Time Travel

"A time machine is a device which brings about closed timelike curves-and thus enables time travel-where none would have existed otherwise."
[Earman, John, Wüthrich, Christian "Time Machines", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2004 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2004/entries/time-machine/>.
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There is much to speculate about the subject of having a time machine and the possible consequences of using it. So, what might happen if one were to take a trip back or forward in time and were to entangle with events? This, of course, is not a new subject, but is an intriguing one.

factitious fiction/

not new, of course, but intriguing nonetheless...

http://www.johntitor.com/

I really like the story about a couple of sailors who paticipated in the Manhatton Project. Their ship disappeared, but they instantly reappeared in a bar... forty years later.

there are some "first person" experiences recorded? ... i saw a mention of this method on the john titor site-

"I have written the three books on the time-travel methods, adventures, etc. used by Steven L. Gibbs and both Steve and I have read/listened to the John Titor material with great interest. First of all, there is a gentleman in Miami, Florida who has gotten fantastic results with Steve's HDR (hyper-dimensional resonator unit) and he has found several alternate time-lines for the future (for the US) by adding a Tesla coil to Steve's invention. His name is Carlos and he has described to us (before we read the Titor material) alternative futures that dovetail with what Titor has also described!

In addition to this, Steve has noticed that many of the other details about time-travel Titor has given seem to parallel what he has also noticed--notably what it would be like leaving one time period and arriving at the next. In short, I read the Titor material AFTER writing about Steve and have found that what they both say is comparable. There is nothing in Steve's experience that would negate what Titor has said. Carlos and I agree that time-travel is accomplished more easily if one can find a powerful vortex in which to operate any devices.

It is my personal belief that if the vortex-or the point of time-slippage as I describe it-is powerful enough, the equipment required to push one over into a different time-frame or universe is minimal! In many places on earth this happens quite naturally-and frequently!"

Patricia Ress,
author of Stranger than Fiction, The True Time-Travel Adventures of Steven Gibbs

I love Ray Bradbury's work. I also like Ursula K. Lequin's,
"The Lathe of Heaven." That's a twist on a time machine.

In "Lathe of Heaven" the machine connected to the mind changed the world. Did it change "the" world or did it change "a" world such that if one could possibly find a way, then one would be able to return to the original world? The question might be similar to a computer when one presses edit-undo. The computer either undoes what is done on the exact same page or it sets that page aside and brings back the old page.

It is a short novel, actually. I do not know how to manipulate the underline function on this page.

Avon:
ISBN: 0-380-01320-7
I read that book in February of 1996. I wrote the date in the cover.

I have another one of her books called "The Beginning Place." It starts out really well. The main character finds a place in the park where time moves slower than the rest of the world. Of course, Le Guin starts introducing characters and plot twists that screw up the basic premise, so I stopped reading the book half way through. I thought it was goofy. The premise is great, though.

Awakening, one of your posts said you teach literature. When I took introductory English I also took Introductory Philosophy at the same time. The problem was that I had to write papers in Philosophy and cite my sources before I learned how to cite sources in English. That mean #@&*&! teaching Philosophy 201took off letter grades if the sources were incorrectly cited. He never indicated whether he wanted papers written in MLA or APA format, and he certainly did not show us how to cite sources. It's amazing that he could even ask why students think he's mean.

solution would be a copy and paste precaution... if you do have to log in a second time, as i have had to do from time to time, your work is saved.

I completely agree, Awakening. I guess I bring up Dr. Bulhof, because I will be taking two more of his classes in the Spring: Ancient Philosophy and Formal Logic. He's a strict logician with the funniest quarks. I had him for Critical Thinking, the first philosophy class I'd ever taken. I applied myself, had a difficult time understanding, did OK on most of the tests and bombed the final. He gave me a C in the class when I was certain I had gotten an F. In a way, he reminds me of C.S. Lewis' tutor who was also a logician, who taught Lewis' father and brother. They called him "The Hard Knock." C.S. Lewis once remarked to his tutor,
"Good day to you, Sir," to which he replied,
"What do you mean by good, and by what means do you attribute it to the day?"
That's a good professor. I shouldn't complain so much about him. He's taught me much and done so quite well. I'm looking forward to his classes.

Basically, time travel can be possible if one of two condutions are met, i.e, either there are a infinite number of dimensions, or life is predetermined.

How are you inferring this, Angel? What line of reasoning is leading you to your conclusion?

Kant says that linear time is merely a category of mind...In other words, time as we experience it, from past, present to future is illusion...The past and future exist now, but because our own minds are limited we cannot percieve the past and future "now"...We say the present exists, but what is the present?...Does it consist of a day, an hour, a minute, second, or even a nano second?...The fact is we can never "capture" the present...It's like a nonexistent "point" and the so-called future continually trickles into the past before we can even "percieve" it...The illusion of the present is created by vivid memory of recent "past events" which tend to fade almost continuously but which are "refed" by new exeperiences...When I look at an object, I am not seeing it as it is now, but as it was only a moment ago...I am seeing light that has traveled 186, 000 miles per second! Our experience of the present may be thought of as perception of a "cross-section" of time...and all that we see is a "cross-section of reality." You can make easy comparisons to the dimensions of three-dimensional space to establish what every scientist already believes: time is the fourth dimension of space. Since a point is a cross-section of a line which is composed of an infinite number of points, and a line is a cross-section of a plane which is composed of an infinite number lines, and a plane is a cross-section of a solid which is composed of an infinite number of planes, a four-dimensional object would be composed of an infinite number of solids and a solid would be a cross-section of a four-dimensional object...The tesseract (four-dimensional object) was once explained to be an "expanding" three-dimensional object because this expansion would result in an infinite number of three-dimensional solids seperated by "moments in time." The main idea to remember is that "time" is required to imagine or "comprehend" a four-dimensional object, and if the past and future exist now somehow then everything in the universe exists on a fourth (or higher) dimension we can neither percieve nor concieve because our minds are forced to separate and divide things somehow according to the rules of three-dimensional space and linear time...We, of course, can fine-tune our minds so that we can begin to experience time as it truly is...and we might be able to 'mentally" travel to other "encapsulated" time periods...that would be time travel, I think...Whew!...I should have posted this one on that "fourth dimension" thread!...Oh, well.