If time travel were discovered to be possible, would it be used for good or would it be used for evil?

Question

If time travel were discovered to be possible, would it be used for good or would it be used for evil?

Answer 1

Both.

Answer 2

Theoretically its might be possible to travel into the future. However, an individual or group travelling into the future may well be anticipated and will thus have effected future events anyway. Whether travel into the future will be for good or bad is hard to say. An individual arriving in the future will be technologically backward and socially out of date, so I do not see how they could 'fit in' or manipulate future events.

A brief survey of the physics of time travel is presented below.

Einstein published his Theory of General Relativity in 1915 but it was not until the late nineteen forties that, the Austrian mathematician, Kurt Gödel found a time travel possibility within a solution to some relativistic equations. He found, that if the universe is rotating then time travel in both directions should be possible. By both directions, I mean, into the past and back or into the future and back. Alas, recent observational work used to study the cosmic back-ground radiation has indicated that the universe has not rotated significantly since its creation. Hence, time travel into the past would appear to be impossible.

However, Einstein's theory of Special Relativity allows 'time-dilated' travel into the future. If an astronaut sets off on a journey travelling at a high percentage of the speed of light, then his on board clock will run more slowly than an equivalent clock here on Earth. Thus, when the high speed traveller returns after a few years of his elapsed time; here on Earth many hundreds of years may have elapsed. The time dilation equation is given below: -

t(Earth) = t(traveller)

..............._________

...............√(1 - (v/c)²)

Where 'c' is the speed of light and 'v' the traveller's velocity, which may be expressed as a percentage of the speed of light ((say) 0.99999c).

Therefore, to summarise, the answer appears to be that you cannot travel through time into the past but you can travel into the future - at least theoretically!

Answer 3

try reading H G Wells book "the time machine"

Answer 4

Time travel forward is possible, even easy (theoretically), just find a nice high gravity field and stick around.

Science would currently seem to indicate that time travel backwards is impossible. If it were it would be used for 'evil' purposes without doubt - would you be able to trust _anyone_ with a time travel device? And even if it were used for 'good', any use would be catastrophic according to Chaos Theory (specifically the Butterfly Effect)

Answer 5

Both, though you would have to consider moral relativism in this answer: whatever good I might claim do as a time traveller might be considered in your eyes to be evil, though if it were to happen in your past, then you would just accept it as history.  Issues such as the "Grandfather Paradox" can also arise with the idea of travelling back in time.  

Travelling at a rate slower than we perceive it is possible by either approching the speed of light, or, as mentioned, harnessing the proximity of a vast gravitational field.  To you it would appear as if less time has passed than for those of us here on Earth.  Note that no such bodies capable of creating this time dilation exist near us either.  There are several other theories as to how time travel might be acheived, but all are beyond current engineering, and certainly never likley anyway..

Answer 6

Some would try to change things for the better. Some may become curious and abuse it. Really depends. But I say it'll be used for good.