Would you risk you life to travel 5 minutes backwards in time?

[JirinPanthosa]

Being the one to prove that time travel works would possibly make me responsible for the unmaking of universe.

Are we assuming the "You actually go back in time into an alternate universe that is created when you arrive" time travel rules? That seems to me a story contrivance for science fiction to stop paradoxes from happening, it doesn't strike me as likely to be how it works if time travel existed in reality. "What happened, happened" rules seem more likely to me.

I guess unmaking the universe is only an issue if you are going back into your own time. The multiverse rules would just result in a lucrative business to send people back in time with the winning lottery numbers. Give the scientist everything you own except the price of a lottery ticket, go back in time, win the powerball jackpot. Everybody can win the same jackpot too because they all get their own duplicate universes. With Lost rules there isn't much to gain from going back in time though I guess learning the future would result in a lot of people going into the future and learning that they are a famous inventor, then being taught by yourself how to invent the stuff.

 

[Jayson1]

As I understand it, everything is the same except that you get transported 5 minutes back in time. For 5 minutes, there are two of you. Freaky, no?
Experiment is a success, you go home and have a beer. Or you die.

I"ll pass, thanks!

Except that their would be another you around unless he also went ahead and time traveled. Plus the nagging concept that your family and friends aren't technically your family and friends anymore. They would belong to that other you from 5 minutes in the past.

Jason

 

[Jedman67]

Except that their would be another you around unless he also went ahead and time traveled. Plus the nagging concept that your family and friends aren't technically your family and friends anymore. They would belong to that other you from 5 minutes in the past.

Jason

Honestly i wouldn't care. Still my family regardless of time travel. And if i time traveled, he'd have to time travel too, predestination paradox.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Isn't this like 7 Days (great show) when Frank returns to the past 7 days ago there's two of him?

 

[The Lensman]

That seems to me a story contrivance for science fiction to stop paradoxes from happening

The short lived "Helix" comics imprint from DC had an excellent mini-series called "Time Breakers" which operated under the conceit that time loops were the structures that ensured the universes survival or something like that. Sorta turning the usual "Time Cop" stuff on it's head as the group was constantly creating time loops while being chased by a zealous group trying to stop them. They were looking to create the ultimate loop IIRC. Really cool series.

I've always preferred Poul Andersons "Time Patrol" time travel logic, which is a more classical version of time travel.
I love paradoxes, time loops and all the crazy shit from classical time travel tales.

 

[KennyB]

Five minutes no. Thirty years yes.

YES!

 

[psCargile]

Know what would be weird? If worldlines weren't static and the past was just as dynamic and fluctuating as the possible futures.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Know what would be weird? If worldlines weren't static and the past was just as dynamic and fluctuating as the possible futures.

I *think* current science implies that that would, in fact, be the case, since "the arrow of time" isn't mathematically "real", and only seems real to us because our brains evolved to perceive it in the direction that we do?

(I'll fully admit - I'm not a professional scientist, and, I've let myself fall a bit behind on my hobbyist-level interest and reading. So that may be outdated, or I may have never really understood it as well as I thought in the first place.)

 

[USS Triumphant]

Sorry for the double-post, but it just occurred to me to add that that assumes that the future is actually dynamic in any way. Perhaps the whole thing is set from start to finish and we only perceive that we have choices. A bit depressing to think about in one way, but on the other hand, it would kind of alleviate responsibility for the things we've screwed up, too.

 

[psCargile]

I may have read it in a Brian Greene book.

 

[Jayson1]

Know what would be weird? If worldlines weren't static and the past was just as dynamic and fluctuating as the possible futures.

If that was the case wouldn't the universe be one constant, resetting loop that never ends? You go back in time and change the past, which changes the future, which means you never go back in time and the timeline is restored allowing you to go back in time again.

Jason

 

[psCargile]

It would mean you would always go back to a time that doesn't match your memory or history.

Not that I believe it.

 

[scotthm]

wouldn't this be one of the biggest things ever conceived of in human history in the real world? Nobody has done it before and it might open the doors to who knows what possibilities in the future. You would basically be Chuck Yeager or a Neil Armstrong.

No. Time travel is bad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrony_(The_X-Files)

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