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Christian95's avatar

How can you travel back in time?

Asked by Christian95 (3260points) March 3rd, 2010

I understand very well the concept of traveling to future because is logic but no one says how to travel back in time they just say that if we’d do that we shouldn’t meet your grandparents and you shouldn’t change the events etc
So how can you travel back in time?

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52 Answers

Captain_Fantasy's avatar

Sobriety fail.

kevbo's avatar

Over the river and through the woods?

Berserker's avatar

Technically, we can’t. Denno what else to say.

jrpowell's avatar

You turn around and walk back into town.

Christian95's avatar

back in time
excuse my sloppiness

Captain_Fantasy's avatar

Time fail.
see title

kevbo's avatar

/facepalm

kevbo's avatar

Dude, you still have a couple of rewrites to go.

iphigeneia's avatar

I don’t know how others prefer to travel back in time, but I have a TARDIS.

FireMadeFlesh's avatar

Time travel makes for some interesting science fiction, but in reality it is completely impossible.

Dr_C's avatar

My awesomeness is timeless. Therefore I walk freely between epochs.

Jeruba's avatar

Spring forward, fall back.

brownlemur's avatar

Just set up your flux capacitor, set the date to November 5, 1955, accelerate to 88mph, and don’t forget the 1.21 gigawatts.

davidbetterman's avatar

I just call mom or dad and wait for the conversation to turn to my childhood.

phillis's avatar

One theory on how it is done is referred to as the slingshot effect.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Slingshot_effect

DrasticDreamer's avatar

When aliens from the future visit you. Because technically, if they’re from the future, you’re already in the past.

ragingloli's avatar

fly around the sun at warp speed.
open a temporal vortex, borg style
create a special kind of space time folding that will have you arrive at a point in the past.

ucme's avatar

Go visit the amish folk they’re pretty backward.

mattbrowne's avatar

In the multiverse you could theoretically travel between universes which would in some cases then look to you as if traveling back in time. At this point this is scientific speculation. In our universe you can definitely travel forward in time. Take a submarine and head for a deep ocean floor. Or board a fighter jet.

RandomMrdan's avatar

I’d imagine you’d have to find a wormhole, or somehow create a worm hole that bends time. And have a vessel to travel through this worm hole with. Assuming you could control the worm hole somehow, you may be able to create a path to a previous time period.

If you haven’t seen the movie Donnie Darko yet, I’d suggest it. It’s a very good movie that is about time travel in the sense of using worm holes.

Who knows if a technology is even possible? If it were, how would we know? I suppose if someone from the future developed a way to use worm holes, it could have easily just created a parallell timeline that we’re not apart of. I’m not sure exactly how it would effect us all if someone did bend time and travel back…. or if at all.

CMaz's avatar

Since you are alive.

If you go back into time. Even with the goal to kill your grandparents.
You won’t and they wont die. Because You are alive and exist to go back in time.

If you go back into time. You have done nothing more then effect the course of the future that led your future you to go back in time.

Or you kill your grandparents only to find you were adopted.

josie's avatar

No. Time is not like matter, something that has a lasting nature. Time is merely a way of measuring the the “distance” between discrete and separate events in reality. Once a “unit” of time is spent it ceases to exist until the next one appears.

Cruiser's avatar

Watch reruns of Saturday Night Live. Works for me!

Bluefreedom's avatar

You use a time machine, of course. You could use the older model seen here but if it’s comfort and style you’re going for, you really should consider the modern version which is this one.

filmfann's avatar

Ask Mr. Peabody and Sherman to set the Way Back Machine to when you wrote this question, and reconsider.

JeanPaulSartre's avatar

Travel faster than the speed of light. Or just visit Indiana.

IchtheosaurusRex's avatar

Special Relativity says no. Kind of like your mother. Go to your room.

DarkScribe's avatar

Sure. It requires a mother-in-law. They will take you back to every negative thing that they think that you have ever done the next time you do something they regard as a negative thing. (The scientific name for them is “Maximus re-Tardis”.)

CMaz's avatar

This question is like a Time Machine.

The results seem to always be the same.

Trillian's avatar

Build yourself a French Bistro. Man it with robots. Pull it up by the foundations, activate the SEP field. Sit at the table, order the food. Toy with it.

mrentropy's avatar

I read a book about time. I don’t remember the name of it or who it was by. Anyway, he was describing time as something that had already happened. Everything in time had already been done. Even alternate events. That is, if you put on your left sock first this morning, there’s also a time-line where you put on your right sock first. What made time look like it was in motion was how our consciousness moved through it.

So, time is a bunch of photographs laid out on the table. Your laser pointer is your consciousness. When you move the pointer from one photo to another, that’s you moving through time.

If time worked that way then I’d say just put your consciousness in reverse and choose another path. You can’t create paradoxes that way so you’re good to go.

Trillian's avatar

@mrentropy I’ve heard that too, as well as the idea that time is not linear, but that all times are happening at once. One can “step out of time” by leaving ones body, as it is the body that experiences time in a linear fashion.

drClaw's avatar

You just (insert Back to the Future reference here).

Comic gold!

philosopher's avatar

@RandomMrdan
Some Scientist say, if a human went through a worm whole at the speed needed to time trave;l they would burn up.
Do we really wish to risk fighting the same wars over? It could happen.
I watched a lot of Startrek.
Does anyone else think about this stuff?

janbb's avatar

There are a number of great time-travel fiction books. The best of them contain explanations or theories as to why time travel is possible. There is also some discussion around Einstein’s theories making time travel theoretically possible. In reallity, I think @filmfann‘s idea about Mr. Peabody and the Wayback Machine is the best way to travel. And remember – don’t eat the figs!

thriftymaid's avatar

Put on some old music and close my eyes.

RareDenver's avatar

with some LSD and a Jimi Hendrix record

Shuttle128's avatar

Technically…..if you had a really long massive body and spun it around its axis very fast, some relativity effects would slow down time close to it. I’ve heard that depending on how long it is and how fast it spins you could travel along it to reach (at the very minimum) the day it began spinning. I’m not sure where I heard this but it was a looooong time ago.

CMaz's avatar

Keep spinning, you will get there.

Fred931's avatar

Go to the north pole and walk across the International Date Line as many times as you like, either forwards or backwards.

PacificToast's avatar

Might I suggest a “living history museum”. are accessible by automobile, train, bus, plane, helicopter, hot air balloon, box, bicycle, foot, scooter, motorbike, hamster ball, and possibly boat.

ChocolateReigns's avatar

@brownlemur and @davidbetterman those were hilarious. Especially @brownlemur…I love Back to the Future. And yes, even though it was made before I was born, I love it. :)

ChaosCross's avatar

Find Space at a bar, beat her unconscious, now that space is out of the picture only Time can remain.

Presumably if space is a method of viewing time, and we no longer have space, then the entire universe will converge upon itself. So theoretically you will be experiencing every moment since you were born all at the same time.

FireMadeFlesh's avatar

@ChaosCross Without space, time would be the only dimension. You would still exist in time and progress in time, but you would not have a spatial coordinate. I don’t think that would allow time travel, it would just disallow spatial travel.

philosopher's avatar

Consult Dr Kaku and Professor Hawking’s.

Sisyphus's avatar

I tend to think David Lewis has a cool response to this. He basically says that time travel is POSSIBLE (with a certain metaphysics) and logically consistent. However, he makes sure to note that time travel does not occur in our world, because a world wherein time travel occurs would be fundamentally different from our own.

Mr_Paradox's avatar

Wormholes are the only way to go back in time. However, because of Quantum Feedback (essentialy that screeching noise you here when you put a micrphone in front of a speaker) they would be ddestroyed before you could use it.

RedDeerGuy1's avatar

Look up chornoskimming.

Hypocrisy_Central's avatar

The better question would be how would one garner enough energy to take the whole present universe back in time? Unless you were able to take the Earth, Moon, Sun, etc. back with you, then it would only be you and nothing else overlapping a time that past and thus leave you in some limbo where you are just a mere observer and of anyone seen you they might believe you to be nothing more than a ghost or specter.

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