Would time travel ever work or would the ramifications of the butterfly effect be too devestating?

I don’t think so.
I am of the opinion that only these 2 options are possible:
1. Anything you do in the past to “alter” the timeline was already part of the timeline before you made the jump back in time. In otherwords, self fulfilling destiny.
2. Anything you do in the past to “alter” the timeline will result in a split of the current timeline into two distinct versions, one where the alteration occured, and one where it didn’t, the latter being your home timeline.

The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined time travel to be impossible.

No, because all these scenarios imply that time is linear (in which case you couldn’t go back anyway).
Modern theory looks at time like a tree with various branches. Every second, any decision will split reality into various sub-realities, each of which will continue to exist in a parallel universe. In one universe I just answered your question, in another one I didn’t. And since there are several outcomes for every single action (turning right or left at a crossroads, multiplied by the millions of people who are standing at similar crossroads at that same moment), the possibilities are infinite.

If you go back in time, you will go to the original “root” timeline out of which our own reality originated. But change one thing, and the reality would change. The original reality would still exist (ie in 2009 our own world would still exist as it is today), but you would have created a series of other realities, and get trapped into one of them. Most of those would be very similar to the original one, and perhaps if you led a relatively insignificant and discreet life, the world would not be that different in the short run. You’d just come here to fluther in 2009 and notice that there was no user called “ragingloli” for example, or “eponymoushipster” only had 9324 lurve on this day. But maybe your little contribution would have affected that timeline enough so that GW Bush would never have become president (after all, he did win by a few hundred questionable votes, remember?). And maybe the current recession would never have happened, or it would have been a lot worse and led to war.

So the “butterfly effect” actually does work according to this theory, except that the reality which you are affecting is the one you’d be trapped in, not the one you came out of. We would never notice the difference, and even if you travelled back to the future, it would be a different future from the one you left (ie the one I’d be experiencing).

@Jack79
one could also argue that each quantum state collapse results (being the only thing right now that has the chance to be non-deterministic and thus random) results in a branch-off.

I think it is only possible in @ragingloli‘s first scenario.

Unless of course you have a flying Delorean…

Yeah, @ragingloli If you believe in the multiple universes hypothesis, then going back in time merely makes that universe branch off into a different universe. Presumably the universe(s) in which you didn’t go back in time are still continuing on in the different path.

Mostly, I think, stories about time travel are opportunities to engage in alternate history.

I like to imagine that time travel works as if you’re seeing a 3d movie. That is to say, you can’t interact with the characters, you’re simply in a read-only copy of the universe.

I’ve heard that there are an infinite amount of universes, and that when you travel to another time you travel to another universe. I think that it’s possible.

The time machine would have already been invented 7 times by my calculations, But people from the future keep coming back in time and killing the inventor before they can invent it to stop some crazy futuristic time travel problems

I went back and checked and the answer is no.

Out on the road today
I saw a deadhead sticker on a Cadillac
A little voice inside my head said,
“Don’t look back. You can never look back.”

- Don Henley, “The Boys of Summer.”

I love that song!

It depends on the humidity.

@IchtheosaurusRex – when that song came out I had NO idea what a “dead head” sticker was.

Depends. Just having something go back in time changes the future. Even if that thing doesnt do anything. Lets say it just goes back in time, takes a look around then goes back to the present or wherever it came from. It would still change the universe as in it would disturb some air particles and as such not every molocule would be in the spot it was supposed to be. Sure it may not change things visibly but they would still be two fierent timelines. I dont think I can give a detailed enough explanation in a single fluther post so you should look at the multiverse theroy on wikipedia. If that doesnt answer your question then try reading the book Physics of the impossible or parallel worlds. Michio Kaku is great at explaing stuff like this.

Just a thought. Perhaps the linear view of time is not accurate. We see it as linear because it fits our view of things – past, present and future in a never ending stream. There is some evidence that for some personalities, time is not a series of events, but a collection of events, episodes, things, all existing together. The future co-exists with the past and the present. So if time travel is possible it is only in the context of an infinite number of events, some of which we have experienced, some of which we have not, and may, and some of which we may never experience. Michael Crichton wrote a novel based on this idea.

Ok, well let’s just say everything worked like it did in Back to the Future. Let’s rule out multiverses, the idea of set in stone history and view it as if we were Robert Zemeckis.

ACTION!

@NaturalMineralWater
BttF had multiple universes as seen in the third movie where doc brown explains it.

@ragingloli Ok maybe I didn’t clarify enough with the “Let’s rule out multiverses” .. lol… pretend it’s all on one screen… ok? forget about the math and the physics.. I’m talking about the ramifications of alterations to a time line as seen in BttF .. we could talk all day about Einstein denying the possibility of black holes and the structure of multiverses.. I’m more interested in how you perceive the effects of a .. “Marty” if he were to arrive.

ok, so if we accept that new rule, there is a specific timeline that you can never change.

What this means is that, even if you don’t travel in time, you can never change your own future (since the timeline is already “set in stone” as you say). I think this in itself is important, because you automatically take out the “free will” factor. It is a religious and philosophical discussion as much as anything else, and results in a fatalistic view of the world.

As far as time travel is concerned (and this rule is used in most sci-fi movies that deal with time travel), this again would mean two things: either that whatever you do is irrelevant and wiped out from history, even if it creates a temporary parallel universe (what Terry Pratchett calls a “realtiy bubble”), or, more commonly, you do whatever you were meant to do, and become part of a history that you were already a part of to start with. So, even if you try to change history, what you’re really doing is what you were supposed to have done all along.

In the latter scenario, either your grandfather is invinsible no matter what you do (because history said he lived so all of your efforts to kill him will fail and be documented as near misses in his life), or you do manage to kill him, but it turns out he was never your grandfather in the first place, because the guy who actually got your grandma pregnant was that other boyfriend your parents didn’t tell you about. Or even you.

@Jack79
”Or even you.”
no, that won’t work. that creates a paradox.

If time travel were possible, some loopy nutjob would have gone back in time and saved Hitler, or Hiroshima, or allowed George W. Bush to become president.
Can you imagine the shit that would have happened without Gore’s competent hand guiding the nation?

@filmfann rule #1 of time travel: you can’t go back and save or kill Hitler.

Rules??? Watch out, or I will go back in time, step on a bug, and you will have 6 eyes.

rule #2 of time travel: you cannot tell anyone about time travel.

@filmfann
cool. but so would you

@ragingloli , @filmfann : and nobody would notice. For all we know the present world is the way it is because somebody traveled back in time and stepped on a bug.

I quite like the ideas set out in Deja Vu. It may be possible to travel in time in that manner, but the original ‘future’ ceases to exist.

That is at least the most believable proposal of time travel that I know of. Once the time travel takes place, the alternate future in which the time travel takes place ceases to exist. Still, it isn’t perfect as you would end up with a disjointed reality where events take place for no apparent purpose. I maintain that time travel is a logical impossibility.

Time travel into the the future does work. All we need is relativistic spaceships. But some people would find it devastating when back on Earth they get invited to their child’s ninetieth birthday when they themselves have just turned thirty.