If time travel is possible, why are there no time travelers visiting us now?

Question

If the flex capacitor has been invented, where's Marty Mcfly?

Answer 1

There are three possible scenerios to answer your question, under the assumption that time travel is possible.

a) Time travel can not be controlled, or we can not use it to travel where we want to travel.

b) The travel must stay low key.

c) The travel tried to tell us he was here, and was laughed at thrown into a mental hospital.

Of course this is running entirely on the assumption that time travel is possible.

Answer 2

I'm a time traveler and I'm visiting. I've only figured out how to travel forward in time, though, at a constant rate of 1 second per second.

Answer 3

How do you know they're not here, if time travel is possible? Plus, I think people would be visiting us from the past, not the future--I've heard that it's more likely to be able to go forward instead of back.

In response to what Jake posted above: if time travelers went back in time and could not interact it might be because they're in a different dimension, and therefore would not have to be invisible, and thus blind. Otherwise I liked his ideas.

Answer 4

Because if they made their presence known they would change history and so change the time line.

When Marty McFly went back in time he changed the time line and he changed history.  He turned his dad from a nerd into someone cool and he made his neighbor into a lackey instead of a threat to his father.  When Marty went back in time he didn't have his own car, when he came back to the future he got a cool new monster truck.  He is no longer the same Marty McFly that went back in time.

There was one time line, when Marty McFly went back in time he changed the time line and started a new one, for him a better one.  It could be that if time travelers came back in time then they would change the time line and laws would be passed to make it illegal to research time travel so the time traveler could not travel back in time.  Therefore by going back in time and showing himself as a time traveler he assures that he no longer exists.  Since he can't exist he can't go back in time to tell people about time travel so the secret is kept.

It is more likely that no one has gone back in time yet, and that those who have don’t want to change their past so they make sure no one knows that they are traveling back in time.

I don’t claim to understand the physics, but according to Steven Hawking time travel, back in time is possible.  Provided you have a super heavy object like a black hole.  The problem is that you have to go so close to the black hole to use the time travel method that it may be impossible to go that close and survive.  If that is true then time travel may be theoretically possible, but actually physically impossible.  We don’t know, we just know that with the science we have you can’t travel back in time.  We can imagine a situation where you could, but we lack the technology to do it, and we may never have the technology to be able to do it; just like we may never develop a method of traveling faster than the speed of light.

The absence of proof is not proof of an absence.

I haven’t seen any UFOs or any aliens from another planet.  That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.  As it stands I don’t think UFOs exist, the evidence is too weak for me.  But, I do believe that there is some thing alive somewhere else in the universe.  The more we study the universe the more we see that earth is not the center of the universe and the more common our solar system seems to be.  In Antarctica, under the ice there are molds.  Sulfuric spewing vents at the bottom of the ocean support life, life exists in the backs of caves that never saw the light of day, even in the hot springs of Yellowstone Park there are life forms.  If life can fit in and area and build a niche to survive then it will; that seems to be the rule of life.  If that is true then there has to be life somewhere else in the universe.

I am more likely to believe in alien life than I am to believe in time travel.  Personally, I hate time travel stories.  Most of them involve a paradox and a paradox makes something impossible, so in most cases time travel is impossible.  I know that with advanced physics time travel is possible, I have read it in a scientific work that I trust based on the observations and theories of people like Steven Hawking.  So it is possible, but to do so requires doing things we can’t do and that makes it CURRENTLY impossible.  It may make it forever impossible.

Answer 5

Time travel according to Einseins theory of relativity is not posible.According to the theory matter can not travel at the speed of light and in order to time travel you must exceed the speed of light. However Hawkins has some complex theories based on blackholes, because the gravity is so dense that not even light can escape. However I have a theory on looking into the past. If you could somehow transport a high level telescope into distant space via wormhole for example, then you could pick up images of earth before that light reached the telescope.

Answer 6

it's a load of c**p to me.

i don't even think it's possible to do that.

it'd be super cool if they could though.

but.. if it was possible, don't you think the whole world would know?

Answer 7

I'm sure they have but they just keep it under cover. Marty McFly never revealed that he was a time traveller, now did he.

I'm sure that if a time traveller were to expose him/herself that person would either be called insane or he would be overwhelmed with attention and questions, it wouldn't be funny. It would be too much for the time traveller if he/she were to expose him/herself.

Thats why it seems like none have visited us yet. But they do all the time.

Answer 8

Time travel WILL be possible, in the near future.  But time flows in just one direction, from past to future, so the time travellers will only be able to go into the future, and will never be able to return home. (Awww!)

As the time machine hasn't been built yet, we won't see any travellers until AFTER it's made.  And that's the only way we'll know time travel has been made possible.  (IE when I vanish next month, then reappear fifty years later but still looking young and fine.)

Answer 9

I am a time traveler.  I have been sent by John Connor to prevent his mother from being killed by a cyborg.

Does anyone here know a Sarah Connor?  If so, please email me.  It's rather important.

Answer 10

That would be FLUX capacitor, Doc.

Answer 11

Maybe there are current time travellers here...

To travel time we might need to change our energetic state.

In other words, be fully aware that we are travelling but without the burden of the physical body.

A bit like dying but less permanent :-)

Answer 12

How do you know they're NOT visiting us? Why would you expect them to not *blend* in with the rest of us?

Answer 13

According to the theory, when we travel at great speed time slows down (for us only), and when we are at the speed of light then the time stops (for us only means that when we started our started our journey my age was 13 so when I will stop travelling after 40 years then still I'll be a child and my 2 years younger brother will be 51, a fully grown up man). If we are at more than the speed of light then we will be travelling to our past (e.g. if we are 51 then after 40 yrs. we will be 13)

But the time and aging of the rest of the world remains at normal speed. So, it means that we can only travel to future.

So if there would be a time machine in and a time traveller, he can only travel to further future. For example there is a time traveller in 3007 A.D. then he can only travel futher many years.

That's why there aren't any time travellers.

We can't have any time travellers until an object with minus speed of light - 300 000 km/s is invented. Such object is not possible so there aren't any time travellers.

Answer 14

What if you can travel back in time but you can't interact with any thing there! If you can't interact then you can't change anything. But it would be worth the trip just to observe and learn what actually happened and why! Imagine learning where D B Cooper landed and where the money really is now! Imagine seeing the massive falls where the rock of Gibraltar rests,what it sounded like just before it collapsed and the med became a sea! Imagine seeing the Crucifixion taking place,and hearing his final words,or seeing his resurrection and the stone move away from his burial place! Perhaps see the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah!What would you just have to know the truth about? I just realized if you can't interact then you would be blind, because if the light doesn't interact with your retina and optic nerve you can't see, just as the invisible man would be blind because the light would just continue past through his eyes!

Answer 15

Time travel isnt possible. You cannot change what has already happened. You cannot change what hasnt happened either.

I hope that makes sense

Answer 16

Time travel is possible "in theory". It is not practical, nor do many of the most basic technologies  that would make it possible exist yet. Exotic matter, stable wormholes, and the  computers, energy  and resources required to even start planning a time machine are hundreds, if not thousands of years away.

It is quite possible that time travel can only go back so far, or can only go back in time to an "event", such as the creation of the first stable wormhole, which we have not done yet. In other words, we need to open the door before folks from the future can "come back"

It is also possible that "time travel" is in fact "universe travel", and we cannot go back in time within our own universe, but only branch out to parallel universes, which may or may not be existing in the same time-line as our universe. Since in theory, there are an infinite number of these parallel universes, travelers may simply not have found ours yet, or have not branched to our present time.

Also, the UFO phenomenon might not be space aliens or top secret government aircraft, but advanced human time travelers from millions or billions of years in the far distant future.

Or, they could already be here, and just be very good at hiding.

If you find one, let me know, I want next week's lottery numbers.

Answer 17

Time travel is NOT possible....ok? It's not......it's not.