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If instantaneous, one-way time travel were possible, I would
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- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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If instantaneous, one-way time travel were possible, I would
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Beauty and harmony are as necessary to you as the very breath of life.
(Score: 2) by pogostix on Monday February 16 2015, @06:12AM
I'd want cargo containers of stuff. Set up a little well defended homestead. I'd go back a few hundred with the clothes on my back. If I could bring some like minded friends it could be fun!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arashi no garou on Monday February 16 2015, @12:59PM
You should read Conquistador by S.M. Stirling, that's exactly what a character in that novel did, and the rest of the novel is about what happened as a result. Very interesting piece of alternate history fiction.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Fauxlosopher on Monday February 16 2015, @11:50PM
Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South explores the results of time travel used to arm the Confederacy with AK-47 rifles during the USA's Civil War.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Tuesday February 17 2015, @01:33AM
And vote on this AGAIN!
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday February 17 2015, @02:06AM
Cross-Time Engineer. Modern electrical engineer gets accidentally sent to 13th century Poland.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Thursday February 19 2015, @02:54PM
So I assume that in the novel, no one ever forgets Poland?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday February 16 2015, @06:51AM
Has our dear Cowboy made the transition to the light side? Or should we just let bygones be bygones? [cue Sons of the Pioneers] "Happy Trails, to you!"
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday February 16 2015, @11:25AM
I was just thinking the same — I think it'd be appropriate (and more funny) to use staff members' usernames. Or have users indicate whether we're willing to have our name used in the polls, then pick whoever had the most downvotes since the previous poll.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by CoolHand on Monday February 16 2015, @01:27PM
It was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to Never Never Land
That referred of course to the Merry Prankster's bus, but it could be appropriate for this time travel scenario also.. :)
Another nice article [poetspath.com] on the subject..
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday February 17 2015, @03:01PM
(Score: 2) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Monday February 16 2015, @07:25AM
1915? Sure, I'll take it! Anything that gets me closer to the 1950's with a good chance of still being alive, and far enough away from the 2000's that I'll be dead and buried way before they ever happen.
There were fewer warning labels back then. I really think I'd love it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 18 2015, @03:55PM
1915? I sure hope you're not in Europe.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by KritonK on Monday February 16 2015, @09:12AM
There's no time like the present. The past seems like a nice place, only because we romanticize it. The future may or may not be better than the present, but if you go there directly, without having taken part in forming it, you'll get to see the future that others helped form, and you might not like it at all.
Given all that, I would like to visit the past as a tourist and take a few snapshots. Not one-way, though.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by slinches on Tuesday February 17 2015, @01:00AM
I generally agree with this, but I think I'd go to the recent past (~5 years ago) anyway. I'd just bring along some winning lottery numbers and a well thought out investment plan so that I can be insanely wealthy when I catch up to the present.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Monday February 16 2015, @11:00AM
Ignoring the fact that timetravel would land you in hard vacuum (heck, just a couple of seconds and you would die form the impact of the resulting drop, assuming you don't end up inside the planet)
- Go back 10,000 years
I'm kinda fond of this thing called agriculture you know, also it would suck to not be able to communicate properly.
Would however be fun to introduce steel weapons, basic electricity and the car prior to things like the horsedrawn chariot..
- Go back 100 years
Ending up in World War I? The only war with extensive use of chemical weapons? How about no...
- Go back 1 year
Sane-ish, except for that everything that currently happens in my life already was set in motion back then. Wouldn't be useful (well, excepting for being able to heavily exploit the stock and resource markets)
- Go ahead 1 year
If I wanted to do this I would just go on an extended vacation with my phone turned off.
- Go ahead 100 years
Ahh, new diseases that you will have no immunity to whatsoever, and you probably would have a hard time understanding the language and the tech of the time.. Might however be interesting as an option to suicide
- Go ahead 10,000 years
Why not send you off to a distant planet with alien lifeforms, new diseases, language and tech you don't understand...
Seriously, people don't think about the sideeffects..
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 16 2015, @01:10PM
Minus 15K puts you a the tail end of the ice age. I'm not entirely sure that where my butt is sitting right now wouldn't STILL be covered with melting ice.
Interglacial periods tend to be pretty short compared to glacial periods. The normal, typical state of the planet for more than a million years has been glacial, not like now. I'd be REALLY careful about suggesting going forward 10K or more, unless you REALLY like the movie "Frozen", you might be in for 50K of ice age till its warm and tropical next time.
Another thing missed by "kids these days" is pre-EPA the conditions in the 1st world were actually worse than conditions today in the 3rd world. So 1950 in a "lassie come home" rural area was pretty idyllic but life in, say, Pittsburgh, kind of sucked.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Hyperturtle on Monday February 16 2015, @04:00PM
Wow, you guys are bummers. Well, after you figure that out, I would like to know what clock are we using, and is it tuned to the Earth's rotation around the Sun, or the Solar System's location as it bobs up and down within the galactic plane, simutaneously while it rotates around the center of the galaxy? Going back in time requires knowing the position of where one is in (at least) four dimensions, something that a stop watch or LCD clock display often experience difficulty representing.
What if we used an atomic clock to agree on time, taking into account the historical record and the time it would be before we were measure such things to a level of accuracy only to be improved in the future? Should we go to the future first to get such a clock? How do we prevent the hard vacuum or solid rock (or perhaps quantum leaping into another person, but physically, killing traveller and unintended host receipient simutaneously?) What about location? Now that we have settled on the actual timestamp of the destinations in question, how do we propose to prove that we show up in the right place, gently upon the ground, as well as the right time? I mean there may have been a tree or glacier where I am standing here complaining.
After much consideration, I have determined that, as demonstrated and such in your provided commentary, you two are no fun. All this reason and ration. Assume that the time machine was made by Apple and Mr. Fusion. That way, it will JUST WORK and you can just garbage to power it. Maybe drag and drop the times and places or something. Does Google Now work for the past on Apple products? We clearly couldn't use Apple's mapping to find where we want to go.
(Oh and remind me not to loan my monkey's claw to either of you. You both would make for a poor drama/horror story due to the predictive nature of your successful wishing strategies.
I figured if I ever was granted three wishes, I would first wish for a lawyer skilled in wish negotiation to advise me on the remaining wishes.)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 16 2015, @04:52PM
how do we propose to prove that we show up in the right place, gently upon the ground
Traditional sci fi story answer is either forward or backward space is mostly empty so an incoming orbital landing in a space capsule will always work, and for trips backward you play games with sending a capsule back and making sure when you discover it 1M years later that its in decent shape, and once you get good at that you start sending people in the capsule. Which is an interesting sci fi story limit for not going back 4B years (or even 1M years), where are you going to stash a capsule for 4B years such that you'll find it but nothing else will? Core of the earth or ... ?
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Friday February 20 2015, @11:43AM
Or just launch from a few meters off the coast next to a nice beach and land in water? Hm..
(Score: 3, Funny) by tangomargarine on Wednesday February 18 2015, @01:09AM
Duh, we'd be using Unix Epoch. It's the only time scale that matters!
I know we all love to be Captain Pedant but do we honestly have to say that the assumption is that we would end up in the same spot *on Earth* when we arrive. Missing the forest for the collection of deciduous herbaceous nonsapient lifeforms that currently inhabit the planet on which we are standing (assuming of course it's not during an ice age period of glaciation).
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 17 2015, @06:46PM
BULL. SHIT.
I've been to the United States of 1969. I've been to China. The two don't even begin compare. Union, New Jersey of 1969 was the Garden of Eden compared to China.
Sorry, but I'll take my own experience over someone who couldn't find China on a map if you spotted them Mongolia and Vietnam.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 18 2015, @03:58PM
I think he was talking about access to iPhones
(Score: 5, Informative) by gnuman on Monday February 16 2015, @04:41PM
Time travel, like in the movies, has problems. Those problems extend past causality. For starters, the Earth moves. It is moving almost 30km/s in orbit around the sun, which means it's getting accelerated towards the sun all the time. Then there is the sun. It's moving too, and we along with it, at over 200km/s. And then there is the Milky Way - our galaxy. That's moving 500km/s, more or less. And so is our local group and the entire Virgo Supercluster, all moving. Move myself 10 *seconds* in time and I could end up in space, or somewhere near Earth's core. And you can't even predict Earth's path anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem [wikipedia.org]
And don't say relativity fixes things by saying "relative to earth". Well, the location vector has 4-coordinates. (x,y,z,t). So let's say now (x=0, y=0, z=0, t=0). What do I put for x,y,z at t=100years ? Remember, relative to Earth at t=0 - what distance?
So, how do you place yourself on Earth if you move around in time any significant amount of time??
Clearly, if you can move around in time and end up on Earth again, you can move around in space. Wouldn't it be much easier to just transport things instantaneously then? Keep t=0 and move x,y,z around the galaxy a bit.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday February 17 2015, @05:31PM
Time travel, like in the movies, has problems. Those problems extend past causality. For starters, the Earth moves.
Duh, that's why you need a time & space machine. Problem solved!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 19 2015, @11:54PM
I'm curious, why do you say the galaxy is moving at 500km a second? with respect to what?
If you would say that the Earth is not an inertial reference frame, I would be ok with that; the same for the Sun and the galaxy etc.
However, correcting for the motion of the galaxy with respect to the local cluster is trivial, once you figure out how to correct for the motion of the Earth around the Sun (corrections get easier and easier the closer the reference frame is to an inertial reference frame).
(Score: 1) by mr_mischief on Friday February 20 2015, @08:59PM
Go out of plane with the galaxy, time travel, then come back to the spot on Earth you want. Since you're time traveling instantly you may as well be able to travel arbitrarily quickly through space, too.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday February 16 2015, @04:47PM
It might be cool to go back in time say 5 to 10 years, assuming you can take some stuff with you. You know, like the winning lottery combination for some huge mega million lottery. Would also want a whole lot of information on news, etc. Though, who knows how much your going back in time will effect the outcome of various things. Maybe your going back in time will destroy the entire human civilization, because you looked at somebody funny.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Tuesday February 17 2015, @02:04AM
Go to about 1980 and invest in Microsoft and Apple.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday February 18 2015, @01:13AM
Having no choices between 1 year and 100 years is rather annoying. I would love to go back a couple decades and see what it was like then firsthand.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday February 16 2015, @06:58PM
...I'd want to live through the intervening years, because otherwise how would you understand it? Just thinking about the changes since my first programming on an IBM 360 with punch cards. Geez, less than 40 years from that to YouTube. Imagine what the next 40, 400, 4000 years will bring!
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by CirclesInSand on Monday February 16 2015, @08:47PM
Go back 10,000 years.
Just go visit Africa, where warlords go village to village sawing people's hands off.
Go back 100 years.
Or visit Alabama.
Go ahead/back 1 year.
Just stay where you are.
Go ahead 100 years.
Or go visit Japan today.
Go ahead 10,000 years.
Or go hang out in a desert after a nuclear explosion? Or the international space station? Or go scuba diving? Who knows?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday February 16 2015, @10:18PM
Gonna really enjoy reading the history books from 2030-2110.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Subsentient on Monday February 16 2015, @10:55PM
We don't need that kind of thing. It opens up a massive can of worms that some asshole would exploit for personal gain at the cost of civilization. Destroy the time machine.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimshatt on Wednesday February 18 2015, @12:07PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by WizardFusion on Tuesday February 17 2015, @02:59PM
Time travel going backwards in time is impossible. For all values of impossible. The Grandfather Paradox [wikipedia.org] would come in to effect for one.
Forwards in time is possible. Just go as fast as you possibly can towards the next nearest star, turn around and come back again. You will have aged a smaller amount than everyone stuck on Earth. The faster you go, the more the time difference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 18 2015, @12:11PM
The Grandfather Paradox would come in to effect for one.
Unless there's a multiverse.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Alfred on Tuesday February 17 2015, @03:20PM
I would prefer to go back like 50 years but I can work with 100. I would definitely take a historical record of some sort be it textbooks or Wikipedia snapshot on a tablet/laptop. I would show up to be the hero in a few places, stop some bombers, hijackers or an assassination. I would go interfere with my younger self to make me a better person.
One big problem is how long do I have in the present to prepare before I go. A day, an hour? Hopefully a month or more. How much stuff can I take? A backpack, a car, a bus?
No matter the combination it would be an interesting adventure. How much good change could I do for the world?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by e_armadillo on Tuesday February 17 2015, @08:51PM
and would buy as many bitcoin as I could get my hands on when it is released, and then sell the whole lot of them when they hit 1200, and cash out way before MtGox bit the big one. After that, who knows . . .
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Non Sequor on Wednesday February 18 2015, @04:42AM
Dude, you cashing out your bitcoins was what CAUSED Mt Gox to bite the big one.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Wednesday February 18 2015, @07:11PM
I'd go back to the night my wife, in the bath alone, had an epileptic seizure and drowned in the bathtub.
Let the paradoxes roll. She would have been alive longer.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 19 2015, @09:12PM
There's a Fringe for that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Tulip [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday February 18 2015, @07:49PM
To the day i met the love of my life
And this time we would catch the tumor on her liver before it was too late.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday February 19 2015, @01:28AM
I wouldn't go back 100 years. I live in New Zealand, the country with the highest casualty rate per head in WWI. I am also of an age where I would be drafted, and in February 1915 the ANZACS were in training for Gallipoli.
Can't see that being a good choice.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday February 21 2015, @06:49PM
find the guy who invented the necktie and prevent it from ever happening.