urgent time travel query

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if you went back in time and shot your grandfather dead would you disappear?

would your grandfather's death prevent you from existing at all - thereby making it impossible for you to go back in time to shoot your grandfather since you don't even exist?

and since you didn't exist to go back in time to shoot your grandfather, wouldn't your family tree continue uninterrupted, meaning that you would be born after all?

can we therefore safely assume that traveling back in time to shoot your grandfather would be pointless?

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:20 (twenty-two years ago)

Why you hatin' on gramps?

― Yanc3y (ystrickler), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:21 (twenty-two years ago)

it's nothing personal

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:22 (twenty-two years ago)

There are so many attempts to do something with this thought experiment. If you are looking for the favourite answer from modern physicists who've bothered, I think that the likelihood of an infinite number of universes provides the way out, where the universe into which you have travelled back cannot be the one you came from, since in that your grandfather did not die 50 years ago. But mainly, since physicists haven't quite solved the problem of why time seems to only go in the one direction, while I believe that the quantum equations can work as well in either direction, in theory.

Note: I gave physics up after A level, so I may be talking bollocks.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Sorry, the last sentence of that first para rather lost its way. I was trying to say that physicists haven't exactly grasped time yet, so worrying about such consequences is premature.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:29 (twenty-two years ago)

tharg to thread!!

― mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:29 (twenty-two years ago)

this is known as "the granny paradox" (last paragraph)

― jones (actual), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:30 (twenty-two years ago)

hey hey hey I didn't say anything about grandmothers! now that's just sick!

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:33 (twenty-two years ago)

(I read today in a book [Borges - Selected Non-fiction] that the original title for HGW's 'The Time Machine' was THE CHRONIC ARGONAUTS - which puts me in mind, for silly reasons, of the Pathetic Sharks. If I remember, I will start a thread tomorrow about abandoned/alternate titles of famous books/films/etc.)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Anyway, the reason I mention Borges is that, in his essay about 'The Time Machine', he claims the first writer to deal with this kind of fictional mindwarp was - OF ALL PEOPLE - Henry James in his novel 'The Sense of the Past'.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:53 (twenty-two years ago)

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 22:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh no! Time travel! I feel as if I've read a post then travelled a few seconds back in time, meaning I've had to read it again!

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 23:03 (twenty-two years ago)

quick - how's yr granfather?

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 23:12 (twenty-two years ago)

quick - how's yr grandfather?

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 23:14 (twenty-two years ago)

oh my god! there's an extra D in there now! YOU SHOULD

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 23:18 (twenty-two years ago)

oh my god! there's an extra D in there now! HISTORY HAS BEEN ALTERED FOREVER!

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 23:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Peabody and Sherman to thread!

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Tuesday, 3 December 2002 23:22 (twenty-two years ago)

quite, you

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 00:03 (twenty-two years ago)

erm

quiet, you

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 00:03 (twenty-two years ago)

If y'all watched Futurama you would have the answer to this question.

― Nicole (Nicole), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 00:16 (twenty-two years ago)

fritz if you ever work it out and get to do it, can you shoot someone else for me please?

― donna (donna), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 00:50 (twenty-two years ago)

well i'm not going to shoot my grandfather i can tell you that much

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 00:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Too bad that Futurama was awful.

― Leee (Leee), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 01:45 (twenty-two years ago)

You can't possibly be saying that the Hypnotoad was awful . . .

― Lynskey (Lynskey), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 02:05 (twenty-two years ago)

sorry, but i'm with leee. it's the frank zappa of cartoons.

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 02:09 (twenty-two years ago)

It's the kraftwerk of cartoons.

― Nicole (Nicole), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 02:11 (twenty-two years ago)

If you go back in time and kill your grandparents, the universe oscillates between two states. Big fucking deal.

― Dave Fischer, Wednesday, 4 December 2002 02:14 (twenty-two years ago)

oscillating universes are no big deal? kids these days...

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 02:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Dudes, don't you understand ? It's all happening now, you're living all your future and past lifetimes simultaneously

it's an ETERNAL NOW - you're just stuck in this room labelled "present" where you can't see the totality, or something. wasn't this in the Bill & Ted sequel, where Rufus answered it?

― V, Wednesday, 4 December 2002 02:22 (twenty-two years ago)

paradoxes rock my ass. i can't wait til xmas for my BTTF dvd box-set. pinch me. etc.

― g-kit (g-kit), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 10:19 (twenty-two years ago)

I did this, but I just didn't travel back in time. Hasn't stopped me existing but this prison thing is a drag.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 10:51 (twenty-two years ago)

it's an ETERNAL NOW

As Derrida's representative on this board I have to say that if anything, it's an ETERNAL NOT-NOW. The time is out of joint, man, get with the programme.

― alext (alext), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 11:16 (twenty-two years ago)

cockfarmercopia!!

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 11:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Can't this be explained away by relativity (kind of)? In the fact that time is effectively personal.... linear, yes, but personal also. So in your own personal linear timeframe you will continue to exist after killing your grandad. I guess this equivalent to the multiple universes theory in the fact that your personal future will be different, but I see no reason to suggest that you will disappear. But then, even after a chemistry degree, relativistic physics really isn't my thing, so take the above with the proverbial pinch of salt, I guess.

― lol p xx, Wednesday, 4 December 2002 13:04 (twenty-two years ago)

You cannot travel in time so question is moot. I like the simple reductive proof that if you could travel in time, where are all the time travelers?

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 13:07 (twenty-two years ago)

You so can travel in time! Only forwards, mind, but it's still time travel.

― RickyT (RickyT), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 13:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Knacks, that's what I meant - science buoy.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 13:14 (twenty-two years ago)

The time travellers are from a far distant future, and are too clever to be easily spotted by the inferior likes of Pete, or even me. Unless of course Pete is one, which might explain why so much of what he says has so little relation to reality as the rest of us grasp it.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 13:30 (twenty-two years ago)

hey, i've e been told to look up "scientific remote viewing" on the 'net, which the military supposedly used to pre-empt russian hmmm

― V or maybe Vee, Wednesday, 4 December 2002 13:38 (twenty-two years ago)

B-b-but where is the point in travelling in time if you are just going to hide. Surely, like any holiday, you want to eat the funny food and shag the locals.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 14:43 (twenty-two years ago)

Pete is going to be severely disappointed by any vacation trips to Hide-And-Seek City.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 16:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Never mind that, what happens when Pete visits Disneyland?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 16:13 (twenty-two years ago)

Are you sure that everyone you've shagged was from the same time period as you, Pete? I don't necessarily mean hiding like scrunching down behind the furniture, they could do it by invisibility powers or disguise.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 18:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I would think you would notice someone you were shagging even despite invisiblity powers.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 18:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Hiding/being invisible and shagging at the same time is not a combination likely to be successful, it's true. (Though see Milo Manara's Butterscotch.)

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 19:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Hmmm... We don't see time travelers from the future because it's not the future yet, so they don't exist yet.. or something... I'm confusing myself...

But in other news: Why would you go back in time?
* To change the future?
* To see what it was like?
* To be some sort of god to the people of the past?
* To use your knowledge of the future to be successful in the past?

― Sarah McLusky (coco), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 19:48 (twenty-two years ago)

what is "remote viewing" ??

― chaki (chaki), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 19:59 (twenty-two years ago)

then maybe Richard Branson is a time traveller ?
or even Jesus?
erm, can't think of anyone else successful.

― Fuzzy (Fuzzy), Wednesday, 4 December 2002 23:55 (twenty-two years ago)

Isn't remote viewing supposed to be where you can "see" something happening in your mind that either hasn't happened yet or isn't something you are to see literally - kinda like when Obi Wan felt that great disturbance in the force when Leia's planet went kablooie.

― Kim (Kim), Thursday, 5 December 2002 00:41 (twenty-two years ago)

seven years pass...

OK, I really don't know what to think about this:

http://forgetomori.com/2010/fortean/time-traveler-caught-in-museum-photo/

― jaymc, Thursday, 28 October 2010 12:45 (fourteen years ago)

sad commentary etc if ppl think that dude looks 'contemporary'.

― balls, Thursday, 28 October 2010 12:54 (fourteen years ago)

If there were a hipster superhero, what would his/her special powers be?

― Eddie Cibrian levels of irony (rip van wanko), Thursday, 28 October 2010 13:00 (fourteen years ago)

http://googleads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/imgad?id=CJnzyr3J0tnumgEQ1AMYPDII6CDL60RpIfc

― dayo, Thursday, 28 October 2010 13:05 (fourteen years ago)

It's not as good as the cellphone user in 1928 that's doing the rounds ATM:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6RjpD1vwh8

..this one is at least entertaining because even though she obv can't be using a cell - like even in the fantastically unlikely event of there being a time traveller, and them going to the premiere of "the circus", they couldn't use their cell anyway because there's no supporting network of antennae! Nevertheless, it does look just like holding a conversation on their mobile!

― Pashmina, Thursday, 28 October 2010 13:14 (fourteen years ago)

if someone could travel through time, they could presumably also have a mobile that didnt really on cell towers?

― candid gamera (s1ocki), Thursday, 28 October 2010 14:23 (fourteen years ago)

rely dude?

― sock lobster (blueski), Thursday, 28 October 2010 14:24 (fourteen years ago)

theyd prob still be talking abt trivial bullshit imo

― johnny crunch, Thursday, 28 October 2010 14:25 (fourteen years ago)

"I'm on the train! The Stockon to Darlingotn one, yeah"

― former moderator, please give generously (DG), Thursday, 28 October 2010 14:26 (fourteen years ago)

According to the comments Fluffy-Haired Canadian Shades-Wearer is (if not photoshopped) in mountain hiking gear - so to us he looks like a total hipster, but everyone in the 1940s in their sharp suits, trimmed Brylcreemed hair and hats is probably thinking "what a loser, dressed like a scruffy unshaven hiker in the middle of our grand bridge opening"

― what is he like? the guy's a juggalo, man (a passing spacecadet), Thursday, 28 October 2010 14:50 (fourteen years ago)

if someone could travel through time, they could presumably also have a mobile that didnt really on cell towers?

but who would they be calling?? unless they could call back to the future?

― Doc Momus (stevie), Thursday, 28 October 2010 15:11 (fourteen years ago)

timestamp + area code + number

all routed through their nearby time machine

― a fucking abortion (onimo), Thursday, 28 October 2010 15:15 (fourteen years ago)

Seems like you wouldn't want to attract attention to yourself like that.

― http://tinyurl.com/beaaarrr (Pleasant Plains), Thursday, 28 October 2010 15:16 (fourteen years ago)

maybe she's calling her time travel buddy!!

― candid gamera (s1ocki), Thursday, 28 October 2010 15:18 (fourteen years ago)

maybe the mobiles are attached to each other with string?

― Mark G, Thursday, 28 October 2010 15:30 (fourteen years ago)

^ string theory

― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 28 October 2010 15:30 (fourteen years ago)

Maybe she's listening to a transistor radio. And singing along to it.

― http://tinyurl.com/beaaarrr (Pleasant Plains), Thursday, 28 October 2010 15:37 (fourteen years ago)

two years pass...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/science/space/a-black-hole-mystery-wrapped-in-a-firewall-paradox.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes

A high-octane debate has broken out among the world’s physicists about what would happen if you jumped into a black hole, a fearsome gravitational monster that can swallow matter, energy and even light. You would die, of course, but how? Crushed smaller than a dust mote by monstrous gravity, as astronomers and science fiction writers have been telling us for decades? Or flash-fried by a firewall of energy, as an alarming new calculation seems to indicate?

look, physicists smoke a lot of weed

― k3vin k., Sunday, 18 August 2013 01:10 (eleven years ago)

"alarming"

― Mordy , Sunday, 18 August 2013 04:43 (eleven years ago)

you escape the hologram, man

― ...the man of the future, the Machine-Man~?! (arby's), Sunday, 18 August 2013 05:20 (eleven years ago)

this is some primo debate, man

― j., Sunday, 18 August 2013 05:39 (eleven years ago)

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