[mojo2]

Let's suppose I arrived here in the USA in year 2005 from the year 2105. What proof could I provide to convince you I am from the future?

If I brought a 2105 newspaper with me, that MIGHT do it. But it's reasonable to assume there would be laws governing time travel and one essential condition of slipping in and out of a time 'zone' might be to preserve the normal history.

A 2105 newspaper in the hands of a 2005 person could drastically change the history of the world. A coin or other form of currency could be equally disruptive to history if it were discovered by the right (wrong) person.

I wouldn't know any of the mundane things that happened in the year 2005 or 2050 or whenever, so that wouldn't serve to convince you.

What proof could I give you?

Actually, I probably wouldn't want you to know I was a traveler, but what if I really needed or really wanted you to know the truth, what could I do or say?

[OptimusG4]

http://www.johntitor.com

[Randman]

If time travel will ever be invented, people would have gone back into time by time. They haven't. So, unless they do and it's the alternate dimension theory, then it's safe to safe that time travel has not been built nor will it ever.

[Oisín]

A video clip of you and me together, recorded about half an hour into the future. If I saw the video clip first, and then half an hour later was being recorded for it, I'd believe you.

Of course, since you say you come straight from 2105, that's not particularly possible...

[lavar78]

Originally Posted by Oisín

A video clip of you and me together, recorded about half an hour into the future. If I saw the video clip first, and then half an hour later was being recorded for it, I'd believe you.

Of course, since you say you come straight from 2105, that's not particularly possible...

It is with time travel.

[Eriamjh]

Accurately predict the final scores of 10 sports events with 100% accuracy and a few other things that no one could possibly know about even the NEAR future and I'll buy it (literally).

[RonnieoftheRose]

You have always been the caretaker.

[turtle777]

You will burn at the stake

What else do you expect if you return to the Middle Ages in 2005.

-t

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Randman

If time travel will ever be invented, people would have gone back into time by time. They haven't. So, unless they do and it's the alternate dimension theory, then it's safe to safe that time travel has not been built nor will it ever.

There's another interesting theory that states that before an event happens there are infinite possibilities concerning it, but once it happens those possibilities collapse into one: the one which happened. By this theory, a time traveller going into the past could not change history, because the events there already happened, and the traveller was already there at that time. In other words, rather than changing history, a time traveller would simply cause it to occur.

[Agent69]

I suspect that if time travel were possible, you could only go forward, not backward. This falls under the "it's hard to swim against the stream" theory.

[PB2K]

Bring me an XXXXL KitKat Chunky White. Then I'll believe you.

[sanity assassin]

Woody Allen once said in regards to if there was a God, "If God would only give me a clear sign... like making a large deposit, in my name, in a Swiss bank."

If you can do something similar for me, I'd believe ya.

[jasonsRX7]

Originally Posted by Agent69

I suspect that if time travel were possible, you could only go forward, not backward. This falls under the "it's hard to swim against the stream" theory.

Behold

It can transport you approximately 7 or 8 hours into the future, longer if coupled with alcohol.

(Ok I think that was from MadTV)

[Stradlater]

Originally Posted by mojo2

Let's suppose I arrived here in the USA in year 2005 from the year 2105. What proof could I provide to convince you I am from the future?

If I brought a 2105 newspaper with me, that MIGHT do it.

Silly mojo! We stopped printing news on paper in 2032!

[Eug Wanker]

Sorry, but it's already been proven that time travel doesn't work.

[AB^2=BCxAC]

From the future, bring me a personalized object that I own right now, in the present. For example, bring something I recognize as entirely my own... like a clay sculpture I did in Grade 3, or better yet, baby hair clippings (with DNA testing to verify).

Then we'll carbon date the radioactive decay of the object from the present and the object from the future: the one with the most decay is obviously from the future... it would be demonstrably older. Almost irrefutable?

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by lavar78

It is with time travel.

Yeah, but then he'd have to be coming from half an hour into the future, not from 2105 (by which time I'll be dead and gone)...

[budster101]

- Go back into the past and bring me

1. a dinasaur egg ready to hatch
2. the original 15 commandments
3. a piece of Jesus' Cross and the Spear of Destiny
4. a brand new newspaper from 1941 when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
5. 1,000,000 in hard currency from 1886 with newly minted coins please
6. An initial release of playboy in mint condition, no make that 10 copies in mint condition
7. a brand new delorean?... with the tags and warrantee information still in it

Any of the above should prove you are a time traveler

[jasonsRX7]

Bring me OS XXI and a dodecagonal core Mactel, please.

Edit: oh, and Longhorn if it's out by then.

[d.fine]

Bring me me, my future self would be the only one I'd trust to believe you

[cjrivera]

Originally Posted by mojo2

Let's suppose I arrived here in the USA in year 2005 from the year 2105. What proof could I provide to convince you I am from the future.....

So is this you?

[Mithras]

Question: If you could take a one-way trip into the future, would you? (any distance: 20 years, 50 years, 500 years, 1 million)
Let's say the pod has room for four or five people, so you can take your dearest loved ones with you.

Would you want to go to the future? See how things turned out? Maybe far enough to hope for some kind of life-extending technology?
Or do you consider it absurd to abandon all that you know and love?

[jokell82]

Originally Posted by Randman

If time travel will ever be invented, people would have gone back into time by time. They haven't. So, unless they do and it's the alternate dimension theory, then it's safe to safe that time travel has not been built nor will it ever.

The theory now is that if time travel were ever to be invented you could never travel back before it existed. So if time travel were invented yesterday, the farthest back you could travel would be yesterday.

[jamil5454]

Time travel into the future is already possible, in small amounts. The faster your velocity in space, the slower time goes for you. So if you moved the speed of light, time for you would stop, while for others it would continue.

Now to go backward in time, hmmm. I guess you'd have to travel a negative velocity... which isn't currently possible.

One day.

[Shaddim]

Originally Posted by Stradlater

Silly mojo! We stopped printing news on paper in 2032!

Yep. Was due to the paper shortage of 2030, when 50% of the forests burned due to Greenies passing the Sylvan Protection Act in 2018. The law killed timber production in old growth forests and allowed for conditions in the those forests to deteriorate, making a sub-continental firestorm possible. It was kept from the main urban centers by means of massive firebreaks, synthetic flame retardents (developed by BP and Texaco), and trillions of gallons of water from the Great Lakes and the Pacific. In fact, the Alaskan pipeline was reversed and converted from oil to water to help combat the blaze as it encroached northward.

However, the Midwest and Pacific Northwest were completely scortched (along with most of B.C., Alb., Sas., and Man.) and the midwest food centers were decimated. Furthermore, weather patterns around the globe were altered. Which, coincidentally, improved rainfall in the ME and NE Africa, allowing for widescale agriculture, but turned most of Europe into a dust bowl.


So, no paper for you.

[ReggieX]

I like the DeLorean idea...

[JoshuaZ]

Bring me back some really super cool piece of tech that we would have never thought of today, but is common place in the future. Something so weird, and so cool, it had to be from the future.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by jasonsRX7

Edit: oh, and Longhorn if it's out by then.

Dude, he said 2105, not 3105!


(Oh god... I said 'dude'. The end is nigh.)

[CreepingDeth]

It's already been done.



Iron Maiden! Yeah!

[Air Guitar Solo]

[wdlove]

I look at it as being quite a dilemma. Would you be coming back to change something?

[ghporter]

Many theories about time travel exist. The one Randman states assumes that one must leave evidence of one's travel into the past, which is not necessarily the case. Further, what would keep some "time manager" from slapping you for screwing up the past and sending you back to fix it?"

There's also the theory that any decision point results in a timeline for EACH POSSIBLE DECISION. While it sounds pretty chaotic, the "footprint" of each possible decision is related to the probability of that decision being taken-I might decide to skip town tomorrow, but as I'm pretty well rooted with a family, a good career plan and so on, I'm not very likely to do anything like that, so the "decision space" for that decision point is very small. This meshes well with the quantum time theory Millenium refered to, and may actually be the same theory stated in a different frame of referenc.

[andi*pandi]

well, you'd have to invite me into your police box, and the sheer mind boggling view of the spacious dimensionally transcendent interior will instantly convince me. Then you better show me some Daleks.

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Many theories about time travel exist. The one Randman states assumes that one must leave evidence of one's travel into the past, which is not necessarily the case.

No, but to travel back in time without leaving any evidence would require one of three things:

1) That the time-traveller (TT) had absolutely no contact in any way with any other humans and did, well, basically, nothing while in the past;

2) That any and all TT were able to efficiently blend into the world as it looks at the time he* is travelling to. Imagine an average modern suddenly appearing in Victorian England—apart from the differences in languages, there would be a whole foundation of common knowledge lacking in the TT, and his way of acting in perfectly normal daily situations would be very different. Imagine how much bigger this difference would be if he came from 300 years into the future;

3) That, at the time whence TT comes from, a way of becoming invisible, or in some other way escaping detection by the people one is faring amongst, had been (will would have had been? I'm not sure how exactly the conditional future past tense works in English ) invented.


* Yes, I know I'm being sexist by omitting females here, I'm just too lazy for all those slashes and parentheses. Feel free to substitute all instance of male TTs with female ones.

[Cubeoid]

1 ticket please

[lavar78]

Originally Posted by Oisín

Yeah, but then he'd have to be coming from half an hour into the future, not from 2105 (by which time I'll be dead and gone)...

No, he could go back to 2105 before coming to see you in the present (or past, as it were).

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by lavar78

No, he could go back to 2105 before coming to see you in the present (or past, as it were).

True, allowing for multiple time journeys.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Oisín

No, but to travel back in time without leaving any evidence would require one of three things:

1) That the time-traveller (TT) had absolutely no contact in any way with any other humans and did, well, basically, nothing while in the past;

2) That any and all TT were able to efficiently blend into the world as it looks at the time he* is travelling to. Imagine an average modern suddenly appearing in Victorian England—apart from the differences in languages, there would be a whole foundation of common knowledge lacking in the TT, and his way of acting in perfectly normal daily situations would be very different. Imagine how much bigger this difference would be if he came from 300 years into the future;

3) That, at the time whence TT comes from, a way of becoming invisible, or in some other way escaping detection by the people one is faring amongst, had been (will would have had been? I'm not sure how exactly the conditional future past tense works in English ) invented.


* Yes, I know I'm being sexist by omitting females here, I'm just too lazy for all those slashes and parentheses. Feel free to substitute all instance of male TTs with female ones.

Not necessarily, on all three points. The vast majority of personal interactions in public are without detectable consequences; I interact with thousands of people at school every day, and yet that interaction has almost no detectable affect on anything. In class, there is more potential for an affect, but what affect could a person sitting in the back of the class and not participating in a discussion have on anything?

Of course to be successfully inconspicuous, a time traveler would have to be pretty well versed in the culture he or she is visiting; think of Malcom McDowel's H.G. Wells in "Time After Time." He moves from Victorian to modern times and merely looks odd and slightly eccentric. A minor eccentricity goes quite unnoticed today. Further, minor differences in accent and word usage, though becoming less common, are usually ignored, particularly in large cities. Further, one could pose as a tourist (in truth a "time tourist!") and thus deflect much suspicion. If I were to visit Copenhagen, I would obviously stand out as I don't speak Danish or know my way around, but as a tourist from the U.S., I wouldn't be too terribly out of place.

On your third point, undetectable observation, say for historical research purposes, would be highly desirable, and if one could travel through time, what's to keep one from developing some technology for being completely undetectable? But a sociologist certainly can't do his or her job as effectively by merely observing. Many (what I would consider) legitimate uses of time travel would require at least minor interaction with the people being visited, so complete invisibility would have only limited utility.

And of course since applied time travel is still (as far as any of us knows, at least) in the realm of science fiction, complete non-interaction makes for boring stories without conflict or depth. It's much better to have a story where there's some potential for absolute disaster with a misstep. Read "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradberry for an excellent take on THAT scenario.

[saddino]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Further, what would keep some "time manager" from slapping you for screwing up the past and sending you back to fix it?"

Why does Apple keeps wasting their very limited resources in superflous stuff like "time managers" and the like?

With application stability at an all-time low and a half-assed genetic modifying tool in Sabre-Tooth I wonder how much time this whole Time Travesty nonsense will take until we finally see the much needed 10.9.2 update...

[JoshuaZ]

Originally Posted by andi*pandi

well, you'd have to invite me into your police box, and the sheer mind boggling view of the spacious dimensionally transcendent interior will instantly convince me. Then you better show me some Daleks.

[CreepingDeth]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Read "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradberry for an excellent take on THAT scenario.

I thought the theory behind that one was stupid.

[JoshuaZ]

Isn't someone making a bad sci-fi film out of 'A sound of thunder'? I mean, it looked bad when I saw the preview...

Bad sci! Bad!!! It knows what its done.

[DeathMan]

I like the idea that even if you go back, the time you go back to is merely a shadow of what has already happened. So you don't really affect anything. Its all just sort of an after-image. That would be the type of reverse time travel I'd like to be involved with. Then you don't have to worry about erasing yourself, or making the world run by nazis or something.

Of course you could still be injured or killed, or fall in love and stay in the "past" or something, thus effectively killing your real self. Still plenty for the sci-fi stories. But maybe not enough world disaster and stuff.

[Y3a]

A DVD of todays evening news. I would wanna see it before it would actually air, but it wouldn't screw up any time lines. maybe about 4-6 hours before.

Also, bring back the lottery numbers for the next 1000 plays of "The Big Game"

[mojo2]

Originally Posted by JoshuaZ

JoshuaZ, you omitted the Dalleks. DOCTOR Robert Dalleck.


EDIT:

andi*pandi
Addicted to MacNN


Join Date: Jun 2000
Location: Inside 128
Posts: 2,499
Status: Offline
report abuse
06-29-2005, 07:54 AM

well, you'd have to invite me into your police box, and the sheer mind boggling view of the spacious dimensionally transcendent interior will instantly convince me. Then you better show me some Daleks.
__________________

andi*pandi, I was FERVENTLY hoping you'd take my 'set-up' post and then 'knock it out of the park.'

Your next post MIGHT have been:

"Doctor WHO???!!!"

Oh well. Maybe next time.

[ink]

Originally Posted by Millennium

In other words, rather than changing history, a time traveller would simply cause it to occur.

Which was the beauty of the storyline in Terminator 1. Too bad they messed it up with Terminator 2 (although part 3 kinda redeemed it).

[Oisín]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Not necessarily, on all three points. The vast majority of personal interactions in public are without detectable consequences; I interact with thousands of people at school every day, and yet that interaction has almost no detectable affect on anything. In class, there is more potential for an affect, but what affect could a person sitting in the back of the class and not participating in a discussion have on anything?

Of course to be successfully inconspicuous, a time traveler would have to be pretty well versed in the culture he or she is visiting; think of Malcom McDowel's H.G. Wells in "Time After Time." He moves from Victorian to modern times and merely looks odd and slightly eccentric. A minor eccentricity goes quite unnoticed today. Further, minor differences in accent and word usage, though becoming less common, are usually ignored, particularly in large cities. Further, one could pose as a tourist (in truth a "time tourist!") and thus deflect much suspicion. If I were to visit Copenhagen, I would obviously stand out as I don't speak Danish or know my way around, but as a tourist from the U.S., I wouldn't be too terribly out of place.

I was mostly referring to people going further back in time with that, actually. Had you gone back to the 1600's, for instance, you would stand out like a sore thumb in a cheddar cheese pudding, not only because of your different accent and language usage, but because of what you describe as 'looking odd and slightly eccentric' taken to the umpteeth power. And small (or in this case, big) oddities weren't as unnoticed three and a half centuries ago as they are now.

While I realise that normal interaction with strangers (shops, etc.) have very little impact, if time travel were truly invented, and made fairly popular/universally accessible, there would be a lot of people doing it, and while a single kooky stranger once in a while might not attract much attention, even in the 1600's, a veritable army of them in more or less every corner of the world would most likely have left some kind of lasting impression, one that would be likely to have been included in written sources as well.

I know I'm presupposing quite a few things here, but this entire thread is presupposing the mere invention and realisation of time travel, so I get to presuppose all I want

[mojo2]

Originally Posted by Y3a

A DVD of todays evening news. I would wanna see it before it would actually air, but it wouldn't screw up any time lines. maybe about 4-6 hours before.

Also, bring back the lottery numbers for the next 1000 plays of "The Big Game"

At first, if/when time travel becomes a reality each trip might be very costly and much more dangerous than future treks. To prepare for a trip by going back into time to secure a DVD of today's evening news would be a pretty costly effort. And there's no way that I'm aware of that any particular day or weekMaybe we should all begin cataloging these things on DVD so they might have value to a future time traveller.

Then just set up a website and sell "Time Proofs" to time travellers. However, you'd have to stay in business (probably set up as a 501c3) until time travel technology happens. Then, when the planners are preparing for the mission, they'll begin a search for undeniable proof...


Nix that.

I just discovered a repository of TV News broadcasts that the time travel agency could use to prepare the necessary proofs the TT would need.

http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/

They won't be going out of business anytime soon.

Ok. Would that satisfy everyone immediately or would anyone still have doubts that I was a time traveler if I showed them tonite's news broadcast several hours in advance?

[nredman]

Originally Posted by JoshuaZ

tom and i need tomorrows lotto numbers

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by JoshuaZ

Isn't someone making a bad sci-fi film out of 'A sound of thunder'? I mean, it looked bad when I saw the preview...

Bad sci! Bad!!! It knows what its done.

Actually in the trailer it looked like it took Bradberry's story and went beyond it. I think that, unless they seriously screw the pooch (that's a technical term for "badly mess up a story") then it should be a pretty good film. At least as much fun as some of the biggies lately.

Of course, (er hem!) somebody with a pocket time machine could let us know if the producers are going to be guilty of doggie abuse here, and that would help a lot!

[nonhuman]

Gray's Sports Almanac