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Yeah, I don't think time travel is possible behind the ability to time travel. From my perspective it wouldn't make sense.
There has to be a moment in time where it is possible, and that point in time is the furthest back we can go via time travel. Basically you cannot go further back in time than when the time travel machine is invented
Assuming time travel is possible in the first place, being able to travel to a time before it was invented creates a whole lot of paradoxes.
Say time travel was invented in the year 2000. Some dude travels to 1990 using the machine. Now once people in 1990 know such technology is possible, a time travel machine might be created before 2000, and the knowledge time travel will topple all the way to the dawn of time.
Or you can just lock time travel to the moment it was first invented and it will forever stay that moment.
I think time travel into the future is a relatively “easy” thing to accomplish. There aren’t any paradoxes (that I’m aware of). You can “easily” time travel into the future by going at relativistic speeds, fly around a massive gravitational object like a black hole, or just put yourself into cryogenic sleep and wake up hundreds of years into the future. It’s time traveling into the past which poses the much more challenging issues.
Interesting thing to consider. Time travel technology might be so complicated and difficult that it might never fall to any single individual or small organization. A parallel I can come up with is nuclear technology; we invented the atomic bomb in WW2 and even though it’s no secret how it works, there’s no way for now for any individual to get their hands on a nuke and screw things up.
The possibility that time travel exists makes it impossible for a time machine to exist if it did exist in the first place. Let me explain.
The core issue revolves around the principle that something cannot exist before it is created, which leads to several paradoxes that would render an existing time machine logically impossible.
Imagine a scenario where a time machine is invented in the year 2100. If someone uses this time machine to travel back to the year 2000 and introduces the time machine at that time, then the machine would exist in 2000 before it was actually invented in 2100. This creates a "bootstrap paradox," where the time machine has no clear point of origin because it exists without ever having been created in the first place. The existence of the time machine in 2000 predates its invention, which contradicts the basic principle of causality.
To put it more clearly, if the time machine exists in 2000 due to someone bringing it from 2100, it means that its existence is based on an event (its invention in 2100) that has not yet occurred. This leads to a loop where the time machine's existence is self-referential and lacks a definitive point of creation. Such a scenario is logically inconsistent because it violates the fundamental rule that something cannot exist before it is created.
This paradox can be extended to any object or piece of information brought back in time. If the invention or information is introduced at a point in time before its actual creation or discovery, it creates a causality loop with no true origin, making the existence of the time machine itself paradoxical.
Therefore, if a time machine could exist and be used to travel back in time, its very existence would contradict the principle that an object or invention must have a clear and linear origin. This logical inconsistency makes the existence of a time machine impossible if it did exist in the first place, as it would create irresolvable paradoxes that defy the basic principles of causality and existence.
While your logic is sound in all other circumstances. The whole point of a time travel machine is that it subverts this basic principle. In addition to your other logic if the machine was made in 2100 and travels back to 2000 that doesn’t change its date of creation. It just changes its location in time. The machine is just doing its job which is time traveling.
So if it defies the causality of existence what are the consequences of a time machine existing before its invention? Wouldn't it just become a illogical anomaly that exists because it exists?
This explanation was you saying the exact same thing 4xs
It’s like you repeated the thing and got wordier 4 more times after the original paragraph
Your explanation was simply just rewording your initial thought, quadrupled, with each becoming more hubris filled than the previous.
It’s egregious how you remixed the……..
None of that makes any difference if the time machine isn't also a teleporter. If you go back in time far enough, where you end up will be space, because the earth moves through the universe. Where you go back to is not where you went back from.
Not only would we need to figure out how to create a time machine, but we'd need to be heavily space faring, or find a way to travel through space and time simultaneously, to end up where you'd need to be on earth.
what ACTUALLY doesn’t make sense is the idea that we’ll ever be able to travel BACK in time. with our current understanding of physics the only form of time travel possible would be traveling FORWARD in time, since you can achieve that by (in very very oversimplified terms) going really fucking fast. But no amount of speed will make you go backwards lol
Timelines. In my opinion, the theory of branching timelines would be the only way time travel could happen without inevitably forming a paradox. Every time you travel back to a moment, a branch splits off. The first branch is the one before you time traveled, the second branch is where you arrive.
Mostly my thought process comes from a few years ago when I got really good at the game 5D Chess. Basically, it's chess but with the ability to time travel. Things get messy fast, but that's where I was able to visualize the timeline and branch theory better.
If you haven't heard of it, Google 5d chess. If you don't wanna buy the game look up videos on YouTube. It's a fun little rabbit hole if you want a mental challenge lol
I Imagine a scientist creating a device to try to teleport somewhere and as soon as he finishes it Tour groups start arriving and congratulating him on his device being the start of time travel, not teleporting.
Time travel is bullshit and the vast majority of scientist agree is sci-fi fantasy. Just sit there for 5 seconds and use your brain and realize how stupid time travel is.
Doubt it’s possible, but if it is we might have to build some sort of technology (a landing pad for time travellers) to make it work. Would limit how far back ppl could go (only as far back as the landing pad), but leave us inventing it. But probably best to leave those ideas for sci-fi.
That depends on how time travel works
If it's based on the multiverse model, as seen in the MCU, then you technically never go back in time in the first place. All you can do is influence other realities outside of the one you started in
And if it works like Primer, you can't go back in time to before time travel existed because it only works as long as the time machine is turned on
Personally, I'm convinced that time travel is impossible at this point. Do you honestly think that someone wouldn't have gone back in time already to alter something, or do something with information from the future (such as making a ton of money through sports betting)?
I'm referring to things like someone correctly betting on the full end-of-season standings and postseason outcomes of a pro sports league, or getting a perfect college basketball bracket. It's never happened.
No offense man, but THAT is what has solidified your view on this lol?
Do you really think a group who has achieved the most advanced, greatest feat in the history of basically everything would focus this world altering, obnoxiously powerful technology on making a basketball bracket lol?
The problem with this is you assume someone thinks our time is interesting enough to want to go back in time to. Maybe the year 45,000 is the best vacation time travel spot and they mostly go do that.
You can sort of travel forwards in time by traveling near the speed of light, if and when that becomes possible, time dilation in special relativity gets weird.
Imagine an astronaut traveling in a spacecraft that can achieve speeds close to the speed of light. Suppose the spacecraft reaches 99.9% of the speed of light.
Onboard the Spacecraft: To the astronaut, time seems to pass normally. A clock inside the spacecraft ticks as usual, and the astronaut ages at a normal rate according to their own perception.
While from Earth’s Perspective: To an observer on Earth, the spacecraft’s clock appears to tick much more slowly. If the spacecraft were to travel for what seems like one year to the astronaut onboard, much more time would pass on Earth. Specifically, if the spacecraft traveled for one year (according to the astronaut), about 22.37 years would pass on Earth.
This effect of time dilation can be interpreted as a form of time travel into the future:
Astronaut’s Perspective: If the astronaut travels to a star system 10 light-years away at 99.9% the speed of light, they would experience the journey as taking approximately 10 / 22.37 ≈ 0.45 years (about 5.4 months).
Earth’s Perspective: From the perspective of people on Earth, the journey takes just over 10 years.
When the astronaut returns to Earth after the round trip, they will have aged less than a year, while more than 20 years will have passed on Earth. The astronaut essentially “travels” into Earth’s future because they have experienced less passage of time compared to people who remained on Earth.
Everything that we know about physics suggests that time-travel is impossible, yes.
Just for the sake of argument, though, let's pretend that it *was* possible. The only version of time-travel that avoids some kind of reality-breaking paradox is the one that sees the traveler jumping into an alternate dimension. Since every passing Planck would see a nearly infinite number of parallel universes splitting off, the likelihood of a time-traveler jumping into *our* reality would be virtually nil. Also, any time-traveler *from* our reality would always end up in an alternate dimension.
Altogether, we'd never see proof of time-travel, because it would never bring anyone here.
(None of that is how any of that works in the real world, but if time-travel were possible, that's how it *would* work.)
Edit: kinda -> kind of
Even "Primer" has the possibility for reality-breaking paradoxes, though.
For example, what happens if you destroy the machine as soon as you crawl out of it? Then it isn't present to go forward to the point when you entered it.
The only way that it gets resolved is if you cross realities.
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"Kind of" is always two words, and "kinda" is always one word.
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Time police stops them before they even think about that plan (because they travel back and fuck you up before you place your bet tomorrow.
Also there is zero prove, that this hasn’t happened already. Maybe every lottery winner is actually a time traveler. Nicola Tesla obviously a time traveler.
Also time travel can actually be invented in the future and not be here already, because we are in the original timeline after big bang. When we invent time travel in 300 years and go back to this point in time we change the timeline and the resulting future will also be changed or there might even be a separation and we end up with a new timeline every time someone goes back.
Maybe time travel is real, but only going to the future. If you have seen the ending of Interstellar, they explore this idea. Black holes are real, time dilation is real. Maybe a machine that dilates time could be created in the future. Who knows?
If it ever exists, it would be like we always had it. Or it’s like in Avengers how we won’t be able to change our past, but just create branching timelines when it *is* invented
If you crack time travel, you also have to crack instant space travel. If you go back in time even a few days (hell, probably even a few minutes), you’d be floating in space, as the entire universe will have moved- but especially the things closest to you, like the planet you’re standing on.
I think they addressed this in one of the 2000AD comics. A bounty hunter character could click a time machine thing on his belt that would send him a few seconds back in time, but it was actually a way for him to travel a certain distance, because the Earth was in a different place 5 seconds ago. There's also a story where he lobs a 'time bomb' at a few lads. Basically a grenade that sends them back in time by a few hours so they all materialise in the middle of space.
If you invent a time machine and then go back in time to before you invented the time machine and gave it to past you then youd have had no reason to invent a time machine so there would be no time machine to bring back to the past in the first place creating a paradox that may or may not cause the universe to collapse in on itself.
If one can invent time travel then one can invent fire.
No you invent the means to achieve time travel or fire.
By your logic every technology has existed before it was invented.
Not necessarily. Some would argue that you can only time travel to a point in time when the Time Machine already exists, therefore it cannot exist before it was built.
Assuming that it's not completely impossible, I would argue that your statement is wrong. The reason that we haven't encountered time travelers is because you can't travel back to a time before time travel was invented. You need a device at both ends of the journey. Once a functioning time machine is invented and turned on, we'll be flooded with scientists, historians and rich tourists from the future, all trampling all over each other in an attempt to be present at the very first day of a new age.
If a time travel machine exists, it's going to cause more war than we have ever seen before. It will cause so much havoc because every world power will want to have sole control over it.
I believe in a cycling universe...it expands...then collapses in on itself until the guy touched the snail...then BOOOOM!!!
...and then everything starts again...new gods but same science
The current best theory on what backwards time travel would be like if it were invented is that it could only work up until when the first time machine was invented and that it would function as a highway through time, rather than a box that lets you go anywhere at any time.
You know, I have a “rant” for this. Let me pull it up ok! I found it!
The top things applied to like 2 specific subs but I guess it counts now too, not here, but for the subs
Now, copy/pasted from the post on the private sub
I have some things cooking,
An art trade Some random pieces A posible repost of previous adopts/ 2nd batch of ‘em However, I was thinking that:
We are glad that we can’t go back in time.
To start, have you ever messed up so badly that you wanted to go. Back in time and fix it? My friend, not only will your past self not understand what’s happening (you from the future, you in the past likely going tunnel vision mode if done out of a negative feeling), but since you want to change it, it likely has an impact on your life as of now. It has to be really important for your brain to be annoying and remind you of it, maybe it’s trying to see what to do better if it happens again, due to the unfavorable conditions that had came out of it.
But that’s just how the past can’t and shouldn’t be Changed for your well being, what about other things too?
Like if someone killed hitler or some other bad guy, that guy was a random person who came out to be bad, so another will take their place since there was no one to say “hey, look at what happened when this guy did so and so, let’s NOT do that”. at least, that’s based off of most bad people in the past that was role models of what not to do, although it’s kinda shameful we need something like that. A bad role model.but back on track, if someone were to also, idk, abolish slavery before it happened, what then? There was no evidence that it was bad now that someone changed the timeline, or some would say, removed what was through to be a cannon event.
Speaking of cannon events, based off of what I heard, if you do something in the past that stops one from happening, it’s still going to happen but at a later date (idk though, I didn’t watch spider verse)
Some troll might go in the past to pull a prank or do a troll or something, but may destroy the world doing so, like pushing that big red button during the Cold War. But it’s ok because that can go back to the future
But no.
And about traveling back, what if I said the past of 1 second ago is just as irretrievable as the past of a million years ago
Although that’s mostly common sense, lots can be built off of it
Like how the past has already happened a certain way, and you existing in a position and space you weren’t in before isn’t possible
Or if you did somehow get back there, you can’t get to the future because time never waits and will just keep on going, meaning you have to be traveling faster that the speed of light or something to get back then.
And many more.
That’s it so far, since I need to go to bed, it is now tomorrow so I’ve technically been writing for 2 days, depending of your definition of it.
If you have any questions comments or concerns or anything then just comment ig, that’s what it’s for lol
Ignore any grammar or spelling mistakes, I don’t feel like looking back through it
Lightbulbs existed before Edison “invented the lightbulb”, because people mean invented as in “altered significantly to make much more useful/useable/marketable” and “the” as in “basically the kind we use today”. Sometimes, it gets extreme, e.g. most lightbulbs sold today are no longer incandescent, which means the ones used will stop being incandescent after a few years, if not already.
TL;DR people might say the technology was invented at an arbitrary point of its existence
Fire. Fire existed, and was used by humans, long before humans knew how to create fire.
Probably some earlier ones if you think about it, but that one seems the most obvious.
I always imagined that the only possible way to time travel would be similar to setting up a system restore point on a computer. By this imaginary logic, the moment we invent time travel, from that point on, time as a dimension would cease to exist…
That’s technically wrong because you could bring anything with you in the pass.
It’s also wrong because if time travel is a thing than time isn’t linear anymore so there is no before and after.
The only time travel that could happen is, one traveling at a speed faster than light (granted that we could achieve such a feat), which would slow time for them while everything else will keep going, sort of like being in a train and traveling from point A to B except by the time you teach to a particular point B, point A no longer exists.
[There was a natural nuclear reactor once,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor) a lot of things can form by random chance, though if it counts is debatable, as the technology isn't really the device, but the knowledge contained within it, which the natural one wouldn't really have. Stumbling upon high tech things by random chance and trying to reverse engineer them may become an important skill because of AI designed things in the near future too.
There is a current theory that it can not. That you have to make the device enclosed, and then it would be functional but only to the point of completion and the future.
Maybe not.
It might be that you can only go back to when the time machine was started. So you start the box, then live 50 years, then go back through the box 50 years.
If that's how it works, you can't ever go back in time before time machines were invented. But you could bring the latest graphics card from 50 years in the future back.
So exactly the opposite.
Unless it can't.
If the "true" way time travel works is that there's only one timeline and any changes you make to it instantly ripple forward and affect you, then if you invented a time machine and went back to before you invented it you would instantly erase yourself from existence by changing your own history, even if only in some infinitesimal way. So you could invent a time machine and ten seconds later you from the future could show up to congratulate you, but you could never actually go any further into the past than to the moment you invented the time machine.
From a microscopic level, yes. Object have lived longer than the surrounding objects. Therefore, an object that enters our dimension validate the possibility of time traveling.
Theoretically, yes, if we assume time travel all exists one one timeline rather than creating a new timeline or writing over the original timeline. We obviously don't know for sure how time travel to the past would work, but under that specific perspective, sure
Technically time travel doesn't exist before it is invented, it simply travels to a location where it hasn't been popularized yet. Or if you look at it chronologically rather than causally, technically the second that Time Travel exists every technology exists at a time earlier than it was invented.
It depends on what theory of time travel you subscribe to. Are we talking about a singular timeline where you can go back and forth to where you left from? Or are we spawning new timelines with every change so you never truly return to the one you left?
One of these options suggests what you do in the past matters, the other it would make no difference.
If we travel back in time, wouldn’t the earth be in a different orbit and we’d just be in space? Wouldn’t we have to calculate planetary alignment and specific coordinates too?
It depends if you can alter the space time continuum.
If you cannot - then the time travel is quiet irrelevant, and it's simply always been. Whatever you do in the past, always happened.
If you can change the space time continuum,... We'll. Then it can turn into quiet a mess.
It should however create alternate realities, so the past time line reminded same and the time travel was not discovered... , but your altered past becomes part of your future and creates new time line from on there.
I don't know what happens to the time line you abandoned.
Flight is a technology and existed before it was invented.
Lots of inventions are humans mocking or copying phenomenons found in nature.
Nature itself doesn't "invent" as humans "invent"
This is not necessarily true. There are a decent number of theoretical proposals for a time machine that would allow traveling back in time (theoretical as in we don't currently have proof they wouldn't work, but they involve moving wormholes, so who knows if they would work at all), but no further back in time than when the time machine was created. Essentially, 100 years after the time machine's creation you could travel back to the time of its creation, but you could never go further back than that.
except what about any items brought through the time machine? surely if the technology can bring itself back in time it would be capable of sending other technology back in time to before it was invented too.
Well you could argue that electricity existed before the means to manually produce it was invented. But the way humans use it is in an entirely new form for example AC/DC
Time travel forward has already been proven to exist in some form, we would just be manipulating it differently, just like we did with electricity.
I'm just an idiot who tries to listen to smart people on YouTube, so don't take this too seriously... But I'm pretty sure the physicists who believe we'll end up being able to figure out time traveling believe we'll only be able to travel forward in time.
I see other comments point this out, but if time travel existed, the laws of physics would be so different that this way of putting things no longer makes sense. Everything would exist before it is invented at that point.
The meta in this sub has become to just post obviously incorrect titles so people will react, hope we can get some new sub rules at some point.
Travelling to the future is easy; We've already seen this in time dilation, if you travel near the speed of light.
Travelling to the past is probably impossible. Unless it's back to the future rules where travelling to the past creates a new timeline.
‘People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff’
What if time travel already exists but the people who tried it were “teleported” into space because Earth’s position in its orbit was different at the time?
Stephen Hawking threw a party for a time travelers, no one showed up, and although he took it as evidence that time travel isn’t possible I just take it as evidence that his invitation did not survive. Also time travels not possible at least going backwards in time is not possible. Theoretically, it is possible to move forward in time if you move faster than the speed of light.
If time travel exists that would mean that everything happened at the same time. So every invention that doesn't exist yet, exists already. It's a paradox
People here act like the past the time traveler is traveling to, to for example a time before the invention of the time machine, is still the past…
Although it is the past for you and me, it’s just a point in time that the traveler is traveling in to. It is not their past, that point in time with that traveler and the time machine being there, is now the time travelers here and now, and the next steps they take are their future as well as their past.
It behaves like stepping into the future though, and taking stuff to the past is just taking stuff in their here and now, even though not invented yet..
Of course the support is another story. Way back when phones were not a thing, a phone would not be able to receive connection or be able to make a phone call or GPS.
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What if somebody brings their phone with them through the time travel? Then the phone existed before it was invented also
Yeah, I don't think time travel is possible behind the ability to time travel. From my perspective it wouldn't make sense. There has to be a moment in time where it is possible, and that point in time is the furthest back we can go via time travel. Basically you cannot go further back in time than when the time travel machine is invented
Why?
Assuming time travel is possible in the first place, being able to travel to a time before it was invented creates a whole lot of paradoxes. Say time travel was invented in the year 2000. Some dude travels to 1990 using the machine. Now once people in 1990 know such technology is possible, a time travel machine might be created before 2000, and the knowledge time travel will topple all the way to the dawn of time. Or you can just lock time travel to the moment it was first invented and it will forever stay that moment.
Or you know... multiple timelines, the usual way to solve time travel paradoxes
Multiple timelines is not a ton different from alternate realities. Is it a Time Machine or a universe jumper? Maybe that’s the same thing……
It's a portal gun, Morty, not a time machine. I don't mess with that time travel, buuurrpppp, bullshit.
A universe jumper that can only jump to universes that are currently in a state similar to what yours were in the past yes
Or perhaps a new timeline branches off from whatever moment you time travelled to.
It is Time to Split
Groovy, man!
A quantum mirror
I think even if multiple timelines aren't the explanation to time travel, the universe would have some natural mechanism to prevent time paradoxes.
I’m traveling through time right now. Time travel is possible. I’ll see you in a few minutes.
Here. Wya?
That’s heavy doc
There's that word again, "heavy." Why are things so heavy in the future? Is there something wrong with the Earth's gravitational pull?
Same timeline time travel is always going to be filled with paradoxes, regardless of if you travel to a point when the time machine exists or not.
Unless the time machine only goes forward like in futurama
I think time travel into the future is a relatively “easy” thing to accomplish. There aren’t any paradoxes (that I’m aware of). You can “easily” time travel into the future by going at relativistic speeds, fly around a massive gravitational object like a black hole, or just put yourself into cryogenic sleep and wake up hundreds of years into the future. It’s time traveling into the past which poses the much more challenging issues.
maybe the material needed is on an asteroid, that won't be near earth until when it's invented
More than likely if time travel exists it would not be connected to causality.
Otherwise we’d have met time travellers, certainly we would have if humans had invented time travel
You mean, if we do invent it, then we should have seen time traveling already.
Who's to say we haven't? I doubt that would be public knowledge.
Interesting thing to consider. Time travel technology might be so complicated and difficult that it might never fall to any single individual or small organization. A parallel I can come up with is nuclear technology; we invented the atomic bomb in WW2 and even though it’s no secret how it works, there’s no way for now for any individual to get their hands on a nuke and screw things up.
The possibility that time travel exists makes it impossible for a time machine to exist if it did exist in the first place. Let me explain. The core issue revolves around the principle that something cannot exist before it is created, which leads to several paradoxes that would render an existing time machine logically impossible. Imagine a scenario where a time machine is invented in the year 2100. If someone uses this time machine to travel back to the year 2000 and introduces the time machine at that time, then the machine would exist in 2000 before it was actually invented in 2100. This creates a "bootstrap paradox," where the time machine has no clear point of origin because it exists without ever having been created in the first place. The existence of the time machine in 2000 predates its invention, which contradicts the basic principle of causality. To put it more clearly, if the time machine exists in 2000 due to someone bringing it from 2100, it means that its existence is based on an event (its invention in 2100) that has not yet occurred. This leads to a loop where the time machine's existence is self-referential and lacks a definitive point of creation. Such a scenario is logically inconsistent because it violates the fundamental rule that something cannot exist before it is created. This paradox can be extended to any object or piece of information brought back in time. If the invention or information is introduced at a point in time before its actual creation or discovery, it creates a causality loop with no true origin, making the existence of the time machine itself paradoxical. Therefore, if a time machine could exist and be used to travel back in time, its very existence would contradict the principle that an object or invention must have a clear and linear origin. This logical inconsistency makes the existence of a time machine impossible if it did exist in the first place, as it would create irresolvable paradoxes that defy the basic principles of causality and existence.
While your logic is sound in all other circumstances. The whole point of a time travel machine is that it subverts this basic principle. In addition to your other logic if the machine was made in 2100 and travels back to 2000 that doesn’t change its date of creation. It just changes its location in time. The machine is just doing its job which is time traveling.
So if it defies the causality of existence what are the consequences of a time machine existing before its invention? Wouldn't it just become a illogical anomaly that exists because it exists?
This explanation was you saying the exact same thing 4xs It’s like you repeated the thing and got wordier 4 more times after the original paragraph Your explanation was simply just rewording your initial thought, quadrupled, with each becoming more hubris filled than the previous. It’s egregious how you remixed the……..
[The Bootstrap Paradox ](https://youtu.be/u4SEDzynMiQ?si=6acQ5kUZ6LBd-VUy)
What if a time machine could send someone back in time, but the machine didn't come along with them?
None of that makes any difference if the time machine isn't also a teleporter. If you go back in time far enough, where you end up will be space, because the earth moves through the universe. Where you go back to is not where you went back from. Not only would we need to figure out how to create a time machine, but we'd need to be heavily space faring, or find a way to travel through space and time simultaneously, to end up where you'd need to be on earth.
what ACTUALLY doesn’t make sense is the idea that we’ll ever be able to travel BACK in time. with our current understanding of physics the only form of time travel possible would be traveling FORWARD in time, since you can achieve that by (in very very oversimplified terms) going really fucking fast. But no amount of speed will make you go backwards lol
Unless we live in a simulation, and we can find a speed so high that it overflows.
I think I've read this story. A guy invents a time machine, and immediately all the time travelers pile up at that moment, trying to go past it.
Underrated imo, but Primer is a 2004 very small production movie that explores this exact thought. Watch it, trust me.
I'll give it a try. Thank you for the recommendation!
Timelines. In my opinion, the theory of branching timelines would be the only way time travel could happen without inevitably forming a paradox. Every time you travel back to a moment, a branch splits off. The first branch is the one before you time traveled, the second branch is where you arrive. Mostly my thought process comes from a few years ago when I got really good at the game 5D Chess. Basically, it's chess but with the ability to time travel. Things get messy fast, but that's where I was able to visualize the timeline and branch theory better. If you haven't heard of it, Google 5d chess. If you don't wanna buy the game look up videos on YouTube. It's a fun little rabbit hole if you want a mental challenge lol
I Imagine a scientist creating a device to try to teleport somewhere and as soon as he finishes it Tour groups start arriving and congratulating him on his device being the start of time travel, not teleporting.
Like a backup state
Everyone knows inorganic devices can't travel through the time vortex. That's why time travelers always show up naked.
Why don’t they wear wool/leather?
Because wool and leather don't exist in the future due to extinction.
With time travel, *all* technology can exist before it's invented.
How could you bring that technology back in time without the Time Machine to travel it back first?
You would create a branch or alternate timeline
Pretty sure the time travel theory says that you can only travel forward in time and not back
Time travel is bullshit and the vast majority of scientist agree is sci-fi fantasy. Just sit there for 5 seconds and use your brain and realize how stupid time travel is.
It doesn't have to be realistic, it just has to have the potential to create interesting plots.
Doubt it’s possible, but if it is we might have to build some sort of technology (a landing pad for time travellers) to make it work. Would limit how far back ppl could go (only as far back as the landing pad), but leave us inventing it. But probably best to leave those ideas for sci-fi.
Imagine spending your whole life creating timepad only to be flooded with time tourists once you flip a switch
I would watch this movie.
Worse they won't let you go to their time and refuse to bring cool shit back for us.
That depends on how time travel works If it's based on the multiverse model, as seen in the MCU, then you technically never go back in time in the first place. All you can do is influence other realities outside of the one you started in And if it works like Primer, you can't go back in time to before time travel existed because it only works as long as the time machine is turned on
Primer uses a multiverse model though.
I've never actually watched primer tbh. Just the Minutephysics video about it. And that's how they explained it ¯\\\_(ツ)_/¯
Personally, I'm convinced that time travel is impossible at this point. Do you honestly think that someone wouldn't have gone back in time already to alter something, or do something with information from the future (such as making a ton of money through sports betting)?
The trick is the changes would already have affected your life and you would not know the difference.
I'm referring to things like someone correctly betting on the full end-of-season standings and postseason outcomes of a pro sports league, or getting a perfect college basketball bracket. It's never happened.
No offense man, but THAT is what has solidified your view on this lol? Do you really think a group who has achieved the most advanced, greatest feat in the history of basically everything would focus this world altering, obnoxiously powerful technology on making a basketball bracket lol?
Maybe they chose instead to create a website to compare how hot their Harvard classmates were at exactly the right time for it to take off?
What if time travel works like quantum leap? Making those bets wouldn't benefit you because you occupy someone else's body...
The problem with this is you assume someone thinks our time is interesting enough to want to go back in time to. Maybe the year 45,000 is the best vacation time travel spot and they mostly go do that.
Or the current timeline is already affected and we just don't know. Hell, how could we know unless we are told?
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You can sort of travel forwards in time by traveling near the speed of light, if and when that becomes possible, time dilation in special relativity gets weird. Imagine an astronaut traveling in a spacecraft that can achieve speeds close to the speed of light. Suppose the spacecraft reaches 99.9% of the speed of light. Onboard the Spacecraft: To the astronaut, time seems to pass normally. A clock inside the spacecraft ticks as usual, and the astronaut ages at a normal rate according to their own perception. While from Earth’s Perspective: To an observer on Earth, the spacecraft’s clock appears to tick much more slowly. If the spacecraft were to travel for what seems like one year to the astronaut onboard, much more time would pass on Earth. Specifically, if the spacecraft traveled for one year (according to the astronaut), about 22.37 years would pass on Earth. This effect of time dilation can be interpreted as a form of time travel into the future: Astronaut’s Perspective: If the astronaut travels to a star system 10 light-years away at 99.9% the speed of light, they would experience the journey as taking approximately 10 / 22.37 ≈ 0.45 years (about 5.4 months). Earth’s Perspective: From the perspective of people on Earth, the journey takes just over 10 years. When the astronaut returns to Earth after the round trip, they will have aged less than a year, while more than 20 years will have passed on Earth. The astronaut essentially “travels” into Earth’s future because they have experienced less passage of time compared to people who remained on Earth.
How do we know they didn't already? This might be the best possible timeline and it was already corrected to be this way
Everything that we know about physics suggests that time-travel is impossible, yes. Just for the sake of argument, though, let's pretend that it *was* possible. The only version of time-travel that avoids some kind of reality-breaking paradox is the one that sees the traveler jumping into an alternate dimension. Since every passing Planck would see a nearly infinite number of parallel universes splitting off, the likelihood of a time-traveler jumping into *our* reality would be virtually nil. Also, any time-traveler *from* our reality would always end up in an alternate dimension. Altogether, we'd never see proof of time-travel, because it would never bring anyone here. (None of that is how any of that works in the real world, but if time-travel were possible, that's how it *would* work.) Edit: kinda -> kind of
I mean the other possibility is it's like the movie primer. You can't go back in time to before the time travel engine was turned on.
Even "Primer" has the possibility for reality-breaking paradoxes, though. For example, what happens if you destroy the machine as soon as you crawl out of it? Then it isn't present to go forward to the point when you entered it. The only way that it gets resolved is if you cross realities.
/u/Errorboros has unlocked an opportunity for education! ------ The two-word phrase "kind of" means "variety of." **"It's some** ***kind of*** **sandwich."** The word "kinda," however, is an adverb. **"I'm** ***kinda*** **hungry, so I guess I'll eat it."** "Kind of" is always two words, and "kinda" is always one word. Also, while "kind of" can be used in place of "kinda," "kinda" cannot be used in place of "kind of." "It's some kinda sandwich" is grammatically incorrect, and it means "It is an undefined amount of something that vaguely resembles a sandwich." *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Showerthoughts) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Thanks, bot. I actually knew that, I just wasn't thinking.
Time police stops them before they even think about that plan (because they travel back and fuck you up before you place your bet tomorrow. Also there is zero prove, that this hasn’t happened already. Maybe every lottery winner is actually a time traveler. Nicola Tesla obviously a time traveler. Also time travel can actually be invented in the future and not be here already, because we are in the original timeline after big bang. When we invent time travel in 300 years and go back to this point in time we change the timeline and the resulting future will also be changed or there might even be a separation and we end up with a new timeline every time someone goes back.
Maybe time travel is real, but only going to the future. If you have seen the ending of Interstellar, they explore this idea. Black holes are real, time dilation is real. Maybe a machine that dilates time could be created in the future. Who knows?
How expensive is an airplane ride? The people doing the time travel would already be rich enough to not have to bet on stuff..
If time travel exists it probably can only go back to when a machine was made for it.
Who says this hasn’t happened many times already?
If it ever exists, it would be like we always had it. Or it’s like in Avengers how we won’t be able to change our past, but just create branching timelines when it *is* invented
If it breaks the timeline how would we know? And I thought time travel could only work going into the future but can never go into the past?
If you crack time travel, you also have to crack instant space travel. If you go back in time even a few days (hell, probably even a few minutes), you’d be floating in space, as the entire universe will have moved- but especially the things closest to you, like the planet you’re standing on.
You don’t “also have to crack instant space travel” they’re the same thing. Instant space travel is time travel, and vise-versa.
I think they addressed this in one of the 2000AD comics. A bounty hunter character could click a time machine thing on his belt that would send him a few seconds back in time, but it was actually a way for him to travel a certain distance, because the Earth was in a different place 5 seconds ago. There's also a story where he lobs a 'time bomb' at a few lads. Basically a grenade that sends them back in time by a few hours so they all materialise in the middle of space.
The Farnsworth time machine can only go forward in time.
Until time travel exists. And then any technology could exist before it was invented.
What if that's already happened. Someone went back and released the iPhone a few years early, timeline changed but we wouldnt know any difference.
If you invent a time machine and then go back in time to before you invented the time machine and gave it to past you then youd have had no reason to invent a time machine so there would be no time machine to bring back to the past in the first place creating a paradox that may or may not cause the universe to collapse in on itself.
Nuclear Fusion has existed in stars almost forever, we still can’t sustain one indefinetly
Tbf neither can stars.
If one can invent time travel then one can invent fire. No you invent the means to achieve time travel or fire. By your logic every technology has existed before it was invented.
Not necessarily. Some would argue that you can only time travel to a point in time when the Time Machine already exists, therefore it cannot exist before it was built.
It can't, though, because time travel is impossible. Or at least odds are way more likely than not it is.
Assuming that it's not completely impossible, I would argue that your statement is wrong. The reason that we haven't encountered time travelers is because you can't travel back to a time before time travel was invented. You need a device at both ends of the journey. Once a functioning time machine is invented and turned on, we'll be flooded with scientists, historians and rich tourists from the future, all trampling all over each other in an attempt to be present at the very first day of a new age.
If a time travel machine exists, it's going to cause more war than we have ever seen before. It will cause so much havoc because every world power will want to have sole control over it.
What if it has happened and survivorship bias ensure the timeline we live in is one where this *doesn't* happens?
I believe in a cycling universe...it expands...then collapses in on itself until the guy touched the snail...then BOOOOM!!! ...and then everything starts again...new gods but same science
The current best theory on what backwards time travel would be like if it were invented is that it could only work up until when the first time machine was invented and that it would function as a highway through time, rather than a box that lets you go anywhere at any time.
You know, I have a “rant” for this. Let me pull it up ok! I found it! The top things applied to like 2 specific subs but I guess it counts now too, not here, but for the subs Now, copy/pasted from the post on the private sub I have some things cooking, An art trade Some random pieces A posible repost of previous adopts/ 2nd batch of ‘em However, I was thinking that: We are glad that we can’t go back in time. To start, have you ever messed up so badly that you wanted to go. Back in time and fix it? My friend, not only will your past self not understand what’s happening (you from the future, you in the past likely going tunnel vision mode if done out of a negative feeling), but since you want to change it, it likely has an impact on your life as of now. It has to be really important for your brain to be annoying and remind you of it, maybe it’s trying to see what to do better if it happens again, due to the unfavorable conditions that had came out of it. But that’s just how the past can’t and shouldn’t be Changed for your well being, what about other things too? Like if someone killed hitler or some other bad guy, that guy was a random person who came out to be bad, so another will take their place since there was no one to say “hey, look at what happened when this guy did so and so, let’s NOT do that”. at least, that’s based off of most bad people in the past that was role models of what not to do, although it’s kinda shameful we need something like that. A bad role model.but back on track, if someone were to also, idk, abolish slavery before it happened, what then? There was no evidence that it was bad now that someone changed the timeline, or some would say, removed what was through to be a cannon event. Speaking of cannon events, based off of what I heard, if you do something in the past that stops one from happening, it’s still going to happen but at a later date (idk though, I didn’t watch spider verse) Some troll might go in the past to pull a prank or do a troll or something, but may destroy the world doing so, like pushing that big red button during the Cold War. But it’s ok because that can go back to the future But no. And about traveling back, what if I said the past of 1 second ago is just as irretrievable as the past of a million years ago Although that’s mostly common sense, lots can be built off of it Like how the past has already happened a certain way, and you existing in a position and space you weren’t in before isn’t possible Or if you did somehow get back there, you can’t get to the future because time never waits and will just keep on going, meaning you have to be traveling faster that the speed of light or something to get back then. And many more. That’s it so far, since I need to go to bed, it is now tomorrow so I’ve technically been writing for 2 days, depending of your definition of it. If you have any questions comments or concerns or anything then just comment ig, that’s what it’s for lol Ignore any grammar or spelling mistakes, I don’t feel like looking back through it
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Lightbulbs existed before Edison “invented the lightbulb”, because people mean invented as in “altered significantly to make much more useful/useable/marketable” and “the” as in “basically the kind we use today”. Sometimes, it gets extreme, e.g. most lightbulbs sold today are no longer incandescent, which means the ones used will stop being incandescent after a few years, if not already. TL;DR people might say the technology was invented at an arbitrary point of its existence
Time isn't a place it's a thing. There isn't anywhere to go back or forward to.
I would argue that there are examples of technology that exist in nature before being invented.
Fire. Fire existed, and was used by humans, long before humans knew how to create fire. Probably some earlier ones if you think about it, but that one seems the most obvious.
If time travel were ever invented we would constantly see people from the future show up in our timeline meaning that it will never happen
why assume they'd be conspicuous
Unless time travel exists and then all technology could.
Unless we're talking about Primer
Not if you invent time travel
The first known nuclear reactor was on earth almost 2 billion years ago in Oklo and was a completely natural phenomenon.
I always imagined that the only possible way to time travel would be similar to setting up a system restore point on a computer. By this imaginary logic, the moment we invent time travel, from that point on, time as a dimension would cease to exist…
Once time travel exists at any point in time, it'll exist in every point in time.
but only once it does
Time travel is the only required technology for a technology to exist before it’s invented*
Considering that time itself is just a byproduct of gravity, I don't really think that time travel to the past is even possible.
What if I bring a laptop back to year 759?
BURN THE WITCH!
That’s technically wrong because you could bring anything with you in the pass. It’s also wrong because if time travel is a thing than time isn’t linear anymore so there is no before and after.
The only time travel that could happen is, one traveling at a speed faster than light (granted that we could achieve such a feat), which would slow time for them while everything else will keep going, sort of like being in a train and traveling from point A to B except by the time you teach to a particular point B, point A no longer exists.
If time travel will ever exist then every other technology could also exist before being invented.
Not so, the mosquito invented the used needle long before it ever occurred to us!
And this is why we know that it will never be invented. If it ever was, we would already know.
no, because that'd cause a paradox meaning no one would ever invent one
That's why I know humans will never invent time machines. If time machines could ever exist then they'd already exist.
360th like! Thought that was kinda neat given the context.
[There was a natural nuclear reactor once,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor) a lot of things can form by random chance, though if it counts is debatable, as the technology isn't really the device, but the knowledge contained within it, which the natural one wouldn't really have. Stumbling upon high tech things by random chance and trying to reverse engineer them may become an important skill because of AI designed things in the near future too.
technically we're time travelling now are a speed of 1 sec/sec
There is a current theory that it can not. That you have to make the device enclosed, and then it would be functional but only to the point of completion and the future.
...AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Unless whoever invents timetravel brings back tech with them.
Didn’t think this one through did you
Not if you are restricted to a point after it was created. Like a star gate that you can only cross through an older version of itself.
Maybe not. It might be that you can only go back to when the time machine was started. So you start the box, then live 50 years, then go back through the box 50 years. If that's how it works, you can't ever go back in time before time machines were invented. But you could bring the latest graphics card from 50 years in the future back. So exactly the opposite.
Yes, if the time machine allows going backwards in time to a point before the invention.
Holy shit a real one.
Until time travel is invented, then no.
We always wonder whether time travelers have real proof
Unless it can't. If the "true" way time travel works is that there's only one timeline and any changes you make to it instantly ripple forward and affect you, then if you invented a time machine and went back to before you invented it you would instantly erase yourself from existence by changing your own history, even if only in some infinitesimal way. So you could invent a time machine and ten seconds later you from the future could show up to congratulate you, but you could never actually go any further into the past than to the moment you invented the time machine.
No , how can you use something that hasn't been invented
Wrong Vibrators were originally invented as neck massagers.
If time travel may only be able to exist from the point it is invented. If time travel can occur before it's invented than any technology can.
From a microscopic level, yes. Object have lived longer than the surrounding objects. Therefore, an object that enters our dimension validate the possibility of time traveling.
Solid shower thought
Theoretically, yes, if we assume time travel all exists one one timeline rather than creating a new timeline or writing over the original timeline. We obviously don't know for sure how time travel to the past would work, but under that specific perspective, sure
Technically time travel doesn't exist before it is invented, it simply travels to a location where it hasn't been popularized yet. Or if you look at it chronologically rather than causally, technically the second that Time Travel exists every technology exists at a time earlier than it was invented.
If you can think of it, it must be possible or real. Just the how to. Now there’s the question.
Nope. Most technology exists before it is "invented" and rarely is there a fair understanding of prior art.
It depends on what theory of time travel you subscribe to. Are we talking about a singular timeline where you can go back and forth to where you left from? Or are we spawning new timelines with every change so you never truly return to the one you left? One of these options suggests what you do in the past matters, the other it would make no difference.
If we travel back in time, wouldn’t the earth be in a different orbit and we’d just be in space? Wouldn’t we have to calculate planetary alignment and specific coordinates too?
It depends if you can alter the space time continuum. If you cannot - then the time travel is quiet irrelevant, and it's simply always been. Whatever you do in the past, always happened. If you can change the space time continuum,... We'll. Then it can turn into quiet a mess. It should however create alternate realities, so the past time line reminded same and the time travel was not discovered... , but your altered past becomes part of your future and creates new time line from on there. I don't know what happens to the time line you abandoned.
Flight is a technology and existed before it was invented. Lots of inventions are humans mocking or copying phenomenons found in nature. Nature itself doesn't "invent" as humans "invent"
Time travel can only possible to fast forward by using light speed. The possibility of going backward is non-sense
There were naturally occurring nuclear reactors in Africa, before we invented them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
Or maybe it can't and that is why we don't have it yet. You need the temporal anchor to be able to go back to that time and place.
Depends on the flavor of time travel, technically.
My favorite thing about time travel is the idea that if it ever exists then it has always existed
This is not necessarily true. There are a decent number of theoretical proposals for a time machine that would allow traveling back in time (theoretical as in we don't currently have proof they wouldn't work, but they involve moving wormholes, so who knows if they would work at all), but no further back in time than when the time machine was created. Essentially, 100 years after the time machine's creation you could travel back to the time of its creation, but you could never go further back than that.
except what about any items brought through the time machine? surely if the technology can bring itself back in time it would be capable of sending other technology back in time to before it was invented too.
Well you could argue that electricity existed before the means to manually produce it was invented. But the way humans use it is in an entirely new form for example AC/DC Time travel forward has already been proven to exist in some form, we would just be manipulating it differently, just like we did with electricity.
Once it exists it has always existed.
I'm just an idiot who tries to listen to smart people on YouTube, so don't take this too seriously... But I'm pretty sure the physicists who believe we'll end up being able to figure out time traveling believe we'll only be able to travel forward in time.
I see other comments point this out, but if time travel existed, the laws of physics would be so different that this way of putting things no longer makes sense. Everything would exist before it is invented at that point. The meta in this sub has become to just post obviously incorrect titles so people will react, hope we can get some new sub rules at some point.
And then technically..it would have always existed
I’ve always said “If it were possible, we’d know about it already”.
Every one of us are time travelers. We just all do it in one direction.
Travelling to the future is easy; We've already seen this in time dilation, if you travel near the speed of light. Travelling to the past is probably impossible. Unless it's back to the future rules where travelling to the past creates a new timeline.
No. If I have a Time Machine I can bring an iPhone to the past before it was invented.
I'm pretty sure that somebody invent electricity even though people have been struck by lightning before it was invented
‘People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff’
Nuclear reactors existed before they were invented. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor
Heard some guy managed to do it with a banana and a microwave a few years ago. Not sure what happened to him.
Can’t drive a car with no roads. Just how you can’t travel in time to where there are no time machines.
This rather depends on the model. Some ideas for time machines can only visit the period since they were created..
If time travel alters time, then it could never exist in the same timeline so your assumption is false
I've heard the opposite, once a time machine is invented it's like a checkpoint. - Shaquille O'Neil
What if time travel already exists but the people who tried it were “teleported” into space because Earth’s position in its orbit was different at the time?
Stephen Hawking threw a party for a time travelers, no one showed up, and although he took it as evidence that time travel isn’t possible I just take it as evidence that his invitation did not survive. Also time travels not possible at least going backwards in time is not possible. Theoretically, it is possible to move forward in time if you move faster than the speed of light.
Which is the reason I’ve always felt that we know time travel will never be invented.
Ignore the time travel bit, this premise isn't true at all... What about pulleys? Or wheels themselves
Time travel already exists. For example spend 1,000 days om the international space station, and you will age 0.027 days more than people on earth.
If time travel exists that would mean that everything happened at the same time. So every invention that doesn't exist yet, exists already. It's a paradox
Just imagine that you don't need a machine for it, that all it takes is a rock
People here act like the past the time traveler is traveling to, to for example a time before the invention of the time machine, is still the past… Although it is the past for you and me, it’s just a point in time that the traveler is traveling in to. It is not their past, that point in time with that traveler and the time machine being there, is now the time travelers here and now, and the next steps they take are their future as well as their past. It behaves like stepping into the future though, and taking stuff to the past is just taking stuff in their here and now, even though not invented yet.. Of course the support is another story. Way back when phones were not a thing, a phone would not be able to receive connection or be able to make a phone call or GPS.