Yep. And it's likely to work about as well as the generic Viagra that's advertised all over the internet. Allegedly.
How About Pain I've always wanted thought about time travelers experiencing pain as they come closer to their past selves. Since the same person cannot occupy the same space in time, or so the concept goes...how about the closer they get to themselves, the pain increases. Fun twist for the traveler, not so fun for the past incarnation.
Based on what physcial principal? That's a fantasy constraint, not a science fiction constraint. At the microscopic level, one person is the same collection of elementary particles and energy states as another. Unless there is a physical explanation that explains where this pain would come from, for instance from stresses induced by potential causality paradoxes, it's very hard to justify that kind of issue. Of course, fantasy stories don't need to justify time travel side effects, as long as they are consistent within the story. Science fiction holds to a higher standard, though.
Assuming this takes place on Earth they could just keep a long calendar with them documenting where they've been. They could also change states each time they come back and live somewhere else. Not very scientific but it could work.
Given that time travel is currently seen to be impossible, a civilisation advanced enough to travel through time could reasonable possess the knowledge to avoid changing the future. While I agree the 'avoid changing the future at all costs' card is overplayed, it must be addressed in some form. Either consider that human error will always present some sort of risk, despite the time traveller's advanced knowledge, or detail the safeguards in place to prevent an alteration in their time-line. Either way, don't have Marty kiss his mother! - Andy
Time travel is one plot device that I quite enjoy, it provides a lot of thought and figuring out. If you wish to make the travelers feel pain, then perhaps the pain can come from another source, an implanted device that detects their past self, and uses pain as a warning. It's one solution.
I think sending the time traveller's mind into his own body in the past will work best. Psudoscientifically, this could be done by sending a signal into the past which rearranges the matter in someone's brain to reflect their future memories and personality. We can assume that the process of reading the "original's" brain destroys it, so there never are two copies of the same person running around. Making people's old selves vanish when their new ones appear in the past has some problems. Firstly, how does the universe keep track of which atoms should vanish from where when new atoms appear from the future? Secondly, people don't consist of exactly the same atoms at different times. Most of the atoms in the body are replaced in around seven years.
Okay I think what happens should be that everyone continues to have their own time line no matter how twisted. No matter what you do to the past your own past memories stay intact. In fact if the past is altered then the fact that you time traveled means you dodged the time wave. The major consequences are not to the Time Traveler but to the other versions of themselves they meet changing history. You create new alternate versions of yourself and new time travelers. This could lead to multiple versions of your 40 year old self arriving from the future. I suppose you could consider Alternate Universe versions of yourself time line contaminations and kill them on arrival leaving behind only the version of yourself that did not result from altering history.
Having done a good deal of time traveling myself, I'd be happy to tell you how it works I don't think it's a good idea to remove your "past self". That would raise all kinds of questions: Does your character just vanish in front of people? Rather, I would think that your "past self" is just that - a separate individual from who you are now. If you must make it so they never meet, you might consider making "time" itself a character who manipulates circumstances so you never run into yourself. I recall seeing a movie called "Time After Time" where H.G. Wells was chasing Jack the Ripper and they worked it like that. It was very good. Good Luck with it.
We are all time travellers. Problem is, we typically only travel in one direction at a constant rate.
dt/dt is exactly equal to one second per second. But the question remains, is time really that linear, or is that merely how the human mind organizes its perception of events? It defines our entire view of physics and the universe, but what if there is a different frame of perception that makes the universe comprehensible in a much simpler way?
Instead of the character traveling through time in mind only and only in their own body in the past. The time traveler's could just occupy the minds of random people in the time they are traveling to. Similar to the show Quantum Leap. The consequences of this would be that the actions of that individual that is occupied would be overwritten as long as the time traveler has taken over their mind.
We cannot ever encounter ourselves in traditional time travel, we all know that, however, keep the work ahead of time, as it where, we actually live by two times, a natural time frequency that governs our universal order and an artificial timing frequency, which separates us from the rest of our environment. If we where to travel according to our natural laws, the journey would be in harmony with the universe, less open to negative and unnatural effects....maybe.
