User:Nightwind Dakota
Time
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A brief introduction
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The transition from day to night is one of the most primal measurements humanity has used to measure the passage of time. As day turned into night, and spring into summer, we began to note the differences that time had brought to our people. As our species matured and grew, we tried to quantitate Time, measuring it in seconds, minutes, hours and the like.
As we continued on in our journey, we began to explore and question the meaning of time itself. How is it that a force that is so powerful and all encompassing is untouchable by man? No matter what we do, we cannot interact with Time but in only one way.
Many writers and philosophers tried to stand up to that challenge; their works are still around to day in almost every conceivable form. We find major questions addressed in books, movies and novels. Attempts at a fantastic machine that would allow us to manipulate time freely remain still the stuff of dreams and legend.
I hope that this article will help you to understand some of those questions and opinions raised by others and by ourselves, and leave you with a better understanding of one of the most powerful forces in the universe. Each member of our group will comment on a different aspect of each article, thereby giving you, the reader, a more balanced and wholesome experience. There will also be links to other wikipedia articles and other websites to further enrich your experience. Please, brows them at your discretion.
~Eric Frykman
Have you ever wanted to travel back in time to do something different that you regretted?
Maybe if you were able to change something, you would have a better future. Maybe you were once that nerd and want to go back to get revenge of that bully that teased you all the time.
Have you ever wanted to travel to the future to see who you would be married to? It could be a long time friend, or someone that you’ve never seen before in your life. Then, maybe you would find out something that you really didn’t want to know. For years, time travel has been an argument. People have their different reasons for why they think time travel would be possible in the future or not. Time paradoxes have also been an issue; explaining whether they are real, or better yet just understanding them. It’s extremely difficult trying to understand them. The ethicality of time travel, as well, has been a dispute; whether it is right or wrong. I have explanations for them all, but of my own personal opinion. So, I will elaborate in this article the possibilities of time travel, whether or not time travel is ethical, and time paradoxes.
~Shanita Wilburn
There are certain ideas that will continuously "pop up for debate." Some of these controversial topics include whether or not aliens exist, whether there is actually a God of some sort, and so on. The point is, probably no one will ever be able to give these questions a definitive answer. There will always be people who claim that aliens have abducted them and there will always be those of us who are skeptical. Time travel follows the same principle as other disputed ideas: Until someone can miraculously invent a time machine of some sort that actually works, or until some genius can come up with an equation that deems it physically impossible, there will always be believers and skeptics. It seems that, however, until experts have disproved a concept, we should consider it feasible. In the United States' court system people are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty; the same principle may be applied to the statement, "The unknown should be considered possible until proven impossible."
Time travel is a concept that no one has been able to prove impossible; therefore, one should consider it a real possibility until experts deem it otherwise.
~Kelly Barnett
The Possibility of a new Frontier
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I read an article, in which traveling to the past was discussed. Mike Lee mentioned in his article that one can travel to the past and change an event, but will soon find out that the event still happened. This is because in the actual universe nothing changed, meaning you are not in the “real” universe.
Now, say that you travel to the past to see someone. Think about what is happening to that person in the present. Will it or will it not be that same person? Traveling to the past in the actual universe or another is not possible. For this to be possible, one must be able to not only defy the speed of light, but also move in a negative direction: therefore traveling more than two times the speed of light in the opposite direction.
My reason for this is that in order to travel to the future, you must be traveling faster than the speed of light, but to travel backwards would be more difficult because, like I mentioned earlier, one would have to be capable of traveling in a vector and speed of a negative position. Someone asked me what a vector was. A vector is used in mathematics or physics for describing a quantity that has a magnitude [size or extent] and a direction. Now, time travel may be possible. Some people may not think so, but no one ever thought that cloning would be possible. Who would have thought that someone could be “made” exactly like them? Also, God created Adam and Eve, and it was meant for them for reproduction. Like I’ll mention later, God is the creator of ALL things. If people started cloning everything, that would be like testing the power of God. That clone of whatever is cloned would be a sin, no matter what or who it is. Anyone made by God has the opportunity of being forgiven, but not a clone. It would also be unfair to the people who are really sincere about God because they deserve eternal life with God. God may also not accept these people into His kingdom. Since they are living in vain until judgment day, they will probably be punished with eternal damnation.
Since technology becomes more advanced every year, there is a possibility that a theory could be proven that acknowledges time travel. However, it still remains from my knowledge to be impossible.
~Shanita Wilburn
One of the biggest arguments concerning the concept of time travel is whether one could actually achieve it. Many writers such as H.G. Wells and Clifford Pickover have written books about time travel, but so far in history, there have been no recorded cases of a person's being able to break the barrier of time. However, because no one has scientifically proven that time travel is
totally impossible, and because we can never be completely sure that there aren't people from the future or past living amongst us without our knowledge, we should consider time travel feasible. There are certain ideas that will continuously "pop up for debate." Some of these controversial topics include whether or not aliens exist, whether there is actually a God of some sort, and so on. The point is, probably no one will ever be able to give these questions a definitive answer. There will always be people who claim that aliens have abducted them and there will always be those of us who are skeptical. Time travel follows the same principle as other disputed ideas: Until someone can miraculously invent a time machine of some sort that actually works, or until some genius can come up with an equation that deems it physically impossible, there will always be believers and skeptics. It seems that, however, until experts have disproved a concept, we should consider it feasible. In the United States' court system people are
presumed to be innocent until proven guilty; the same principle may be applied to the statement, "The unknown should be considered possible until proven impossible." Time travel is a concept that no one has been able to prove impossible; therefore, one should consider it a real possibility until experts deem it otherwise.
Another reason exists why we should not consider time travel infeasible. The fact is, so many times in history what humans were so certain was true later turned out to be false. For example, in the 1800's there was probably very little hope that one day scientists would build a vehicle that would be not only able to levitate itself, but travel all the way to the moon, as well. Perhaps one day a few hundred years from now, time travel will be just as common an event as a flight from New York to Los Angeles. Just because no one has yet traveled through time (that we know of) does not mean that it will never happen. Many times in the past people have underestimated the human ability to make things happen. For example, many centuries ago, people were positive that the world was flat. When Columbus set off on his voyage, everyone was sure he would literally fall off the face of the earth. However, Columbus proved the skeptics wrong. I am not saying that I am a firm believer that time travel is possible, but it seems as though the historical evidence for scientific discoveries often seems to follow a similar pattern: someone thinks of an idea and everyone accuses him or her of being a lunatic, then that person follows through and succeeds. In doing so, he or she thereby refutes all the doubters' arguments. If we can set foot on the moon, why can't we take a trip through time?
In addition to the fact that no one has actually proved that time travel is impossible, there is also the possibility that perhaps a select few have actually succeeded in coasting through time. The rebuttal to this statement is "Well, how would they know how to act in order to avoid discovery? Wouldn't they be obviously out of place?" There are answers to this question. The first is that perhaps people would realize the danger of this and therefore only travel through time in increments of several days or weeks, so as not to be obvious. Most of the times that I think to myself how great it would be to have a time machine involve instances when I have recently made one wrong decision or narrowly missed an opportunity and would love to be able to go back and change one small thing. Perhaps people can travel through time, but choose not to do so in the stereotypical "Back to the Future" manner of going back twenty or more years; but instead they travel travel through merely days, or even minutes.
Another response to the question above is the obvious fact that there are some people in the world whom others perceive as being weird, with no explanation. Did you ever stop and wonder why your next-door neighbor wears a metal helmet and eats cat food? As ridiculous as this may sound, there is always the possibility that those strange people whose behavior is just inexplicable might be from another time period. People always joke about the possibility of others “being from outer space,” so why couldn’t someone be a visitor from the year 3204? As ludicrous as this idea might seem, one cannot actually rule out the possibility. This ties in with the fact that until one can disprove a concept, one cannot effectively argue that is not possible. Who's to say that your weirdo next-door neighbor isn't from another era?
Although some of these arguments might seem strange, the point is, no one can either prove or disprove time travel. Therefore no one can logically say, "Time travel cannot exist and never will." The answer to the question of "Is Time travel feasible?" should be, "Sure. Why not?”
~Kelly Barnett
For as long as we have been around, we have assumed that there was a beginning of Time and an end of time (that has yet to come, thankfully). And, because we have defined time with having both a beginning and an end, we can assume that it travels along in a line.
Since we assume time travels along in a line, why then is it that we cannot go back? We should be able to turn around and travel back across that same line we traveled. According to all simple physics, this is impossible. And, no one really knows why.
Oh, sure, there are lots of theories: if you go past the speed of light you can go into the past; linking two black holes to form a wormhole may possibly give you a time/space portal as well. They physics behind it are extremely complex, and quite frankly my brain can’t handle it.
There are some universal agreements to the time machine, however. Whatever it is, it should be safe, effective, quick, and most importantly, discrete. An image comes to mind of Jesus’ Crucifixion and the billions of believers that suddenly swarm that place and time to see that event. It would be a catastrophe, wouldn’t you agree? The practicality of time travel should also be weighted in with our next subject; it’s ethic concequences.
~Eric Frykman
The Ethics of meeting yourself yesterday
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Although the most commonly debated question regarding time travel is "Is it possible?" perhaps maybe the more pertinent question should be "Is it ethical?" Many people are so preoccupied with the excitement of the possibility of being able to travel through time, (who wouldn't want to go back and relive the best moment in his or her life or prevent something bad from happening to him or her?) that they don't stop and consider the effects that their actions might have on other people. Theoretically, if you think about it, if someone goes back in time and even alters one tiny second, it could have serious adverse effects on the future (or present, depending on which way you think about it).
For example, take Marty in "Back to the Future." His would-be mom becomes attracted to him, and his presence in the past nearly destroys his existence. Sure, the end of the movie produces good outcomes for everyone, but what if Marty's presence in the past had affected the way his future mom felt about his future dad and caused Marty to never be born? There are an infinite number of possibilities in time travel that could go wrong and cause a series of chain effects that could devastate many people. Without knowing it, a person who travels back in time could potentially end several other people's lives in the future.
Besides the fact that someone could accidentally do harm to other people (or him/herself), there is also the potential for someone who has destructive or criminal intentions to intentionally cause harm. For example, an arrested criminal who obtains a time travel device could travel back in time and alter the evidence to avoid arrest. There are many ways time travel could benefit society: there are at least an equal number of ways one could use it maliciously. What if Saddam Hussein had a time machine? He could use it to go back in time to avoid capture and ensure success of more dire plans. Another potentially harmful use for time travel would be to aid someone with a vendetta against someone else. The person could actually go back in time and make sure his rival was never born. There are truly an infinite amount of ways in which one could use time travel in a very, very destructive manner.
Another aspect of time travel that many people do not consider is the fact that many of the events we count on now would be altered. For example, playing the lottery would have to be eliminated, because anyone could go back in time and guarantee winning numbers. The anticipation of sporting events would also become obsolete. The idea of time travel seems at first so incredible and amazing that people don't stop and realize that if everyone could travel through time, the world could essentially come to a stand-still. Everyone would be so busy going back in time to fix old mistakes and attempt to change future outcomes that time would never progress. It would be as it was for Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day; each day would repeat for eternity. Life would become pointless due to the unethical use of time travel.
Although time travel has the potential to be extremely destructive, if it were used properly by only a select few individuals with genuinely good intentions, the potential to help humanity would be great. For example, if we could go back in time with the advance knowledge of 9/11 , we could change certain things to thwart the terrorists' plans. Time travel has the potential to be very beneficial. However, like other controversial concepts (such as human cloning), if it got out of control it would have dire consequences for the world. Like human cloning, time travel could cause unforeseen problems. Both hold the potential of imminent disaster. Both cloning and time travel are very drastic tools. If either of these capabilities ever fell into the wrong hands, the whole world would obviously suffer greatly. In fact, even in the hands of an average well- meaning person, a time machine could cause have dire consequences for us all
The question “Is time travel ethical?” truly has no one good answer. A time machine itself isn’t unethical, because the time machine hasn’t done anything wrong. Just like guns, bombs, and other weapons time machines aren’t unethical themselves, but it’s what people do with them that has the potential to be unethical. The main point that people should understand is that just like any other powerful tool, the concept of time travel must be treated carefully, as it has very strong possibilities.
~Kelly Barnett
Meeting yourself yesterday. That sounds like a grammatical error, but if Time travel becomes a possibility, then it will become a problem we’ll have to face. What would happen if everyone went back 10, 20, 50 years and altered the past? At any given point in time we’d have hundreds of wars, kingdoms, deaths, births, joys and defeats.
As I alluded to earlier, historic events would be literally swamped by “time tourists”. The Crucifixion would have billions of people around the countryside cheering/weeping/selling popcorn whilst one of the most important events in history took place. There would be millions of people watching the signing of the Declaration of Independence, JFK’s assassination, the fall of the Berlin Wall. Physical space itself would become scarce as each person tries to occupy the same space at the same time.
We also run into problems of mucking about with the timeline itself. If you do go back and alter the past to favor you, who else are you hurting? For instance, assume that you were fired from a job. You go back into time and tell yourself what to do to keep the job, and do it. Turns out, 5 months “after” you would have lost that job, a co-worker goes postal and kills everyone off. You saved yourself some pain in the short term, but in the long run you screwed yourself over.
Also, many people believe in a “ripple effect”; as in one person’s actions have an effect on 10 or 20 or more people. Going back a paragraph, because I “lost” that job, I drowned my sorrows in liquor. I met a girl at a bar, and we hit it off. Eventually, she becomes my wife. But, because I chose to alter the timeline, I stay in my job. Because I stay in my job, three other people are fired in my stead. Although I’ve done nothing extraordinary (other than existing) there are still ripples felt throughout the world.
Time travel, although it might initially be used for “good”, should not be used at all. The peripheral effects that it could have on our world and our history are too catastrophic to imagine. If anything, Time travel should only be used to observe; never to interact.
~Eric "Easy E" Frykman
About time travel being ethical, I would not agree. Although time travel may one day be possible, it goes against many biblical terms. Time travel would be unethical, or morally wrong, because: say for instance people could sin anytime they wanted to. Sins would be premeditated, and then people would have the opportunity to travel to the past to undo their sin. No one can take away their own sin. Only prayer and repentance will allow that sin to be forgiven. Another reason is that no one would ever be able to harness the power of the sun. What I mean by this is since God is the creator of all things, mankind should not have control over something as great as time travel. If mankind were able to control what was made by God, the world would go downhill. People would have no concern for what is right or wrong. The world would come to an end at that point because once people stop believing in God or worshipping themselves and others, God said that there would be a second coming of Him. According to the books of Revelations and Thessolonians, Jesus Christ has promised to return to the earth and allow saved Christians to get caught in what is believed to be “the rapture”. On the contrary, those who are not saved will be left here on earth with the anti-Christ, and live through difficult trials and tribulations. Adding to what was said earlier, time travel will allow those who are not Christians at the time of Christ’s return to go back in time to get saved, but only to avoid living through tribulation and not because they really love Jesus Christ. Also, Jesus mentions that no one except God knows the day or the hour of his return. If time travel were possible, then we could look into the future and have knowledge of Jesus Christ’s return to earth. This would influence and encourage individuals to live their lives full of sin, but not as they approach the day or hour of his return. They would become a saved Christian. They will not have a sincere spirit.
To further speak about how time travel is unethical, it will interfere with God’s way of showing people how to be patient. God puts people in situations for reasons. He may be teaching someone how to be strong or how to deal with certain things. For instance, a man and woman are in relationship that’s getting nowhere. In fact, the relationship was the best relationship, in the beginning, that anyone could ever ask for. Suddenly, everything went downhill, and they never got along again because of differences that they didn’t know of each other at first. That may be God’s way of saying they need to try to work things out, or he may be saying that they need to move on with their lives. On the other hand, who would risk the chance of knowing their own dying day? One may travel back so far that they wouldn’t be in existence anymore. This can relate to what I said about the sincerity of one’s heart. One would sin, knowing that they will one day have to ask for forgiveness.
On the ethicality of time travel, other than God; well, let’s just pretend that the world was made mysteriously. I wouldn’t see anything wrong with it then because there would probably be no rules or commandments to go by. Then, I don’t think morality would even matter. There would be no right or wrong, or would there? Since God wouldn’t be in existence, would there be another power? Anyway, it would be ok. People with desires to travel back in time or to the future should be able to visit loved ones or to just try something different. They should, however, do it in a way that wouldn’t harm others. What I don’t understand is why someone would want to change their past. What happened in the past happened for the good. Let’s just say, in order to learn from mistakes, you must make them. It won’t always be good to go into the past because there is always something greater that may happen to you. Then, you may never know the greatness of what could have happened.
~Shanita Wilburn
A Paradox is much like this sentence because it loops in on itself like A Paradox...
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As for time paradoxes, I’ll just give a few examples. Three examples are the Grandfather paradox, mother/father paradox, and the egg clock. First, a paradox is a time challenge. It doesn’t have a beginning or end. It’s almost like a time loop.
The most famous example is the Grandfather Paradox. If I went back in time and killed my grandfather, then my parent would not have been born. If my parent wasn't born, then neither was I, which meant I never existed to go back and time to kill my grandfather. But if I didn't go back, it means my grandfather lived, so did my parent and so did I. But if I lived, then I did go back in time and kill my grandfather! As you can see this gets confusing, but I am caught in an endless loop, never to end. This is like a loop because maybe I existed, or maybe I didn’t. It’s really confusing to think about. Like I mentioned earlier about going back to the past, would that have even been my real grandfather?
Here's another example, which is even more confusing. A guy friend of mine took a time travel expedition to the past, met a beautiful woman, hit it off and eventually she gets pregnant. But, he cannot bring her to the future, because the timeline would be changed and she cannot stay, so he leaves her and go to his own time. He looks years later in his grandparent's attic and sees a picture of her. She's his great-great grandmother! And he has become his own great-great grandfather! If he didn't go back, then would he never have been born! What happened is my guy friend got his own great-great grandmother pregnant. The baby was his great-grandparent, but he was also the great-great grandfather because he was the father of the child. However, he still would have been born if he had not gone back. If he hadn’t gone back in time, his real great-great grandfather would have been the father of the baby, and he still would have been born.
One example of this in the game is the side quest involving a basketball. In 1980, Michael Jordan the professional basketball player gives you a basketball. If you travel to 1908, you can give this basketball to the owner of the bar to pay off your tab. By doing so you give the owner a hobby, which is collecting round, rubber objects, a hobby shared by his descendant in the present. In the present, if you give the current bar owner another basketball, he is very grateful and gives you the weapon that saves your life. Now, if you hadn't given the basketball to the bar owner in the past, then the current bar owner wouldn't have been interested in the basketball you gave him, so he wouldn't have given you the weapon. If you didn’t have the weapon in the present, then you would have died, and therefore you never went back in time anyway! Now, this is the most confusing one of all. If you didn’t go back to the past, you would have died, but since you did, you are able to say that you went to the past. Otherwise, you would have died anyway, meaning that you never had the opportunity to go back to the past. You died because you never had the chance to make a man become interested in basketballs, and you never got that weapon that saved your life.
Paradoxes are the most confusing for me to explain. Do I think that paradoxes are real? Just as time travel, I think that it’s also impossible. If something sounds so confusing and involved such loops as a paradox, meaning that many and anything could happen, there’s not a possibility. This goes back to whether it is ethical or not.
Therefore, my overall opinion on time travel is that it won’t be possible, it is not ethical, and there is not possible way for paradoxes to be true.
~Shanita Wilburn
According to [Dictionary.com], a paradox is “a seemingly contradictory statement that may nonetheless be true." The concept of time travel has endless possibility of paradox, because it defies a principle that we all know to be true. The definition of a paradox seems to be a bit confusing and is best explained in the form of example. I will illustrate some examples of paradoxes and unknowns that could possibly occur. There are many more examples, but these are ones I have created myself.
First example: A thirty-year-old man goes back in time to his childhood whenhe was nine years old. The man accidentally knocks over a can of paint while observing his nine-year-old self. As the man hides, he leaves his childhood persona to clean up the mysteriously spilled can of paint. As a result, the nine-year-old leaves for school several minutes later than he would have, and a speeding car hits the boy as he is walking to school. (The car obviously would not have been there five minutes earlier.) The child version of the adult dies, so then what happensto the thirty-year-old man? Does he die instantly at the same time, or can he go back in time and change what happened? If the boy has died in the past, has the man ever even existed? This situation has no feasible solution; therefore, it is a paradox.
Another example of paradox in time travel: A cancer patient is told she has only three months to live. Suppose she obtains a time travel device and travels twenty years into the future (way past her life expectancy, given the fact that she is terminally ill). If the patient had been so ill and would have died so many years ago, what will happen when she arrives twenty years into the future? Will she be herself with three months to live and therefore die three months from that point in the future, or will it be even be possible for her to travel into the future? If she breaks the “rules” of fate, what will happen to her? Suppose there is a new treatment for her cancer available now twenty years into the future. Can she return to the past completely cured? Is she alive in the future if her life expectancy in the present was to be only three months?
Contradictory situations like these are impossible to clarify and can have multiple outcomes at once, thus making them paradoxical.
~Kelly Barnett
Delicious, delicious paradoxes. Where would time travel ethics be without them? For the uninformed, a Paradox is an inherent contradiction. A cute little paradox would be this section’s title, which is a sentence that never ends (it loops into itself). Time itself has no paradoxes: it has an orderly flow, and does not repeat itself at all. Once you enter into the mix human fallibility, we begin to run into problems.
For instance, think of a set of plans. Got it in your head? Now, you’re walking down the street when an old man comes towards you and hands you a set of plans. You open them up and see that they’re schematics for a time machine. You then spend the next 30 years building the time machine. When it is finished, you go back into time and hand your younger self the plans. The paradox question: where did the plans come from?
Another example would be the Grandfather paradox: basically you go back into time, fall in love with a young woman, start a family, and then one day (very far down the road) your son has a son that looks eerily like you did when you were young. You gave birth to yourself, so the paradox question is where did you come from?
Most paradoxes revolve around the creation of something out of nothing. In the last two cases, you and the plans were self-created. This is quite impossible, because it defies many laws of physics (such as the fact that matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed). Defying those laws might just cause a catastrophe, or as I like to think of it a “Blue-Screen of the universe”.
~Eric "Top Hat" Frykman
This is the end, my friend.
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Time, and Time travel, are things that we seem to be obsessed with. Whether we try to take back the years with plastic surgery or physically build a machine to escape the troubles of this era, we continue to strive against the natural flow of things.
The sheer amount of physical laws that you have to break, the amount of energy needed to travel back in time, and also the trouble that can so easily be caused if you are successful should all be incentives enough to not do any such thing. I find that the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” quite useful here, and would like to end on a slightly humorous note. But, please do try to see through this charade; Time travel is the one place that humankind was and is not bidden to go to.
~Eric Frykman
~Shanita Wilburn
~Kelly Barnett
