If you could control time...

[plastic_window]

For starters can I just point out that controlling time doesn't mean you can either stop or slow it - you can also speed it up if you want to be the world's oldest person*. Or just do whatever you want with it.

Anyhoo, I was just wondering what sort of creative things people could think of doing with the world when time is theirs to control.

*The way I see this whole "time control" thing is like two separate tunnels. In one, there's the rest of the universe and in the other, it's yourself with the magic watch or whatever it is. So if you sped up time, you'd still age normally within your own tunnel - so as the world around you goes faster, you're seconds become their minutes. That's what I think of it, anyway. Everything's open to opinion/science.

 

[Gregorius]

I personally think there's more fiction than science in the "science-fiction of time control". The idea of actually being able to manipulate time is too abstract to be practical. What I'm about to type is my theory on the subject at hand:

• They say that time branches off into smaller trees. Two scenarios branch into four, then eight, sixteen, et cetera. They don't post the underlying possibility of those "branches" in time intersecting and joining. For example, say you were walking down the street, encounter a bank robber after a heist and got shot near the heart. You rewind time to the "intersection" between heading toward the robber or away from the robber, back to previous healthy condition, and head opposite the robber. What happens now?
  
  You know what happened. You feel at ease now that you're avoiding the robber with the gun, right? Well, the possibility slips into mind: what lies along path number two? There's the possibility that safety lies around the bend, or an equal danger. You soon enough realize that at approximately this time, you had gotten shot by the robber. You start to worry. What if I see him again? What if someone or something else comes? You can clearly recall the pain of getting shot; after all, at this point in time, it only happened a second ago. The heart is affected by the false pain signals sent by the brain, and begins to act irregularly. Suddenly, the heart stops and you fall into clinical death. You can still be resuscitated... within the next ten minutes.

You see? The body can take the strain of the time displacement, but the mind is fragile. Also, in another thread, I stated that the body, under certain conditions would be affected by the displacement.To sum it up in a few sentences:

• If time is sped up, the body will age and deteriorate faster.
  Slowed down, the molecules that compose your body would lose kinetic energy.
  To freeze time, all kinetic energy would be lost and you yourself would be frozen.

Time heals... and harms... all things.

 

[SecretTacoNinja]

This is making my head hurt already ~o_o~

 

[Reaperman Wompa]

what happens if you are in slow time while everyone moves faster and someone walks where you are standing?
do they bumb off of you or go through you, just always wondered.

 

[Becoming Insane]

RE: Gregorius' rant

I think you're overthinking things. (or perhaps not, depending where this post goes) Assuming we live in an infinite multiverse with an infinite number of dimensions, anything is possible, and indeed, has already happened/is happening/will happen. Therefore, in your scenario, rewinding to the "intersection" will let the person have prior knowledge of the robber, and avoid him. After that, if they die, it's more than likely the user of the time-controlling magic/technology/whatever is too stupid to rewind again to avoid the "second" death (even though it's the first).

 

[no.soap.radio]

Oh and your forgeting about paradoxes
Eg:

Lets say someone killed your brother, and you figured out who it was right? so then youd go back in time to kill the guy who killed your brother riteeeee???? So then you go back to the present to find your brother alive but in actuality the man who was alive to kill you brother before you went back in time is now dead so you would have never gone back to kill him which would mean the he would be alive to kill your brother but he can be because you killed him....... then the universe would implode on itself.

 

[FeepingCreature]

No actually, there's a number of theories that handle this situation - for instance, it does not occur at all in the Many Worlds interpretation, or the Novikov principle is in effect meaning that you wouldn't be able to create a contradiction in the first place (e.g. your gun suddenly fails, you're out of ammo, you keep missing, you have a sudden stroke .. etc). Alternatively, if time travel is handled in a message-based fashion, the problem doesn't occur at all, because your "imprint" on the past is decoupled from your actual behavior in the future, meaning that you appear to have gone back in time even if you really haven't. (Of course, this violates conservation of matter).

 

[Becoming Insane]

Here we have a classic case of what British author Terry Pratchett calls "the Trousers of Time." By killing the person who killed your brother, you've created an alternate "leg." When you go back to the present, you go back to the "leg" that contains your still-alive brother. In the other "leg," you never went back in time. Therefore, no paradox.

Consider this, though.

Hypothetically, if you're on a starship going .999999999999999999(etc.) the speed of light, if you have artificial gravity, what happens once you take a step? Once you do, will your combined velocities exceed the speed of light? If so, what will happen? Will your body go back in time, making it impossible for you to have taken the step in the first place? If so, that's a paradox.

 

[JC123]

Just do whatever the hell I felt like. Mess with people's minds, prevent events I didn't want to happen, maybe something so simple as pausing time to see what Elisha Cuthbert's rack ACTUALLY looks like (lol, boobies).

I've thought about this pretty regularly for the last few years, it was a common daydream of mine, until I realised that if I stopped time I couldn't see, as no light would hit my eyes, and I might not be able to move, what with the air particles being frozen in place as well.

 

[Lord Krunk]

I would stop time, steal whatever I wanted, and get on with my life. Whenever audits happened, I either stop time and get the hell out of there, or I just stop it and hide my stuff.

 

[mark_n_b]

I'd have to get back to 1985!

88 Miles an Hour... Where we're going we don't need roads.

 

[Souplex]

Todays Lotto jackpot numbers are 965!
*Goes back to yesterday*

 

[mark_n_b]

Todays Lotto jackpot numbers are 965!
*Goes back to yesterday*

No! Because then Biff steals your idea and uses it to open a casino and marry your mother! And it's up to us to to get the Sports Almanac back!

 

[FrankDux]

Ya, I'd definitely pull some shit with the lottery and being able to win money. You could only win one though, so you'd have to pick wisely and get a huge payout.

 

[Johnn Johnston]

Todays Lotto jackpot numbers are 965!
*Goes back to yesterday*

No! Because then Biff steals your idea and uses it to open a casino and marry your mother! And it's up to us to to get the Sports Almanac back!

All the while, he'll be telling us to make like a tree and split.

 

[Thais]

Consider this, though.

Hypothetically, if you're on a starship going .999999999999999999(etc.) the speed of light, if you have artificial gravity, what happens once you take a step? Once you do, will your combined velocities exceed the speed of light? If so, what will happen? Will your body go back in time, making it impossible for you to have taken the step in the first place? If so, that's a paradox.

Um...nothing. You move forward in the space inside the ship a little bit. In no way are you powering or accelerating the ship beyond ".999999999999999999(etc.) the speed of light" by taking a step inside the cabin. Astrophysics does not run on hamster-wheels.

 

[chimmers]

Aside from anything sex related, i would enter a food eating contest. Whenever i feel full, stop time for a bit and recover. I shall be the master of food contests!

Also play at Matrix style bullet dodging, obviously

 

[mark_n_b]

All the while, he'll be telling us to make like a tree and split.

"Make like a tree and get outta here!"

Manard... I hate Manard... (it sounds like manard when he says it)

 

[Becoming Insane]

Consider this, though.

Hypothetically, if you're on a starship going .999999999999999999(etc.) the speed of light, if you have artificial gravity, what happens once you take a step? Once you do, will your combined velocities exceed the speed of light? If so, what will happen? Will your body go back in time, making it impossible for you to have taken the step in the first place? If so, that's a paradox.

Um...nothing. You move forward in the space inside the ship a little bit. In no way are you powering or accelerating the ship beyond ".999999999999999999(etc.) the speed of light" by taking a step inside the cabin. Astrophysics does not run on hamster-wheels.

I wasn't talking about accelerating the ship; I was simply wondering what would happen to you.

 

[the monopoly guy]

Make things in the microwave cook faster. I don't want to wait 3 minutes to burn my mouth on molten cheese from a Hot Pocket!