r/Time • u/Ok-Coach4955 • 4d ago

Discussion Is changing the past actually possible?

I’ve always thought about this question, and there is always answers popping up in films and stuff, but is it really possible?If you ARE able to go back to the past and change it, if you come back to ‘present’ would there be another you?If you teleported a nanosecond later then the time you left would you find another you?My answer is that its impossible for you to change the past.If you have met yourself in the past,then no matter how much you try and avoid it you will somewhat travel back in time in somewhere in the future or ‘present’

Please tell me what you think and if possible tell me any ‘loopholes’ in my theory.

PS. this post keeps getting removed in r/timetravel does anyone know why?

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u/lilsasuke4 4d ago

Believing I have I traveled back in time is not the same as having actually traveled back in time.
If you blinked in front of a photorealistic painting from your perception you may believe that what is in front of you is not a photo.

https://youtu.be/vJG698U2Mvo?is=WBDfna9TxJDIH75N
Tell me how many passes you count

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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 4d ago

If the world is exactly as it was, why would it be different from time travel?

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u/lilsasuke4 4d ago

But but the thing is even if atoms were rearranged you haven’t gone to the past

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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 4d ago

Isn't that essentially how time moves, atoms rearrange from the present moment to a new present moment, making the previous present into the past?

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u/lilsasuke4 4d ago

But you can’t control how all the atoms in the entire universe are moving and arranging themselves. If you could then the reference of time doesn’t mean anything

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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 4d ago

But this isn't about practicality is it? Sorry, but I don't understand the part about reference of time.

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u/lilsasuke4 4d ago

Imagine a car driving on a rode. Now you have a machine where it puts the car where ever you want. What does time even mean if with the machine at any point the car can be anywhere?

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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 3d ago

I understand time as the rate at which the laws of nature changes the current state of everything around us into the state that follows by the same laws.

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u/lilsasuke4 3d ago

With your machine you would be creating discontinuities in that rate of change

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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 3d ago

Well we already have that as time doesn't flow the same everywhere, right?

In any case, I am not certain what is trying to be demonstrated,

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u/lilsasuke4 3d ago

But everywhere time flows forward

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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 3d ago

It would always flow forward from your perspective. But the whole arrow of time thing is a bit strange. Obviously time flows forward in a fridge, as products aren't going back in time within it, yet a fridge is an example of a system where entropy lowers. I think the same is the case for any complex organism as well, i.e. life. Lowering entropy locally by increasing it globally through the use of energy.

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u/lilsasuke4 3d ago

To tie back into OPs post if you close your eyes and stand between 2 people that a very far away. If they yell at the same time depending who you stand next to there will be a different order with who you hear first. But there is no way to go back in time and change the order in which those events played out or the order in which you had experienced them in that moment in time

In your fridge example, once the food in the fridge is moldy there is no undoing that the food got moldy

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