A Possible Way To Prove The Existence Of Backwards Time Travel

By well-wisher

Sun, 14 Jun 2015
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3 comments
 

 

  1. Firstly, write down a secret set of symbols (numbers; a phrase or password) and then seal it in an envelope marked “Not to be opened until Time Travel Becomes Possible” .
  2. Then lock the envelope in a bank vault, giving the bank the instructions that no one is to remove the envelope from the bank vault until time travel becomes possible.
  3. Also within the envelope place a letter with these instructions. “If time travel is possible please leave the symbols within this envelope in the past somewhere as a sign that Time Travel is possible. The symbols must be left after the date that this envelope was sealed and locked away”.
  4. Also, within the letter you might want to leave some locations where the symbols can be left.
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Comments

Submitted by White Dwarf on

How will they know some random person has left a message to time travellers in the vault? And why should they care? I should think there would be far to busy dodging dinosaurs or memorising horse races. 

What if there is a temporal prime directive that states time travellers should never alter the past?

Submitted by well-wisher on

Answer to your first objection: It goes without saying that this would have to be a scientific experiment that would be recorded and publicized so that just like I know SETI exists or that James Randi's foundation offers a reward for any person who proves telepathy exists, everyone would know my experiment exists.

Answer to your second objection: What if there's no intelligent life out there? Then SETI's wasting its time. But how will they ever know? Yet they still keep trying. So any "What ifs" don't invalidate the usefulness of the experiment.

Oh look, a link. I wonder where it leads.

JoHn

Submitted by White Dwarf on

And the paradox of chicken before the egg is solved by saying the symbols need to displayed by the traveller only after the symbols are locked away. Because if they were displayed before, everyone would know the symbols so they would have to be changed, or the project just wouldn’t happen because it had already succeeded, in which case it would never have taken place to have had succeeded. If you get my drift. I like it.