The Risky Business of Time Travel
Stephen Hawking the celebrated theoretical physicist, et. Al., have stated a belief that time travel may very well be possible. However, some who disagree say that evidence that it is in fact not possible, lies in the fact that we have never been visited by time travelers. Nevertheless, that fact that we have never been visited by time travelers, upon considering the ramifications of time travel, nullifies that evidence.
For instance, consider that traveling back in time is risky beyond all imagining. Any visitor from the future would or could purposely or inadvertently, with or without malice, almost certainly by merely existing in our present, effect a change upon the future.
An innocuous conversation could change a person’s life. What would a person engaged in conversation with a time traveler have done with that same time if there had not been so engaged? Would they have left the room, and met the person of their dreams and had offspring with them, adding to the persons in the future while instead they never met that person? Given the conversation with a time traveler, the future was changed in that those offspring would never exist in the future.
Also, consider human nature. What would be the point or incentive for first developing time travel, and then actually traveling back in time if not to change the past? Eliminate Hitler before he could cause the slaughter of seven million Jews? What Jewish person could resist? Human nature would likely assure that some time traveler, at some point would succumb to the temptation.
The more intelligent of those future time machine builders would likely at some point, come to the conclusion that traveling backward in time would be too much of a risk to their present to be allowed under any circumstances. Considering that, it is unlikely time travel would be allowed or the instrument ever built.
Consider also, that it is unknown what would happen if the future as a present state of being, if it were to be changed. Someone goes back in time and inadvertently causes the death of your father before you were born. What happens to you? That is, do you suddenly disappear, or are there suddenly two present realities, one with you in it and one without you in it. Or, as some theoretical physicists think that it is possible, a paradox causes the destruction of all
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8 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.I like the idea of a space-time continuum where it all already exists and while it might be possible to travel ang any of the 4 axes, it would only be as an observer since it’s all immutable. But I guess if you throw multiverses into the picture, then anything’s possible.
jerry99
Level 8
Apr 6, 2019
0
The assumption that we have never met time travelers does not necessarily prove that it is impossible. Maybe it simply means that our species did not survive long enough to figure out how to time travel.
Fit50something
Level 7
Apr 6, 2019
0
Considering that Hawking stated that global warming would become self-perpetuating in a few years and would result in human extinction, your statement seems all too logical.
There is no concrete "past" or "future" for an actual person to travel to in terms of physically. In reality, there is only the present. The past only plays over in your memories and film or pictures and the future is a figment of our imaginations.
There is a quantum mechanics video explaining time and how the past, present, and future exist all at once like a flip book, but I'm not sure that's practical in terms of traveling to them.
Piece2YourPuzzle
Level 8
Apr 5, 2019
1
I find a far more interesting idea was mooted in a science fiction short story I read some 60 years ago. A professor, wishing to find out more about ancient Carthage, prevails upon a physicist friend to help him develop a machine to peer into the past, sinking his fortune into the project. Just as they start to get the first, murky images the FBI arrive, confiscate everything and make them swear to secrecy, even isolating them from society. The professor cannot understand how such an innocent hobby can be considered so important. Then his physicist friend points out that the past can be just one second ago, and they could just as easily be tuning in to the Kremlin with.a one second delay!
Petter
Level 9
Apr 5, 2019
1
This reminds me of the time I went back in time and met my mother. She fell in love with me and I started to disappear from a photo I had on me. It really was scary!
indirect76
Level 7
Apr 5, 2019
1
Heavy.
Ha, ha. Remember Niven's Law (named for Larry Niven who wrote about it).
Niven's Law. If the universe of discourse permits the possibility of time travel and of changing the past, then no time machine will be invented in that universe. ... Time travel may thus act to erase itself.
The past will be changed until a timeline is settled on in which the past never happens to be altered. The simplest way to reach that state is to find a timeline that never discovers time travel. ? Lol.
RichCC
Level 8
Apr 5, 2019
0
Hawking was more of a science fiction writer, than an actual scientist.
gater
Level 7
Apr 5, 2019
0
@TheAstroChuck I could say the same thing to you.
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