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[GlyphGryph]

But if you go back and change in order to that president, then there would be no reason for you to go back in the first place, thereby preventing you from changing the president, then you would go back and change the president because you haven't changed the president yet, then the president would be different and you would never have gone back in the first place... see where I'm going with this?

Lolwhut?
No, the point is changing the president wouldn't change the present, so the reason to go back in time would still apply... unless, of course, you stayed back in time long enough to get carried through and overwrite the present. In which case, yeah, you would no longer be going back in time, but the lack of a need for temporal continuity applies to your own personal timeline as well, so that's no an issue.

It's like in a computer. Going "back in time" to an earlier bit of code and changing it doesn't change the current state of the program.

[Lagslayer]

But is that really time then? If time is what did happen to us, what is happening to us, and what will happen to us, then if you were really traveling through time, that would change everything after it because it's fundamentally different. According to your logic, if you go back in time and kill yourself, then you would die, but instantly pop back into existence when you eventually come back to the present. This violates the law of conservation of matter and energy.

Alternately, you could argue that it's a parallel universe or something, but that's not really time travel.

[GlyphGryph]

This violates the law of conservation of matter and energy.

How do you figure?

[Lagslayer]

This violates the law of conservation of matter and energy.

How do you figure?

Because the instant you go back in time, you disappear completely from the present, thus removing your matter and energy from existence. Consequently, your matter and energy suddenly appear in the past out of nothing.

But if we go with the alternate universe theory, this is no longer a problem.

[lemon10]

I don't think time travel really needs to follow the laws of conventional physics for the most part.

And plus, going back in time would be impossible (if the law of conservation was true), because you would create more energy/mass in the past when you arrive.

[Lagslayer]

Wow. I didn't expect anyone to agree with me on this subject.

[rarborman]

Backward time travel wouldnt violate the laws of of physics, matter would neither be destroyed or created, just temporally displaced, and causing the uncreation of either yourself or time travel method would most likely be either impossible or cause so much paradoxes or if your intent be thus you'd most likely end up dead in the past traveling back to the present.

But of course if you can travel back in time, and do stop time travel from being invented, the universe would most likely kill your paradox future self shortly after.

[Scood]

Fall into a sufficiently big black hole, time dilation will do the rest.

oooh thats a good one.

also on paradoxes, i just kinda figured if time travel is possible then time is infinite. If time is infinite, then a paradox is impossible because eventually enough matter will leak into the past to change it back. but this is speculation, and as far as i know time travel has not been achieved yet. So time may or may not be infinite.