Calling all scholars of the Nuances of Time Travel. I'll try to boil this down into a reasonably understandable question, but it's so wiggly inside my head, it just continues to sprawl and ooze everywhere. Very ugly.

If I had my own personal time machine and could jump in and out of time on whim, could I conceivably be immortal?

I know I still have a normal life span, but what if I consistently returned to the same year in my own timeline before I traveled again? Say I started time jumping when I was a young and dewy 22 year old in 1990. And no matter where or when I go, I always return to 1990 before I jump again. Am I still 22 everywhere else, thus never aging?

(And is it normal that I've tortured myself two days straight in the carpool line thinking myself in perfect circles?)

SOS and a big, fat thank you to anyone who is willing to offer up a point of view. I'm all ears. And, frankly, my head hurts.

CC

You would age at a normal rate. So, for instance, you're 22 in 1990. You jump to 1890 for a year, then jump back to 1990. You are physically one year older, being 23 in 1990. Then you jump to 2010 for 6 months, jump back, jump to 1700 for 18 months, then go back to 1990. You are now physically 25, but legally you will be 22. Keep doing that, and you'll eventually physically be 60, and the court will recognize you as being 22... and probably start running tests to find out why you look so old.

I agree with Karen; I think you would age normally. Once you leave your timeline, you stop existing in that timeline. So if you spend a year somewhere else, you are a year older when you return because ... well, it's the same you who is returning. (Gee, I see how this can induce carpool mirgranes ... )

And, of course, you could still be killed in another time. If you traveled to the future and were shot there, for example, you could never return back to your original 22 year old life anyway.

Ah, gotta love those time line conundrums. <g>

Kathy

Here's a twist on this thought.

You could live to a very ripe old age if you go forward about oh, three decades, and check and see if you're dead yet. If so, you could find out the circumstances and prevent it, assuming it is something stoppable. Find out you have cancer, go back to a point and time and tell yourself about it so you can agressively avoid treat it. Get ran over by a little old lady from Pasadena, memorize the details and avoid it when it comes to time to.

See, there are even more headaches to have over this.

James

In any case, even if you returned to your original time, in your own personal timeline, you will continue to age, time travel notwithstanding. That was why HG Wells's thing about returning Lois and Clark to the time before their trip into the past to save Clark as a baby never made sense to me. Whether or not they were returned to before the event started, in their *own personal timelines*, the events happened. They didn't suddenly grow a day or so younger. Therefore, they should remember it.

Nan

Thank you, Kathy and Karen, these answers are pretty much what I hoped for. Just wanted to be sure I wasn't overlooking some sort of loophole.

James, holy cow, you are coming really close to parts of my premise. Cut it out!!

And Nan, well, you've given me something completely new to worry over. But at least I won't be bored in the carpool line tomorrow.

Thanks all. I really appreciate it!

CC

Well, you will have one more guarenteed reader. Let me know when you start it up.

I might even be tempted into BRing it, that is if you don't already have one...

James

I also would assume that a time traveler would continue to age. In fact, that is the assumption that I work to when I write H G Wells into my stories, even if I haven't (yet) made it explicit.

I would think that the aging thing would put definite limits on Wells's ability to meddle in time. If he does it too much, he will cut the amount of time he has to live in his own time-line. Plus, people would notice all those extra wrinkles.

Chris

Of course, if you're a Time Lord from the planet Galifrey, you transfer into a new body every time the BBC contracts a new actor to play Dr Who - which pretty much does make you immortal. <g>

Yvonne

You would be the same age or there abouts but the rest of the world would be older since to theoretically achieve time travel one has to travel at the speed of light which of course at present is inconceiveable. According to the Twin Paradox (I think I have to go back to my old physics textbooks to make sure I'll get back on that ASAP) if a twin was to fly to the moon at the speed of light and back while the other remains on Earth, the question has been which twin is older and the answer is the twin on Earth because time remains the same for the twin in the rocket flying to the moon while several years have passed on Earth. This is all in accordance to the Theory of Relativity which even after two years of study on it I still haven't really grasped it. But essentially the time traveller would be younger than the rest of the world.

If you time travel to when you were 22, you'd have the currently aged you and the 22 year old you living at the same time.

So you could time travel back to when you are 22 and nag yourself incessantly to stop any destructive habits you may wish you didn't have :-)

In deep space 9, a little girl fell into a time vortex. Her parents desperately worked to figure out how to bring her back (her dad was chief engineer) and he succeeded, but she was a young woman when she came back, and she was wild - having lived alone in this barren planet for so many of her years.

Finally it turns out that she can't deal with living on deep space 9, and she wants desperately to go 'home' (the planet)

with heavy heart they go back to the planet with her and say good bye, letting her return through the vortex - out of their lives forever

And she goes back, and finds herself as a little girl, injured, cowering and terrified - recently forced into this time.

She pushes the little girl into the vortex from which she just came, causing herself to return to her parents as a little girl and then she herself vanishes.

So now I think I'm going to change the time travel character into an accountant. A nice CPA. Works in an office during the day, goes home at night, stays in assigned space/time continum and ages appropriately.

Really. It'll be fun.

CC

Or. An accountant who is accidentally forced into becoming a time traveller due to a bureaucratic error.

But his twin will stay behind and take his place, earn his brother's bonus, and buy that nice new car...

CC!

You've gotta read "The door into summer" by Robert Heinlein!

In science fiction there seems to be two theories on the nature of time that are used the most. First is the one where time is looked at like the flow of a mighty river. In this model, events that might happen are like a pebble being thrown into the water. There is a localized ripple effect, but eventually the river is restored to it's natural path.

Stories that embrace this idea often use the concept that 'time will find a way to right itself'. For example, if you went back in time to stop someone from being run over by a car, you might succeed only to have that person struck down by a bus the following day. In other words, if the person was meant to die, then they will die.

The other main theory is the infinite multiple futures concept. In this one every choice made by anyone causes a new alternate future to come into existance. Kind of like the branches of a tree sprouting off. Using this model, if someone went back in time to change something (like saving someone from dying) their actions would cause a new timeline to form and thus the future they came from would no longer exist. This also has the side effect of possibly affecting the time traveler. If the 'change' pre-dates his/her birth then the possibility that they were never born, or a person very different was born with their identity is likely. This could lead to a couple of consequences often used in time travel fiction. First, the traveler could just fade away because they never existed. Examples of this were seen in the episode 'Meet John Doe' where the peacekeeper Andrus disappears when Tempus' manipulations cause his character to have not existed. Also, for those who watch Charmed. The whole Chris saga was an example of this. He came back in time to prevent his brother from becoming evil, which he succeeds in doing. But that meant that his future no longer existed and so he disappeared. A new baby Chris was born, but it wasn't the same person as the one who came back in time to change things, that Chris no longer existed.

The other is that the travel would become stranded in time since they no longer have a place in the 'real' world.

Time travel stories can be fun, but no matter how you set up your premise, there will always seem to be some logic flaw in the execution. Such is the nature of trying to conceptualize something that contrary to the natural order.

Tank (who figures that CC is now sorry she asked)

Ah yeah, I remember the O'Brien storyline. She came back as a wild child after having lived in a wilderness-type of area. No memories of her parents, or even human language in general.

There can be bad consequences to time travel. That's why, in Back to the Future, Doc didn't want Marty meeting himself or Jennifer coming along. Personally, I'd love to see those consequences explored in a fic. What if future Lois, knowing Clark's secret, traveled to the past and met herself before she knew Clark's secret, and told herself? That could be interesting.

Ah, my favourite ever Heinlein story. Yes, you do, CC. If for no other reason than it's a darn good read.

LabRat