A question about time travel

[Vegosiux]

So you are walking down the road, and you are greeted by yourself, who has travelled back 10 years to talk to you.

You carry on, and part ways. Now 10 years later, you are supposed to go back 10 years and talk to yourself, 10 years ago.

What happens if you don't go back? Do the events of meeting your past self cease to exist?

I think I'll let my favorite webcomic demonstrate this one.

And in the next line of panels Kevyn shoots out the time travelling drone, to prove that the equivalent drone from "this" timeline will still sit there, undamaged and able to perform its function. There's a twist, of course, it's Tayler's comic after all, but that's how causality and time travel are dealt with in Schlockiverse, and it's the concept I see myself least averse to.

 

[zidine100]

well it depends, you could cause a paradox and everything goes wibbly wobbly and that would be bad for the timey wimey stuff.

Well unless the many worlds theory holds true, then it could be just another you who has gone back and diverged the timeline. Or the world reshapes itself and the future you that went back to the past could cease to exist, or there could be two of you existing at the same time when you go back or there could be pancakes and donuts and happy happy joy joy with a bottle of sleepy sleepy nighty night awaiting you on the magical fruit machine of time but to hell with it, thinking about this just makes my head spin, just saying all the ideas in my head just makes me look like a idiot who doesn't know what hes talking about.

Spoiler

BINGO! that's true

In other words, the only way i can see that you would know for sure is to make a time machine and do it if that is indeed possible, otherwise there's just way too many hypotheses to have even a reasonable answer.


Have i made enough doctor who fans want to hit me yet?

El Psy Congroo.

 

[Nuke_em_05]

My take on time-travel has always been a stance of permanence. One universe, one timeline.

Kind-of like Like Slaughterhouse 5, Deja Vu, Premonition, or (I'm told...) the Time-Traveler's Wife. You can't change the timeline, because your travels are already part of it.

Think Harry Potter (III?); Harry is saved by his own Petronus before he goes back in time to save himself.

All the time travel that will happen, has happened. Everyone from the future who time-traveled to the circa-1940s (to do what you must do with such power) already did; and obviously failed, for one reason or the other.

So, if you meet your future self; at some point in the future, you are going to travel into the past and meet yourself.

It's not some cosmic timeline-preserving force or anything, just simply that cause and effect endures, and already includes the effects of time-travel.

 

[cerebus23]

I thought some models of wormholes were shown to be the best shot at time travel, since they loop back to themselves you tend thru science stuff to come out of it before you left.

course most wormholes are microscopic also and while pulling one open to squeeze something through is technically possible it takes heaps of amounts of energy. way beyond anything we got going on now.

I tend to think of space/time as flexible with branches of timelines flowing out, where tiny changes make tiny bumps in the map maybe and major ones create entire new branches. So in a temporal sense each and every possibility might play out over a multitude of sister timelines/dimensions.

Sort of the sliders take on time and space i guess .