Organization: The Leader Desslok School of Diplomacy
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1992 14:50:06 EDT
From: Norman St. John Polevaulter <MBS110@psuvm.psu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc
Subject: Re: Free will and time travel
 <1992Aug12.090550.22749@cs.hw.ac.uk>
 <1992Aug14.011312.13075@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
 <1992Aug17.200411.25622@udel.edu>

In article <1992Aug17.200411.25622@udel.edu>, lintz@buster.cis.udel.edu (Brian
Lintz) says:

>In article <1992Aug14.011312.13075@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
>dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann) writes:

>>So whither time travel?  There are several possibilities:
>>  - You can travel to the past by "reversing" time, so everyone comes
>>    along.  Then, the future you know of will only be one possibility.
>>    The new one that is subsequently  played out will no doubt be
>>    different...

>I'm not sure what the difference between these two are. If the past is
>changeable, and you don't have alternate universes, when you travel
>back to the past, the time you travel to becomes your present, and
>as you say, the future you are from is only one possibility. Maybe
>my problem is that I don't know exactly what you mean by "reversing time
>so that everyone comes along." Could you expand on this?

I'll jump in here with a guess: it's like winding back the entire universe,
like a movie going through the projector backwards. You'd "rewind" time to
the desired date, and then "fast-forward" it back to your own time to see
how things work out.

Of course, there's a problem -- who says that someone'll be able to get off
the universe as it "rewinds", and then hop back on at the desired time? Not
to mention how much power it would take to affect the entire universe! Perhaps
you could create a bubble around just part of the universe (just the Solar
System, say) and wind _it_ backwards while standing outside and watching.
Someone whose name I can't recall did a book with a gimmick like this called
_October the First is Too Late_ (Fred Hoyle?) where bubbles of the Earth's
surface got wound backwards and forwards through time.

Here's an idea I just thought of, though... once, I was discussing bog-standard
time travel with someone (y'know, you basically have a machine that you sit in
and drive back through time to the desired date) and they pointed out an
interesting objection. If the Universe constantly is moving forward thru time,
then when you drive back to a particular date you won't find anything, just
void! This is because the Universe left that date long ago, and is now in
the present and still moving into the future! Odd... but it makes a certain
kind of sense.

And what if there are other Universes following along the timestream after
ours? It could be interesting to time your landing perfectly, such that you
land in another Universe which is currently at 1450 A.D. or whenever. Of
course there's no guarantee this other Universe will have any relation to
ours.

Weird stuff.

[Your blood pressure just went up.]       Mark Sachs IS: mbs110@psuvm.psu.edu
       DISCLAIMER: If it ain't money, Penn State doesn't care about it.
   "Ladies and gentlemen, I've suffered for my music! Now it's your turn!"
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc