There's a curious science article over at Yahoo.....regarding physicists who've built a time-travel simulator. Nothing to get really hot and excited over.....just that the science guys have taken another step toward this one concept of time-travel.
This group has advanced the idea of the younger "you" could meet up with the older "you" and the fabrics of the universe would not necessarily fall apart. At least in theory, they think this now.
I've been one of those people who got locked into this whole concept with the old TV series from the 1960s.....The Time Tunnel. To be honest, it was pretty lame for most of the thirty episodes but when it came to science fiction....it was a four-star series.
The whole jest to the concept of time-travel is that you probably only get one shot at going back, and changing something.....because it'll all shift around and alter the future, which likely changes the creation of your time device, the technology used, and the results around your one mission. In effect....noting I'm not a scientist but simply a free-thinker....you are on a one-way mission with no hope of a return.
This state of pondering leaves you with only one state of mind.....what one event will you change or solve?
JFK's murder? Save Martin Luther King? Shorten the Civil War? Save Lincoln? Save Christ? Stop Napoleon from ever taking charge of France? Prevent the Norman invasion of England? Talk Kaiser Wilhelm II out of World War I? Kill Hitler after he leaves the Munich jail? Stall the Roman Empire from dissolving? Stop the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Help kill Hitler in 1942? Prevent the sale of the Louisiana Purchase from happening?
One shot at doing something, with zero chance of a return? That means you have to stay and live with the consequences of what you undid. So, if you save Lincoln....does his reputation continue to rise as he finishes out eight full years as President.....or does the problems of the handling of the southern states unravel his whole history?
If you talk the Kaiser out of WW I.....does it just stall things for a major war in the 1930s and massive use of chemicals and possibly a nuke weapon being used in Europe?
If you kill Hitler at the beginning of the 1920s.....does it really stop the Nazi rise to power, or does someone else take his place?
If you save JFK, what impact does it have for the remaining five years of his likely presidency? Positive or negative?
If you did the Roman Empire from dissolving....do they eventually tangle with the Islamic expansion in the Middle East and create a massive war of huge proportions?
If you prevent the Louisiana Purchase....does the US end up as a small empire from the Mississippi River eastward and a French state from the Mississippi River westward?
Fixing something doesn't really mean you actually fixed it....but simply created an alternate outcome, with unknown consequences.
It's like saying Muhammad's killing of two-hundred-fifty-million humans over the past 1,400 years needs to be fixed.....but perhaps someone else comes to replace Muhammad who doubles the results of death.
At some one point, I envision some scientist group coming to this rare moment where they know they can perform this one and only one time-travel event. The minute that this gets into public knowledge.....thousands of political players will want to control this and ensure nothing happens. You'd have to kill off the technology and the men who invented it.....all to stop a change in history which worries people.
It's the science that would be terminated because of the impact of one simple act.
