h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hey, I've just seen somebody patent a new way of describing the universe (quarks don't exist, radio isn't an electromagnetic wave, everything from photons, to electrons, to protons are made up of new things called trons. The only reason he states this as correct is that he dosen't know enough phyisics to prove himself wrong. I know enough physics, and he is wrong!

I also know that you can't patent a new way of observing the universe !

Relatively speaking, there is no difference

But Time Travel must exhist, because most things that are made into tv programmes/films always have some truth about them, just look at "The Craft", or "Eastenders". Story linesw have to come from somewhere.
Going back to my holidays now

CHeEky

I am just coming up to 70 years of age and and I can state with absolute certainty that, the older one become the faster time travels, proving to me at least that time doesn't exist, it is just relative, otherwise why can't I remember all the" so called time" before I was borne? The same thing applies to size, one of the reasons I can't reach the furthest known star is because i'm not tall enough

well time is a permabual matrix so if you traveled you might get to a parralel universe !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Time travel has always been a bit worrying for me. I can barely stand tomorrow coming after today so what would 1967 coming today do to me?

Thought travels faster than the speed of light.

Also if a person visits the past and has a accident, so be it thats their destiny.

As for people in the past altering the future, it happens all the time thats why there are such a lot of missing people.
Also the only reason we still have Tony in charge is no one has figured out who his father is yet.

"I am just coming up to 70 years of age and and I can state with absolute certainty that, the older one become the faster time travels, proving to me at least that time doesn't exist"

just a thought on this, the reason why time appears to move faster as you get older is that it as you get older, each unit of time becomes a smaller proportion of the time that you are concious of. to explain - a child of one year of age would think that a day is longer than a man of 20 years, because a day, expressed as a proportion of the childs life, is 1/365th, whereas for the 20 year old a day is 1/7300th of their life - a much lower fraction. Seems to make sense to me, whaddaya think?

I have only just caught onto this thread, so I have a comment on timelines etc from about 3 pages back, I tend to think of timelines like rope. Everythings timeline intertwined with everything else. when timelines diverge, its like a fray in the rope, it doesnt stop being rope, its just a little tatty at the divergent point!

call it oversimplistic, or just plain stupid, but it works for me!

just seen this one and had another thought (I must be inspired, these many thoughts dont usually happen this often!) I think Gandolf's comment does work. the reason for this is as follows:

You are on a timeline (lets call it "Alpha"). you have the ability to travel back in time, and you decide to use it - well you would, wouldnt you! - so you go back to a point in the past on the same timeline (we could call this point "Alpha -1"). Now, from the very rudimentary basics that I have picked up from this conversation so far, your very presence in "Alpha -1" would alter the future from this point, so it would be impossible to go back to "Alpha", you bould have to go to a new timeline.

does this make sense?

Every one has a different perception of the passing of time.For instance your watching a football match, and your team is winning 1-0 with 5 mins to go, the time suddenly slows down as though it is waiting for the opposing side to score.Two weeks on vacation is shorter than two weeks at work.
Time travel is pure fantasy, one can`t travel forward or backward, just along with it. Everything else is pure speculation, but non the less it promotes stimulating conversation.
My definition of time is, the period between one event and another.

I think life is confusing enought with time going one way, and the further I could be from some parts of the past (Yes, most of the 14th century is pretty grimm ) the better.

I vote for the brains of the world joining to come up with a quick and eady hangover cure, and leaving time travel to SiFI.

A quick cure for a hangover is to have another drink. Unfortunately it doesn't help the next day. So maybe you should travel into the past and not have the first drink?

I'll drink to that!

The trick is to let time travel to you.

I say, what is it we're trying to accomplish here? Is the entire concept of time travel spurred from the media's superfluous concept time travel? Maybe time travel will become a perfectly realistic tool in the future, but not in any way we can think of. We just keep thinking about all the ways we could fix those little flaws in our past, but what about the entire picture? What about the world's use of it? I guess the question is, if we were to establish a means of time travel in the future, what would it plausibly be like, what would be the primary uses, and would those specifics widen the chance we have to actually pull it off?

surely the answer to every possible paradox in existence (although not a great one) is simply to ignore it and hope it will go away? no, hadn't thought that one through. i need coffee.

Already exists.

It's called an Aeroplane.

You can take off and go to another country and be there before you got out of bed. If that's not time travel then what the frell is?

Why do alledgely intelligent people constantly overlook the obvious?

If there's no such thing as time and space then there's nothing to worry about since wherever you are you'll always be in the in your here and now.
Your present might be in my past or future. Where our paths cross we may appear to each other as ghosts.
Time travellers may be found in haunted castles in Scotland.
Spooky, eh?

Wait, so those people who are "time travelling" are like ghosts because they are only partially part of our here and now, since the two paths cross but still aren't the same?

-Drink your coffee, there are people in India sleeping!

A reliable and trustworthy friend of mine was having a picnic on a Scottish mountain when he saw an ancient battle unfold below. Later he read in a book that others had seen the smae thing. I myself have seen the ghost of a Celtic chieftain. He was in another time/space dimension because his legs went down through the floor. These might be cases of where space/time (as we percieve it)gets out of synch.