Is time travel possible?

<b>Spoiler</b>

I liked one tidbit in Timeline (book, not the movie) where the people in our reality our vaporized and only appear in another time in another universe because people in our time in yet another universe have acquired the technology to transport people.

 

I'm pretty sure the time storm will start back up and take us back to 1980 before our F14s can arrive and save Pearl Harbor.

 

If we use the Omega 13 device we can time travel 13 seconds into the past.

 

"Astronauts returning from the moon moved backward in time?"
Must have missed that when I read the history of NASA space travel.
I also hear there are zombies. If a zombie is really a walking dead person, can he travel back in time to un-zombie himself?

 

If you do go back in time, do not kill Hitler. The guy who replaces him is not bat-shit crazy and will decide to bide his time until German atomic bombs are ready to drop on New York City.

 

Marvin Barnes votes yes.

http://www.celticslife.com/2011/07/what-hell-happened-tomarvin-barnes.html

 

Time cannot move backwards. Time dilation explains why time passed at a slower rate for astronauts compared to those on the Earth's surface.

 

I think if/when it becomes a commercial enterprise, there will be laws to follow. Everybody is going to want to go back in time and prevent knocking up that girl or investing in Enron, but I don't think that'll be allowed. Too much can go into changing the world by that decision.

However, I do think personal decisions that really affect nobody else may be allowed. Like, for instance, picking College X over University Y or taking Good Job instead of Great Job.

 

Every decision causes ripples in time. No decision can be re-done in a world where time travel is possible. If you change and get Great Job instead of Good Job.. who didn't get the Great Job? The dude that cured cancer? Or a murderer? Who knows. All decisions are woven into the tapestry of humanity. It's just hard to see that.

 

Dan Bern made the request and God Said No.

(the verse about Hitler starts at around the 2 minute mark)

 

Just BEING there can cause ripples with long-term consequences.
For example, let's say you go back and are just cruising around in a car. You go through a light, but the guy behind you gets stuck at it instead of making it through. Thirty seconds later he's killed when someone runs the red light and T-bones him. So now, his entire timeline changes. His children are never born, nor is the great-grandson who would've grown up to become president. All the people they ever would've inspired or interacted with have their timelines changed, too. The interactions that lead them to certain decisions, big or small, never happen or happen differently. Some might have the same net effect, but it's still far too dangerous.

Of course, on the other hand, that leads us to the mind-bending topic of time loops and paradoxes.
Perhaps the guy who was killed in the car wreck was supposed to die. The guy who hit him ends up crippled, becomes a computer expert, and invents the technology necessary to make time travel possible -- thus ensuring both the first guy's death and his own condition. Without the wreck, time travel doesn't become a reality and he goes through his life like normal.
This is the "Terminator" scenario. You go back in time to accomplish a goal, but must not succeed because it leads to certain other events including your own creation.
In the "Terminator" movies, the machines could've won if they'd never sent back the first Terminator because John Connor never would've been conceived. But they also never would've been created because the first Terminator needed to be destroyed so his parts could inspire the next generation of machines and, ultimately, Skynet itself.
So they had to do it, despite the fact that if the Terminator actually succeeded in killing Sarah Connor they would also cease to exist. Their ultimate defeat led to their creation and rise, which led to their ultimate defeat.

Like I said, time travel makes my head hurt. If it ever becomes possible technologically, there are a host of reasons why it should never -- EVER -- be allowed.

 

Is the world a perfect utopia now? There's an argument to be made that going back in time could make the world a better place.