Time Travel, consideration of effects of point alteration

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A lot of times debate on the issue of time travel tends to get wrapped up upon the points involving paradoxes of causality or on the point that we already do travel in the dimension of time, but only in one direction and at the speed of light. However, I would rather that this thread concentrate more upon the effects to history if an alteration were made than on issues of "it can't be done" or otherwise points to discourage thinking or to entrap in paradoxes rather than actually considering the subject matter.

This can have the format of a forum game, if everyone wishes to do so, or individual topics can be dwelt upon.

Example question:

What would be the effect on history of giving 4th Century Romans the formula for gunpowder and the knowledge of applications such as firearms and grenades?

There is a what-if discussion group in User Groups and an alternative history site

www.alternativehistory.com where such matters can be discussed.

ruveyn

Roleplaying forum, perhaps?

I don't know much about Roman history...but...

seems to me giving them gunpowder would simply have made "the fall of the emipire" longer and messier, but wouldn't prevent it, as the barbarian hordes would get ahold of the weapons and learn how to use them as well - and proceed to overcome the Romans. They were barbarians, not idiots.

It *ahem* wasn't the lack of military power and ability to project and protect Roman interests throughout Europe, etc., that doomed the Roman Empire, it was internal change in the society and loss of will to fight for said civilization.

Decadence! Decadence = Doom! Decadence!

Ok, another example question, which everyone can write their own too,

What would be the effect of giving Louis Pasteur an electron microscope?

What would have happened to Germany if Hitler had decided against conquering land?

My first thought, and its not at all original, is that Jerusalem around A.D 33 would be flooded with all manner of people curious and strange to the time.

Including Jesus?

I dont know. I cant travel time. However, roman historical records indicate that hippy-like prophets were not rare or strange to the time. Again, you'd have to travel time to see if any of their actions were curious.

How would such an instrument be maintained at a time when the underlying theory was completely unknown. Alternatives have to be possible at the time they occur. No fair invoking miracles or breaches of logic. A good optical microscope would have been fine. In Pasteur's time optical theory was advancing rather well and in Germany very good lens grinding technology was being developed. One does not need an electron microscope to see bacteria or one-celled animals.

ruveyn

Well, if we're ruling out the impossible...

Everyone knows that only living beings can survive time travel.

It's not possible to carry materials through time - there isn't enough power in the time machine.

My uncle, Mr. Wells, was working on the problem when I spoke to him last.

Just sitting where you are you are currently moving ahead in time at the speed of light
which is to say one second per second.

ruveyn

The only thing that moves through time is consciousness.

If you accept that the space-time continuum is physically real, then all matter is moving forward in time at the speed of light. Read a book on Special Theory of Relativity sometime. And consciousness is the twitching and fuming of our neural tissue. Consciousness as a substance does not exist. It is a property of matter and physical processes.

ruveyn

For something to actually move from the past to the future it would have to cease to exist in the past and exist only momentarily in each moment of time. It does not do this.. Only our consciousness moves. The universe is, at minimum, a four dimensional structure with both past and future in full existence in that structure.

Not true. You could say that consciousness results from matter and "physical processes" in the brain. The problem with this statement is the brain is basically no different from any other organ in the human body--heart, liver, skin, whatever. It's just another mass of cells. Specialized, sure, but you can describe brain cells in purely physical terms the same way you can describe muscle cells or hair follicles. What you can't explain is how like causes in consciousness produce radically different effects. You can say that we are individuals, of course, but the problem is we are all individuals with basically the same cell structures, organs, and chemistry. You can't explain why it is individuality appears in physical terms, and consciousness has a lot to do with that individuality. In strictly physical terms, the mind is totally unpredictable and unexplainable.

That is precisely right. Every atom of our body moves through the space-time continuum at the speed of light when no motion through space occurs. All things in the cosmos travel through time. For a given location in space, the relativistic interval between an event at some point and an event at that point but a second later is c where c is the speed of light. Just by sitting where you are you are going at the speed of light ahead in time at the rate of one second per second.

Consciousness does not move in the manner of on object. Consciousness is a process, not a substance.

ruveyn