Woah. The premise of Quantum leap doesn't make any sense. A dude travels back in time to fix what went wrong in the past. But since it was in the past, wouldn't it have already have happened, and thus be already "fixed"? Therefore negating the purpose of time travel in the first place? And if he did do these things, wouldn't he be creating history, (and it would already have been documented anyhow)? The end result is that he traveled back in time to do whatever, but since whatever was already done, he didn't travel back into time to fix it. Time Travel is the Schrodinger's cat paradox of the Sci-Fi world.
You're forgetting the fact that if they incorporated all aspects of time travel theory there wouldn't have been a television show.
I don't watch that show...but I watched 'Back To The Future' and 'Butterfly Effect' and both of them showed that if you were to go back in time and change anything, it would change everything...so they would travel back in time again to try and change it again cause once they changed it the first time, it made things even worse... Confusing, ain't it? Kinda makes a little sense, though if you really think about it.. I'd like to travel back in time and just stay there, myself. I can't keep up with the world as it is today...technology is moving way too fast for me
The Butterfly Effect is based off of a real theory also, the movie just made it a little more popularized. Butterfly effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I was actually very interested in time travel for quite a few years. I don't support it in our ideological sense, as it would only bring problems. Though it would really push the boundaries of what we, as humans are capable of. The problem is that, with such capabilities we lose common sense of right and wrong. We forget when to stop.
Even if it were possible, (general relativity does allow it), and it has been done, it wouldn't impact the existing timeline/universe. Because if it did, then it would be creating a time paradox. (go back in time to kill Hitler to prevent the holocaust, but since the holocaust didn't happen, you didn't go back to kill Hitler, so the holocaust happened, so you went back in time to kill Hitler to stop the holocaust, (ad infinitum). If you DID go back in time to kill Hitler, (and succeeded), you would spawn a parallel universe where the holocaust did not happen, but the "future" you came from would remain unchanged, as you can still remember Hitler, and the holocaust is documented in text books from your time. Plus, you'd kind of have to go FTL to pull it off, and that's not physically possible, (at least in this universe), and even if it were, you'd have to have ∞+1 amount of energy to pull off. (more energy then is contained within the Universe).
If time travel were possible it would ruin every thing. whether u chose to tie up you shoe and miss the one you were supose to spend the rest of your life with. I don't see why scientist's try to put a grasp on time and life we will never know and if we did there would be no point on living.
Michio Kaku's my homeboy [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnkE2yQPw6s]YouTube - Michio Kaku: Time Travel, Parallel Universes, and Reality[/ame] He basically talks about, how if you go back in time and change something, you're changing it in a parallel universe. The universe you come from stays exactly the same. I'm not sure how much of myself believes in it; but hey we know so little that anything's possible..
I believe the theory that a parallel universe was more a rationalization of thought. The idea of paradox is mindboggling so we just assume that the only way change during time travel could occur is if it actually doesn't...at least not on the same timeline.
Holy crap! My wake n' bake theory lined up with a real physicist! F'n A! Maybe I should partake some more.
Woah, I just thought of something. The Kaiser of Germany was killed in 1914, which kicked off WWI. What if he was a previous incarnation of Hitler, but some body traveled back in time to kill him, thus preventing a holocaust in the early 20th century? But since the time line can't be stopped, it happened again 30 years later when the opprotunity came? Man, this shit's deep, and it's giving me a serious mind fuck. I love wake n' bake.
Well there are three schools of thought on time travel 1. Terminator rules - One way travel 2. Back to the Future rules - Travel forwards and backwards 3. Timerider rules - Just plain silly.
1. Terminator was just retarded. A dude goes back in time and f-ks his grandmother, who gives birth to his father who f-ks his mother to give birth to himself?? 2. Back to the future was also retarded. The living dictate the future by thier actions, but since it's in the future, it hasn't occured yet, so the future is still unset. Alternative "futures", sure, but "The Future", no. 3. Never seen "Time Rider" so I can't comment.
I think travel into the past is impossible. For one, if you look at GR the only solution to the equations which allows for it doesn't exist in the real world. There's also the paradox problem. It seems like it should stand to reason that if you go back in time and kill your own grandfather, then the future you inhabited no longer exists. Just based on my own intuition I'd guess that you don't disappear, but that raises an even hairier paradox: where did your information come from? Every last particle in your body is described as a quantum state. That's a lot of fucking particles, and even more fucking information. So where did the information come from? Information doesn't just pop into existence (not in a stable, long-lasting way anyways... virtual particle-antiparticle pairs pop into existence all the time, but they never last long enough to do anything but disappear... and two particles is one thing, but enough to make a full person, in just the right configuration to make a person with a full set of memories and experiences, in a way that lasts?).
As Michio Kaku explained in the video I posted, if you go back in time and change something, it's in a parallel universe. In an infinite universe, there are infinite parallel universes, therefore an infinite amount of possible outcomes. You might go back in time and meet your "mother" when she was a teenager, but it's not your mother (in this universe) - it's your mother in a parallel dimension. She is exactly the same as your mother, but she just isn't your mother. But, as CurtChronic said, that may just be a rationalization to explain things we just.. Well, don't know how else to explain
personally i think any time, at any point of decision, chance or difference a parallel universe is spawned, ending up in a humongous tree of infinite possibilities, and our consciousness just rides along one of those branches till the end, so i guess i believe in either the "future" which cannot be changed(and maybe also not gone back to) once you, by changing sometihing in the past, spawned the alternate universe to accomodate those changes... or in the ever-changing, yet unchangeable future, which in itself would make timetravel for any changing reasons impossible (see hitler-paradox)... i like that one more, since i'm not into the idea of some moron going back to caveman times and seriously messing up my family tree... yuck... or maybe a third possibility, where all changes are immediately incorporated, like where you kill hitler, and immediately disappear because the reason your parents/grandparents never met, thus popping hitler right back into existence, by you never having gone back to kill him... weird stuff, that
Fuckin' Michio Kaku. He does a good job explaining ideas on the cutting-edge of physics but he's not so good at saying what's speculation and what's supported by observation. That's theoretical physicists for you. So excited to explain their latest untestable hypothesis that they don't bother to stop and clarify to the viewing public that it's not supported by observation. A few things about the multiverse hypothesis: It's just a hypothesis and we're currently not even sure how to test it. There are different ways to envision a multiverse. You can have a branching-timelines scenario like what Kaku described, or you can have a multiplicity of universes each occupying the same timeline but causally isolated from one another (IE They can't see us and we can't see them), or you can have many universes occupying different timelines (not a branching-timelines scenario: many universes, but one timeline to a universe) with different laws of physics in each, and so on and so on. One physicist has even proposed natural selection at the universe level, with universes being born of black holes in parent universes, and those universes spawned with laws of physics amenable to forming black holes form more black holes and thus produce even more child universes (interesting side note: the laws of physics that are good for black holes are also good for life - because you need big, big stars to make black holes, and those big, big stars are also the stars that make the heavier elements needed for complex organic chemistry, so as time went on and more universes were spawned with better and better laws of physics for black holes - there'd also be more and more universes with better and better laws of physics for life) The multiverse theory springs from one way to interpret quantum mechanics, but it's not the only way to interpret it. The more conventional interpretation, the Copenhagen interpretation, states that the randomness of quantum mechanics springs from a fundamental element of randomness in the universe; the multiverse explains it in terms of branching timelines: we can't predict exactly what's going to happen because what we will see is determined by which branch of the universe we end up in, and we can't predict which one we're going to find ourselves in. The multiverse hypothesis is beginning to gain some traction these days but it's all speculation. Branching-timelines is just one way to look at one interpretation of quantum mechanics which has no concrete evidence in its favor.
Wow, very interesting to read. Thanks for taking the time to post that. I realize it's all speculation, but I enjoy hearing what Michio Kaku has to say simply because he's more "out there" and simplifies things to the point where someone like me can understand it heh