Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

If you could go back in time...

I'd have waited a couple more months to buy my iMac G5 so I could have one w/ iSight & FrontRow. :p

I'd get my parents to buy tons of Google shares.
 
BearRanger said:
Actually, we don't know what happened in the past. As people often say, "the victor writes the history". There's a lot we can learn by directly examining past events rather than just believing the filtered knowledge we've received.
Click to expand...

Well said. Witnessing history as it is made is awesome. In some ways the internet may change that adage though. As long as there is a record of all the websites and blogs, the real feeling and truth of history will be a little clearer to see.

As for the future, that one's an interesting situation. If the future is better than the present, would you come back and risk ruining it? And if it's worse, would you risk being considered insane to "fix" it?
Click to expand...

Interesting thought here. I like Richard Bach's concept of time from his book "One". That there are paths in time. For each decision, there is a different branch. Sort of explored in the TV show "Sliders".

With this concept of time, we would then just be seeing and living another branch of time.

Chundles said:
You do realise that by killing Hitler and Stalin you would also set back the development of most modern technology by many years. Think about it, at the start of WWII we were flying propellor driven planes, 6 years later there were jets. WWII gave us radar, jet propulsion, better communications.

War is horrible but better technology is one of the few good things to arise from conflict.

I wouldn't actually go back and change anything, you just cannot be sure of the eventual outcome. I would go back and witness a few things, sneakily take a few photos too. Oh, and just to mess with people's minds, I'd take an iPod back and leave it in Tutankhamun's tomb.
Click to expand...

If time is linear, with just one outcome, then you are right. Forget "radar, jet propulsion, better communications"; the development of the V2 rocket eventually lead us to the moon and beyond. We would not have teflon or velcro, or even maybe the computers we are now using. :eek:

takao said:
sure you mean the MiG 29 ? ;) no matter how you turn the avro arrow (i found on the internet) it never seems to look like a MiG 29
Click to expand...

Doing some searching on the net, the general feeling is that the Mig-25 too a lot from the Arrow. Glad to see that Bombardier still has allowed a Canadian presence in aircraft manufacture.

After my experiences flying with Flyi, and their CRJ-200's, I would choose any flight on a CRJ-200, the newer CRJ-700, and brand new CRJ-900. For prop service their Q series (the based on the old Dash-8) was a comfortable ride.
 
After going back to 1969 and investing $50,000 in the Quantum Fund (look that one up), I'd do a number of things. (I've been thinking on this for ages...time travel was my biggest fascination as a kid).

1) Visit Rome and hear people speaking Latin as it was meant to be spoken.

2) Bring several "special" cat pedigrees back to the ancient Egyptians...somehow I think they'd appreciate that. :D

3) Witness Tiananmen Square at its maximum capacity.

4) Spend a year in the time of King Arthur. I don't think any of us would be able to handle any more than that in that time.

5) See a mammoth.

6) See a T-Rex.

7) Visit Henry Ford's first assembly line.

8) Happen in upon the signings of the US Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution.

9) Blow down the fences around Auschwitz/Birkenau.

10) Bring a modern-day video about the Vietnam War to concerned parties. Make them watch it as many times as necessary.

Obviously there would have to be some fun things involved...like bringing a sports almanac back 15 years and betting on the exact scores of each and every game, or chilling out with homies...like Alexander the Great. :p

Now, the biggest thing about time travel is the question of limits...what are the rules? Are you there only as a copy of your real self, or would you be taken back as your true self. What happens to the time you came from? Do you leave your real self behind in a paused reality? Does reality continue without you? What happens if you see yourself? Would it be possible to see yourself? Would you exist as a duplicate of yourself? DAMMIT I WANT ANSWERS :D

Bottom line if I ever managed to time travel, I'd do nothing but hop to different time periods and see just how it was back then. Nobody can truly know how life was like, say 200 years ago...*frustrated at my inability to visit past centuries*
 
do what I just did, come back to this very moment and type a post in MR that time travel is no better than flying USAir, your bags get lost, you have to buy a new pair of finger nail clippers when you get here, security lines are long when comets are forecast to hit earth, and the food in the teleport facitlity is still crap and now costs thousands of dollars!

The worst part is they can never seem to get the date and location right, last week I was going to travel back to watch Newton get smacked by an apple, when I ended up in an early enema study in the 1800's.

The best thing I did was go back and tighten a screw on Apollo 11 before launch so that things went well, I keep trying to get back to Apollo 13, but keep ending up in Athens.....just remember to get a good time travel agent!
 
OutThere said:
6) See a T-Rex.
Click to expand...

From very far away :D

Going back and seeing the dinosaurs might be interesting - but what if you brought back a ancient plague - or even something that was benign back then, but something that would wreak havoc today....

D
 
helicopters are very unreliable, and parts are hard to get.

So far time machines always blank out the recorded media, something about the magnetic fields are something, whatever.

T-Rex bbq's are not as tasty when the meat is fried by a tow missle.

Of course there are other health risks when using spent Uranium rounds too.

For a couple of trillion $$ I can help arrange a trip to show ya.
 
This reminds me of a book called "The Man Who Folded Himself" by David Gerrold. (FYI: He's the same guy that wrote the Star Trek "Tribbles" episode) In the book a young man inherits a belt from an uncle that allows him to travel in time. It's a really intersesting twist on time paradox stories you might have seen. The twist I will not reveal just in case you DO want to read it... it's worth a look for sure.
 
stubeeef said:
The worst part is they can never seem to get the date and location right, last week I was going to travel back to watch Newton get smacked by an apple, when I ended up in an early enema study in the 1800's.
Click to expand...
There's a slim chance that you are pulling our leg about this and aren't really a time traveler, but I'll take your word for it.

However, you reminded me that I have something similar to report.

This photo of me is from the Koishikawa Botanical Gardens in Tokyo (run by the University of Tokyo). The tree I'm next to was planted from a graft of the apple tree in Isaac Newton's back yard!

Not only that, but the grapevine behind me is from an offshoot of the grapevine used by Gregor Mendel, the Austrian geneticist!

We didn't know these were in this garden until we ran into them while wandering the paths there. Nothing was mentioned about them in our tourist books. Our mouths dropped open when we found them (and signs explaining what they are) as we walked by. We could easily have missed them. It was quite a thrill to feel connected to these great scientists.

And it really did feel like we had gone back in time.
 

Attachments

  • Newtons-Tree.jpg
    Newtons-Tree.jpg
    60.1 KB · Views: 362
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back