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Given Time Travel, Where & When Would You Want To Travel?

mikelegs

mikelegs

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Jul 31, 2001
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Just an idea...

I write down today's lotto numbers, because no one won. I throw together a time machine and by tomorrow{now} I come back to this morning{before} and confidently play the winning numbers. {now} everyone has a memory of me winning the lotto, instead of no one winning, and my memory has both. Note: there's no overlap, cause in my chronology everything lines up nicely... just happened to live the same day twice. Sure, there are two of me, but the {now} me has extra memory. So I (the {now} me) have to get back to my own time, so to speak, or else kill the {before} me. Of course I could always talk some sense into him and we could split the winnings. I'm assuming we'll get along.
 
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So which date would you travel back to?

Unfortunately, I don't think it will ever happen.

But it would be extremely interesting if it did. I'm not going to get tangled up in the what-would-happen-if-you-went-back-and-killed-your-own-grandfather debate, but if it were possible, what date would you like to go back to and why? Just as a spectator, of course, any interaction strictly forbidden!

Carole
 
what time period

Palistine 30-36 AD would be top of my list:D
just to see the worlds best ever public speaker in action.
 
I want to go back to New York in the 1930's, because my favourite film is Radio Days, I have no idea why.
 
Oh,Beak, it was on TV the other day! Great film. Back to the days of ancient Egypt for me - New Kingdom, can't decide between Akhenaten's reign or Ramesses II, it would also be interesting to see what form the Exodus really took, whether it was perceived as such an important event by the Egyptians.

Carole
 
Egypt's a good one, the idea that the civilisation lasted hundreds of years and we have these fixed ideas about it, which can't possibly hold true for all of it, is fascinating in itself.
 
I think, given the chance, I'd like to bounce around from here to there. Not just because I grew up watching Doctor Who. (Or because I caught the second half of The Daleks Invasion Earth 2050 last night. I'd forgotten how little like Peter Cushing he looked in those.)

It's more to do with there being so many things I'd like to have seen, ranging from some of the earliest achievements (Pyramids, Minoan temples, and the like) to quite ordinary (live performances by people like Hendrix, The Beatles, Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc; original or otherwise noteworthy productions of plays), and being able to sort out once and for all a few controversies (the Princes in the Tower; who was Shakespeare; what did crash into New Mexico in 1947, or Siberia in 1912; who stopped the Anglo-Saxons in their tracks in the 5th century, and was he called Arthur?).

I'm afraid if I were forced to have only one choice, I'd rather go forward to see what happens next (not to get any specific details, mind you, just to see how humanity gets on for the next thousand or so years). Of course, time travel forwards is not only possible, it's compulsory. I'd just like to do more of it than we normally get to.

This dog just turned up on my doorstep, mumbling something about losing his boy, and asking if I want to buy a slightly used Wayback machine. How very peculiar.
 
Pliocene Earth for me. I just want to get away from people for a bit.

EDIT: That's the last epoch of the Tertiary Period in the Cainozoic Era in case you didn't know. ;)
 
OK Forty2, but if you see anything crawl out of the sea, don't step on it by mistake.
 
Okay Beak, I'll go well armed!

Or did you mean I might step on something that winds up to be me?!!?

It'd be nice to slip back and see Mum and Dad as a courting couple too. Would also like to see them as kids. Just pop in and observe, you know. Could even follow the family tree way back and meet them all. Now that'd be interesting.

Or how about dropping in on someone's life at various points like, say, John Lennon, or Hitler, or Henry Ford etc, and watching progress. Just like in the film "Time Machine" where he sees the son of his friend Philby grow old. Be a bit God like wouldn't it?
 
Forty2 said:
Or did you mean I might step on something that winds up to be me?!!?

Or how about dropping in on someone's life at various points like, say, John Lennon, or Hitler, or Henry Ford etc, and watching progress. . Be a bit God like wouldn't it?
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Exactly, or more to the point, it might wind up being me. :p
I would love to drop in on John Lennon, especially the time I heard he was in a nightclub with a sanitary towell stuck to his forehead, and some woman was ignoring him. He said "Don't you know who I am love?" and she said "Yes, you're a c*nt with a sanitary towell stuck to his head". I'd love to see if this actually happened.
 
Laugh? I nearly fell off me chair! I've never heard of that one, and I'd have to go see it. :D :D :D :D
 
I'd like to go back to when I was a kid, meet up with myself and tell myself all the things I wish I'd known. It'd make a good story, that...I'd change my appearance as I stood in front of myself telling myself to stop overeating and how to deal with the bullies. I'd look totally different now if it was just for those two things. I'd be a different person too.

Pinkle
 
I agree with the earlier post about seeing famous acts live - perhaps going to Woodstock, or LiveAid.

But as for ancient mysteries, like Stonehenge, Easter Island and others mentioned above, I'd prefer to leave them as they are. Not knowing the truth (or the reality) makes them far more interesting. If you don't know the reality you can put your own personal spin on it, which has to keep you far more excited and intrigued.

Also, imagine finding out the truth about JFK or Roswell (or Jesus Christ!). Could turn you into the world's number 1 target for agencies wishing to keep the truth under wraps. For that reason, even if the technology becomes available I doubt we'll get a look-in.

But, if we did, I'd watch England win the World Cup in '66 :)
 
I share my first choice with Colin Wilson: going to Mitre Square on 30 October 1888 and discovering the identity of Jack the Ripper.

Carole, I think the point about spectating but not interfering introduces the problem that you either complete a closed timelike loop (you were always bound by the laws of physics to visit the point in the past you choose, and long before you were born, your future self had existed in the past), or you introduce a paradox. If you pop into the past and take up a previously spare seat at a Mozart concert, it is necessarily a different past from the one that gave rise to you and your time travelling antics in the first place. Otherwise your mere prescence is just as paradoxical as if you were to kill your grandfather.
 
Hmmmm, I'd like to go to 1967 and watch the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup Championship....and the Sugar Bowl in 1979 to watch the Univ. of Alabama win another National Championship....:D

sureshot
 
All I'd need from time travel is information. You know, like lottery numbers and other similar stuff.
 
Mythopoeika said:
All I'd need from time travel is information. You know, like lottery numbers and other similar stuff.
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Ah.... But that doesn't necessarily guarantee happiness or satisfaction. There are lottery winners who have spent the cash on cars, hookers and drugs and simply wasted the rest, ending up in a worse situation than when they started.
 
Mythopoeika said:
All I'd need from time travel is information. You know, like lottery numbers and other similar stuff.
Click to expand...
But then you'd seriously skew the laws of random distribution of variables, so there's probably a cosmic rule that prohibits TT on those grounds. If things didn't average out properly, there'd be all sorts of extreme events happening.

But perhaps that's what's affecting the weather recently - Time Travellers! (Probably from Boston, USA, judging by the winter weather they've been having...)
 
Time travel wouldn't be wonderful, it would be terrifying. Every faction would want to go back in time and edit history to suit their own purposes; there would be editing wars that would make Wikipedia look tame, with no moderators or Timecops to protect us. You'd go bed a man, and wake up an unmarried mother. Or a camel.
 
eburacum said:
Time travel wouldn't be wonderful, it would be terrifying. Every faction would want to go back in time and edit history to suit their own purposes; there would be editing wars that would make Wikipedia look tame, with no moderators or Timecops to protect us. You'd go bed a man, and wake up an unmarried mother. Or a camel.
Click to expand...

I like your thinking. If we look at the problems of this happening on Wikipedia, just think of the problems it would create in Real life/time...
 
Who ever is in charge of the time machine...any chance you can let me slip on by without checking in ? I would like to start over starting with 3rd grade [that is when the town kids lied about having their homework done and not getting in trouble] But as I was a [farm kid] I was more honest and told the truth I was the one who got in trouble. I could also start about 8th grade as that is when I started [experimenting] . Honest I have no idea that is what happens when you put a paper clip in the wall socket.
 
Has anyone seriously considered whether the world would be a better place without Hitler? I am not sure that assassinating Hitler would ever be the right answer. After all, he was more of a symptom than the disease itself, and with Hitler out of the picture, someone smarter may have got the nod. Also, consider what the world would look like without WW2, with the European Empires still operating. If that is really your kettle of fish, then rather than killing Hitler, it would be wiser to save Archduke Franz Ferdinand and prevent WW1, and thus the Versailles Treaty that made Hitler possible.
 
This thread is established to consolidate multiple discussions concerning where / when one would choose to travel if he / she were enabled to travel through time.
 
Oh a few places and events:
The Apollo 11 launch
The Gunfight at the OK Corrall
Roswell to see what actually happened
 
Nazareth around 5 BC would be interesting.

Or how about say 500 miles from the Chicxulub crater around 65 million years ago?

To be honest though, my passion would be to jump maybe 200 years into the future, with the hope that what I saw would be more Star Trek ((TNG) than Mad Max.
 
I would like to jump into the future and maybe stop there if i liked it, maybe about 500 years or so
 
For me, I'd go back to the early 80s and give my younger self LOTS of advice.
I'd become very successful, known as the inventor of all kinds of things and be the wealthiest person on the planet.
 
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