Time Travel??

[Phil H]

I start this thread after making several interventions in the current discussion on UFOLOGY.

Does anyone here believe that our descendents will ever be able to travel in time and (perhaps) go back to Whitechapel and Spitalfields in 1888?

Films and novels have been made and written using time travel as a device to explain the murders and their cessation.

My belief that it will not be possible to go back in time (and I regret it very much as an historian) is that we have no reports from any point in history to indicate the presence of anyone who did not have genuine reason to be there. No anachronisms arise - no off occurences are known. Surely, if man was ever to be able to go back to previous ages, there would be some trace in the record we have?

So that's my view - I wish it might not be so, but I don't think we will ever be able to travel in time (backwards at least). UNLESS - some of the UFO reports are actually about time travellers? But I see no "little grey men" in 1888 Whitechapel.

What do others think?

Phil

[kensei]

Well, people a thousand years ago certainly wouldn't recognize the world of today if they could have seen it. Who knows what the science of the future will produce? I recall a quote from Steven Hawking, saying that if people from the future are traveling back in time, "Where are all the time travelers?" And I remember immediately thinking- why would he think it would be a given that they would reveal themselves? I imagine there would be very strict rules about not screwing up history, and as people in the future would have their history archives to see how people of the past dressed, spoke, behaved, etc., they could learn to disguise themselves and fit in. Traveling forward in time might be a different story. You would not have the benefit of knowing how to assimilate yourself, and for another thing, since the future has not happened yet you just might beam yourself forward and find yourself floating in a sea of nothingness.

There was a guy (sorry, don't remember his name) on the radio show "Coast to Coast a.m." which covers many paranormal subjects, who said that as a kid he'd been part of a secret government program that took a bunch of children and subjected them to mind control experiments and then used them as test subjects for top secret time travel technology. He said there was film of the crucifixtion of Christ. He said he himself had been sent back to Lincoln's Gettysburgh Address and presented an old photo of it that was supposed to show him in the crowd. Don't worry, I am not endorsing him. My thought was- dude, even if you are not just making all of this up, you have admitted to being part of a mind control experiment and yet you still think you can trust all your memories from that time.

[Phil H]

There is a "science fiction" story called (I think) "Ecce Homo" by Michael Morecock which won an award a long time ago.

Essentially it tells of time travellers who go back to the crucifixion, having been briefed etc on what to do. they are specifically told that -whatever their religious beliefs they must shout to crucify Christ as otherwise history might be changed.

One of the time travellers wanders off the approved route and finds the locals hidden away in fear in cellars and behind locked doors. He asks one why?

"Because all these people turned up unexpectedly and started to shout for that good man to be killed. We didn't know who they were and they were so determined." ((This is NOT a quote but my remembrance.)

Your post made me think of that.

Maybe "Jack" was some time travellers after all, who were each told - you have to murder a woman so you fit in! Maybe one was dressd as a teacher and called himself Druitt, another was an immigrant and used the name Kosminski....

Phil

[niko]

Impossible ?

Hi Phil, interesting thread, my belives are that evoultion goes forward into the future and not back into the past. I do not belife in the word IMPOSSIBLE one reason being that it was invented by man. Another reason is that my late grandfarther, I supose thought many things on being IMPOSSIBLE and not many year's later his grandson witnessed them as POSSIBLE. I supose talking about going to the moon in 1888 was an IMPOSSIBLE task, lol.

As a kid I use to watch a tv series in the 70's called "The tommorow people" this use to make me think if one day we would be able to time travel, but today I greatly doubt it, at least in my life span, but like I say the word IMPOSSIBLE has little weight in my dictionary, all the best,Agur.

[Jonathan H]

This is getting to be a habit, but I agree with Phil H.

If time travel is possible then where are all the tourists clicking away at the Crucifixion?

I do think that 'Time After Time', with a Druittish Ripper travelling to modern-day San Francisco and pursued by a semi-fictional H G Wells, is by far the best Whitechapel movie (and I thought that long, long before I subscribed to the theory that Macnaghten knew what he was talking about).

[Sally]

Hmm..

I love the idea of Time Travel!

I suppose forward travel might happen one day with better technology - but backwards time travel? Would the laws of physics allow it?

Say we could travel back in time and did - would the past be changed by our presence?

That question isn't as easy to answer as it seems.

[Errata]

I think if time travel were possible we would know already. We would have met time travelers. I mean, maybe not me, because who am I in the grand context of things, but important type people.

I mean, it's one thing to try and protect the timeline and avoid paradox (Grandfather principle and all that), but there are immutable laws of the universe that cannot be altered. One of them being "one a$$hole ruins it for the rest of us" and that guy would expose everything so that the timeline is irrevocably altered, and they say "the hell with this. bring on the tourists".

[Rubyretro]

There is a great short story by Woody Allen (can't remember the name of it)
where the 'hero' can travel in a machine into different books. He is a womaniser, and fed up with paying alimony after several divorces, decides to have affairs with literary heroines instead.
Suddenly, all over America, literature students were turning to each other and asking "who is the bald headed Jew making love to Madame Bovary on page X ?".
Poor bloke ends up stuck for eternity in a book of Spanish Grammar.

Well, it's not Time Travel as such..but maybe, as in Woody Allen's story,
History (and the recordings of it) would change at the point when people could travel backwards in time ?

Personally I think that it's theoretically possible, but it would only be a few scientists that would do it, and not very far at that...minutes, hours, then days and weeks..and we're probably a very long way off yet..

[Abby Normal]

I love the idea of Time Travel!

I suppose forward travel might happen one day with better technology - but backwards time travel? Would the laws of physics allow it?

Say we could travel back in time and did - would the past be changed by our presence?

That question isn't as easy to answer as it seems.

Hi Sally
So far there is nothing in physics that rules out timetravel forward or backward. on paper the equations work just as if you reverse time-but in actual practice I guess thats the million dollar question. I think the physicists are clearer on how time travel to the future would work.

For example, put a man in a spaceship and send it out near the speed of light for a while and as his clock would run slower when he returns to earth everyone would be older and more time would have passed.

I think they are less clear on how time travel to the past would work. i remember reading about a theory that if you have a massively spinning object (the shape of a cylinder)that is large enough and fast enough it warps space and time and then if you go near it you could go back in time. But then when they worked it out they found that the size would have to be larger than the known universe-so that idea was chucked.

The latest i have read would be that in order to go back in time you would have to build a device say now in 2011, then wait for a while and then could travel back only as far back as 2011 (when you opened the first portal so to speak) and no sooner.

The physicists tell us now it is not a theoretical problem but an "engineering" problem. But what an engineering problem!!!!

My thought is that it will be probably discovered that it is a theoretical problem and that time travel (significant time travel) will be impossible. Probably something having to do with entropy and that entropy always increases.

I am totally fascinated that its even theoretically possible though.

[Robert]

Surely if someone went back in time he would change something - even if it only affected, say, the insect world. And of course, these changes will have effects and so on, leading up to quite a big change somewhere.

I don't see how someone could kill his grandad, because then he wouldn't exist. It's not just that he would change the past and the future; he actually wouldn't be available to kill his grandad, since he wouldn't exist.

Maybe he could kill someone else's grandad - and just hope that nobody killed his.

[Sister Hyde]

I don't see how someone could kill his grandad, because then he wouldn't exist. It's not just that he would change the past and the future; he actually wouldn't be available to kill his grandad, since he wouldn't exist.

got a grudge against grandpa hey? then just back in time once your father/mother was alrerady born and kill him then

[Robert]

Hi Sister Hyde

I wouldn't dream of killing either of my grandads. Actually, I could have a paradox without involving my family at all. Suppose I enter a time machine, travel backwards one minute in time, and then attempt to stop myself entering the time machine....

[Errata]

I think if you look at the way we now use microwaves, throwing cds in them, jousting peeps in them, microwaving a bullet to see what happens... you can sort of get the idea of what time travel would be like once all the shiny newness wore off, and it then becomes obvious that time travel is impossible. Because nobody winked in and pantsed George Washington at his inauguration. And someone would have, if time travel could be achieved.

Dimensional travel on the other hand is totally possible.

[Sister Hyde]

Hi Sister Hyde

I wouldn't dream of killing either of my grandads. Actually, I could have a paradox without involving my family at all. Suppose I enter a time machine, travel backwards one minute in time, and then attempt to stop myself entering the time machine....

ahah yeah you just looked very anxious at the idea to kill your grandpa and then never be born. well if you do that the "future you" would be rather surprised, i think he would suddenly stop when seeing you anyway

[Robert]

It wouldn't just be me, it would be mes. I could keep going back again and again, filling the room with Roberts. Imagine if such a machine got into the hands of Jedward.