What do you think of this... ?

Question

If a method of time travel was discovered, then traveling into the past in order to change the time travelers native times history, would be pointless, because once a moment has passed then it becomes its own entity. Meaning that once it has passed a change occurring in that moment will only change the native people of that moments history, yet not the time travelers.

very very rough... just wrote it.. very hard to make it clear what i am trying to get across. if you get what im trying to say then please respond with oppinions etc...

Answer 1

No I get what your saying. If you go back and change what was you'll also change what is! Whatever you change could make our lives at present drastically different! Impressive for a fourteen year old. I think time travel could be useful only in that we could observe what life was like in whatever time we visited.

EDIT: I meant no offense. I think its impressive, because most fourteen year olds aren't thinking about things like this. They are a little more superficial than that. I find it refreshing and again, I meant no insult!

Answer 2

"Don't expect much positive..."?  I tip my hat to you sir!  At 14, thinking of something like this is wonderful.  You create a hypothetical and question the possible solutions.  This is the same process which the top scientific minds in the world are doing right now, as well.

     Now, I'm no expert in theoretical physics but to continue your discussion...  Backward time travel presents a paradox, which is usually a bad word in science but this is your hypothetical so it's fine.  You propose that someone changing the past only changes the timeline for those "currently" in their natural spot in the timestream.  This presents two problems in my mind right away: first, that the person altering the past for all but him/herself is immediately without a past since everything changed without him/her, second, that all other displaced time travelers are then without histories as well due to someone's meddling.  The easiest is the second.  All others would be affected, I would think, by changes in the past since they're not initiating the change and therefore are not posing a paradox.  Now the first is a case of paradox so the time traveler who initiates a change (instead of merely observing, though the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle states that the act of observing always changes the thing observed- but we'll ignore it for now) must have some immunity- "non-native person to that moment", as I think you would put it, will suffice.  I suppose if the one changing time has immunity, then it's not a stretch to say any non-natives do too.

We end up with time-traveler(s) who are either stuck as "foreigners" in time and have no place to go home to since history is ignoring them somehow, or they can go back just fine to the new present time and must then adapt to it.  There's so many questions ready to pose from this that I'm ready to quit already- ugh.

P.S.- "Time Foreigner" is a cool name for a band.

Answer 3

Oh!  A pocket Steven Hawking!  Well, time travel in itself is a paradox.  Time 'Travel' is impossible and will never be possible.

Answer 4

...if all were possible it would be great to change what was...

...the unscrupulous would do otherwise...

...now the big decision would you sell the machine to the highest bidder...

...good luck...

Answer 5

true..but also if the time travelers were from the native people that they made the change in, there in fact they would be changed in the future whether being different or a different culture..either way if they changed the people it would change them because of an effect from the change of the people but i get what you are saying....