If time travel were possible...

[General Jumper One]

therew are hundreds of permientations to consider. what we developed nukes earlier, there was a war and we all died? however then there would be no one to travel back and change time.. causality loop.

nuke developed earlier - blow ourselves up - no one to travel back - nukes not developed earlier - people live to go back and develop nukes earlier... causality loop complete.

my point is it shouldnt happen

not if when you went back in time, and when you altered it it created an alternate reality and didn't harm our timeline

[shipper hannah]

I'd go 200 years into the future.

[Ben 'Teal'c would WIN!!' Noble]

On the WW2 thing it seems to me Hitler was able to change Nazi party and also manipulate the system very well while still being charismatic. Without him I don't really see the Nazis becoming the largest party and use the system to change the constitution.

[Puddle-Jumper]

If it where possible, I would protest against it. It is a bad idea in many ways.

Liar liar pants on fire, cheater cheater compulsive eater...

If time travel in possible, then that says in itself that paradoxs are capable of resolving themselves thereby making time travel relatively safe. Id spend my days going in a loop round and round again watching episodes of SGU millions of time thereby making the ratings increase.. and get the show renewed..

[Bane]

Every-time i think of time travel i just confuse myself up so much that i have to stop thinking about it!

If i go back in time, would it change the events of this time line (causality).
If i go into the future and see something i don't like and want to change it, what if by trying to change the events i actually started the events that made everything wrong in the first place? What if i think its vise versa and do nothing, but doing nothing made everything wrong?

I'd say we shouldn't mess around with things we don't understand.. But if we did one day understand it i'd like to see the death of the dinosaurs.

[Matt G]

My thinking on time travel is that it's only hard and fast rule is the grandfather paradox. Hence 'if' time travel were to be possible, you could change history in every way imaginable that didn't result in your ancestors dying before they had kids or your younger self dying before you time travelled. Purely because, using a scenario I've used before, you could go back in time 10 years, go into the local pizza place, order a pizza...and by ordering the pizza you'd be changing history(if you hadn't already by sitting down at the table).

Once you travel back in time you are immediately taking up space and possibly resources that weren't previously taken up. And that's before talking about inadvertantly delaying someone from getting home.

[SF_and_Coffee]

My thinking on time travel is that it's only hard and fast rule is the grandfather paradox. Hence 'if' time travel were to be possible, you could change history in every way imaginable that didn't result in your ancestors dying before they had kids or your younger self dying before you time travelled.

What about changing history in such a way that resulted in your ancestors not dying, but also not having kids? Or maybe your mother and father not ever getting together to produce you -- would you still be "you" if you were the child of only one of them?

Or what if you changed history such that your own earlier self never came into contact with whatever mechanism you used to do your time traveling?

Purely because, using a scenario I've used before, you could go back in time 10 years, go into the local pizza place, order a pizza...and by ordering the pizza you'd be changing history(if you hadn't already by sitting down at the table).

Once you travel back in time you are immediately taking up space and possibly resources that weren't previously taken up. And that's before talking about inadvertantly delaying someone from getting home.

My guess would be that the time stream could absorb a certain amount of small changes, provided they didn't go on to cause larger ones. Of course, it's virtually impossible to know which small changes are likely to lead to larger changes ("butterfly effect").

[Sealurk]

Though it is certainly entertaining to consider the possibiltiies, I honestly doubt time travel is possible, except maybe in a fashion that has absolutely no effect on the original time line (such as the aforementioned parallel timeline idea). Even the most unimaginably minute change could potentially have incredibly far reaching consequences, many of which possibly haven't been properly dealt with in fiction (this of course assumes there isn't some mechanism in play that restricts or prevents changes to the timeline...which basically means preventing time travel completely as far as I can see).

For example, and I'll try and keep it clean, even minutely altering the circumstances under which you were conceived would more than likely result in a significantly different person being born due to the pretty random genetic recombination that forms part of fertilisation. The entire, ah, 'process' would have to unfold in precisely the same manner as it originally happened with no interference by time travellers in order to produce the exact same person. Siblings that aren't identical twins but nevertheless have the same parents still differ considerably.

Puts Back to the Future in a new perspective, doesn't it?

[mathpiglet]

Well, McKay (Before I Sleep is correct, if you went back in time another reality is already created. If things changed, would you remember them? That theory is different from the Back to the Future theory. Could there be multiple yous around, each slightly different, or not?

I doubt time travel will be possible, but the only safe way would be to go back solely as an observer, sealed in a force field so that you cannot even bend a blade of grass. I'd like to go back just to see the origin of the stones at Carnac or who wrote the Voynich Manuscript and why. So many mysteries. I'd love to solve them!

[garhkal]

Heck if that were poss math, i would love to see the formation of Stone henge, and the giant stone faces in the polynesian area.

[Ukko]

Become my own ancestor!

[Selkhet]

Personally, I would be greedy. I would go back in time a day or so, play the winning lotto numbers, and watch my family's lives change forever.

I think I would as well. I was watching an old episode of Challenge of the Superfriends and the Legion of Doom went back in time before the Gold Rush and took a bunch of gold. I like that idea. Come back to my time period with tons of gold literally. I could have some seriously fun then. Maybe even pay for a fourth Stargate series.

[mathpiglet]

Heck if that were poss math, i would love to see the formation of Stone henge, and the giant stone faces in the polynesian area.

Yes!!! That's what I would want to do. Just observe while these things are happening.

[Ukko]

So im the only freak here? Not suprised

[garhkal]

Maybe we might find out for real, who did certain things!