What happens to my "other" self if i go back in time?

The fact that you can think about traveling in time should be enough proof that you can in some infinite universe out there...This is just one "simulation" so to speak, of many...I wouldn't be so hasty as to say that it isn't possible. But in the event you saw yourself, in a sense you would change your destiny because you intervened- your life would surely change for both of you actually. When you leave is the bigger question, will everything return the way it was or stay changed??? Maybe there's a rebound effect...



[edit on 3/30/2008 by PimpyMcgibbins]

In the movie White Noise; people who died supposedly weren't bound by the same time restraints. If you were able to have an OOBE or remote view and able to take over or manipulate your younger self, then there would be no need to physically time travel and run into yourself etc.

In the movie Scrooge he visits his younger self who can't hear him. At any rate, the ability as an entity to possess other people may also include yourself from making any certain mistakes or even winning the lottery. Obviously if this were possible people would be doing it already........or maybe some are?

There's always The Wishmaster or Jinn. (kidding)

Look into Remote Viewing. Some claim to be able to time travel using this psychic ability we all supposedly have.

Hoax or not, I really enjoyed John Titor's take on time travel. I imagine it would be similar to the way he described.

www.johntitor.com

If you go back in time you'll be taxed twice as much.
Best to stay in the present.

Fascinating insight from the great Michio Kaku as excerted from his book
'Physics of the Impossible'
Visit the link for a great read:
Prof Michio Kaku on the science behind UFOs and time travel

Time travel to the future is possible and has been experimentally verified millions of times. If an astronaut were to travel near the speed of light, it might take him, say, one minute to reach the nearest stars. Four years would have elapsed on Earth, but for him only one minute would have passed, because time would have slowed down inside the rocket ship. Hence he would have travelled four years into the future, as experienced here on Earth. (Our astronauts actually take a short trip into the future every time they go into outer space. As they travel at 18,000 miles per hour above the Earth, their clocks beat a tiny bit slower than clocks on Earth. The world record for travelling into the future is held by the Russian cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev, who orbited for 748 days and was hence hurled .02 seconds into the future.)

He proposes three ways of resolving time travel paradox. I'm leaning toward his third:

But perhaps the thorniest problems are the logical paradoxes raised by time travel. For example, what happens if we kill our parents before we are born? This is a logical impossibility. It is sometimes called the 'grandfather paradox'...Third, the universe splits into two. On one timeline the people whom you killed look just like your parents, but they are different, because you are now in a parallel universe. This latter possibility seems to be the one consistent with the quantum theory.

This man is so brilliant and his writings are fascinating reading.
By the way, I too, am unsure whether John Titor was real or not, but his story is extremely compelling. All of his forum discussion is documented on the prior-mentioned website.

If you believe in a multiverse instead of a universe then time travel seems to make more sense. Strangely, and laugh if you want, John Titor explains time travel in a way my skeptic mind understands and sees as possible. Many scientist have adopted his time travel theory also, his machine too. It even goes in to time divergince(spelling), multiple time lines and more theories that make a lot sense, as much as time travel can make anyway.

Isn't time though, only relevant to our planet earth? Something that human beings devised? So how does the time machine know what time is to travel through it?

And how would a time machine travel?

Like superman did? Or like the time machine in the H G Wells novel? I'm not taking the mickey here but Ive always wondered how it would move.

reply to post by Stumpy1


Good heavens... why would you want to go "back" in time (even if it were possible to intervene in the action observed) - instead of going laterally in time, as it were...?

If there is something you would really like to change in your "past", there are ways... Only it's not really your "past" what you're amending - rather, you're bringing into life (YOUR life) a different experience of the "past". (Think of it as a thread to be woven into the fabric of your here-and-now.)

There are more knowledgeable people than myself on this board, so I am sure they can help you. (In fact, they may have done so already... it's just that I am in such a hurry right now that I can't really read the replies. Sorry about that... )

But I am sure all of them would agree with this: whatever you do with your "past" on the observing (= creative imagination, which is absolutely NOT the same as "fantasy") level, you absolutely must retain - and enhance, if possible - your feeling of here-and-now. (Otherwise you'll be missing the material to weave that "thread" into, and all that creating will really remain just a fantasy.)

Also... remember this: IF you are trying to effect a change (and you're not asking just out of curiosity), the less thinking about what is "possible" and what "not", the better. Whatever you think is possible - is; whatever you think is not possible - isn't.

In that (practical) sense, all such debates are just a waste of time and, in fact, only serve to derail you further and further from your goal.


Good luck!

Hi all hope you don’t mind me butting in, time travel is impossible, as I understand time it is a calibration of the earths rotation on its axis and around the sun that is our days and years, days are broken down further into manageable sections such as hours, minutes and seconds, with these calibrations we can map the past and plan for the future. We all know these calibrations are not exact as this year we have a leap year and every so often we have leap seconds, these are to bring our measuring instruments back into synchronisation with the earths rotation. It is wrong to say that the closer you travel to light speed the slower time elapses because the earth will continue to rotate and the human body will continue to age so time will continue at the same rate, ultimately we can only measure time with the planet we sit on therefore any difference in the measuring instruments can only be a difference in the instruments.


As for the original question, ‘if’ you did happen to do so I would think that the moment you interfered you would disappear as the current disabled self as your now different future self would have no need to travel back and change anything thereby creating a paradox as your disabled self in the future would not exist to go back and change the event that led to the incident.
My head hurts now so I think I shall go and watch Back to the Future to get some ‘real’ answers.

Anathematic.

Anathematic,
I just showed you, above, that time travel, at least toward the future IS, INDEED possible, via high speed travel. Is it not logical to conclude that as we increase our ability to achieve ever higher velocities our ability to more efficiently travel ahead will increase? To what limits I can only imagine.