Polluting The Time Line?

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by Jimbee68, May 30, 2016.

  1. Jimbee68

    Jimbee68 Member

    Messages:
    1,281
    Likes Received:
    499
    Why do they always say you mustn't change the future, in sci-fi shows at least? I did here professor Stephen Hawking say something similar once. So I assume there is some scientific basis to it. But why?

    I would think under certain circumstances, NOT changing the past would be the really unethical choice.

    As I already alluded to in a previous post, if you could prevent the Nazi holocaust, by killing baby Hitler, say, I think you should.

    Of course, though, for all we know, Hitler and WWII were the lesser of two evils. Maybe the fact they happened averted an even worse disaster.

    What do the rest of you think? And while I am asking it, where are all the time historians from the future? Surely they would have a thing or two to tell us even now. No?

    :) :) :)
     
    1 person likes this.
  2. SpacemanSpiff

    SpacemanSpiff Visitor

    112263 was a great little miniseries...or book if you prefer reading

    i like the way they did the parts about time getting mad and fighting back/resisting
     
  3. Lynnbrown

    Lynnbrown Firecracker

    Messages:
    8,315
    Likes Received:
    3,757
    I read the book and that is exactly what I thought of after read the OP.

    Even though there have been horrific events in the past, it is possible that with those events changed/stopped something even worse could/would happen...is what I got out of that, and also what I tend to believe.
     
  4. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

    Messages:
    50,601
    Likes Received:
    38,892
    More than likely the laws of physics will not allow you to make any changes to the past, but if it does it will renormalize by creating a branch to a parallel universe allowing the change or changes to take place.

    In reality all you did was to create an alternate past, but in your universe nothing has changed. Hitler still killed six million Jews, and the Titanic still hit an iceberg and sank in the cold waters of the Atlantic.


    Hotwater
     
  5. Vanilla Gorilla

    Vanilla Gorilla Go Ape

    Messages:
    30,289
    Likes Received:
    8,560
    Even if we stick to a single universe theory and went back to try to "change" the past. Ship builders around the same time would still be overconfident and it would be another big passenger liner hitting something else and sinking, would just have a different name.

    The Kill baby Hitler example - would have just been someone else instead of Hitler.
     
  6. I'minmyunderwear

    I'minmyunderwear Newbie

    Messages:
    59
    Likes Received:
    9,110
    you kill baby hitler, and aaron silverstein is never killed in the holocaust. aaron then meets your grandma, and they fall quickly in love, marry, and have children. your grandpa meets grandma 2 years later, but he sees the wedding ring and just gives her a polite "howdy ma'am" and moves on. so, you are never born, and thus you can't invent the time machine that you took back in time to kill baby hitler. so baby hitler grows up and starts WWII, killing aaron silverstein in the process. then you invent the time machine and go back and kill baby hitler. it just creates kind of a stupid paradox, and eventually time and space will explode because of the confusion caused by your changing the present.
     
  7. I believe that our consciousness and actions in the now retroactively effect the past. We're already in the past, as far as the locality of our consciousness goes. But I also think the past and the future are fixed. We maintain the past as it is, though we directly effect it.

    I see no reason to posit that anything would exist if the block of the universe were any different, so I wouldn't go back in time and stop the Nazis even if I could. I think if you could physically travel back in time and make a change that altered the future, everything would implode upon itself into a realm where there is no set future, and that's all that would happen. A new future wouldn't take form. It would just become true that no set future exists.
     
  8. guerillabedlam

    guerillabedlam _|=|-|=|_

    Messages:
    29,419
    Likes Received:
    6,296
    I think the general idea in Sci-Fi regarding not going back in time to alter events to change the future is that it will cause something along the lines of the butterfly effect to occur, where seemingly minute changes to the past, will alter unaccounted variables enough to accumulate into something much grander and the future as they know it will not occur.

    I'd be interested in the Hawking reasoning to this if you could find it, I've read some stuff regarding wormholes here and there but nothing that's really caught my attention, it seems like most of the science regarding these concepts border the realm of hypothetical possibility allotted by the laws of physics, to pure conjecture but in any case, I don't think it's anywhere close to being realized.
     
  9. hotwater

    hotwater Senior Member Lifetime Supporter

    Messages:
    50,601
    Likes Received:
    38,892
    This is somewhat related to time travel

    In December of 2000 Michael “Mucko” McDermott an employee at Edgewater Technologies in Wakefield, Massachusetts entered the building with an AK-47 assault rifle and a 12-gauge shotgun and killed seven of his fellow employee’s in the belief they were Nazis.

    He claimed he momentarily traveled back in time and killed Hitler and his 6 top lieutenants to prevent the holocaust.

    He was ultimately found guilty, but If he really did travel back in time to 1939.......................


    Michael “Mucko” McDermott’s Top Ten Successful Timeline Revisions


    10) The lovely resort community of Auschwitz-Birkenau

    9) Josef Mengele’s complete guide to child rearing

    8) The Heinrich Himmler Institute for Advanced Hebrew Studies

    7) I.G. Farben Big n’ Tall Stores

    6) NY Times Best Seller ‘The Fox & the Hare’ by Erwin Rommel

    5) Zyklon-B the Dentists choice

    4) Schindler’s List of blue chip stocks

    3) The Berlin Wall at checkpoint Schwartz

    2) Jerusalem’s four-time incumbent Mayor Yasser Arafat

    1) President of the United States – Rodney Dangerfield


    Hotwater
     
  10. Bilby

    Bilby Lifetime Supporter and Freerangertarian Super Moderator

    Messages:
    5,625
    Likes Received:
    1,781
    In the original Star Trek series there was an episode that raised this very question . It was the one with Joan Collins.
     
  11. relaxxx

    relaxxx Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,454
    Likes Received:
    722
    Any sci-fi with a time travel plot is far more fiction than science. The common scenario is if you mess up the past involving your parents procreation, then you don't exist to go to the past and mess up your parents... Classic time traveler paradox.
     
  12. saloni123

    saloni123 Members

    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    As we have seen that our environment is keeps on changing. No one can deny this. If there occurs environment changes, that result in increasing of problems in our surrounding. With a immense entry of natural disasters, warming and cooling periods, different kinds of weather patterns and much more, so people should to be aware of what kind of environmental problems our planet is facing.
    [SIZE=11pt]Environment destruction is often caused by humans is a global problem nowadays, and this is a becoming a big problem in today’s world. By the year 2050, it is expected that the global human population is grow by 2 billion people, and thereby reaching a level of 9.6 billion people (Living Blue Planet [/SIZE]As we have seen that our environment is keeps on changing. No one can deny this. If there occurs environment changes, that result in increasing of problems in our surrounding. With a immense entry of natural disasters, warming and cooling periods, different kinds of weather patterns and much more, so people should to be aware of what kind of environmental problems our planet is facing.
    [SIZE=11pt]Environment destruction is often caused by humans is a global problem nowadays, and this is a becoming a big problem in today’s world. By the year 2050, it is expected that the global human population is grow by 2 billion people, and thereby reaching a level of 9.6 billion people.[/SIZE]

    [SIZE=11pt]http://www.environmentalaffairs.tk/ep.html[/SIZE]
     

Share This Page

  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
    Dismiss Notice