What would you change if you could travel through time?

Movie example time travel question: when they go back in time to change something?

  • wouldn't that mean that it was unnecessary to go back in time? if so, they wouldn't go back in time of the event never happened. but if they didn't go back in time, the event DID take place, which would make them have to go back in time. which would mean they stop the event, go to the future, and the event never took place, so they never had to go back in time, so then they never fixed it.... and on and on. so how would this work out in real life? would our time stream infinitely loop between two alternate realities? is this really what would happen? Note: this has happened in many movies im not talking about one in specific. My question, is ur opinion. not really a question. but i want to know what you think would happen in this hypothetical situation. give me your thoughts.

  • Answer:

    I kinda get where you're coming from. It was kinda hard to follow. As for the first part of your question. They want to go back in time to change something that did or did not happen. Maybe they know the outcome of a horse race they could go back in time to bet on and make a bunch of cash. Maybe they wish they hadn't gotten married, so they go back and call the wedding off. It is rather confusing. But, while they are traveling through time, things could've happened. It is called a paradox. Basically, because they changed that one event, an alternate timeline took place between the time they changed the event and the time they are actually living their present life in. Say they want to go back into time 15 years back. So they go back in time to change it and then they go back to the future. Things could've happened during their travels back in forth through time because they changed that event. It's not the same as before because they changed that one event, which may mean that that changed everything in the next 15 years. As for the second question. Things would be awfully crazy. Life... wouldn't be life. Our time would indeed indefinitely loop between two alternate realities.

Gaurav M. at Yahoo! Answers Visit the source

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Other answers

it's called a paradox, it happens when things like time travel come into play. Basically when they go back and change the thing the entirity of history is changed and we enter an alternate time line in which things continue with the change as if it was normal

Thomas

you are a very Intelligent person and i think you are right

joe

the easiest thing is called the grandfather paradox and it proves that it is impossible with anything on a macro scale. if you went back in time and killed your grandfather, then your father wouldn't exist, and you wouldn't be born, but, if you weren't borne, you couldn't go back in time to kill him.

destructicus

Dude, why not change your clothes from a red shirt to a blue shirt and go back in time, like 10 minutes and meet yourself the way you were before you changed and fight yourself. If the blue "you" killed the red "you", you'd be cool cuz the blue "you" continues on. But if the red "you" killed the blue "you", then you'd be in trouble cuz the red "you" is going to disappear in a couple of minutes and travel back in time.

runningman022003

Welcome to the world of time-travel paradoxes. Larry Niven proposed that even if it were possible to invent a time machine, it would never happen, because if someone did, eventually somebody would go back and change the past such that the machine never got invented.

redbeardthegiant

you lost me at "wouldn't that mean" but ive thought about how this would all work, and i think i might know what you mean

fnd_info

Fist off, movie time travel is usually crap. The script writers never take the time to make it consistent with any acceptable theory of metaphysics (at least not in my experience). As a presentist, I believe that the only time is the present, period. Accordingly, there is no past and no future, only now. But this view is not at all inconsistent with what you're talking about. The "going back in time" would have to actually send the traveler into something like a parallel universe which wouldn't actually affect the present from which he/she came (except for the fact that the traveler would be gone). If this be the case then "going back in time" would be pointless if you wanted to change the world for other people. It would be useful, however, if you wanted to change the world for yourself and your changes would affect everyone in that universe. Another possible solution to the many time travel problems could involve abstract times and concrete particular time, but I'm not even going there.

Time travel movies are largely based on story telling and not on anything scientific. Since no one has ever traveled in time, there's no way of knowing for sure. But the scientific community does have two different theories of what would happen: 1. When you went back and tried to change the past, something would continually happen that would prevent you from changing it. (This is what happened in the 2002 remake of "Time Machine," where he went back to save his fiance but she kept getting killed no matter what he did.) 2. You would succeed in changing the past. You would then be in a parallel universe in which everything happened exactly the same as it had in your own universe, except for the thing you changed. So you could then go back to your own time, which would actually be a different universe than the one you were in originally. In your own universe, the changes you made never happened. You just disappeared one day and everyone wondered where you were. (This is what happened in "Back to the Future" when he went back to 1985 and found his dad all successful and Biff was afraid of him now.)

Arlo

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