The Plausibility of Time Travel

[leamichelle]

I was Googling this supposed iPhone(?) app that "let you call yourself in the past" (mentioned by Charlie Brooker on How TV Ruined Your Life - rather off-topic, but I love that show to death), and I stumbled across the actual topic of this thread, which is a lovely exposition of the plausibility and contradictions with the theory of time travel.

I've always liked to ascribe to the Many Worlds theory and the idea that multiple "extra" dimensions exist to house different time lines; say, what you do when you travel back in time creates a separate time line branching off from the first. (It's a very Who sort of theory, but I think it makes a lot of sense if you, er. Totally ignore relativity and pretend that quantum mechanics applies miraculously to the macrocosm. xD)

Anyway, here's the page: ingles.homeunix.net/rants/timetravel.html

Any opinions? What's your favourite theory? Any idea why we haven't seen time travellers? Do you accept that, in a way, we are time travellers already? DO YOU LIKE OCELOTS!? Discuss.

[primsong]

I don't know how I missed this before, but I was just poking around and went "what, you mean like theories of "real" time travel? Huh?" - and the baby ocelots were CUUUUTE! I want one. I want several! I want them bouncing all over my furniture!

The theories look like they'll take a bit of time to wade through or even scan over, so I have nothing intelligent to say at the moment, though I must say the "wave" of change coming from something changing a past event makes more sense to me than the idea that another entire universe is created every time someone makes a different decision (you know, the Universe Where Henry Turned Right Instead of Left to Reach the Ice Cream Shoppe). The 'make a new universe/world' concept seems to give far too much weight to the inconsequential things people do all the time, so I see it as very narcissistic and inclined to encouraging self-importance (oooh, I chose Chocolate instead of Vanilla! I have changed all of creation!)

Hm!

[magnusgreel]

Apr 27, 2012 0:12:39 GMT primsong said:

I must say the "wave" of change coming from something changing a past event makes more sense to me than the idea that another entire universe is created every time someone makes a different decision (you know, the Universe Where Henry Turned Right Instead of Left to Reach the Ice Cream Shoppe). The 'make a new universe/world' concept seems to give far too much weight to the inconsequential things people do all the time, so I see it as very narcissistic and inclined to encouraging self-importance (oooh, I chose Chocolate instead of Vanilla! I have changed all of creation!)

Hm!

Yes primsong, that's part of my problem with it too. My stubbing my toe (or not stubbing same) probably does not have universe-creating capability. I'd love to be able to immerse in all the physics and come to understand what these theories are really all about, but since I can't... I'll just say that there are some ideas that appear to have at least a certain amount of nonsense in them, which one doesn't have to be an expert to question.

I heard an article a few years ago about where the "many worlds" idea came from, as a real-physics idea, not science fiction where we've been hearing about it for many decades. I don't remember much, but the gist seemed to be that some physicists were sitting around talking, and speculating, with some hard physics as a starting point, but imagining way beyond this, much as a group of scientifically knowledgeable science-fiction fans might at a convention, say. Somebody, perhaps an interviewer, took this all down, and it was published. Something like this.

Next thing you know, their science-fiction-ish speculations were being widely read, and taken as hard-science gospel, proven hard fact from reputable scientists. I know there's math that points vaguely to a possible ten or eleven spatial dimensions. That came from Einstein, I think. What goes on in those "dimensions" though? How would we know? I can't see how physics could possibly point to parallel me typing something else on my keyboard this very moment. Think about it. We avoid thinking about these things, deferring automatically and completely to passing remarks from scientists... but even without the information a trained scientist possesses, we can carefully and cautiously apply a bit of logic to these things, and question what we hear.

By the way, Google "John Titor" sometime, for kicks, or possibly to become seriously weirded out for a few hours, as I was one day a few years ago. He claimed to be a time traveller, "appearing" in 2000 I think. It was all unexpectedly plausible-sounding, and I wouldn't blame anyone for believing in it (especially since I like people who apply imagination to life). His gizmo had two artificial spinning micro-singularities (black holes) in it, supposedly, and was built by General Electric.....

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor

[jjpor]

Ah yes, John Titor! I remember there being some discussion of him on another thread a good while back, but yes, interesting story at the very least. Like you, Magnus, I like people with a bit of imagination and audacity. And then of course, there's this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiIrpEMbQ2M

Although it has apparently been Scully-ed now - see the second comment down.

I suppose the other thing about the many-worlds theory is that while it may or may not be scientifically plausible, from a dramatic point of view it has a fatal weakness - how can you have a time travel story with suspense and consequences if any changes your characters make or prevent happen not in their own universe but in some nearly-identical parallel?