i would go back long ago , to a galaxy far far away.....

AHAHAHAHA

as long as i could stay my current age, go back to the beginning of the 1950's and live out my life on a random, run-down farm. when things were done PROPERLY and there was hardly any of this H&S shit and restrictions running around.

i know what i'm doing. i have watched many episodes of Heartbeat. it would just be 10 years earlier.

Just so that you guys don't break your time machines and get trapped forever in the vortex, I'd like to point out that there was is no year 0 in the Gregorian calendar (that we use) or the Julian calendar that preceded it. It goes from 1BC to 1AD, because dates are not equivalent to the mathematical number line.

There is a year 0 in the Buddhist and Hindu calendars, but good luck finding a Roman Empire then.



I would use a time machine to observe the natural world as it existed throughout geological time. I am particularly interested in discovering species that left no trace in the fossil record, which would be the vast majority of them. Fun!

I would also go to the distent future. i'll love to see if Global warming really did anything :P

Not much has changed but we live underwater.

I'd go back and fix that then :p

Paradox!!!

Why do people always assume a time machine can teleport as well?

Because we don't like to think that we'd have to attempt to book a flight in 1509.

Or end up stuck inside a wall built in the time you skipped.

You seen the original The Time Machine movie? Where the guy is stuck inside a freezing mountain of ash and rubble created by a nuclear explosion and he's too terrified to go backwards out of fear of immediate death?

Scary stuff.

If time machines didnt move wouldn't end up in outer space all the time? with the planet moving all the time

The time machine would move with the planet, as long as it is fixed (I should assume). But by that logic, it would be a shit time machine, as any attempt to go backwards would fail, since it would have no where to materialise.

How does that work?

Magic.

I would go to 1998, because that is before they took all the good stuff out of Sunny D.

Diagram:

http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/3733/digram.png

Hey, you used a question mark correctly.

Wells uses sort of bad physics to explain this one...

The Time Machine moves through all four dimensions at once, it creates its own kind of temporal space field around itself which is kept up as long as it keeps moving. It doesn't 'travel' through normal fixed space so that's why it doesn't just crash and explode when the bomb drops.

Wells also uses a lot of other bad physics and biology (Nevertheless accepted at the time, this was the very first science fiction book after all). He's almost as bad as the writer of Jojo for it.

It#s still an absolutely fantastic book though, especially the horrific monster crabs in the final chapter.

I'd go back to the time when dinosaurs ruled the Earth...


SPLASH!


Damn that continental drift.

Somehow, no one worries about materialising in another time in a space already occupied by air. Instant death.

I agree, the only reason I wouldn't like to time travel is that I wouldn't like to that I was being broken down into information and then being rebuilt atom by atom in a different universe...that is scary.

Actually, the world reshapes itself around you.

I'm glad we have experts in our midst.

I honestly can't remember, and let's face it, you never know what kind of crazy spooky shit would happen around the messiah when he's just a tot.

The man makes a point.

What if I kill Hitler and Albert Einstien?

The world would be in a state of equilibrium...with an unsatisfactory amount of Jews. I kid

Really? I thought nuclear energy wouldn't exist and Japan would become a superpower :D

If only it were the other way around..............

I'd rather Japan exist than have nuclear power.

Einstein was only peripherally related to the Manhattan project. He used his influence to support it, but to the best of my knowledge did little of the physics.

Isn't it Dr. Oppenheimer you're looking for?

Nuclear power has enormous potential as an energy source. It just needs to be used with certain precautions.

You must realise that if you were to eliminate the people responsible for most of the world's discoveries and events, someone else would do them instead. The environment that allowed Hitler to come to power would easily produce any number of men like him, and they may well be more competent. And if it hadn't happened in Germany, it most certainly would have happened in Britain or another Allied power.

As for scientific discoveries, they may take a little longer, but not much longer. Science had already advanced to the point were nuclear physics were known of and being studied, and practical applications we becoming possible. There were also, and there are and were with most discoveries, other teams worldwide doing the same research.

You need to be very well versed in history to predict what events were truly unprecedented and could alone have altered human history, and even then its not something you can predict with confidence. And then Chaos complicates things further. The fact is, the effects of some events diminish with time, while others grow phenomenally. In fact, most events probably have many effects of both types.

This reminds me of the third Animorphs special where one of the Yeerk Vissers goes back in time and changes shit so America publicly promotes racist ideology and all the countries fear and distrust each-other so much that taking over the world would be that much easier.

With a little help from The Elimist (Read: God) the Animorphs are saved from that alternate time line after seeing the effects and follow the man through time where he first goes to the battle of Agincourt to make sure the French win, then to Washington's crossing of the Delaware to make sure the British win, then to the Battle of Trafalgor to make sure Napoleon wins and then to Princeton University where they find Visser Four looking extremely disorientated and confused at the fact that Einstein never attended Princeton University because he messed so much with the timeline.

They then corner him at the Normandy Landing where the German and French alliance (Flying a standard of a golden eagle on a black background) are fighting a British invading force (Flying an incomprehensible standard) and Hitler is an old man driving a jeep.

Moral of the story: Don't fuck with what you can't control.

I would make scathing comment about you reading Animorphs, but I won't, because you hate me, and will pound me into the ground for eternity if I do.

Fuck you Animorphs was the best children's book series of the 90s fuck you to hell.

Bitch.

I didn't say Animorphs was bad. I just like making scathing comments.

I read Horrible Histories and Diana Wynne Jones; feel free to say what you like about that.

Why? Horrible Histories was a brilliant series by the time I got too old for it, I particularly enjoyed the brilliant yet inaccurate satire America book.

Well, I also read Terry Pratchett and Agatha Christie, and I figured that Horrible Histories and Diana Wynne Jones were more eligible for scathing comments.

I read a couple of Animorphs books when I was twelve or so, but the main things that put me off were the covers - well, basically the entire design of the books reminded me of Goosebumps and stuff like that. You know, short, poorly-written novels published in their millions and probably written by a syndicate.

I apologise if they're better than I though they were :)

Animorphs is worth it for the Andalite and Hork Bajir Chronicles as well as the final two books of the series.

Well, I'm about to buy around 7 Terry Pratchett books second-hand ($50 worth), but once I've read all them, I'll have a go at Animorphs :)