A question about time

[miketx]

For the moment, assume time travel is possible. Please note that this NOT a time travel paradox question. Suppose that we have achieved time travel and we want to study history, to see how it differs from history books and learn from the past. Now, let's say our traveler is a person born in 1983, and they are sent to the past to study it with things they need to record history. But, our traveler is unlucky. For the sake of the story, let us say that he was going to Pearl Harbor on December 6th 1941, to record the attack on the American fleet. All goes well until early on the 7th, during the attack, when our traveler is struck by a stray bullet and is killed instantly.


After the smoke clears his body is found, but is in such a state that no one can ID it or figure out what the little "doo-dads" he has do, so it is all disposed of. Forensics being what they were then, he is marked off as another unknown casualty of war.


So, to the question. Our time traveler has perished in the past, 42 years before he was born. As time proceeds from the events of 1941, slowly moving forward until 1983 is once again the present, is our traveler born again? I would say that he must be, if time is indeed a constant, ever moving current. So, if he is born and follows his path as he previously did, does he once again end up being killed in the past, and if so, how many cycles does this time loop repeat itself? What is the long term effect on entropy, and will the random effect of entropy at some time or another, fix the causal loop?

 

[depotoo]

What if he were to return to the present when he is killed.

For the moment, assume time travel is possible. Please note that this NOT a time travel paradox question. Suppose that we have achieved time travel and we want to study history, to see how it differs from history books and learn from the past. Now, let's say our traveler is a person born in 1983, and they are sent to the past to study it with things they need to record history. But, our traveler is unlucky. For the sake of the story, let us say that he was going to Pearl Harbor on December 6th 1941, to record the attack on the American fleet. All goes well until early on the 7th, during the attack, when our traveler is struck by a stray bullet and is killed instantly.


After the smoke clears his body is found, but is in such a state that no one can ID it or figure out what the little "doo-dads" he has do, so it is all disposed of. Forensics being what they were then, he is marked off as another unknown casualty of war.


So, to the question. Our time traveler has perished in the past, 42 years before he was born. As time proceeds from the events of 1941, slowly moving forward until 1983 is once again the present, is our traveler born again? I would say that he must be, if time is indeed a constant, ever moving current. So, if he is born and follows his path as he previously did, does he once again end up being killed in the past, and if so, how many cycles does this time loop repeat itself? What is the long term effect on entropy, and will the random effect of entropy at some time or another, fix the causal loop?

 

[CrusaderFrank]

I watched a Stargate movie last night and they answered this quite conclusively. I just can't remember what their answer was

 

[depotoo]

From Stanford.
Time Travel (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

This means that time travellers can do less than we might have hoped: they cannot right the wrongs of history; they cannot even stir a speck of dust on a certain day in the past if, on that day, the speck was in fact unmoved. But this does not mean that time travellers must be entirely powerless in the past: while they cannot do anything that did not actually happen, they can (in principle) do anything that did happen. Time travellers cannot change the past: they cannot make it different from the way it was—but they can participate in it: they can be amongst the people who did make the past the way it was.[12]

For the moment, assume time travel is possible. Please note that this NOT a time travel paradox question. Suppose that we have achieved time travel and we want to study history, to see how it differs from history books and learn from the past. Now, let's say our traveler is a person born in 1983, and they are sent to the past to study it with things they need to record history. But, our traveler is unlucky. For the sake of the story, let us say that he was going to Pearl Harbor on December 6th 1941, to record the attack on the American fleet. All goes well until early on the 7th, during the attack, when our traveler is struck by a stray bullet and is killed instantly.


After the smoke clears his body is found, but is in such a state that no one can ID it or figure out what the little "doo-dads" he has do, so it is all disposed of. Forensics being what they were then, he is marked off as another unknown casualty of war.


So, to the question. Our time traveler has perished in the past, 42 years before he was born. As time proceeds from the events of 1941, slowly moving forward until 1983 is once again the present, is our traveler born again? I would say that he must be, if time is indeed a constant, ever moving current. So, if he is born and follows his path as he previously did, does he once again end up being killed in the past, and if so, how many cycles does this time loop repeat itself? What is the long term effect on entropy, and will the random effect of entropy at some time or another, fix the causal loop?

 

[yiostheoy]

Time travel is NOT possible simply because TIME DOES NOT EXIST.

The present is continuous. There is no past or future.

We are mere mortals having conjured up the notion of time to reconcile ourselves with our own deaths.

However in reality we all live in the present with everything happening all at once.

Only from the perspective of the God(s) can you fully comprehend that nothing changes and that everything is really in the present.

This is a major issue of Philosophy, not science fiction.

And when you play the science fiction game you immediately run into stark contradictions which simply further proves philosophically that time does not exist and cannot exist.

Ergo there is no such thing as time.

 

[Muhammed]

Time is simply a measurement of change.

 

[RodISHI]

Time travel is NOT possible simply because TIME DOES NOT EXIST.

The present is continuous. There is no past or future.

We are mere mortals having conjured up the notion of time to reconcile ourselves with our own deaths.

However in reality we all live in the present with everything happening all at once.

Only from the perspective of the God(s) can you fully comprehend that nothing changes and that everything is really in the present.

This is a major issue of Philosophy, not science fiction.

And when you play the science fiction game you immediately run into stark contradictions which simply further proves philosophically that time does not exist and cannot exist.

Ergo there is no such thing as time.

I disagree with you somewhat. You are close but not exact. Time in eternity does not exist. The eternal being cannot tell time as it exist in this carnal world of flesh. As carnal and spiritual beings we cannot really tell the difference between yesterday and today or tomorrow even if we think we can. The spirit can put us in any time frame yet we would not know the difference unless we were allowed to see it or shown events in various times of our carnal lives of flesh. Times/seasons/etc.. were made for humans as the spirit of the Son grows in them.

 

[miketx]

But what of my clock.....

 

[Missourian]

Read this interesting article a few years ago and was surprised by how it could be adapted to explain a religious conundrum based on predestination vs. free-will.

The nub of the problem is that you cannot have a consistent “arrow of time” in the presence of closed timelike curves. The arrow of time is simply the distinction between the past and the future. We can turn an egg into an omelet, but not an omelet into an egg; we remember yesterday, but not tomorrow; we are born, grow older, and die, never the reverse. Scientists explain all of these manifestations of the arrow of time in terms of entropy—loosely, the “disorderliness” of a system. A neatly stacked collection of papers has a low entropy, while the same collection scattered across a desktop has a high entropy. The entropy of any system left to its own devices will either increase with time or stay constant; that is the celebrated second law of thermodynamics. The arrow of time comes down to the fact that entropy increases toward the future and was lower in the past.

A statement like “We remember the past and not the future” makes perfect sense to us under ordinary circumstances. But in the presence of closed timelike curves, some events are in our past and also in our future. So do we remember such events or not? In general, events along a closed timelike curve cannot be compatible with an uninterrupted increase of entropy along the curve. That’s a puzzle: On a closed curve, the entropy has to finish exactly where it started, but the arrow of time says that entropy tends to increase and never decrease. Something has to give.

The Real Rules for Time Travelers | DiscoverMagazine.com
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Hope you enjoy this article as much as I did...took me at least three readings and a good week of contemplation to wrap my mind around it.