot your grandfather (before he creates your father) your foot slips on a banana skin and you slip over, the shot missing.

 

[fury]

I love these kinds of discussions.

The problem with the banana peel possibility is that unless your grandfather owns a superstore with a lot of bananas, a monkey zoo, or a banana tree field, you're unlikely to slip on a banana peel, so you actually will shoot your grandfather, causing a big ol' chain reaction of neverending loops of "Since you killed your grandfather, you were never born, but since you were never born, you never went back in time to kill your grandfather."

 

[Pradeep]

The point is that it doesn't have to be a banana peel, it could be a piece of wood you trip over, anything at all, but that something would stop you from doing it. Or you bring the gun up and physically can't pull the trigger.

 

[fury]

Oh yeah. The ethical stuff.

Well, those are just objects to overcome... I'm sure in time (doh) we will make the time (doh) to find out how to travel through time. I just have some feeling that it is possible, I can't explain it...

There's this eery sensation that I'm going to meet a voluptuous alien female and she's going to rape me and take me back to the future

In all seriousness, I actually do think it will eventually be possible to travel through time.

After all, it worked in Star Trek, so why not real life?