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Why do people bother researching into time travel? Even if it's possible, it's potentially a massively dangerous act. Nobody should have the power to alter eve

Why do people bother researching into time travel? Even if it's possible, it's potentially a massively dangerous act. Nobody should have the power to alter events outside of the present in any way, shape or form. Period.

fierarul 16y ago
I can't imagine a greater human achievement than time travel.
- wladimir 16y ago
  The good thing about time travel is that it would make FTL space travel possible as well.
  - Pyrodogg 16y ago
    Every time I think of possible FTL travel now I remember that it takes light about 8 minutes to get from our sun to the earth. If we ever do get to FTL travel, we really need to figure out the FT part or we still aren't going to be going anywhere too quickly. Edit: And as soon as I typed that out I remembered relativity effects, and my brain hurts.
  - lallysingh 16y ago
    In the general case, time travel is only good for making terrible, terrible science fiction plots. However, FTL is well justified. Even with various limitations (e.g. you can only use it for instant communications, or only robots can travel), it'd be an utterly fantastic leap for mankind.
  - arethuza 16y ago
    The implications for computing might be interesting as well... (Charlie Stross mentions this in some of his stories).
    - sorbus 16y ago
      To anyone who might not be familiar with the applications of timelike paths in computers: it's the quickest way to the singularity. Basically, you get a computer and wire its output (in the future) to its input (in the present or past). Depending on how time travel works, this either gives you an infinite amount of computational power (actually an infinite amount of time to perform operations in, but it looks rather similar to outside viewers) or a way to quickly find the conditions under which a program returns the input as output (which gives you instantaneous protein folding, factoring of large primes, and so on, if you design your programs properly. If you don't, it gives you a good way to find buffer overflows and other failure conditions). Of course, both of those would look pretty much exactly the same to outside viewers.
- dexen 16y ago
  But don't they say, ``There is no future in time travel.''? ;-)
cryptoz 16y ago
> events outside of the present I hate to break this to you, but there's no such thing that you can describe as simply as "the present". Since we're talking about time travel here, it's important to remember that relativity is real, and that every single atom in your body exists at a different "present". Our GPS satellites are time travellers. Their distance away from Earth is so great that we must compensate for their different perception of time, or our reported locations would be way off. You should not be so absolutist in your views, especially when you don't have an accurate understanding of time. I also take issue with you suggesting that nothing dangerous should be "bothered" with in research. Look where the Manhattan project got us: We have safe nuclear reactors all over the planet, we have sent a few spaceships outside the solar system (Voyager 1 and 2, for example) that run on nuclear reactors. We know that nuclear research presents great danger, but the rewards are so huge it's worth it. All knowledge is worth some danger, especially the truly incredible knowledge like finding out that our understanding of physics is incorrect, or building spaceships that leave the solar system.
- crpatino 16y ago
  >Look where the Manhattan project got us: Oh, the irony!!!
- dexen 16y ago
  You laid it out pretty clearly, but one detail ought to be corrected -- Voyagers etc. use Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators rather than reactors. The difference is, there is no chain reaction in RTGs; the natural spontaneous fission is relied on. The construction (lack of neutron moderator) prevents chain reaction for safety reasons -- no chance of runaway reaction. On the other hand, it means the thermal output cannot be regulated at all, and drops steadily in parallel to the half-decay time. The RTGs are so safe they even used miniature ones in some heart pacemakers implanted years ago; they are still going [1]. -- [1] http://duckduckgo.com/?q=nuclear+pacemaker&v= http://duckduckgo.com/?q=nuclear+pacemaker&v=
archgoon 16y ago
I find your objection quite strange. If it _is_ possible, and it _is_ dangerous, than it would be critical to understand how it works, lest it be abused. That being said, understanding time travel (even if it's impossible) is very important for getting a better understanding by what we mean by 'time' in the first place.
dexen 16y ago
Similar reasoning is sometimes used against researching and publishing information on security vulnerabilities in software. Yet in practice it's better to publish that openly, lest the blackhats abuse the vulnerabilities for their purposes unhindered.

fierarul 16y ago

I can't imagine a greater human achievement than time travel.

wladimir 16y ago
The good thing about time travel is that it would make FTL space travel possible as well.
- Pyrodogg 16y ago
  Every time I think of possible FTL travel now I remember that it takes light about 8 minutes to get from our sun to the earth. If we ever do get to FTL travel, we really need to figure out the FT part or we still aren't going to be going anywhere too quickly. Edit: And as soon as I typed that out I remembered relativity effects, and my brain hurts.
- lallysingh 16y ago
  In the general case, time travel is only good for making terrible, terrible science fiction plots. However, FTL is well justified. Even with various limitations (e.g. you can only use it for instant communications, or only robots can travel), it'd be an utterly fantastic leap for mankind.
- arethuza 16y ago
  The implications for computing might be interesting as well... (Charlie Stross mentions this in some of his stories).
  - sorbus 16y ago
    To anyone who might not be familiar with the applications of timelike paths in computers: it's the quickest way to the singularity. Basically, you get a computer and wire its output (in the future) to its input (in the present or past). Depending on how time travel works, this either gives you an infinite amount of computational power (actually an infinite amount of time to perform operations in, but it looks rather similar to outside viewers) or a way to quickly find the conditions under which a program returns the input as output (which gives you instantaneous protein folding, factoring of large primes, and so on, if you design your programs properly. If you don't, it gives you a good way to find buffer overflows and other failure conditions). Of course, both of those would look pretty much exactly the same to outside viewers.
dexen 16y ago
But don't they say, ``There is no future in time travel.''? ;-)

cryptoz 16y ago

> events outside of the present I hate to break this to you, but there's no such thing that you can describe as simply as "the present". Since we're talking about time travel here, it's important to remember that relativity is real, and that every single atom in your body exists at a different "present". Our GPS satellites are time travellers. Their distance away from Earth is so great that we must compensate for their different perception of time, or our reported locations would be way off. You should not be so absolutist in your views, especially when you don't have an accurate understanding of time. I also take issue with you suggesting that nothing dangerous should be "bothered" with in research. Look where the Manhattan project got us: We have safe nuclear reactors all over the planet, we have sent a few spaceships outside the solar system (Voyager 1 and 2, for example) that run on nuclear reactors. We know that nuclear research presents great danger, but the rewards are so huge it's worth it. All knowledge is worth some danger, especially the truly incredible knowledge like finding out that our understanding of physics is incorrect, or building spaceships that leave the solar system.

crpatino 16y ago
>Look where the Manhattan project got us: Oh, the irony!!!
dexen 16y ago
You laid it out pretty clearly, but one detail ought to be corrected -- Voyagers etc. use Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators rather than reactors. The difference is, there is no chain reaction in RTGs; the natural spontaneous fission is relied on. The construction (lack of neutron moderator) prevents chain reaction for safety reasons -- no chance of runaway reaction. On the other hand, it means the thermal output cannot be regulated at all, and drops steadily in parallel to the half-decay time. The RTGs are so safe they even used miniature ones in some heart pacemakers implanted years ago; they are still going [1]. -- [1] http://duckduckgo.com/?q=nuclear+pacemaker&v= http://duckduckgo.com/?q=nuclear+pacemaker&v=

archgoon 16y ago

I find your objection quite strange. If it _is_ possible, and it _is_ dangerous, than it would be critical to understand how it works, lest it be abused. That being said, understanding time travel (even if it's impossible) is very important for getting a better understanding by what we mean by 'time' in the first place.

dexen 16y ago

Similar reasoning is sometimes used against researching and publishing information on security vulnerabilities in software. Yet in practice it's better to publish that openly, lest the blackhats abuse the vulnerabilities for their purposes unhindered.