Here's my problem with time travel as a plot device...
...jump in your time machine. Punch in your time coordinates. Hit the big red button. Congratulations, you've emerged from the time stream in the black void of space.
The Earth is moving around the Sun. The Sun is lollygagging around the milky way galaxy. The milky way galaxy is moving in relation to Andromeda, 2 dozen other galaxies, and the expansion of space itself.
There is literally no chance you're going to pop out of the time stream cleanly to kill Hitler or stop the sacking of the library of Alexandria. You're going to be sucking vacuum in the cold void of space.
And then there's the issue of returning to somewhere that hasn't happened yet.
You could wave that away by saying that because of how closely time and gravity are related time travel is still anchored to earth.
Not if you actually believe in the conservation of angular momentum. Believe me, I've thought about this a lot. Even the earth itself is rotating. Even if you were working some tied to Terra angle, the odds of you not popping out in the middle of an ocean without a boat or in the middle of a mountain range, or hundreds of feet above the planet in relation to where you left are extraordinarily remote. You'd actually have to calculate your precise location in space and time, as well as that of your destination when going backwards and there's still the issue of where you're aiming for not having happened yet if you're going forward, even if "forward" is the present you left from.
Time travel is still a mess as a plot device no matter how you handwave it.
idk, space and time are curved so you just need to time-travel sideways >_>
In 4/19/25 dimensions with your primitive 3d brain that hasn't even figured out what dark matter is.
Yeah, good luck with that.
If you were smart enough to create a time machine, hopefully, you'd be smart enough to put the coordinates of where you wanted to land when you go back. NASA can help. Or it could depend on how far from the future you are...
TheCyborgNinja posted...
Snake posted...
You'd cause a paradox if you tried to change anything since once it's been changed your past changes as well. So preventing a death because someone died in the past is impossible to accomplish because if they stay alive you won't go back and prevent their death in the first place.
We don't know though. The only logical explanation is for a tangent universe to be created, so you're just missing from your old one and can never return. You created a divergence. A paradox would in essence be impossible because if you undid your own existence you couldn't undo your own existence.
I agree. The paradox would only work if you tried to go back. But now you're created a different universe. That being said, I think it depends on how far back you go. You could fuck a lot of shit up... and you'll basically have to live there now unless you have a time machine that goes with you so you can either try again or stop yourself from changing anything.
Either way, I would most likely never go back and change anything. I like my life the way it is. And changing even the smallest thing in my past would change who I am today... ---
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