Time Travel

[Flyboy]

Has anybody ever thought of what would happen if the SGC decided to exploit the Stargate's ability to cause time travel if it encounters a solar flare?

Goa'uld destroys a planet, hey no problem! Just send a message back through time making sure you prevent it. It could do so many things!

[ShadowMaat]

Time travel is far too complicated. You risk changing too much, there's the danger of paradox, and the possibility that the timeline will try to perform a self-correction so that the event still happens, only the changes might be for the worse.

The ramifications have been fairly mild on Stargate, but in general it's a dangerous element and the attitude of "oh we'll just go back and fix things" would tend to make people lazy. Why bother worrying about anything if you can just go back and "fix" it later?

[petzke_42]

The only problem is that we can't really predict solar flares yet.......yet...hmmmmm

[Flyboy]

Lol very true, paradoxes are serious things. It's the old "if i i go back in time and kill Hitler in 1933, what will make me go back and kill hitler in present day cause I'll never have heard of them!" I just think it would actually be interesting to see SG1 cause a time paradox and have to repair the damage.

[Newbie]

i think they have something like TimePrimeDirective, like in star trek, which says not to mess around with time as the whole cause and effect things is not understood. and then think...do Asguard, or Ancients mess around with time travel???

[the_fours]

the anciants did once in WoO, but heres a thouth in POV the alternate carter couldnt survive in our universe because of the increased entropy from the two of them. Does this mean that time travel could have the same effect if the individual exists in twice in one point of history?

[Emmit Devay]

I don't think they would simply because, even if they could somehow predict when a solar flare would occur, how would they be able to control where in the past/future the messaage or whatever would go?

[BoBWraith]

In 1969, it was explained(or at least theorized) that the side of the sun that the flare occured on determined which direction they went through time. Also, the timing of the activation of the Stargate determined how far back/forward they went. I don't remember them mentioning any of this in 2010, but I'm guessing that they took it into account.

[Darkstar]

i think they have something like TimePrimeDirective, like in star trek, which says not to mess around with time as the whole cause and effect things is not understood. and then think...do Asguard, or Ancients mess around with time travel???

the ancients built a time ramification device in the episode "window of opportunity" but they never managed to get the thing to work and so they died off.

and the asgard only use their technology to slow time down not jump into the past. so if they could go back (the asgard i mean) they would never find the replicators and they would never have been over run, however some other alien race would probably just find them like sg1 did in the eps "menace" they has no idea it was the world the replicators come from so it would have started their and then the s**t would have hit the fan.

[Goa'uld Jedi]

Lol very true, paradoxes are serious things. It's the old "if i i go back in time and kill Hitler in 1933, what will make me go back and kill hitler in present day cause I'll never have heard of them!" I just think it would actually be interesting to see SG1 cause a time paradox and have to repair the damage.

Hi guys. I'm what you call a thread luker using the search tool to resurrect long dead posts. I want to resoleve this question of how time works in the universe once and for all.

My theory is that if you go back and kill hitler, the change will stick. Even though there will be no reason for anyone to go back and kill a young German Man, drinking his way through life, it will still happen. There will be a theoretical universe where hitler was not killed, that a version of you that killls hitler. However we know that no one will ever go back and kill Hitler, because we are not living in a theoretical universe, but a real one.

How do you know that you are not part of a theoretical universe, that branches off the main flow of time to serve a purpose of changing the main universe at an earlier date? Because you have consciousness in this universe. You percieve the world through your own eyes in this universe. If someone were to make an exact copy of you, You could look at your copy, but you can not BE your copy. You can not look at the world through the eyes of your copy. You have consciousness in your own body.

If there was a time traveler who created a paradox causing the traveler not to cause the paradox in the first place. The Paradox would still take place. THe theoretical time and effect timeline would create a traveler who would still create the effect regardless.

Want proof? Look at quantam mechanics. Particles of light can interfere with theoretical versions of themselves. This is known as the two slit experiment and has been proven for at least a century.

[Giantevilhead]

Lol very true, paradoxes are serious things. It's the old "if i i go back in time and kill Hitler in 1933, what will make me go back and kill hitler in present day cause I'll never have heard of them!" I just think it would actually be interesting to see SG1 cause a time paradox and have to repair the damage.

If they go back through time to kill Hitler then the Soviet Union under the rule of Stalin will rise to power, start WW2, and conquer all of Europe.

[Flyboy]

I wasnt suggesting that they do it, that was an example of how a paradox might occur.

[Daniel's_twin]

Going back in time every time something goes wrong...ummm, probably a bad idea.

Spoiler:

I think they're gonna be exploring them going into the past in the season finale Mobious and it doesn't turn out too good

. Besides, I don't think it would make for a very entertaining show. Picture this (assuming they ever do figure out how to use and predict the solar flares);

Walter: Sir, the Goa'uld are attacking!

Jack: (looks up from playing cards) Hmm? Oh, Ok. Carter, get my secretary and tell her to start taking a letter. And Walter, start getting the time-hole calculated and ready. (the Goa'uld start taking out Egypt, Europe, etc. Jack's secretary dictates all the important information necessary for saving the earth, they activate the Gate, send the message through, and Carter in the past yells out "another message, sir!")

Real exciting.