This keeps popping up again and again. I still don't understand the relevance of it.
Originally posted by Fringan@Aug 27 2004, 08:15 AM
A classic problem with time traveling is if you built a time machine and went back in time to when you were born, found the infant you and killed it what would happen?
Logically, if you were killed just after you were born you wouldn't grow up and live to the moment when you go back in time and kill youself. Therefore, in order for time travel to be possible the universe has to consist of multiple realities (or dimensions) and time traveling would only be possible from one reality to another, not within the same reality.
Ofcourse there is a possibility there is just one reality but if timetravel would be possible within that reality you would be able to go back to your birth but you wouldn't be able to kill yourself, because if you did you would instantly disapear because of the the above fact that you never grew up to go back. If you died as a child you couldn't go back and kill yourself, could you?
Maybe the \"one reality theory\" had to mean there is a sealed fate for everyone and everything since there would be things you could and couldn't do. Let me explain: Let's say you start building a time machine after reading this. Your traveling in time eventaully leads to you beeing shot and deadly wounded. You decide your machine is too dangerous so you rig it with dynamite and a timer so it blows up a minute after you go back in time to the moment you are reading this to warn you NOT to build that time machine. So as you are reading this, a future you pop up next to you, warn you about building the time machine and then die from his wound. This event would evetually lead up to you somehow HAVE TO build a time machine and become mortally wounded and to back in time to warn yourself, even though you have warned yourself. Everything you tried to do to avoid this from happening would only be you fulfilling another step of your predetermined fate.
The more I think of it, the less probable i find time traveling to exist in a universe with only one reality/dimension.
No, for time traveling to exist there have to be 1/0 (infinite) number of \"timelines\" or possible configurations of the universe to travel between. I think of it like an infinite number of \"bubbles\" containing the entire universe in one of its possible configurations, that is something like a freeze frame of every sub atomic particle in a certain place and state. Time would just be passing through \"bubbles\" or configurations, one bubble for each of the smallest possible change in the configuration.
\"Time\" would only be able to jump from the bubble it's currently at to the ones where the changes in the next bubble compared to the one before follows the laws of nature.
If this was true, time traveling would basically be to learn how to break the laws of nature and to leave the time line we are currently in and \"jump\" to another timeline running through the same or similar bubble/configurations of the universe before or after where we are currently at.
I realize this also would mean there is no free will and I guess that might upset alot of people
My conclusion is that we have to learn how the universe works in detail before it will be possible to travel in time (or prove that it's impossible).
@);- 
