time machine

[Latimer]

Well, my original point was for Back To The Future III, but yes, you may be right about that. The future they arrived at never existed because, at the end of the movie, they avoided the accident that determined that very future.

But do you see the flaw in the third movie that would've made the whole train business completely unnecessary?

The fact they had a whole buried Delorean to grab parts and gas from, but didn't dig it up, grab the parts, split for 1985, get more parts, and put it back?

Jonathan
-Temporal Klutz-

 

[garys_2k]

Latimer got it! Yes, once whatsisname (Michael J. Fox's character) appeard back in the 1800's there was no longer a need to keep the DeLorean buried and hidden away. Just uncover it and either use it or fix the broken one.

 

[Kilted_Canuck]

I also heard somewhere that if you could theoretically exceed the speed of light, you would actually be travelling backwards in time. I have to find the source though...

 

[rwald]

Well, if you were traveling at the speed of light, you'd be moving into the future infinitely fast. So, I'm not sure if going faster than the speed of light would make you move backwards in time.

Of course, it could be like the function y = 1/x, where x is how close to the speed of light you are (x=0 is when you're traveling at c), and negative values of x represent speeds faster than c. The y value would be how fast (and in what direction) you move in time. If you could somehow get into the negative region, you'd be traveling backwards in time. However, that large asymptote in the middle would make crossing the threshold rather diffucult...

Actually, some theories suggest the existence of "tachyons," particles which travel faster than the speed of light and move backwards in time. For tachyons, the speed of light is still the universal speed limit -- they can never go slower than it, or even reach it. So, even if moving faster than light would let you move backwards in time, it's still impossible for baryonic matter (what you're made of) to move faster than light.