Wank time-travel research

[overoceans]

Notice the thread title specifies "research". I'm not asking for time-travel to actually come about.

Anyway, like it says, have governments and/or corporations spend the maximum of time, money, and manpower on researching time travel. Maybe this works best as a Cold War scenario? Possibly the best you could get is the time-travel equivalent to MK-ULTRA, a lot of sensational sounding projects, but ultimately amounting to very little.

Perhaps the USSR launches a clever disinformation campaign, via a fake defector, that convinces some gullible CIA agents that Moscow is actively pursuing time-travel, and has made some impressive discoveries. So, the USA figures they need to play catch-up, and ends up blowing a lot of money on harebrained physics experiments.

 

[Arkenfolm]

This would logically also lead to a lot of research on FTL travel (as anything going faster than light would be going backwards in time).

 

[gatordad699]

The country doing the research would have to get a DeLorean and some plutonium first.

 

[overoceans]

This would logically also lead to a lot of research on FTL travel (as anything going faster than light would be going backwards in time).

Yeah, arguably, this research might be synonymous with FTL research. I know just enough about physics to know that.

Also, various sci-fi subcultural tendencies, with their obsession with quantum physics and its supposed ability to transcend objectivity, would have a field day with this.

 

[overoceans]

The country doing the research would have to get a DeLorean and some plutonium first.

It is some testimony to the cultural prominence of that film series that never having seen a single installment, I nevertheless was able to figure out in about five seconds what was being referenced.

 

[FlyingSquirrel]

Maybe some sort of slow-motion disaster is unfolding - WWIII, ecological catastrophe, or impending large asteroid strike - such that some government decides that it's worth the risk of paradoxes and what not to see if we can go back and prevent it?

Or maybe something is discovered that appears to be evidence of time travel from the future to the present day. The TV remake of The Andromeda Strain included this as a plot point, and I'm assuming that if word got out in the scientific community or even among those with access to high-level classified research, they'd want to study it further and see if they can master the technology themselves. (Especially since, in this scenario, there would be evidence that time travel can take place without causing a universe-destroying paradox.)

Personally, I tend to think that the lack of evidence for it in the present or past means that it's not possible, unless you count one-way forward travel by time dilation.

 

[SunilTanna]

The problem is that there are only 2 approaches:

1. Conventional science methods - based on relativity -there are some ideas, but these are purely mathematical (so a few smart people write unreadable papers for each other), as engineering them as FAR FAR beyond anything we could do for centuries, if ever, as they require exotic objects and exotic materials moving in ways that require vast amounts of energy

or

2. Wacko nut job methods - crank physicists and mathematiicans - very very unlikely to work

So if we some government or governments that wants to wank time travel, they EITHER (1) pay a few smart people a bit more, and get a few extra papers on time travel instead of say string theory, OR (2) throw money at cranks, and get nothing back

Obviously this has an economic effect, but it doesn't make time travel happen.

If time travel is needed to solve some urgent problem - solving the problem directly is likely to be orders of magnitude cheaper and more practical then the hail Mary time travel idea.

 

[CalBear]

Actually I have very little doubt that billions of Dollars, Pounds, Rubles and probably Renminbi have been poured into research. Time Travel is literally the ultimate weapon. If massive programs were created to study and possibly weaponize "paranormal combat methods", something that has no scientifically accepted theory to back it, imagine how readily Time Travel would be accepted. Time Travel is actually a supportable concept using long recognized and respected science (which, as an off-shoot, provided the current ultimate weapon). That research into it would also encompass another Bolt from Zeus' hand, namely FTL (and likely as not either fusion or matter/anti-matter as a power source) and you have the sort of deep black hole that governments LOVE to throw big piles of money down in hopes of the occasional 1,000,000 caret diamond in the rough.

 

[Arkenfolm]

I wonder if we'd get a lot more research into black holes, and in particular artificial black holes, as a consequence of their link to FTL/wormholes. If taken seriously, we might get an LHC or even more powerful collider earlier, but sadly no black holes, assuming the current theory of making artificial black holes (you need orders of magnitude more energy than we have now) is true.

 

[MKD]

I wonder if we'd get a lot more research into black holes, and in particular artificial black holes, as a consequence of their link to FTL/wormholes. If taken seriously, we might get an LHC or even more powerful collider earlier, but sadly no black holes, assuming the current theory of making artificial black holes (you need orders of magnitude more energy than we have now) is true.

have you not seen Event Horizon?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

We need:

• a mad scientist
• a car with gull wing doors made in a factory in Northern Ireland
• a flux capacitor ( needs inventing - cant be that hard)
• 1.21 gigawatts of power ( might need some plutonium or somesuch)
• Enough road for the vehicle to reach 88 mph.

;-)

 

[Alcsentre Calanice]

Time Travel is literally the ultimate weapon.

I doubt it.

It creates too many paradoxes to be used rationally.

 

[overoceans]

I doubt it.

It creates too many paradoxes to be used rationally.

In that case, it might actually have its greatest appeal to apocalyptic wackjobs, who wouldn't care if they butterfly away the entire modern world, or even their own existences, if it somehow brings about the desired eschatology. But those would be the people least likely to have the skills and resources to develop it, and nobody else would want to sell it to them.

 

[Alcsentre Calanice]

In that case, it might actually have its greatest appeal to apocalyptic wackjobs, who wouldn't care if they butterfly away the entire modern world, or even their own existences, if it somehow brings about the desired eschatology. But those would be the people least likely to have the skills and resources to develop it, and nobody else would want to sell it to them.

I mean, the smallest change in the past would completely alter our existences, and may even change us so much that we are by all standards different people - so that we, as we exist today, disappear.

What's the point of using a weapon that destroys everything, including yourself?

 

[Aber]

I doubt it.

It creates too many paradoxes to be used rationally.

Not necessarily:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2397535/

An alternate view

What do we want: Time Travel
When do we want it: It's Irrelevant

 

[anotherlurker]

Here's my "wank" of time travel research:

-The Nazis take over Germany and follow the script until Poland
-Nothing happens then and Hitler declares that Germany has successfully been made great again (ignore the steep tax increases and unemployment, just wave that damn flag)
-Europe is generally a peaceful place, with the normal rivalries
-Hitler dies, Himmler takes over and in his wake the German scientific community is fully taken over by proponents of paranormal sciences, world ice theory, Thule society etc.
-One of them proposes time travel as the ultimate Wunderwaffe of the German Volk
-Through their connections to the new Führer they get it fully funded and supported, Germany pours billions of Marks into the "project" over the next years
-Decades later the last remnants of the project are swept under the rug as nothing ever came out of it and the realization dawned that German science was just a huge amount of graft and charlatanry and the Jewish sciences are right when they say that time travel is impossible

 

[FlyingSquirrel]

have you not seen Event Horizon?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Great Scott!

I'm not really sure what the consequences of creating an artificial black hole would be, but I'm pretty sure it *wouldn't* be everybody going crazy and gouging out their own eyes while the ship gets taken over by some sort of alien hell-demon.

 

[FlyingSquirrel]

Not necessarily:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2397535/

An alternate view

What do we want: Time Travel
When do we want it: It's Irrelevant

Is this the "whatever happened, happened" view as expressed in Lost? Namely, anything we do while time-traveling into the past is already incorporated into the timeline and therefore Grandfather Paradoxes aren't possible? Because if that's the case, then using time travel to actually change our circumstances is futile anyway. Traveling to the past might be useful as a historical research tool, and traveling to the future would satisfy some curiosities while probably also creating its share of disillusionment and confusion.

Though I suppose you could have a scenario where someone travels to the future, obtains some scientific knowledge that we don't yet have in the present, then comes back to kick-start the research that leads to the observed future development of that knowledge without violating the rule of "whatever happened, happened."

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

if you want a pod to slow down technological development governments+companies deciding to pour tons of money into ratholes like ftl/time travel would work

 

[CalBear]

I doubt it.

It creates too many paradoxes to be used rationally.

Randomly? I completely agree.

Strategically? Even high level tactically? Very different matter. There is the classic "go WAY back and kill XXXXX" that creates a cascade effect that either A) Splits the T/L or B) Drastically alters the original T/L beyond recognition (the classic "butterfly effect" from A Sound of Thunder) but there is also the "go back in time five minutes" or "go back an hour/day".

A reasonable example of the second can be 9/11. Total event happened in the space of two hours and four minutes. Before the final aircraft went down it was obvious that it was some sort of an attack and all the aircraft had been identified. All that needs to be done is send someone back three hours and order a ground hold and have instructions to rescreen the passengers on those four flights. Yes, that will have enormous impact on the future, but not any future anyone knows. Even the individual(s) sent back only have a three hour change. Obviously this won't work for events that happened before the discovery of Time Travel because you will need to set up some sort of system to allow the stops (although if you are really bloody-minded all you have to do is send back a couple geese to interdict each aircraft on climb-out). There will be huge changes from the perspective of a viewer outside of the current T/L, but for those within the T/L? It's the future, haven't happened yet.

 

[overoceans]

if you want a pod to slow down technological development governments+companies deciding to pour tons of money into ratholes like ftl/time travel would work

Yeah, that's why I think that, as far as everyday politics goes, this works best as a disinformation campaign. The fake defector tells the CIA that the Soviets are pouring money and manpower into time-travel, and the CIA panics and tries to play catch-up.

Thing is, though, the CIA wasted so much money on dubious projects during the Cold War(seriously, were any significant number of important individuals swayed against Communism just by reading Encounter?), it's doubtful that one scientific goose-chase is going to make much difference. The US would need to be spending space-program levels of cash on time-travel in order to garner much self-inflicted damage, and even then, it's still probably a loss they can absorb.