Time Machine?

[mike1515]

If you had a time machine were would you go and what would you do?

 

[Photios]

I really don't know, seeing as how anything would do, would already have been done.

 

[Ponderer]

Well it does rather depend upon whether you wanted to go back or forwards.

I think I would mostly be drawn to the idea of going forwards. The trouble with that of course is that:

If time machines had been invented then the people of the future would know about them and time travelers.

Arriving in the future would almost certainly give one at least a slight if not severe culture shock. Things are unlikely to be as we anticipate them, so you would need to procede with caution just in case you did not break some new law or social convention - for example a time traveler from the 1940s arriving in our time would think nothing of lighting up a cigarette inside a public building.

Therefore it would be very easy for the people of the future to recognise visitors from their past. They might look on them with either distain or amusement.

Going back into the past would present its own set of problems. Could you change history that of course has been a common theme of SciFi. The danger is that you might do that without intending it. What if you made your trip back into the past shortly after becoming infected with a dose of Flu. You might not yet be feeling sick and to a modern human population your disease might be a minor inconvenience. It would not be so clever however if you started a plague that wiped out most of the Roman Empire.

So maybe it would be safer to only visit the early past before human civilisation. That way your effects are less likely to be wide ranging. Mind you then again there is always a chance you might pick up some long since extinct microbial nasty and bring it back to our time where it could flourish.

These are just a few random thoughts to going along with.

Some years ago I heard a Radio Play which concerned a couple of guys being interviewed as to why they had blown up a time portal generator. They said they did it to collapse the tunnel into the past which another member of the project team had entered. They had discovered he was going back into the past to prevent the trial and execution of Jesus. To ensure success he had taken with him a machine gun and several thousand rounds of ammunition.

 

[BagelLord]

Personaly, I would destroy a time machine. As tempting as it would be to go back and see different things in history, there would also be the temptation to change things. Like to prevent JFK from being shot.

Who knows what consequences that would have on history

 

[todaydvd]

If really have a time machine... why no future people come to here??

I think it is not possible to create a time machine..

 

[mike1515]

Well it does rather depend upon whether you wanted to go back or forwards.

I think I would mostly be drawn to the idea of going forwards. The trouble with that of course is that:

If time machines had been invented then the people of the future would know about them and time travelers.

Arriving in the future would almost certainly give one at least a slight if not severe culture shock. Things are unlikely to be as we anticipate them, so you would need to procede with caution just in case you did not break some new law or social convention - for example a time traveler from the 1940s arriving in our time would think nothing of lighting up a cigarette inside a public building.

Therefore it would be very easy for the people of the future to recognise visitors from their past. They might look on them with either distain or amusement.

Going back into the past would present its own set of problems. Could you change history that of course has been a common theme of SciFi. The danger is that you might do that without intending it. What if you made your trip back into the past shortly after becoming infected with a dose of Flu. You might not yet be feeling sick and to a modern human population your disease might be a minor inconvenience. It would not be so clever however if you started a plague that wiped out most of the Roman Empire.

So maybe it would be safer to only visit the early past before human civilisation. That way your effects are less likely to be wide ranging. Mind you then again there is always a chance you might pick up some long since extinct microbial nasty and bring it back to our time where it could flourish.

These are just a few random thoughts to going along with.

Some years ago I heard a Radio Play which concerned a couple of guys being interviewed as to why they had blown up a time portal generator. They said they did it to collapse the tunnel into the past which another member of the project team had entered. They had discovered he was going back into the past to prevent the trial and execution of Jesus. To ensure success he had taken with him a machine gun and several thousand rounds of ammunition.

Thanks for the post i enjoyed reading it

 

[mike1515]

Personaly, I would destroy a time machine. As tempting as it would be to go back and see different things in history, there would also be the temptation to change things. Like to prevent JFK from being shot.

Who knows what consequences that would have on history

ya i agree

 

[mike1515]

If really have a time machine... why no future people come to here??

I think it is not possible to create a time machine..

Thats why its sci fi its about the fantasy of it who knows what god has planed in the future for us but its always fun to wonder thats what makes sci-fi great

 

[Ponderer]

Personaly, I would destroy a time machine. As tempting as it would be to go back and see different things in history, there would also be the temptation to change things. Like to prevent JFK from being shot.

Who knows what consequences that would have on history

Actually preventing the shooting of JFK might have had a fairly minor effect on the grander scheme of human history.

Though of course the "Red Dwarf" TV series did actually play with this very concept. After several failed attempts to put right the mess they had made of history they persuaded JFK that he would have a much greater historical legacy if he was assasinated so they took him back with their time drive so that he could shoot himself from the grassy knoll.

How ever you would have a much bigger influence on human history by say taking back some modern weapons to wipe out the Norman Army at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The ripples from that would have drastically altered NW European history - the English language today would be totally different and it is possible that the only European Languages spoken in North America would be French and Spanish.

Or what if you slipped back and poisoned Columbus before he had been able to win support for his first voyage across the atlantic. Might Europe have just remained a marginal collection of nations on the fringes of the Eurasian land mass and not the collection of competative empire building cultures that it became?

 

[Photios]

Again, the fantasy/sci-fi aspects aside, nothing could actually be changed, even if it were possible to go back in time. If you go back, historically speaking, you've already been there. Say tomorrow I hopped in a time machine, and tried to prevent the JFK assasination. Obviously, I fail, since he was already assasinated, and I had gone back in time. The only way any "changes" can be wrought is through some sort of parallel universe sort of thing.

 

[Ponderer]

Again, the fantasy/sci-fi aspects aside, nothing could actually be changed, even if it were possible to go back in time. If you go back, historically speaking, you've already been there. Say tomorrow I hopped in a time machine, and tried to prevent the JFK assasination. Obviously, I fail, since he was already assasinated, and I had gone back in time. The only way any "changes" can be wrought is through some sort of parallel universe sort of thing.

Well of course the classic time travel paradox that is often quoted is more basic than that.

What if you went back in time and murdered your own grandfather.

 

[Photios]

Again, you've obviously failed, since that time has already passed. If you were born, assuming that the plan was to kill him prior to the conception of your mom or dad, then something prevented you. There's no telling what it was. I could be you made friends with him, or you killed someone else by mistake and were arrested. It's really of no consequence. Your actions on a trip to the past would simply be part of history that never made it to the books. History would still be the same, since everything you would do in the past would already have been done.

 

[ApostolicRev]

What I would do is probably go back to when the Nation of Israel first came to existence as a people under Moses, so that I could see exactly what he taught, because that would put an end to much of the controversy between the christian churches today.

 

[Photios]

What I would do is probably go back to when the Nation of Israel first came to existence as a people under Moses, so that I could see exactly what he taught, because that would put an end to much of the controversy between the christian churches today.

Wouldn't the effort be somewhat in vain, if you didn't also visit the time of Christ's ministry to see what He taught, exactly? His interpretation of Moses would be a bit more relevant to Christianity at large.

 

[Ponderer]

Wouldn't the effort be somewhat in vain, if you didn't also visit the time of Christ's ministry to see what He taught, exactly? His interpretation of Moses would be a bit more relevant to Christianity at large.

I was thinking the same thing - If you were Jewish then just stopping with Moses would be good enough. But if you are a Christian then Christ's output is far more valuable than what Moses produced.

 

[NiteClerk]

Other than the obvious of spying on Jesus I would,
invent MicroSoft, Wal-Mart, Ikea, E-bay and Google.

Go far back in time & gather gold, then bury where my house is today.

Try to change the U.S. Constitution a little bit ... (hehe)

 

[Photios]

Try to change the U.S. Constitution a little bit ... (hehe)

Giving a miss to my earlier statements, I would only make it less ambiguous. That way, there'd be no question as to what is intended, and no worries of people lawyering things about.

 

[BobfromSales]

Since it's just fantasy I don't mind saying. I'd go to rural Texas in the 1800s and meet my ancestors just to see what they were like. Also perhaps to Israel during the time of Jesus to try to blend into the crowd at the sermon on the mount. Not speaking aramaic could be a problem though.