If you could go back in time once...

[Ridge]

Why backward in time? Go to the future and study before returning to the present.

In the past, your future knowledge would get you some good medication, institutionalization, and possibly electric-shock therapy.

In the future, you will be considered backward and harmless due to your ignorance.

Back in the present, your new awareness of the future, used in a quiet and judicious manner will provide you with affluence and influence.

IMO, time travel is as silly as what-if history. I've read one (only one) book by Harry Turtledove. I prefer more orthodox fiction.

[Ronin13]

Bring some good books. According to birthdate, Obama was conceivedi in 1960.

No I didn't stutter... before they even met.

True, but you could preempt the act of conception long before 1960.

Can't conceive if you're not alive...

Just make sure it wasn't also Frank Marshall Davis that banged the commie chick from KS.

That's why I'd break my rule: "No women, no kids." There are very very rare exceptions, this would be one of them.

[rondog]

Well, let's see......invest in Microsoft, buy gold and silver by the truckloads, buy certain lottery tickets, stop Stevie Ray Vaughan from getting on that helicopter, stop Lynyrd Skynyrd from getting on that airplane, get Frank Zappa to get a prostate exam, those would be good starters.

[Mtn.man]

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures.

[n8tive97]

When my ex wife got married on the bridge in Texas, I would jump......

[RblDiver]

I'd go back to the 1780s with a pile of history and Constitutional law texts and show the Founding Fathers how Congress and the SCOTUS have (mis)interpreted the document they wrote. I'd leave documents showing the growth of taxation and government intrusion so they could guard against the 16th Amendment and other expansions of federal "power".

Now, going back to 622 and eliminate a certain prophet of the "religion of peace", is kind of tempting....

Probably one of these two.

[asmo]

You do understand that if you can go back in time* "once" you can go back an indefinite number of times, right?

causality loops - they're a bitch..

For the layman: I would go back in time with all the materials and plans for my time machine (e.g. I would take a time machine with me - or at least all the know how to make one)..

This is also how I know that time travel will not be invented within my lifetime - because if it was to be, then I would have already come back in time and told myself about it.



* for the Wellsian traditional definition of time travel

[Ronin13]

You do understand that if you can go back in time* "once" you can go back an indefinite number of times, right?

causality loops - they're a bitch..

For the layman: I would go back in time with all the materials and plans for my time machine (e.g. I would take a time machine with me - or at least all the know how to make one)..

This is also how I know that time travel will not be invented within my lifetime - because if it was to be, then I would have already come back in time and told myself about it.



* for the Wellsian traditional definition of time travel

That's deep man...
Now that I think about it, I'd rather not go back in time... doing that crap gives you Parkinson's!

Too soon?
I'm shocked no one started in on all the paradoxes and pitfalls that theorists associate with time travel... like the butterfly effect...

[NightCat]

Make sure Barry never existed.....and go meet my past self and tell myself to never marry my exwife....

[Dingo]

That's deep man...
Now that I think about it, I'd rather not go back in time... doing that crap gives you Parkinson's! .

Nice. Lol.

The real question I have, is the old standby whenever a time travel discussion comes up. If you were to go back in time and stop the inventor from creatimg a time machine, what would happen? I've got at least a very basic, layman's grasp of quantum theory, but this one is a stumper.

I think it's interesting that Hawking believes time has physical properties that can be manipulated by gravity. He postulates that different people could genuinely experience time at different speeds, in the right set of circumstances. Gives a whole new take on Einstein's "minute with a pretty girl vs minute on a hot stove" bit. :-)