mjacobsca said:
Steven hawking recently conducted an interesting experiment on this matter. Unknown to anyone else, he left an instruction in his will to provide money for and advertisement for a time traveller conference to be held at a date, time and place that only he knew and was held only for months after editing his will. His instructions were to make the announcement as far reaching as possible and as long lasting as possible (published in historical references, scientific journals, biographies written about him, etc...). Future time travellers could come across this information and use it to attend the conference. Alas, Hawking showed up at the conference, but no one else did. Either:
- The instructions were destroyed and/or never made it to the future time traveller
- The instructions were unreadable to the future time traveller (maybe only aliens have figured it out)
- The future time traveller chose not to attend the conference
- it is not possible to travel back in time to attend the conference
I thought this was a very clever experiment! Draw your own conclusions.
I've thought about this approach and some of the implications of its success, and it creates (in my humble interpretation) a paradox of sorts. Assume that in the future some scientist does indeed discover a method of traveling back in time (the particulars of the method being irrelevant) and decides to visit Hawking. Hawking meets with the traveler and converses for hours on end, learning all the advancements of science that have occurred between the two time periods. Here lies the paradox:
Hawking now possesses all of the results of "n" years of experimentation, derivation, observation, etc. Thus, he could publish all of these findings as discoveries (who the credit goes to is irrelevant). However the time traveler is only able to tell Hawking about these things because he has seen the results of said experimentation. Now that Hawking has published the findings ahead of time, there is no need for the experimentation and the entire reality of the traveler either A: becomes a fallacy or B: becomes a component of an alternate universe.
In my opinion, this paradox provides sufficient evidence for reasons that the time travelers would not present themselves to anyone that was not
involved in the actual experimentation. I also have a corroboratory theory that could allow for such a "meeting" while dodging the paradox.
Say someone is working on the idea of time travel, but they've reached their mental limits. If one views the time line as a rigid system dominated by the laws of cause and effect (and this is an assumption that I am making from a limited level of experience, I must admit), then the following would be possible:
As the scientist is working diligently (or eating, sleeping or anything of the like), an older, nearly identical image of himself appears and tells him that he has made a breakthrough. The time traveler version of the scientist shows his past self the necessary means to complete his work (not necessarily the methods of time travel), and leaves. The past scientist eventually figures the process out and goes back to inform himself of his success.
This is the absolute epitome of the "chicken and the egg" question. Can a scientist discover something by going back in time and telling himself? Can time behave in a "circular" manner?
