a weird Paradox

i was thinking about this one day..

If you had the ability to go back in time and like.. kill your mother.. What would happen?

Because if you kill her, your not born. and if your not born, you cant shoot her...

Any suggestions?

(just a hypothetical)

it all depends on how it works, since we cant really be sure right now. one way of looking at it, is you would leave your dimension of happening to the past, kill your mom, which then would create another string/dimension of happening where you werent born. thus in your previous dimension, you'd still be the guy who went back in time to kill your mom. so both would exist. thats my thoughts on it anyways. however, if you take it from a linear stand point, which i think you are, then as soon as you shot her, it would end just right there for you. that is, if it was the first time of the occurance, so i suppose it would wipe you out permanently. hope i didnt confuse you there. dfh out.

Yeah, i see where you are coming from. but since we can't really test this theory.. ah well

I would assume you could do it once which I guess the instant you kill your mother creates a whole new reality sort of (?), this is all theory mind you.

Your personal timeline starts the moment you are born, if you grow up, go back in time and kill your mother (not sure this is the best use of time travel) your personal timeline ends and now your mothers personal time line ends earlier than it should which I think would be drastic enough to cause a complete split alla copenhagen collapse.

Meaning the entire universe you grew up in implodes or disintegrates or does whatever it is universes do when someone travels back in time and kills his mom and this new "Without Mom" universe instantly blooms into existence.

This is of course if you go back and shoot her before you are born. If you go back and shoot her after you have been born I would think something like that would cause another more subtle timeline split. Because you've already been born the older you killing your mother wouldn't wipe you out of existence because you already exist. Since you travel back in time and kill your mother after you have already been born it could be assumed that this is the natural end of your mothers personal timeline.

You pull the trigger ending your time line and your mothers time line. The younger version of you now grows up without a mother, in what could be described as an alternate reality of sorts. Again the universe in which you grew up in with a mom blinking out of existence.

What does this new you grow up to be without the influence of a mother, would he grow up to travel back in time and kill your mother again?

What the hell do I know its just a theory and I'm certainly no scientist.

SPiderj

Do you really hate your mother that much, that you will go back in time and kill her?

They mention something similar to this in reference to time travel at the following website:
freespace.virgin.net...

"There are problems. The commonest are the so-called paradoxes. For example, if we could travel through time, imagine what would happen to a time traveller if he (or she) travelled back in time and killed his own grandmother at birth. In theory the time traveller will therefore never be born, so the journey could never have been made in the first place; but if the journey never occurred then the grandmother would be born which means the time traveller would have been born and could make the journey ... and so on and so on. This is a paradox.

There are two possibilities to resolve this paradox. The first is that the past is totally defined, i.e. everything that has happened or must happen, including the time traveler's attempt to kill his grandmother, cannot be altered and nothing will change the course of history. In other words, the time traveller will experience endless "mishaps" in trying to kill his grandmother and will never achieve the murder, thus keeping time (or at least events) intact.

The second possibility is more complex and involves the quantum rules which govern the subatomic level of the universe. Put simply, when the time traveller kills the grandmother he immediately creates a new quantum universe, in essence a parallel universe where the young grandmother never existed and where our time traveller is never born. The original universe still remains. Stephen hawking believes he can explain the origin of our universe in a variation of this parallel-worlds theme."

im a proud supporter of the 'endless mishaps' theory. maybe because it sounds so kool.

indeed, a few points:

surfup: lol its a hypothetical

Spider: Yeah, i was thinking before you were born, i know what would happen if you killed her aftr your born

my theory is that couldn't happen. the reason I believe that by travelling back in time you step into a parallel or create a parallel in doing so, going back in the same timeline would be impossible , whats happened has already happened and nothing can change that fact! so you would be going into the alternate version , where you went back and actually killed your mother, who probably isnt your mother in that timeline, am i confusing you yet? lol

I MO you might get a hell of a beating when your dad got home

As a Back to the Future Fan, I don't know how many times I've been in this conversation. I even shot a short movie on it.(no kidding)
I always think this question itself is your answer that time travel to past can never be real. Although I must say I always like the Mishaps theory too.
Lets say u went to Guns'n Ammo to buy a gun and went to spells r us and bought a time machine.
You engage the machine and went the "the" past of "your" reality (not any alternate version). You found your mother and tried to pull the trigger. She's dead, so she never gave birth to you, so u never grew up to go to Guns and ammo to buy that gun, so you couldn't travel to past to kill her.
So she gave birth to you and time went on.
The only "possible" continious timeline is the one without the time travel.
So Time Travel to past is "impossible".
It's never confusing for me. Really!

Sounds like a thread i had created long ago: " What if one went back into time and made love to his mother, then got her pregnant, before she gave birth to oneself "

..........



I was a bit of an odd ball back then.

Deep

Originally posted by ZeroDeep
Sounds like a thread i had created long ago: " What if one went back into time and made love to his mother, then got her pregnant, before she gave birth to oneself "

..........

I was a bit of an odd ball back then.

Deep

Wasn't that the premise for an Episode of Futurama? Where the character Fry, turns out to be his own Grandfather of something..

Yeah, in the futurama episode "Roswell that ends well" Fry and the others go back in time and besides Benders body parts being confused for pieces of a UFO crash, Fry sleeps with his grandma making himself "his own grandpa".

actually the entire universe would callapse and cease to exist. then after that it could come back and start all over. maybe thats what happens when the world ends, someone finds out a way to go back and kill someone, and the world just starts all over again... but hey, we will never know..

For the true answer take a look at the John Titor threads.



Jack

Originally posted by Bongobob
i was thinking about this one day..

If you had the ability to go back in time and like.. kill your mother.. What would happen?


(just a hypothetical)

First of all, What would make you think about killing your own mother? U need to seek help!

-_- you read it wrong.. i said "if" Not meaning i was thinking it or saying it.

i would go back and kil my dad and mum they are stupid bums.

Wasn't that the premise for an Episode of Futurama? Where the character Fry, turns out to be his own Grandfather of something..

..........

Never knew that. But have you, i thought of this before that show

Deep