Time Travel: What would you do?

Atom smashers work via relativity. Stuff decays really fast, but is moving so near C that we have time to take measurements.

Rajaah said:

I think that any extraterrestrial interstellar travel out there is likely being done via wormhole generation or warp bubble rather than actually reaching or exceeding light speed. The time dilation, and the difficulty, seem like brick walls to light speed actually being workable compared to the other ideas.

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The biggest issue with time dilation is that any impacts with any object of any size can be catastrophic when you are moving at those speeds. And even in the interstellar void there is a lot of stray molecules that never got sucked into the galaxies.

I think it’s more likely we figure out interdimensional travel than time travel. Exploring the multiverse could be cool. How to not be de-atomized while jumping dimensions may be a hiccup though

Politics thread is Hitler was right.
This thread is kill Hitler.
Fires of heaven really is a diverse forum.

I would go back and count exactly how many Jews were put in ovens and report my findings here.

moonarchia said:

The biggest issue with time dilation is that any impacts with any object of any size can be catastrophic when you are moving at those speeds. And even in the interstellar void there is a lot of stray molecules that never got sucked into the galaxies.

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I've read scifi novels where they stack a few miles thick of ice on the front, and make the ship shaped like a needle, but It will be fascinating to see how it all shakes out in the future.

There's math you can do to predict the energy released by striking hydrogen atoms and such. Lots of heavy gamma radiation. I wonder if you'd need a couple miles of ice, then a few feet of steel and maybe even some lead? Maybe there's a hard limit way before C where you just can't stack enough ice to get anywhere fast.

Oh man. The mountain of cash you could make just knowing lotto numbers. The question would be whether you have the power or a device to only time travel yourself or with other people. If other people, it's as simple as making a buttload of cash to hire, train, and gear a mercenary force. Then take said force back in time to make sure those god damned Ottomans never take Constantinople.

Metalhead said:

Oh man. The mountain of cash you could make just knowing lotto numbers. The question would be whether you have the power or a device to only time travel yourself or with other people. If other people, it's as simple as making a buttload of cash to hire, train, and gear a mercenary force. Then take said force back in time to make sure those god damned Ottomans never take Constantinople.

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What's the minimum number of modern soldiers/equipment you'd need to influence a historic conflict?

Example, could one modern fighter jet for Germany win the Battle of Britain? How many modern jets to win ww2?

What about modern submarines?

I'd go back in time to edit this post to see if I can create a universe ending time paradox.

post last edited by Fucker 3:41PM on 12/14/2014

Cutlery said:

Time travel? That's simple. Save scum my life.

Turns out I only need to go back a month to pick a different dialogue option to maybe a save a buddy.

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See? this is what I'm talking about. Anybody who pretends they're gonna go alter history books is full of shit. We've all got stuff much closer to home we'd like to change first. This shit is like the whole reason a person would take the risks of time travel in the first place.

Time travel would seem risky by itself. Say you have a machine that does the time travel for you right, who's to say you back 100 years and materialize inside a tree or inside a hill that was leveled off at some point?

I read a lot about traveling back in time to kill Hitler. Wouldn't that make Israel cease to exist? Even the person going back in time would cease to exist most likely. WW2 doesn't happen and my grand parents on both sides never meet.

I'd go back in time to save my father. Spend more time with friends and family while I had the chance. Invest in the right areas as well.

Otto said:

I read a lot about traveling back in time to kill Hitler. Wouldn't that make Israel cease to exist? Even the person going back in time would cease to exist most likely. WW2 doesn't happen and my grand parents on both sides never meet.

I'd go back in time to save my father. Spend more time with friends and family while I had the chance. Invest in the right areas as well.

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The "kill Hitler" time travel idea is a classic example of how trying to do an objectively "good" thing can result in unintended consequences. It usually is based on the idea that if Hitler was killed before he rose to power, then WW2 and the Holocaust would be avoided and hundreds of millions of lives may have been saved. However, it takes a very myopic view of the world at the time

1) Imperial Japan and Stalin's USSR still exist even without Hitler - there still would have been major geopolitical issues and probably a war still
2) It rides on the idea that Hitler basically the genesis of all the Holocaust stuff and the mastermind of WW2. While he did clearly push for those, he didn't invent the ideas for either. It is just as likely another person could have risen to power that would have subscribed to the same viewpoints
3) As an extension to #3, a more competent person than Hitler in power could have resulted in a very different outcome in WW2. Hitler made a lot of decisions that really hurt Germany in the long run, especially all the Eastern Front stuff
4) Even if you somehow got the outcome no WW2 at all, the global stage would be completely different. There would be significantly reduced technological advancement, which would have cascading effects. Jet, Rocket, Computers, Atomic, etc. The changes to the timeline on Earth would be massive. Those technologies would no doubt be eventually refined and developed, but the levels they reached by the end of WW2 may have been delayed for decades.