Time travel?

[Pawelk198604]

I wonder what would be if time traveler would go back in time and provide Inca and Aztec indians with AK-47, or if time traveler would help my country (Poland) in 1939

I wonder does the are any serious research on implication of time travel on history?

[EdFred]

Maybe the time travelers already went back and caused the history we know today.

[KerbMav]

You "can" fly through space close to the speed of light to slow down the time you personally perceive relative to the rest of the world and thereby kind of travel into the future. This seems to be the only viable way/direction of time travel as far as I read non-fiction material about this.

Also, the things you suggest are exactly why it is a good thing we do NOT have the capability to travel through time, especially not backwards.

There is no safe way to alter history, because you yourself are a part of history and what became of it. If you travel back and stop WW2 from happening, you would have never known of WW2 and therefore never had a reason to travel back, so you will never have travelled to prevent it, so it will happen, giving you a reason to travel back and so you do so, negating the reason for you to ... see what is going on?

Alternatively you travel back in time and the universe/space-time tries to protect itself from getting caught in a time loop and never moving any further by creating an alternative timeline - it then is up to physics again into which future you will return:

a. You travel back into your own timeline and nothing has changed.

b. You travel into the future of the alternative timeline and will have left your family, your whole home-continuum behind, living from now on in an alternative timeline.

Interesting would be how much matter you could move from one timeline into the next before one or both universes are influenced?

Edited February 10, 2015 by KerbMav

[michaelsteele3]

Well we still need some explanation for this:

[KerikBalm]

And what if the time traveller gave Tlaxcala AK-47s...

Or Carthage AK-47s

or helped Germany in 1918

or helped the celts fight off the anglo saxons in britain

or helped neandertals against cromagnons...

or diverted the asteroid that wiped out the non-avian dinos

Why, of Earth's extremely long history, would they chose those events to intervene.

And helped Poland against whom?

The Germans or the Russians?

The Ruskies invaded you guys too. After the war, they kept the part they took, and gave you guys a peice of Germany....

Maybe if Germany never invaded you guys, there'd be no cause to give poland formerly German land, but the Ruskies still would have kept the eastern part...

Who knows... Its impossible to have a scientific discussion on the matter. No observations or experiments can be done.... just endless speculation.

[micha]

The best argument I've heard/thought about as to why (backwards) time travel is probably impossible is the following: tourism.

Basically, we are currently eroding differences between cultures. Slowly, but surely. Give it another couple hundred years of easy and cheap travel for the masses, and it'll be difficult to tell where on earth you are.

Same with time travel. No matter how controlled it is at the start, eventually it'll become mass-market. And eventually there will be irresponsible or greedy people who don't care about the ethics. Given a long enough future, the past will homogenise.

So the reason it's impossible (or at the very least that the "trousers of time" argument is correct) is that we are living in our present. That is, we don't have access to time-travel. Or flying cars, or any of the other things we could reasonably expect a highly industrialised and advanced future version of ourselves to have brought back into the past on their tourist-time-trips.

[KerbMav]

Does not look to much out of place.

Edited February 10, 2015 by KerbMav

[ZedNova]

And what if the time traveller gave Tlaxcala AK-47s...

Or Carthage AK-47s

or helped Germany in 1918

or helped the celts fight off the anglo saxons in britain

or helped neandertals against cromagnons...

or diverted the asteroid that wiped out the non-avian dinos .

Or what if they gave bears and Native Americans Ak-47s?

The possibilities are endless!

[Voyager55]

Maybe the time travelers already went back and caused the history we know today.

They did a lousy job, lol.

[Rakaydos]

They did a lousy job, lol.

What if this was the first timeline they found where something like the Cuba Missile Crisis (or timeline equivilant) didnt end human advancement? (either by wipeout or by producing a fear of technoligy)

So when they found a viable future, they threw up their hands and said "screw it, good enough, we done. Save and QUIT."

[Greenfire32]

Real talk? I like to think that "real world" time travel isn't something that can be traversed, but rather observed. For example, whenever you look at the stars at night, you are seeing those stars as they were thousands (probably more) years ago. You are, in effect, time traveling.

If we do find a way to actually "time travel" I sincerely doubt it would be the romanticized idea of actually going into the past and interacting with people (and ultimately changing/maintaining history). I think it would be more like watching a movie.

Want to see Paul Revere?

Sure.

Wow, who knew that before he got on the horse he blew his nose.

Crazy right? Let's try another angle. Maybe we can see him coming down the road.

So basically, I think it would be more like the movie Paycheck where we invent some kind of lens that allows us to see (not travel) into the past (not future).

But those are just my thoughts.

[EdFred]

They did a lousy job, lol.

What they changed it from may have been worse.

[Nuke]

Or what if they gave bears and Native Americans Ak-47s?

The possibilities are endless!

i have a right to arm bears.

*insert appropriate jpeg here*

[Tex_NL]

Time travel to the past? NO! Not now, not ever. Why not? Paradoxes!

The most famous paradox is the so called grandfather paradox. You go back in time to kill your grandfather as a young man preventing your father and as a result you from ever being born. If you've never been born you could not have travelled back, your grandfather would not have been killed and you would be born as if nothing has ever intervened.

Some people try to avoid paradoxes by introducing parallel universes but that does not change the fact you can never change your own time line.

[GoSlash27]

There is a whole branch of science fiction devoted to this topic called "alternate history".

It makes for very interesting stories, and brings more understanding and appreciation for history as it actually unfolded.

Best,

-Slashy

[PB666]

And what if the time traveller gave Tlaxcala AK-47s...

And helped Poland against whom?

The Germans or the Russians?

Like we helped the Iraqi's(2003), Palestinians (1920), El Salvador (70's and 80's), Cuba (1898-1960), Native Americans (1850-Present), Cambodians (1967-1974), Lybians (2012), Egypt (2012-Pres), Yemen (2003-Pres), Afganistan (1979-1995).... These all went so well we should go back in time and do more!

The basic idea is that modern knowledge and technology can solve deep social problems.

Its easy to make things worse, its not so easy to make them better.

[Bill Phil]

Can't help myself:

http://xkcd.com/1063/

[PB666]

i have a right to arm bears.

Since they are four leggers i guess they do need a couple. Go back in time and insert arm DNA into the most recent common ancestors of the bears, that will fix it.

[WestAir]

Time travel can be described as having an effect before a cause; We do that all the time. I know dozens of people who act before they think.

[Tex_NL]

Time travel can be described as having an effect before a cause; We do that all the time. I know dozens of people who act before they think.

But causality still applies. The cause is people acting. The effect is the same people thinking.

[Brethern]

I wonder what would be if time traveler would go back in time and provide Inca and Aztec indians with AK-47, or if time traveler would help my country (Poland) in 1939

I wonder does the are any serious research on implication of time travel on history?

Most likely case is there's going to be more death as everyone tries to take the weapon from the gods to give themselves more power, however unless you're going to be supplying them with ammo and repair services nothing else is going to happen.

You'd have to teach them metallurgy and machining as well as chemistry in order for them to take care of the guns on their own.

As for Poland well helping would be a very bad idea, a large portion of the invasion of Russia happened through Poland, if Germany didn't invade Poland they might have never invaded Russia leaving more forces to handle the western front. Or even worse they go on with the invasion but since they have more territory to work through Stalin wins the eastern front before 1944 and given what we know of Stalin he wouldn't have stopped.

[Herr Doktor Strangemember]

On the topic of alternate history one of the best books I've read on the subject was Harry Turtledove's 'Guns of the South' where South Africans travel back in time to give Robert E. Lee's army AK-47s in the late Civil War. Awesome read and very in depth look at how complicated politics around the Civil War was, it was not just about slavery. It opened my eyes to alot of things that just get glossed over in history class.

If you are into that type of story another good read would be Eric Flint's 1632 'verse, the spinoff works go into great detail how you need tools to make tools to make tools to create an industry to make the tools you need to make more tools before you run out advanced tech and get smashed in the head by your neighbors who have primitive tech but alot of primitive tech.

Regards.

[-Velocity-]

Best alternate history novel I read was Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card. I thought it was perhaps the best novel OSC has ever written, maybe even better than Ender's Game.

[GoSlash27]

My favorite AH novel is "Resurrection Day"; the story of a Boston newspaper reporter in post- nuclear apocalypse America where the Cuban missile crisis had sparked an all-out war between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

Best,

-Slashy

[merendel]

Time travel can be described as having an effect before a cause; We do that all the time. I know dozens of people who act before they think.

Sadly that does not prove time travel, just proves that human stupidity is the greatest force in the known universe.

I doubt we will ever develop the ability to travle backwards in time. No mater how careful or how well regulated there would eventualy people that break the rules or just screw up and leave evidence behind that they were from the future. Its the clasic issue of security needing to succeed 100% of the time while the person breaking the security only needs to succeed once but the security needs to succeed for 100% of the attempts from all of humanity's remaining existence. eventualy the evidence would start showing up and we'd see time travlers. Lacking any evidence of time travlers to date implies that its probably impossible