Are Time Travelers Stealing Our Stuff?

Megalith

Megalith

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Many of us would probably try to get rich quick after unlocking the secrets of time travel, but there is that lingering danger of altering the past. In his novel Time Salvager, Wesley Chu suggests that time travelers avoid this by salvaging materials from famous disasters, which are destined to be destroyed anyway.

"The number one rule for time travel should be that you don't change the timeline," Chu says in Episode 160 of the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast. "But if you jump to moments before a disaster, you can cover your tracks."
 
Considering the whole of time would be fucked the moment time travel is made possible, I'd say it never becomes possible :p
 
This doesn't fly. If you changed the properties of one single particle like an electron or photon, or an atom, you could have a cascading effect that re-arranged everything in the timeline anyway, like the butterfly effect.
 
Implausible yes, but it is futurist Sci-Fi. Fun. I will probably pick this up.
 
devil22 said:
This doesn't fly. If you changed the properties of one single particle like an electron or photon, or an atom, you could have a cascading effect that re-arranged everything in the timeline anyway, like the butterfly effect.
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Or if you're going for the whole linear time idea, then you might not, because you already went back in time, messed around with those particles, and the net result of you messing around with the stuff is the exact future that you came from. Closed-loop time travel rocks :D
 
devil22 said:
This doesn't fly. If you changed the properties of one single particle like an electron or photon, or an atom, you could have a cascading effect that re-arranged everything in the timeline anyway, like the butterfly effect.
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Has this been proven?
 
Steve said:
We did ;)
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I guess he's the perfect FP poster tbh. But still......

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I'm the only time traveler. If someone else is on the verge of discovering time travel, I just go back before the events leading to any persons discovery and prevent it from happening, so that I keep my monopoly of time travel
 
sfsuphysics said:
Or if you're going for the whole linear time idea, then you might not, because you already went back in time, messed around with those particles, and the net result of you messing around with the stuff is the exact future that you came from. Closed-loop time travel rocks :D
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Yup. This is the most likely way time travel would really work. We are already pretty darn certain that all time exists simultaneously and can't be changed. If you travel "through" time, you aren't changing anything because you in fact always traveled through time and anything you do is what you always will have been having done.

However, there are likely actually two kinds of "time" travel. The first is the one where you stay in your original timeline, as described above, which is true time travel. The second is where you aren't really traveling through time, but rather to a different point in time in a parallel universe. In that case you may THINK you changed the future of your universe because you will see that the universe has indeed changed from what happened in your original universe. But really all you did was travel to a universe where you will have always have had been traveling there and so you will have changed nothing about that universe.
 
Don't over think it if you knew how to time travel you'd either be doing it anyway or scared as hell to actually do it so if it exists who cares it doesn't change your current reality one bit you can't control everything only somethings within your own means. Also besides that time travel is no guarantee to riches or power truth is you might be just as powerless regardless of it that's just misconception. You might have a nice advantage, but everyone sleeps and anyone can be deceived. Plus if your fate is predetermined you can't control it just like Merlin couldn't save Arthur from death.
 
devil22 said:
This doesn't fly. If you changed the properties of one single particle like an electron or photon, or an atom, you could have a cascading effect that re-arranged everything in the timeline anyway, like the butterfly effect.
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Not like... that IS the butterfly effect.:cool:
 
sfsuphysics said:
Or if you're going for the whole linear time idea, then you might not, because you already went back in time, messed around with those particles, and the net result of you messing around with the stuff is the exact future that you came from. Closed-loop time travel rocks :D
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But the point is intent. I already said "you could have a cascading effect" meaning that you also might not. So yea you might go back in time and it causes the exact future you came from, but that's not something that would be knowable so therefore you'd risk changing things. If you're going through the trouble to time travel into a disaster, you probably don't want to gamble on the small chance your time travel causes your exact future, sounds like infinitesimally small odds.
 
Sounds interesting. I may actually have to read the book as I don't want to see the movie if it's being made by Michael Bay.
 
So what would happen if you time traveled into the future and brought back some technology and the knowledge to make that technology?

Would it end in an recursive loop where the technology you brought back would get so advanced that it couldn't advance anymore?

Same could be said for anything... bringing back money from your future interest gaining account to put in your current account, etc.

What would happen?
 
Wyodiver said:
Wasn't there a movie about time travelers going to airplanes right before a crash and snatching people for parts, or something?
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Yep, it was called "Millenium" and it came out in 1989, I thought about it as soon I saw the headline.....We saw it in the theater and it looked really cool based on the trailers....it was actually sorta bad. Semi-spoiler alert (but this happens relatively early on): The woman from 1000 years in the future meets a man in the past who acts like they knew each other and had been involved, but she doesn't know him. That means she somehow wasn't smart enough to put it together, according to the movie's time travel mechanics, the pretty simple notion that she will meet him in a future time travel trip that hasn't happened for her yet, but occurs at a point further in the past, in the guy's past. So the big hinge is just a hokey pretentious criss-crossing that tries to be profound and unbelievable. Yeah, so her trips happen in reverse, I get it. It was supposed to be a crazy, mind-blowing "the past is the future" development, but it came across as melodramatic and corny, and the movie wasn't executed well, silly at points, and felt like a one-trick pony more deserving of a half-hour Twilight Zone episode. Actually, later on I found out it was based on a short story, so there it is. After watching a movie like "12 Monkeys", it seems pretty juvenile. And the robot is super annoying! It's not terrible, it's campy but still a fun watch.
 
Highwind said:
We're all travelling through time... at regular speed.
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And we could vary that speed (slow down) if we knew how to travel at close to the speed of light.

Basically time is a one way street, and we may eventually be able to slow down or speed up the rate in which we are traveling through time in relation to others, but I doubt there will ever be a way to go backwards.
 
devil22 said:
But the point is intent. I already said "you could have a cascading effect" meaning that you also might not. So yea you might go back in time and it causes the exact future you came from, but that's not something that would be knowable so therefore you'd risk changing things. If you're going through the trouble to time travel into a disaster, you probably don't want to gamble on the small chance your time travel causes your exact future, sounds like infinitesimally small odds.
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You are missing the point that he is making. He is saying that there is no possibility of a cascading effect because our current understanding of time tells us it should be impossible to change the "past" in any way even if you find a way to travel to the past. If you travel to our past you will have always have traveled to our past, so you can't change anything... It is literally 100% impossible.

As I said earlier, there are two types of "time" travel, of which only one is REALLY time travel.

Real time travel: You travel to the real past, and will have always have been there so you can't change anything in the timeline. If you "take" something from that time it will have always been taken, and if you place a bet on a sporting event, deposit the winnings, and return to the future to collect the interest you will have always done so and in fact you should be able to tell that you need to go to the past to do so by the fact that you have a big bank account in your name with all sorts of money in it, and you will do so no matter how badly you try not to.

Not real time travel, but will seem like it is: You travel to a point in the past of a parallel universe where what you do appears to you to change things. Of course it won't really change things because in that time line you will have always arrived where and when you do, but you won't know any better and will think you changed stuff. When you "return" to your original time one of two things will happen. One, you return to your real real timeline and nothing at all will be different from when you left. Two, you will return to your original "time" but in yet another parallel universe where the things you changed in the second universe will have taken effect and things will be different from when you left the first universe... This is the one that could have the "cascading" effect you are worried about, but it won't cause you to cease to exist. It will just cause you to have never been born in that particular universe. You will still show up and be alive and be yourself when you get there, there just may not be anyone that knows you there because your parents never met and so you were never born in that universe.
 
I have tried to use time traveling thieves as an excuse many times thus far I can only say I have had 100% failure rates.

I do however believe that megalith is a time traveler and has somehow used that power to gain his current position. I am just not sure why he wasted it on this though.
 
I once read the Russian authors Brothers Strugatsky titled "Hard to be a God".
It was a time traveller who was sent into the past with specific objectives and was aware he would surely be killed if he uncovered his secret and that he can't change anything - even to save his newly met friends from the past. He was in a constant dillema and a very tragic person. He could only watch as our ancestors did stupid counterproductive things, he could have saved his loved ones - but he couldn't.
 
arentol said:
You are missing the point that he is making. He is saying that there is no possibility of a cascading effect because our current understanding of time tells us it should be impossible to change the "past" in any way even if you find a way to travel to the past. If you travel to our past you will have always have traveled to our past, so you can't change anything... It is literally 100% impossible. ...
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But, but, Voyager?? !!!
 
arentol said:
You are missing the point that he is making. He is saying that there is no possibility of a cascading effect because our current understanding of time tells us it should be impossible to change the "past" in any way even if you find a way to travel to the past. If you travel to our past you will have always have traveled to our past, so you can't change anything... It is literally 100% impossible.

As I said earlier, there are two types of "time" travel, of which only one is REALLY time travel.

Real time travel: You travel to the real past, and will have always have been there so you can't change anything in the timeline. If you "take" something from that time it will have always been taken, and if you place a bet on a sporting event, deposit the winnings, and return to the future to collect the interest you will have always done so and in fact you should be able to tell that you need to go to the past to do so by the fact that you have a big bank account in your name with all sorts of money in it, and you will do so no matter how badly you try not to.
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Seems not quite right. If someone gets a time machine, then they can never do anything different than they remember? What makes that impossible? You could always go back to a time where you don't remember meeting yourself, and uhm, meet yourself. I think you're saying that's impossible, because you did not remember meeting yourself before you went back, but that's the usual definition of time travel; you can go back and do anything.
And any way, your mind is not much different than the universe, if you can't change something you remember, you really can't change anything else either.
 
This statement is a waste of time as it is not falsifiable.

Such claim belongs in the same category as the invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster, the deity that created the universe according to Church of the same name.
 
I reckon that would be ingenious to to strike at those times. But much like criminals, why hasn't somebody somewhere just not come back to wreak havoc?
 
This exercise is futile. Why? If did actually know the answer, you couldn't write it without fear of altering your time line. The rest is just pure conjecture with zero basis. Btw, butterfly effect is also false.

Our plane of existence here is a temporary one.
 
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