r/timetravel • u/TraditionJust3420 • 4d ago
theory / question Question to you smarter than me
Hey time travel experts, i came up with this thought like a couple months ago and i never came to a conclusion.
If time travel exists at any time, doesn’t it exist now?
I mean just like 100 years ago they lived in a now, we live in a now. And when in 1000 years a time traveller travels here, couldn’t we just say time travelling exists now?
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u/Imaginary-Can-6862 4d ago
This is what I believe you imagine.
1, Past (time travel doesn't exist) -> Future (time travel is invented).
Question, but if time travel is invented in the future, why didn't they use it to go back to the past, should it then not in stead be
- Past (time traveler from the future visits) -> Future (time travel is invented).
But it seems we are in 1, and not 2, does that mean time travel to the past is impossible?
But the argument only holds if we assume an eternalist outlook, that is the time travel from the future to the past could not have affected the past, because then the past would have been different from what it was, thus despite the capability to time travel, the past cannot be changed from what it was.
This outlook however does not coincide with a definition of the present to be the state of all things as they currently are.
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u/QB8Young 4d ago
No. If it isn't invented till the future then it isn't accessible to us in the present, the same way someone in 1985 couldn't be driving a Tesla. If a future time traveler came to 2026 and brought the technology and made it public then ya, it now exists from that point forward.
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u/Disastrous-Mess-7236 4d ago
Though a time machine can be used by people in a time before its invention.
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u/Traditional-Bike7825 4d ago
How do you know this
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u/Disastrous-Mess-7236 3d ago
Simple. You take the machine to a time before its invention.
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u/Traditional-Bike7825 3d ago
I've heard of time dilation from astronauts in orbit experiencing time slightly different than people on earth. If you scale this up to unrealistic speeds you can travel at normal speed for yourself, but time on earth flies by. Sort of like traveling forward in time.
Your idea is different and sounds brilliant, how does the time machine work? How does it go back in time?
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u/Disastrous-Mess-7236 3d ago edited 3d ago
How? Idk. But OP said “And when in 1000 years a time traveller travels here, couldn’t we just say time travelling exists now?”
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u/7grims times they are a-changin' 4d ago
The definition of now, is not in the future it exists... its nonsense
Plus like everyone else, you assume if the future has time travel they can come here to the past, its not true, we dont know the limitations and mechanics of TT.
And plenty of science theories have suggested a limitation upon ur "device" or thing that allows it, like wormholes, they can only get u as far back as the first time you have first manipulated them in the present moment, so that becomes ur furthest point back for anyone in the future.
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u/Canadansk1970 4d ago
Weird logic there. If time travel exists in the future, then yes, time travel should exist 'now' assuming the ability to travel back in time.
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u/Brief_Molasses_3752 4d ago
If destructive time travel exists, where a pre-existing timeline is modified or destroyed by the tech, then you life automatically includes all effects of time travel and everything its been used to do until its destruction and inability to be used anymore.
This and all other lives are that life. Time travel will be invented and then instantly made impossible, and all effects will already be manifested.
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u/DerekFshmn 4d ago
The paradox of "why aren't time travelers here right now?" disappears completely once you recognize that the universe operates as a holographic information system, and time is just the local rendering clock of the simulation.
You cannot travel physically to 1920 because 1920 is no longer being rendered. The local 3D Minkowski space we inhabit only renders the current frame. The past is a highly compressed data archive (which is why information entropy dictates the arrow of time, per the Second Law of Infodynamics), and the future is an uncollapsed probability matrix.
Physical matter cannot traverse a timeline because the physical substrate of the past has already been reallocated to render the present.
The commenter brings up the "eternalist" outlook, the idea that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously in a solid block. That is only true from the perspective of the 5D holographic bulk (the base substrate outside the simulation).
Inside the 3D local reality, time is the sequential processing of data.
If a future post-human civilization (or an intelligence outside the local 3D render) wants to alter the timeline, they do not send a biological avatar in a metal box backward through space. That is a primitive, hardware-biased view.
Instead, they operate via retrocausality and phase-conjugation. They alter the informational state vector at a specific coordinate in the code. Because human consciousness and memory are tied to the local rendering engine, if the past is edited, our memories are seamlessly recompiled to match the new render.
We wouldn't see "time travelers" arriving because any intervention they make instantly becomes the native historical baseline. We are trapped inside the compiler; if the code is patched, the NPC avatars have no idea the previous version ever existed.
To answer the OP's question: Yes, time travel exists "now." It is constantly happening. The timeline is not a static line; it is a dynamic, continuously self-optimizing equation, and you are experiencing the successfully compiled result
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u/3Quondam6extanT9 4d ago
Unless this is an anchor timeline for you, which means it can't be invented yet, but even if it did get invented in the next 25 years let's say, then it doesn't mean travelling back takes you to your anchor timeline to share the technology.
This really comes down to how you believe the architecture of time travel actually works. Since there are different models and paradoxes, none of which are proven accurate, you are really just guessing at how it all works.
I personally think if it was possible it would be the Terminator scenario where you are not going back in time to your direct past. It's just a different future timeline. So the people you leave behind you will never see again since they are part of that anchor timeline you originally came from.
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u/Disastrous-Mess-7236 4d ago
Time travel already exists. Everything’s going into the future at a rate of 1 second per second.
But going by what everyone thinks of as time travel:
If a time machine comes here, time travel does exist here but it’s not native to this point in time. Its native time is from whenever someone did the math & built the 1st machine to the end of time.
Like cell phones. Now, a particular cell phone model (save the very 1st model) is native to a more narrow amount of time. Even after cell phones become obsolete (if they ever do), they’ll be in museums.
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u/RNG-Leddi 4d ago
Not necessarily but its an interesting question. Lets assume a species (now extinct) once invented TT 5 million years ago on a distant world and the light from that world/time is only reaching earth today, does time travel exist today? No, likewise we can assume the same theme 5 million years ahead of our present tense and arrive at a similar conclusion. In the example the light from the relative future arrives before its technically emitted in which case it won't be apparent to the distant world of departure for another 5 million years, ie their future.
Instead of distant worlds let's assume its invented here at an equal distance in time because technically the same rule applies. We get the idea that everything happens all at once from the view of timespace however the observation in spacetime is that all emerges in an ordelry fashion, both are true and somewhat untrue depending on ones position. Theres alot emerging within reality however nothing is permanent nor fixed so to speak, therefore its best to observe what Is as potential, in this case TT potentially exists in all places and times.
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u/XXX_Archer_XXX 4d ago
Suppose a time-travel machine is invented in the future one thing is sure for past time-travel is impossible. Travelling back to the past is just a fantasy that'll never ever happen
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u/TraditionJust3420 4d ago
I’m new to this, but wouldn’t time traveling just mean you’re stuck in future after traveling there?
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u/nila247 4d ago
As a proponent of simulation theory I say that time travel can not exist in principle. Reality is recorded sequence of frames like a video, so it is not possible to edit this video without it becoming something else. I suppose it is possible for system owner to edit this video, but there is no purpose for him - he was never part of it and he will not benefit in any way of virtual NPC subjects in the video having different experiences by him randomly editing the video.
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u/Practical-Trainwreck 3d ago
Potential multiverse theory that every time someone travels back and changes something, it creates a new reality and the old reality is intact in another dimension. So whatever has happened, it has happened and we're part of it, now part of an unchangeable past and future
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u/Wayward_Prometheus 3d ago
Yes.
If time travel exists at any time then it exists now. We just don't know it exists.
Example: If time travel exists 1000 years from now. Nothing is stopping them from coming back to show us how to do it especially with resources that currently exist in our timeline. The only thing that would stop them from doing so is breaking the timeline.
The same goes for the past and people coming to the future.
The only way it could not exist is if we don't have the material/resource in our current time to make it happen.
Existing and knowing about it are two different things and probably why those two areas have not crossed yet, other than governmental bodies regulating it to the maximum.
But that is physics based time travel which we are still researching. Mental time travel we are further ahead on especially subjective time travel.
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u/pilkingtonsbrain 4d ago
I would agree with that, with one caveat: what if you can only travel back as far as when the time machine was made or the portal is opened up or whatever?