if time travel was possable could you change the future?

Question: if time travel was possable could you change the future?
- Keywords:
  future,
  time travel
Asked by kieran12 to Drew, Amy, Julia, Kimberley, Sara on 15 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by robina.
- Drew Rae answered on 9 Jun 2011:
  
  Kieran,
  
  Good question, and I don’t know the answer. “If” questions are hard to answer, because all you can really do is think through what they mean. There’s a theory that if someone invented time travel, they would go back in time, and then the people back then would have a time machine too. Then they would start travelling, and soon every time would have a time machine. If that theory is right, then either time travel will never happen, or the people who invent/invented it in the future were really sneaky.
  
  Another theory says that if you try to change things with time travel, the whole universe splits into two universes, one where you change things and one where you don’t.
  
  Another theory says that if you try to change things with time travel, the universe kind of fixes itself again so what you changed doesn’t have much effect.
  
  There are lots of cool stories and movies using the different theories.
- Kimberley Bryon answered on 14 Jun 2011:
  
  This is a really good question. Have you ever heard of “the butterfly effect”. There is an idea that if we went back to the past to change the future even something as small as the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings could drastically alter the future. An example that I just made up is say that you wanted to go back in the past to stop a friend dying because they got hit by a speeding car. You stop them crossing the road but then the car hits someone else and they die. That person in the future was going to be the prime minister but now isn’t so you have drastically altered the future.
  
  Time travel makes my head spin, because you can never quite work out what would happen. In a worst case scenario you could accidently stop yourself from being born and then how could you have gone in to the past to change the future if you weren’t born so then you must be born. Argh!
- Julia Griffen answered on 14 Jun 2011:
  
  Wow Kieran, tough one, IF time travlel was possible then sure you could change alot of things… guess its relying on the whole time travel thing.. and thats not possible so… 🙁
- Amy MacQueen answered on 14 Jun 2011:
  
  Hey Kieran! I guess you could – but its not possible yet so…
- Sara Imari Walker answered on 15 Jun 2011:
  
  Hi keiran12 and robina. Cool question. I would say yes. But it depends on what you mean by the “future”. You can think of each persons timeline as a separate trajectory through space-time. For example in 1905 all of Albert Einstein’s future was still in my past. So future and past are not necessarily concrete terms. Your future could even be in your own past if you had a time machine, just try not to meet back up with yourself 😉
  
  All I can say is that certainly we all change our own future everyday – even without time travel!! I just decided to answer this question which changes the future of what you do when you get around to reading my response. In this case, it seems that the future is not pre-determined. If that’s the case, then yes you can change the future!! Hopefully for the better! Otherwise, we can get into some squirrely cause and effect issues like what Drew has described.

Question: if time travel was possable could you change the future?

Comments