Time Travel Paradoxes

Time travel stories require a suspension of disbelief. There will always be paradoxes and logic problems because the concept is patently impossible even in the wildest theoretical imagining.

I agree.

There's no way to get around the obstacles of Time Travel Story Inconsistencies because it can't be done.

Well, you can probably travel to the future using Einstein's theories, but it would only seem like traveling to the future, because time compressed for you.

As far as going back in time is concerned. It obviously can't be done, because A. We're here in real time and what happened already happened and B. If you could go back in time someone from the future would have already visited.

Although the future hasn't happened yet.

Or maybe it has? But not according to my calculations. So, technically, maybe item B is not a reason to beleive that going back in time isn't possible, but item A is.

Although, one never knows know does one.

It's very confusing.

Thank you.

tourdeforce said:

Time travel stories require a suspension of disbelief. There will always be paradoxes and logic problems because the concept is patently impossible even in the wildest theoretical imagining.

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Michio Kaku would take issue with you on that one.

Thinking about time travel makes me dizzy. Thank you all for making my head spin.

If time travel is possible, we have no free will. If we have free will, then time travel is impossible.

or so that Hawkings guy says.

Two words. Worm Holes. It was three but I went back in time and edited it.

No..no...no

I cant believe a board full of creative people would ever believe the concept of anything being impossible. Flight was so called impossible at one time. Now we complain about ticket prices. Time travel has been done to death so in order to refresh it , a truly original rational concept must be thought up to make the film successful...And I will listen to no arguement that tells me that is impossible.

Funny

Its ironic, funny even, that I was listening to the Donnie Darko soundtrack while writing the above and didn't even realize it.

time travel is absolute possible theoretically. It's just application that lags.

To me the ultimate argument against it ever happening is that time travelers from future have not appeared. But maybe we just live in an undesirable temporal neighborhood.

Actually time travel is not only possible but technically acheivable.

A study showed that taking a plane flight from New York to LA in a supersonic jet will give the traveller a very minute and almost indiscernable fraction of a nano-second more time than those from thier departing place.

It's all about how fast we can get going.

As for free will. If time travel is possible then we can state that there are multiple realities at each path taken at any one moment because of free will.

But why are we talking about advanced theoretical physics in a screenwriting forum again? I must have missed that part and my time machine is broken.

I find time travel stories more believable than romance.

I mean, Jeez...if Westlife can get to number one, anything can happen...

Julie Worth said:

On a subatomic level, particles do travel back in time. They also appear out of nowhere and can exist in two places at once. All of these are seemingly impossible, but they happen.

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Some scientists liken this phenomena to the parallel worlds theory, and also as a get-out clause for the grandfather paradox. Once having travelled back in time and killed your grandfather, your actions won't affect the world you've just left, only the parallel world in which you've now found yourself.

And as they also theorise that there are an infinite number of parallel worlds... oh, we don't want to get into that... hurts my brain.

Heck, I paid two thousand Altairian dollars for my ticket to 2006 and this is all it is.

Oh, sorry, I'm not supposed to mention that.

Re. travellers from the future not being here therefore it's unlikely to be possible. How about, you can only travel back in time if you land at a receiving station. (Makes sense - planes need runways, trains appreciate platforms and stations, let alone the rails) Point is, we don't know how to build one yet, so no-one can arrive here. If we do work out how to build one - and actually build it - then we can stand back and watch as the future time travellers start turning up fast and furious....

G

Maybe, way way waaaaay in the future, it's not possible to travel to a point prior to time travel being invented. So, say it's brought about in 2007, no one from the year 3053 would be able to travel back to December 2006?

I could be onto something here...

Goldminer said:

Re. travellers from the future not being here therefore it's unlikely to be possible.
G

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According to certain quantum phsycists who, in theory, explained how time travel could be achieved without violating any of the laws of physics(one of them was used as a consultant in that Jodie Foster time travel movie), we will only be able to travel back to when the "machine" was built, no further. To achieve what they were proposing would require a staggering amount of energy and a technology far beyond ours. So if it ever does become possible, the travellers won't visit us. But perhaps our descendants will come to regard time travel as the norm, just as we do with the likes of space exploration. Perhaps talk of time travel in this age is akin to dreams of flight in ancient civilisations.

ETA: just noticed Scarletpeaches post. Exact same theory. Did you travel forward in time and see my post, and then go back in order to beat me to the punch?

xhouseboy said:

According to certain quantum phsycists who, in theory, explained how time travel could be achieved without violating any of the laws of physics(one of them was used as a consultant in that Jodie Foster time travel movie), we will only be able to travel back to when the "machine" was built, no further.

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That restriction isn't to avoid breaking any laws, just to explain why we're not covered up with time travelers. The only law that would be broken by time travel is the law of causality, and not even that in the many worlds theory.

Julie Worth said:

That restriction isn't to avoid breaking any laws, just to explain why we're not covered up with time travelers. The only law that would be broken by time travel is the law of causality, and not even that in the many worlds theory.

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I said that! No, wait, it was in my next post...damn you and your time travelling to make it look like you said it first.

That restriction isn't to avoid breaking any laws, just to explain why we're not covered up with time travelers. The only law that would be broken by time travel is the law of causality, and not even that in the many worlds theory.

I remember when I used to set my computer clock back a few days and send emails to people and then complain that they never read my emails. The date stamp on the emails would show it being from the past.

Does this count as time travel.