Time Travel

[Kasreyn]

First off, what does the poll mean? I'm totally confused as to what the subject of the poll is. And don't say "time travel, duh!". Time travel is a technology (also a very unlikely one). One doesn't make emotional judgements about technology; technology is neutral. Only its uses are up for debate.

Also:

if one could achieve the speed of light, then one could travel anywhere instantly

Incorrect. You would instead be travelling at the speed of light, which as you may or may not know is far, far slower than "instantly". A paltry 186,200 miles per second!

Another problem with time travel I haven't seen mentioned recently: Say you have a normal universe, going about its business next Thursday. Suddenly, a time traveller from the year 30,000 AD appears out of nowhere, in a time machine / spaceship. How can we reconcile the fact that universal entropy has suddenly reversed a tiny amount? Certainly we must assume that the universe is a closed system, at least until we can discover if there is anything beyond it. So how could a person travel to the past, thus decreasing entropy at a specific point in the past? Or would it be balanced by his absence in the future?

Finally, as to the "kill your own grandmother" paradox, I'm leaning toward the belief that the timestream is more flexible than that. If you go back in time and somehow affect the events leading to your existence, I predict you will actually CAUSE yourself to exist, rather than the opposite. IMO paradox is something that would simply never occur. If you went back in time with the purpose of proving me wrong and murdering your ancestor, something would happen to stop you. Why? Because otherwise you would not have existed. Paradox would be used by the universe, to prevent paradox.

-Kasreyn