Time travel direction?

[Maets]

If you had a time machine (steam powered or otherwise):     
Would you want to travel into the future or the past?
What if it was a one way trip?

[Dr Fidelius]

Sideways, through all the myriad variations of alternity. Most of them sideslip anyway into a fictional phase of the multiverse when the change-winds blow.

[dman762000]

Brings up quantum mechanics and the multiverse theory. I personally do not believe in the grandfather paradox as any change to the past would create an alternate reality and the time traveler would be outside the timestream when traveling. This means that traveling to the past and making a change would have no effect on the traveler only the reality he/she would be traveling to when returning to his/her proper timeframe. This means that if you killed your grandfather in the past, when you return to "the present" noone on earth would know you, there would be no record of your existance in any shape form or fashion. Really it would be the ultimate way to escape from "the grid" or "the system".

Now having said all that, I would go to the past with a return. Few things I would like to change right at this moment.

If there was no return? Still the past. My progeny would rule this universe by now.

[pakled]

Ah, Sliders... Sideways in time...could be interesting.

[akumabito]

Curiosity would make me head to the future. Human nature (in effect the love of wealth and power) would make me head to the past. With a proper selection of books, I would own the past, lol..

[chicar]

I will take residence in the early 19th century. Thank to a couple of how-to guides, i will ''invent'' technologys with the clear intention to make the industrial revolution take a greener path. I will live there just until my old age when i will return to see the results of my ''corrections''.

[Captain Shipton Bellinger]

I make fairly regular trips to the past. Great-Great-Grandfather has, so far, apparently survived all of my practical experiments in temporal paradox creation, although I seem to be becoming a little more transparent after each such experiment.

As for the question of a single or return journey; the past is a jolly place to visit, but I would not wish to live there.

Strangely, my Chrono-Displacement Apparatus only allows me to travel to earlier times. I have yet to resolve whether this is a limitation of my particular method of chrono-displacement, or if there is an underlying universal principle involved. The more believable of my postulations have tended toward philosophical, rather than scientific, explanations.  I am aware of Wells' reports of displacement to future times but suspect the chap may have been 'exaggerating for narrative effect'. It would be most interesting to hear of others' experiences in this regard.

[bicyclebuilder]

Curiosity would make me head to the future. Human nature (in effect the love of wealth and power) would make me head to the past. With a proper selection of books, I would own the past, lol..

Me to. And it should be lole (laughing out loud evil) moohahahaha, MOOOOhahaha. #puts pinky finger on the side of his mouth#

[dman762000]

The only problem with traveling to the future is that it hasn't happened yet. Since it hasn't happened yet the multiversal spread is so wide that there is no way to pinpoint exactly what future you would travel to. If you travel to a future where ape-men rule the world then return to the "present" the simple knowledge of that possible future would cause changes in the time stream so that "future" may not exist. Which is why I haven't purchased any stocks that I read about the last time I was in the future. If I buy them, then I have changed their value and therefore changed which ones will be valuable in the future, seems to be the same with the sporting events I have tried to bet on. My putting a wager on them seems to change who wins.

[Maets]

Of course we are all moving into the future, without a return one clock tick at a time.  It is possible to make a jump into the future with the high speed (near light speed) trip or maybe the freeze your head and wake up someday?

[Dr Fidelius]

With my luck, frozen heads will be the main course at the fancy dinners hosted by sentient lobsters in the future.  And if I upload my consciousness to a machine, the lobsters will tap my power source, use my chips as jewelry and trade-tokens and I'll be off line before I know it. No thanks, I'll continue to try to see the future the old-fashioned way -- by not dying.

Give Me Immortality. or Give Me Death!

[pakled]

I plan to achieve immortality by not dying - Woody Allen

That being said, and no matter who pays for it or how it works, I am getting to the age where I don't want to deal with the 4 humors, laudatory p*s, and lack of sanitation...or people heating shot glasses to put on my back...give me modern or even future-medicine...

[Damnd of Hell]

If one moves backward in time, and stops at any given frame of time or era; one would not be returning to their original time.  Since now the time line has been changed; or bifurcated.  Like splitting an atom, you would have created another time line.

[dman762000]

Yeah, pretty much what I said.

[Maets]

Is there a difference between?
A: Traveling to the future, returning, taking advantage of what you saw
or
B: Traveling to the past, making a change, returning to the present

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Besides the fact that either is probably impossible.

[Atterton]

Option B is a lot harder to control.

[bicyclebuilder]

Perhaps a safe alternative is a machine that can look back in time, using something that can pick up vibrations stored in all materials. For instance, a tree holds information about the enviroment in it's Growth rings. A fire, a drouth, floods, cold weather, hot weather. If, with the naked eye you can see this information, what would a machine see or hear?
Now, we can "travel back in time" using carbon dating, DNA mapping, gathering artifacts and man made structures. What can we see or hear when we would use all this info we've gathered, plus some more soon to be discovered technology?
I think time travel would be something like that. Archeology.

@Maets: I believe: "same difference" is the expression.
Next open question? Why would you travel back or forward in time?

[Dr Fidelius]

Next open question? Why would you travel back or forward in time?

Why?  For survival.
The rare Cavor's Intermittant Antelope of sub-saharan Africa has the natural ability to time-shift forward by about one-half second.  To an observer they seem to disappear for that half-second.  They don't have conscious control of the time-shifting, but use it by instinctual reflex when attacked by a leopard, causing the big cat to miss its lunge more often than not.
We have not been able to locate which organ or system allows this ability, and I hope our biological associates are able to work it out before all specimens are hunted out.  It would be a shame if this unique ungulate were to become extinct before we wrested its secrets from it.

[Maets]

Next open question? Why would you travel back or forward in time?

I would gladly take a jump into the future, without a return needed.  50 years or 100 years, to see what it is like.  I am quite confident that things will be greater and grander.   Look at what has happened in the last 50 to 100 years.  I would also like to know what happens to my children and what if anything I made in the last 21 years is still in use and how is it regarded.  Creating art is one way of taking a jump to a future time.  I won't be there, but some of my work will be.

[Capt. Dirigible]

Step 1. Visit a shop that sells old coins/bank notes and purchase about £100 of bank notes from the 60's.

Step 2.  Travel back in time armed with the results of The Grand National, The Derby, The St Ledger, The Irish Derby etc.

Step 3. Bet on the winners using the period cash.

Step 4. Bank said winnings in a reputable high street bank account with high interest rates.

Step 5. Return to present and empty account.


This is known as the 'Biff Tannen Method'

[bicyclebuilder]

plan A: Send a buddy back in time to warn your future mom, from a robot that is going to kill her.
coincidentally, your buddy falls in love with your mom and he's now your dad.
Unfortunately, your dad dies trying to terminate the robot from the future.

plan B: let a robot, that supposed to kill you and your mother in the past, go back in time to protect you from another robot that is programmed to kill you. In order to not leave any traces, terminate both robots.

plan c: try to stop a huge computer virus that is going to distroy the planet. Send back again the first robot to help you.


This is known as the 'John Connor Method'
All three plans didn't exactly work out the way they were planned.

[SeVeNeVeS]

John Connor: "The future's not set....... There's no fate, but what we make for ourselves"

~SeVeN~

[bicyclebuilder]

Hang on, something is not right with plan A. How can someone go back in time and get killed in the past? That would mean he wasn't send back, because he wasn't alive in the present... ehr, future.

[SeVeNeVeS]

Hang on, something is not right with plan A. How can someone go back in time and get killed in the past? That would mean he wasn't send back, because he wasn't alive in the present... ehr, future.

In the present (his past) he hasnt been born yet......So in the future he will still be born and so be able to be sent back into the past to die.........I think......Is that right???

~SeVeN~

[bicyclebuilder]

Hang on, something is not right with plan A. How can someone go back in time and get killed in the past? That would mean he wasn't send back, because he wasn't alive in the present... ehr, future.

In the present (his past) he hasnt been born yet......So in the future he will still be born and so be able to be sent back into the past to die.........I think......Is that right???

~SeVeN~

But how can he send back his father if he wasn't born? Unless the dad was already send back.      
............I'll ask Arnold Schwartzenegger next time I see him.