(August 6, 2010 at 7:02 pm)Darwinian Wrote: If time travel was possible then it poses the question, where are all the tourists from the future?
Well, this is actually one question that is quite interesting to think about. Hawking printed out an invitation for a "Time Traveler Party" of sorts, and put it in a place where it could potentially survive many years into the future. The invitation had the exact coordinates of the party, geographically and time, yet no one showed up.
Hawking says that we actually may not be able to visit the past because of paradoxical issues. Let's say you were able to create a wormhole that had an adjoining wormhole right next to it but one minute into the past. This makes it possible for you to see through to the other side where you just were. If you shot yourself dead, how would you have died? Who would have shot you?
I see his points, and they are quite reasonable, but he also says that the paradox problem really only exists for the past... the future is still highly plausible. So, yeah, I guess that if time travel to the past were really possible we'd maybe have seen evidence of that already. We wouldn't have any visitors FROM our past because the technology wasn't there... maybe folks in the future are just on the edge of their seats until the time when we discover the technology and can pop in and say hello.
