Time Travel

[VikingGirlTBird]

A couple weeks ago I read the best book ever. It was called "Out of Time" by Cliff Ball. The story rotates around the premise of time travel and constantly talks about something called the grandfather paradox. If time travel were real where would you go?

If I had a time machine and could travel back in history, the historical time periods I would really love to visit are mostly from Prehistory to the Sixteenth Century. The Historical time periods I would really love to visit are Prehistory, The Ancient Celtic Age, The Ancient Germanic Tribal Age, The Viking Age, The Northern and Western European Middle Ages, The Tudor Age, The Elizabethan Age, Northern and Western Europe during the Sixteenth Century, Early Colonial Days during the sixteenth century and the seventeenth century in America, The American Revolutionary War, and the American Civil War. Also, if I had a time machine, I would also travel all through out history and into the future as well.

 

[pointman7a]

You mean when? I've always said I was born 100 years too late.

Probably the mid to late 1800's.

This time period was horrible. poverty, disease, slavery, terrible living conditions,bad teeth, ignorance on medicine and practice, bad food, bad water, pollution in rivers and air, child sweat shops, venereal disease, crime and bad cops and politics.
I thank God we live today in America and have a job.
If I traveled back I prefer just to be an observer.

 

[keith99]

This time period was horrible. poverty, disease, slavery, terrible living conditions,bad teeth, ignorance on medicine and practice, bad food, bad water, pollution in rivers and air, child sweat shops, venereal disease, crime and bad cops and politics.
I thank God we live today in America and have a job.
If I traveled back I prefer just to be an observer.

There are not many parts of History that would be nice to live, especially if one went back to the equivalent social class. Any of the good, noble and clean (more or less) situations were one limited to the top 1%.

 

[Peripatetic]

I can't seem to get away from time travel lately. I can think of at least these novels that I've read in the past year or so that involve time travel of some sort:

The Prodigal Hour (Entrekin)
11/22/63 (King)
Pathfinder (Card)
The Map of Time (Palma)
The Timekeeper (Albom)

All of them were worthy in their own ways, though not the best I've read.

 

[Shstrang98]

I would like to see who, or what is living on earth 10k or even 100k years from now. Would they be humans? Maybe extraterrestrials that moved in after we're extinct? Mad how we managed to become extinct. Disease, alien invasion or maybe self destruction.

Also I'd like to see and talk to my dad with me as an adult with the adult perspective on life. I was 18 when my dad died but I was hardly an "adult."

 

[keith99]

I would like to see who, or what is living on earth 10k or even 100k years from now. Would they be humans? Maybe extraterrestrials that moved in after we're extinct? Mad how we managed to become extinct. Disease, alien invasion or maybe self destruction.

Also I'd like to see and talk to my dad with me as an adult with the adult perspective on life. I was 18 when my dad died but I was hardly an "adult."

An interesting reason to desire time travel. It reminds me of one of Heinlein's earliest stories (one that reading would be of benefit to many here). The basic premise is Dr. Pinero invents a machine that can determine the time of your death. It is described as reading the echoes off a tunnel through time that is you.

So what reminded me of this? One man asks fro the time of his birth! He was a foundling and wanted to know.

Why should others read it? Heinlein includes a rather painless lecture/example of how the scientific method should work, which is entwined with an example what is NOT the scientific method.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

A couple weeks ago I read the best book ever. It was called "Out of Time" by Cliff Ball. The story rotates around the premise of time travel and constantly talks about something called the grandfather paradox. If time travel were real where would you go?

I've sort of a time story outline. People invent a time machine and decide to go back in time to see Jesus. They prepare by trying to learn Greek well enough to converse with the locals. They try to interview Jesus and Jesus refuses to see them. They go back to the current time and find that scripture has been added to the bible as they remembered it . . . John 12:20-32.

John 12:20-21
20 Now there were some Greeks among those who were going up to worship at the feast;

21 these then came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and began to ask him, saying, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."

And so forth.

 

[LizaMarie]

I wonder if StarGate series showed any time travel episodes.
Most of the series was dimension travel and portals to exceedingly distant planets

Yep all three of the Stargate shows had several that featured time travel
SG1 had 1969
Atlantis had "the Last Man"
just to name a couple of examples.
there were quite a few more just can't remember all of them.

 

[alsughasoughaiuyfygh]

.

 

[Dave-W]

One of the visits I would like to make would be to early 1600s England, France and Germany. I would love to hear how the people that wrote Viol music actually played the instruments and what kind of sound they strove for. To hear Christopher Simpson play the Division Viol (and not just read about it) To hear the court Viols play Henry VIII's Fantasias. (they would have still been in circulation) Or maybe go back a century earlier and hear the King play them himself.

 

[Luna Meyer]

I'd go to the future!

 

[dms1972]

I don't believe its possible, though it is a fascinating topic.

 

[Wgw]

One aspect that Star Trek failed to coherently address is time travel, which is a side effect of FTL. If one has warp drive, one can use it at will in a temporally inconsistent manner, since warp drive requires we reject causality. A proper space opera should be set in a universe littered with the apparently uncreated relics of aborted timelines, artifacts of causality violation.

 

[Dirk1540]

Depends how long the trip is! If the trip is an hour I'd go back in time to check out that fight between Samson and the 1,000 Philistines...of course my answer changes drastically if it means I'm staying there for life

 

[dms1972]

One aspect that Star Trek failed to coherently address is time travel, which is a side effect of FTL.

That's because Captain Kirk nobbled the transwarp drive on the Excelsior?? in Star Trek 3 - I guess he must have kept the bits.

 

[dms1972]

Depends how long the trip is! If the trip is an hour I'd go back in time to check out that fight between Samson and the 1,000 Philistines...of course my answer changes drastically if it means I'm staying there for life

Not sure how long it would take, might depend on whether you have a mechanical counter to count back the years.

The question of what to put on the radio while time travelling?

 

[Wgw]

That's because Captain Kirk nobbled the transwarp drive on the Excelsior?? in Star Trek 3 - I guess he must have kept the bits.

Transwarp itself was never really satisfactorily explained.

 

[Wgw]

Not sure how long it would take, might depend on whether you have a mechanical counter to count back the years.

The question of what to put on the radio while time travelling?

Well, if we work on the basis of some sort of FTL, subjective travel time might well observe some form of semi-deterministic course. However, it might be possible to nest recursive time machines to allow one to sode step this.

 

[dms1972]

Well, if we work on the basis of some sort of FTL..."

It's not a problem needing solved. The past cannot be changed.

 

[Dave-W]

People always forget that going back in time does not include some magic translator.

Make a side trip to the 24th century and borrow Captain Pickard's Universal Translator....