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If you built a time machine, and went back in time to try and change something:

Would you simply cease to exist, because time travel is impossible?

Or would you simply alter history - and create a new timeline of existence based on your new actions?

Or would anything you do in the past happen, because it has always happened, because you were already a part of history without knowing it, and you can't change history - but something would keep happening to ensure you didn't alter established events?

Or... perhaps you have another idea?

1. TT is impossible in theory and if we ever figured out how to do it we would be screwed anyways.

2. A bit of both seeing how you would cease to exist in your original timeline but a new(seperate) timeline would be established based on your actions.

3. The original time-line would do this.

4. if you messed with the multiverse is such a way that would be possible.

Other Idea: Everybody but you has gone time traveling and changed something in history resulting in you never going time traveling. :)

Check out some of the theories posted in this old thread:

http://chooseyourstory.com/forums/the-lounge/message/7465

If backwards time travel were possible, which it isn't because of the multitude of paradoxes involved, and you tried to alter something, then there would be huge numbers of realities, each being caused when somebody went back and changed something. The one we're experiencing right now would be a consequence of the alteration that took place the farthest back in time because since the alteration would cause everything to happen differently, so all other alterations whether we experience them now or not would have happened  because of that change.

BTW, nice to see you're back. We don't know each other, but you're one of the old legends of the site.

I think that when it comes to time travel, it's important that you try not to think of time as a straight line and think of it more like wibbly wobbly timey whimey stuff... If that doesn't work, just go find help from the nearest mad scientist and hope your teenage mother doesn't get a crush on you 

Unfortunately I don't find a Hipster's television program as a valid source :P

How about a totally awesome 80's movie?

If you altered history you would have no need to go back, keeping you from being able to alter history...

You cannot make the same argument for traveling into the future however.

The past has already happened so unless you end up entering a new timeline, it wouldn't happen. Now, you wouldn't create an time line, since you can create something into existence that existed for trillions of years before hand, but, you could enter a timeline in which your time traveling action occurred. 

But, of course, time travel is a fantasy, since we would know if it existed by now. 

What if time travel DO exist? What if they were discovered Millions and Millions of years later after Humanity went extinct and another sentient race that has surface discovered it and the reason we don't know is because they don't know Humanity existed in the first place? :3

I'm not sure but I think the point Aman was trying to make was that if time travel existed and it was possible for someone to time travel to the past then surely someone would've met a time traveller by now.

Lol I was just blabbering about what I thought :P

However...

What if there IS a time traveler and people already meet him/her but they don't know that he/she is from the future? :D

Wouldn't people have noticed that their clothes were all different?

 How different do you think clothes will be in the future.

Completely. Look at how the 19th century dressed and compare it to the 21st, or the 20th for that matter. If you want to hunt deeper, contrast modern clothes to the middle age clothes. 

Exactly. It's not just a case of modern day clothes compared to futuristic clothes. I mean, if time travel were invented now, today and someone went back in time to the middle ages, people would've noticed them. There'd be all sorts of records throughout history of people appearing out of nowhere wearing weird clothes and speaking in a funny language and stuff, and since history has no record of any time travelers, I guess it's safe to say that time travel to the past will never be invented. Time travel to the future's another story 

The problem with future time traveling is the fact that the future hasn't happened yet. (quoted from a horrible movie called Time Cop, but the point is solid) 

If I traveled into the future, and returned, it would be safe that I would know about what's going to happen. As such. We could change the future, if you will, and thus create the same paradox we would be stuck with if we discuss past time travel.

... Actually, if you think about it, we're all time traveling to the future as we speak 

But you couldn't return. Backwards time travel we have already disproven.

Plus if you went to the future, then went back to a different point in the past knowing what would happen, you wouldn't have lived your life between the point you left and the point you came back simply because you weren't there. It doesn't really have anything to do with what he said, but I find it a fun concept :)

If we couldn't return, my whole point would be incorrect, that is true.

What if you didn't alter history at all and just came for a look around. Also I am sure that time travelers would take precautions not to alter the timeline when they went back into the past, I mean who knows maybe there wearing the invisibility cloaks that were developing now.

1.) If you did come back (which is impossible) a split second after you left, then sure, it would all be the same.

2.) It's impossible not to alter the timeline. Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect? It means that even if you did as little as kill a butterfly while in the past, the future would be dramatically different. That butterfly couldn't fly down the street, which wouldn't make a little girl stop and look at it, which means she didn't get in line for ice cream after you, which means your spot in line was one person longer, which means you get your ice cream later, which means you cross the street later, which means you get hit by the drunk driver that would have come after you crossed normally, which means that everything you would have done during your life wouldn't happen, which means that everything you did (like killing another butterfly :P) that had an infinite number of consequences never happened, which means that the future would be entirely different. That's not the exact theory of course, but that's the logic behind it. It could also be if you accidentaly bumped into someone on the street, said hi to someone, picked up a piece of trash, stopped in one place for too long, etc.

3.) It doesn't matter if they're wearing invisibilty cloaks, read 2.) :)

2. I know I know, but the tiniest affects like breathing in the air that could have gone to a plant, would only be felt if it were done in ancient times (like dinosaurs and such), if  it were done in more recent times we wouldn't see such a drastic difference, like in the movie of the effect.

3.  Also the invisibility cloak would matter because the less impact you have the better.

2.) That's completely irrelevant. Anything you do in the past changes the past.

3.) But you still have an effect by doing anything you're there to do. Even if you went back to sight see, you'll be waiting in line, bumping into people, standing in one place, etc. Literally ANYTHING you do in the past will change it no matter how small the impact (which is the entire point of the butterfly effect, which seems to have gone over your head), whether or not people see you doesn't matter whatsoever

I know it changes the past, I am just saying that if you perhaps didn't care if you changed the past so little that it had no discernable affect on the present then, the further back in time you go, the more your present is going to be affected. This only applies to sight seeing as any other purpose would create a paradox. 

But what Bo is saying is that breathing, stepping on an ant, heck even snapping a twig, will cause a change in the past, that could cause everything to be different. And as such, cause you to create that time traveling parardox, we have already mentioned.

<-<, no you don't know. The entire point of the butterfly effect is that no matter what you do, it will cause a slight effect, which will cause other effects, which changes everything. It's like dominos, no matter how lightly you touch the domino, it will still topple and cause the rest to fall.

And thats why I mentioned things like the invisibility cloak, if you had that and a few other things then maybe you could reduce you impact to almost nothing, and though that will still have effects it might not be enough to change anything.

Once again, it goes way, way over your head cov.

Unless your saying that even the slightest change to the past creates a paradox or that even the act of going into the past creates a paradox then I guess it did swoosh right over my head.

I'm saying that it changes the past entirely, which means when it gets to you in the future, then you wouldn't go back to fix it in the first place. Even if someone wanted to take the Dr. Who approach and say it's not a line, then you'd still always reach the point in your life where you went back in time, then went back to the future, then went back in time again, and so you'd never actually advance your life.

Ok but lets say you go into the past 1 year and the only impact you leave and the only thing you do before you return to the present is breath in one puff of air, how would the drastically change the present?

"butterfly effect" you still altered the past insomuch that your original future does not exist anymore. This results in you never going back in time and that creates a paradox.

Ok I think I understand that, thank you.

Sorry dude, I don't normally break out the grammar Nazi but this is really, really bad. It's does exist, and they didn't know humanity existed. One is just using the wrong word entirely, and the second is using a whole different tense :P.

I don't think of time as a straight line on a timeline, I think time is an ever-present breakdown of the universe to the millisecond. Think of time as manor full of picture frames, and each individual frame represents a millisecond or whatever unit of the universe at some point in time. I'm not sure that time travel exists, but we can see into the future of our lives at times. 

Perhaps our entire "life" is our consciousness replaying each frame it experienced over and over again like a movie? Probably not, but it makes me feel peachy inside.

That's what I said! Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey... stuff 

I see time as humanity's perception of light, and the past as what happened before us :P.