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If time travel was ever possible, then why hasn't someone from the future come back to visit us?
March 8, 2009 - 11:37am
I've been dreaming about going back to the early 1960s and patching things up with one of my first loves, and then later buying some MicroSoft stock, and enjoying the Easy Life. 
However, that got me thinking - if time travel ever became possible, then why hasn't someone from the future come back to warn us of impending catastrophe, in an effort to avoid mass loss of life or environmental disaster? 
Would it even be ethical? A time traveller would in effect end up playing God and manipulating things and generally just messing up the natural evolution of things.
If time travel was possible, but yet people from our future have never returned to us, maybe it means this going to be a damn hard recession, and maybe climate change will indeed cause our branch in the tree of species to fall off. maybe an astroid is about to hit.
Basically we can assume humans get a fail, no?
I'll let you know yesterday.
What makes you think we haven't?
That's an interesting idea. That the future has no future, that all things come to a sudden end. I'm picturing in my mind a future time traveller who doesn't realize that the future has an end date, and he sets his time machine to go further than the earth exists - does he simply disappear, or land in exisential limbo?
You're thinking of Journeyman, a great series that was killed by the writers' strike.
There's also been time travel in this season's Lost.
According to theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, it could be possible to travel to parallel universes where, say, your teenaged mother is alive ie. "Back to the Future" sci-fi movies. But she really wouldnt be your mother, she would be future mother of another version of you. Travel at Star Trek warp speed is also possible on paper. The only hitch is that you would probably need the power of the sun to achieve it. And our civilization isnt advanced enough for that. Maybe in a few centuries.
Good point Catchfire.
If time travel were possible, in the way that theoretical physicists postulate it, it would be very limited in terms of setting target dates and locations--like it might be possible if one were to find orbiting blackholes ("wormholes"). But the idea of travelling forward or backward in time and arriving at the same physical location is a bit off because the earth is always moving.
Imagine that our universe is like a fish pond. We can swim left and right, down and up. But light shines only inside our world, which theoretical physicists and string theorists liken to an expanding(or contracting) soap bubble and possibly multiple bubbles. We cant see what's just above our heads and all around us. If black holes pull enormous amounts of matter and light into them, then is our universe the result of what's expelled out at other end? ie. a white hole? In school we were told everything that exists consists of atoms. Apparently that isnt true anymore. Everything we can see and observe is perhaps 5% of all that there is.
"This is it!" said the scientist. My time machine is finally ready!" He pressed the button the pressed He "!ready finally is machine time My. scientist the said "!it is This"
(A Jacques Sternberg short short story)
"What makes you think we haven't?"
Easy to find out... Did anyone unload a lot of stocks just before 9/11 or Fall 2007?
This is a little bit of time travel but I loved Quantum Leap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Leap_(TV_series)
Has anyone checked the hospital psychiatirc wards? Maybe there is someone there who really is from the future!
I know if I time travelled I would keep it to myself in the past. Maybe when they finally do "invent" time travel hundreds of people will step forward and say "Man, we have been waiting so long to tell you but we knew no one would believe us till now!".
I met a guy once who said he came from the future. It was an amusing conversation.
Hmm now that I think of it, he did say the global economy was going to tank. Hmmm.......
He may have simply been a sarcastic babbler at any point in their life ;)
Quantum Leap is the series I was thinking of - I don't recall seeing the series that M. Spector mentioned.
I was thinking exactly the same thing, because it would be such a fantastic thing. And, it would throw world society into complete chaos if it became common knowledge - there would be mass suspicion about time travellers cheating on lotteries and the stock markets, for instance (see my earlier comment about buying up MicroSoft stock...). There would probably be huge anger if time travellers did nothing to prevent (or warn about) catastrophies from occurring. But physicists tell us this kind of time travel is impossible, so the whole argument is moot.
"physicists tell us this kind of time travel is impossible, so the whole argument is moot"
Hmmm... at one point did they suddenly start trying to convey that message? (TWILIGHT ZONE theme)
List of TV series that include time travel
I kinda liked Sliders when it was on. The Terminator is a cult classic now. Arnie said he disliked that movie role and didnt think it would go over very well.
I looked through the "Is," but found no mention of "It's About Time," a TV show that was on for a brief time when I was kid. The show was about astronauts who break through a time barrier and end up living among cave men.
Opening Theme
I would attempt to contemplate that, but my head might explode
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY-03vYYAjA
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Teleportation, time travel and aliens - a vision of tomorrow today
Quantum theory is a surprisingly large part of modernizing economies, from lasers to computer/electronic components o MRI's. Many politicians think it's a gamble, but some also believe governments should be investing a lot more money in people and high technology.
So Let's have some Fun(link)