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Time Travelers' Convention

Posted by timothy on from the early-registration-discouraged dept.

usermilk writes "Some folks at MIT are holding a time-travelers' convention. The idea is to make it so famous and so widely-known that even thousands of years in the future, people will still know exactly when and where this time-traveler convention went down, and will all come travel to it at some point in their illustrious time-traveling careers. For those interested in attending, it's on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC) in the East Campus Courtyard at MIT. 42:21:36.025N, 71:05:16.332W (42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)."

5 of 836 comments (clear)

  1. Why did they set the date in the future? by femto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Why didn't they set the date for yesterday? That way we wouldn't have to wait to see if it was successful.

  2. Hmmm.... by carterhawk001 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    hmm...things to remember:
    1. if a time travel came back in time and altered the past, no one would know but him/her.
    2. it is impossible to prove that our recorded history now is the same as it was 1 second ago due to rule number 1.
    3. You may be caught in a temporal causality loop, doomed forever to repeat the same period of time over and over.
    4. If time is an expression of entropy, then the only way to travel through time is to prefectly reverse entropy, which is impossible because, iirc, entropy is chaotic.
    5. If the universe is nonlinear, or rather, linear is an illusion, then there is no past or future to travel to, but only the present wich exists at any instant as a snapshot in the cascade towards greater entropy.
    6. The universe is moving towards a state of pure heat, at which time entropy will cease, as all engery, which drives entropy, will have been used. if you intend to travel through time by altering the universe around you, then you can not go past this point, or ever return. if you time travel by using internal independent means, then you may travel past this point, but you would no longer have any external means of measuring the passage of time in the universe. To time travel through external means you must increase the general entropy of the universe such that all events happen faster outside your time machine. to travel through time internaly you must slow down your own entropy. in both instances you must phase away from the universe such that you do not exist in it, lest you collide with something going faster than you can percieve.
    7 If time is a seperate dimension then you must find a way to travel in the direction that is forwards or backwards from where you are now. 4 dimensional travel occurs at a steady, measurable rate. As you approach the speed of light, this rate of passage decreases. Thus, it is logical to assume that by exceeding the speed of light in our universe of spacetime you would travel backwards in time.
    8. You may be your own great great grandparent.
    9. If you change your own past you can not go back to your own future to reap the benifits because the new future would have a new you to match it.
    10. Journeyman Project is t3h roxors!!!!!

    1. Re:Hmmm.... by DirtyDuck · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Nah, you've been watching too much startrek.

      Assuming time travel is possible, it's impossible to alter the past.

      Think of it this way, the way something happened, is the way it happened. If you travel back in time, then you're participating in events however, your paticipation would already have happened. Therefore, anything you've already done would already have happened.

      Think of it this way. You couldn't go back in time and shoot Hilter before he got into power for the very simple reason that it didn't happen. Say you setup a sniper rifle on a building. You could try to fire but you'd either miss, the gun would jam, you'd get arrested, have a heart-attack etc. etc.

      This isn't the universe trying to protect itself or any such mystical mumbo jumbo. It's just the simple fact that a thing didn't happen and your actions in trying to change the past are already part of history.

      Probably didn't explain it very clearly. ;)

    2. Re:Hmmm.... by ravind · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well if you think that it is impossible to change the past, then you have to conclude that it is impossible to change the future too because your future is somebody else's past. Which means the way your life turns out has already been determined and cannot be changed. How do you fit free will into that?

    3. Re:Hmmm.... by carterhawk001 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Dont forget the multiverse, aka, the great tree of possibilities. Consider this, going back in time may be likened to moving back down the tree, and when you change something, a new branch forms and you start moving along that, parallel to the old branch. now your stuck in the new branch. The implication here is that nothing you do to alter time will truly alter time, it will just launch you along a new limb of the tree. You arent changing the past, your creating a new future.