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Time Travelers' Convention
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)."
But will John Titor be invited?
But I couldn't figure out where those coordinates posted. Would you mind pointing out where you are at the moment in your galactic and solar orbits relative to a few quasars, please?
Why didn't they set the date for yesterday? That way we wouldn't have to wait to see if it was successful.
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!!!!!
They should plan out all the conferences in advance for the next 10,000 years, like the freemasons did in 5000 b.c.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
youve gotta love those mit guys and their uncanny study avoidance manouevres
It was great.
For those interested in attending, it's on May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT
Oh, I'm sure I'll get around to it one of these days.
The place will be full of dozens of idiots dressed in spandex and insisting thet they come from the future.
If no time travellers turn up on May 7th, will everyone stop promoting it after the date?
Personally I would have thought it'd make sense to give a bit more advanced notice than a week, if only to give people a chance to get the word around more beforehand (thus more likely to be archived).
I'm a time traveller. Unfortunately, you can't tell, because I travel through time with the help of an angel and an invisible lech, and the process causing me to appear identical to someone in the time I'm travelling to.
Hold on, I have to go get this Erik kid married to his one true love.
Oh boy.
It could be a ruse... the organizers may be stranded time travellers trying to send a message to the future to get rescued now. It may not be a genuine convention, but rather a lifeboat technique for the Insiders.
> [...]it will have been a blast!
I believe you mean willan on-be a blast.
Its gonna be boring. But the after party they're planning last year kicked ass.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
You could have a Time Traveler supply booth running there:
- Legit costumes for whatever era. WW2 uniform, peasant outfit, etc
- Monetary exchange: buy/sell money from different eras, at varying rates. You will always need money(depending on the time)
- Fake IDs. Going back 20 years? get an ID 20 years prior to your birthday
- Fake license plates. Travelling in an old car back to an earlier time? Get "legit" license plates that are either from the same car, or just some convincing out-of-state plates.
WARNING: Management is not responsible to disruptions in history.
The sales possibilities are endless.
Even if someone time travelled into the past for a few seconds, wouldn't they wind up in the icy cold of space while the planet speeds along on its normal course around the sun?
[o]_O
dude. you totally missed the point!
Let me hop in my delorean and I'll be there in 5 minutes ago.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
"So if there is no one present from the future theoretically we never figure out how to transend time." Or the party on May 7th becomes famous throughout time as one of the most suck-ass parties in all history. So, time travelers decide to skip it.
Pshaw... everybody knows that nobody goes to these things because they are too crowded.
For a universe in which time travel is possible and the past can be altered by time travelers the only stable state is one in which time travel is never invented. Work it out.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Dude, it's not like you don't have time.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
I think "Time is an illusion" is an easier way to say it. If you have a picture you and a friend are looking at, and he wonders if the right side can ever travel to the left side and modify things, you'd wonder what he was talking about. I would argue that time is like that: static if viewed from enough dimensions, available for observation (in theory) as one massive N dimensional statue.
If you were really a time traveler, why would you want to show up at a known place on a known date? The government would be waiting with an awesome arsenal of firepower, waiting to forcefully take your tools from you.
Or if you're the big-business conspiracy theory type, substitute "government" for "private mercenaries."
What's your damage, Heather?
Don't go. It was boring so a bunch of us went to ancient Babylonia for the invention of beer.
..why didn't you get first post?
Reminds me a bit of what my friends and I did back in high school/college (we were in a program called TAMS in which, for your last two years of high school, you went to college and stayed in a dorm). A few student groups were famous for spamming our mailboxes with notices for the meetings and posting their signs everywhere, and it was quite annoying.
So, as a countermeasure, we formed a "Time Travellers Club". We put out notices in everyone's boxes, first notifying people of an upcoming meeting a week prior, and the second time thanking everyone for such a large turnout at our meeting a week later. We got permission to post our own sign - a big hanging one that ha our group name, and its motto ("I'll See You Yesterday!").
Later, we found the notices on at least one RA's and one student's door - the student had apparently actually tried to go to the meeting that we thanked people for the turnout at, because they had it next to a note that said "I went, and it sucked!"
Dear Lord: One of your creatures may be hurt tonight. Please let it be the other creature.
Most likely, a time travel path would be along a line of freefall (geodesic). ie. Imagine if you could fall through the ground, wobbling back and forth from one side of the planet to the other.
For any given initial velocity, there would only be certain periodic times when you *wouldn't* end up inside the planet. And the position on the planet where you come out would also be problematic. If you're not satisfied with those precise times and places, then you can adjust your velocity a tad, to get another set of options.
If you're in orbit then you have much less to worry about.
Well, I went back about 2000 years with a couple of pound of good hydroponically grown weed and started a groovy movement. It was back in the area that is called Israel today.
I used this funny hispanic name, Jesus...
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Watever everyone says, time travel is possible. The thing is you can only travel to the future and it is incredibly slow...
As someone who frequents these types of parties I can tell you they never go bad. Whats so bad about a bunch of engineers having huge drunken bonanza?
"Dude, why is your volumetric spirit flow rate decreasing exponentially as a function of time while your volumetric elimination flow rate increasing as a logarithmic function of time?"
Yeah, those types of parties.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Read "The End of Eternity" by Asimov... he also alludes to the episode in other books.
Your friendly neighborhood nitpicker
Seeing the location depicted so accurately, I have only one fear...
Telefrags.
I've read through their discussion and changelog, I think one more person coming along with "Shh! grownups are talking" will yet again be met with "if someone believes it for whatever reason, it's a valid opinion" line of thinking.
Yeah, it's a rather strange phenomenon. "Fair and balanced" means presenting both sides of a case, even when one side is obviously right (or at least more right), and one side is wrong. The John Titor case is one of those (obviously a very artful hoax). Intelligent Design vs. evolution is another. Both John Titor and Intelligent Design are attractive falsehoods (at least, attractive to some people). That doesn't make them right, or even viable.
I mean, if I claim that I have invisible aliens called Dvutels living in my attic...
Jesus, you've got those, too? How do you get rid of them? I've been using invisible Raid, but that ain't working.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Actually, here's the real reason this won't fly...
/. perhaps), in the distant future by a timetraveler, and he decides to go.
Let's assume for the sake of argument, that this convention is discovered in a historylibrary of some sort (archives of
When he does, he'll instantly split the timeline, and the one he came from will become a parallel universe to the one he's in when he attends the convention.
Why? Because in order for a time traveler to notice it in the future, it will have to happen at least once without him. Ergo, if I were to go to this meeting, I would not meet a time traveler, because this is "my" timeline.
However, if this were to happen, an alternate version of me would be able to meet the time traveler, because he came back in time, after having lived later in "my" timeline, where the convention took place without a visitor from the future.
In fact, the moment he interacts with anything or anyone from our timeline when he arrives, is when the timeline splits, because he wasn't there the first time around. So unless he's already here in our timeline, which would make me the alternate version of me, then I won't meet him.
It's more than likely nobody from the future will show up at the convention. Unless, like I said, we're already in the alternate timeline.
Also, when he goes back to the future, his timeline will have been altered and he may not even exist in the timeline he returns to; and he will have no way to get back to his own previous future timeline, unless he goes back again a little earlier and tells his alternate self to go back immediately without going to the convention - which of course would create a grandfather paradox, as he would then have no reason to tell himself not to go and the entire universe would simply cease to exist.
Is that clear?
-- This sig for rent.
This has nothing to do with free speech (or even Free Speech) whatsoever. Free speech guarantees your right to hold and voice an opinion, unmolested by the powers that be. This concept is often warped into the notion that it obviates the need to defend such an opinion, or that merely holding it requires others to recognize it as valid.
Nobody is even remotely pondering curtailing the "Titorites"' rights to self expression. What I have a problem with is that the editors of the particular article, in their treatment of the subject matter are giving far too much credence to this particular crackpot theory. They do this in the laudible pursuit of neutrality, but in this case that leads to a product that reflects negatively on the project as a whole.
Free speech does not mean the abandonment of objective reasoning. Neutral point of view does not mean that wikipedia editors should parrot everything they read on the internet.
Oh and thank you for providing a link to the article on free speech - how deliciously patronizing.
sic transit gloria mundi
Everyone acts like a thousand years is the equivalent of "yesterday". The very concept that in thousands of years everyone will even know about one particular nerd party, is at best a joke.
You know how long a thousand years is? Columbus discovering America is _half_ that time ago.
A thousand years ago, the Vikings were still getting converted to Christianity. Do you know where the big parties have been at this time? If I told you that Bjarni Hrolfsson and Erik Karlsson (made up viking names) had this fabulous party 1000 years ago, would you even know when and where to go?
Heck, would you have even heard about it? History tends to recall more like royal events and wars from that long ago. We know roughly when and where the saxon earl Harold Goodwinson fought the Vikings and we know where he later lost to William of Normandie. But do you know exactly where some vikings or normans from back then had a party? I don't think so.
Roughly a thousand years ago, we had the first crusade. We remember that because it's a bloody big war... went awfully wrong, with a bloody huge PR, but even then a lot of details are missing.
Roughly a thousand years ago, temperatures peaked _higher_ than they are today. In fact so high that Greenland thawed and was green enough to be called that. The Vikings could farm it.
That's a bloody huge event even on history scale, but even the vast majority the global-warming scare gang doesn't know about it. (E.g., that it happened without driving SUVs. Or that no, all that molten ice did _not_ kill all fish life, and did _not_ reverse the gulf stream either.)
Roughly a thousand years ago, Leif Eriksson decided to sail west from Greenland, to check out Bjarni Herjolfsson's story that he's seen land there. And he discovered America. That's a bloody huge event, and even about that we have little more than a saga and some ruins that sorta look like a Viking village. And even that's _one_ of the landfalls that Leif made.
So what makes anyone think that a nerd party would go into every history book for millenia?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.