Time travel?

Question

If you were able to travel in time, and you returned to the time of your conception (ok you probably wouldnt want to imagine that) if you prevented your conception and therfore stopped yourself being born would the time travelling you cease to exist?

Answer 1

This is known was the Grandfather Paradox and the version I heard wa slightly different to how you've just put it.

Basically:

You travel back in time to meet your Grandpa and when you meet him, he has not yet met your Grandma. That means your Dad has not been born, and as such, neither have you.

You and your Grandpa have many conversations and debates but one day, one debate gets a little too heated and, by accident, you kill your Grandpa.

Your Grandpa is dead, your Dad is never born and neither have you. As a result, how can you travel back in time to kill your Grandpa?

You can't, so you do get born and travel back and kill your Grandpa. But you can't have done because that would mean you don't exist and so can't have killed anyone.

And we now have a messy, never-ending circle known as a Paradox. A Paradox can happen in any situation that creates this type of answer.

As far as I know, there is no straight answer (if any answer at all) to a Paradox because the situation that created it will always produce a contradiction which itself creates another contradiction and etc, etc, etc forever.

I hope you've been able to follow that :-)
It's fairly simply idea really. It only gets difficult when you get too deep in trying to understand :-)

Answer 2

Accepting that the underlying rules of the universe do not allow a paradox, then no, you would not cease to exist, because this would set up the classic 'you were there, so now you cannot be there, but since you were not there you can be there' existence loop. I feel that you would still exist, but is a slightly different form.
My reasoning for this is that you were destined to exist in one form or another, and you cannot prevent your conception, only delay it. If you were to travel back and prevent your current mother from conceiving, you would be conceived either at a different time or place, or even different parents. Since this would change your genetic makeup (each sperm cell and egg contain slight variances for diversity, which is why siblings look similar but are different)
you could wind up with different hair, eyes, gender, deformity's, or even be a different race or species. Another good question would be one of would you would retain the memories of your existence prior to traveling, or would you think that you had always been the way you are now?

Answer 3

You should write a science fiction story about that. I read one in which a man travelled in time to be his own mother and then his father...after a sex change, of course. The paradoxes of time travel are formidable, so it takes a good author to write such a story well. It is difficult to answer your question. If you could really prevent your conception, you might cease to exist altogether. You might erase your existence entirely. You might also go into an alternative dimension where you do exist, but you would be erased in the dimension to which you were accustomed.

Answer 4

That sounds like a question for Dr. Samuel Beckett. I think that although you are travelling between different times and are thus able to affect the future there are some variables to consider. First of all, would the overall physicality of your being overpower the disruption in the time-space continuum? I think it would be an interesting battle of physics vs. biology, theory vs. trial. A molecular battle would definitely be waged with your existence being the overall spoils that would go to the victor.

Answer 5

Okee Dokee

If you do something - it's done.
Can't change that fact.
If you could go back in time it would only be to observe.

And then again - if you were standing there - observing - on a pavement, and someone has to walk into the kerb because you were in the way - and a truck hit them and killed them - and that person would have become the president of the Inter-Galaxy Federation of Glass Cutters - who would be fixing the windows on Pluto?

You didn't know Pluto had windows, did you?

Answer 6

time is an illusion, it is really a construct we have created so that we can fully experience everything. time is distance, the "time" it takes to get from here to there. if you travel fast enough, you can stop time, or even go back in time. but in the ultimate reality, everything is happening in the one moment of now. all experiences lay on top of each other, as if on a spindle. they do not ever null each other out. you would create a different path for that set of people, your once parents, and you would still be existing in a differnent universe, the one you created when you went back in time. the reality that you left would still go on, and there would be 3 "yous" now, living out the rest of your lives. you could keep creating many "yous" each existing in different planes of existance or universes. trippy man, trippy..but fun to think about

Answer 7

Ah the good old Grandfather paradox, recent thinking suggests that history adjusts to accomodate the new situation.

Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle

and also look at the Multiverse and Many worlds theories.

This subject is delt with in the fictional book Timeships

Answer 8

Well - i think - If Time travel can be done and even you return just in same moment when you wish to ...
Acording to Theory of Possibilities nad some my ideas - it wont cause any damage on your existing , becouse it shall develop new universe of possibilities , and this universe shall have nothing to do with your universe, anyway - when you try to travel back in future - maybe you shall go to future , but in changed universe , not yours universe ...
So - In your curent universe you shall stop exisiting, but what will happend to you - still can not decide , becouse you shall belong to universe that you can not back to ..

Anyway - time travel in future is 100% impossible, in past is possible , but realy little - about some hundred bilion part of second if i'm right

Answer 9

If time is a dimension we travel in, and if time traveling could ever be possible, then the issue of parallel worlds is coming up.
Then we get crossroads in time, Infinite number of crossroads coming up in the past.
Well, the universe is BIG..

Answer 10

Yeah - you and your memory would be wiped from existence.

Though if you weren't born in the first place, how would you be able to travel back in time to stop yourself being born?? But you wouldn't need to if you were never born. But you would be born if you didn't travel back and stop it.

Brain just melted. Thanks.