If time travel can alter history, then it’s highly unlikely that the season would occur exactly as it did “before”. As long as the time traveller doesn’t directly interfere with the baseball season, it would probably be quite similar, especially since the events took place soon after he arrived in the past, but there would still be a certain amount of deviation.
If time travel can’t alter history, you could indicate it with such information. It’s also guaranteed that you couldn’t convince more than a few people that you were a time traveller; otherwise, it would have been big news before he left.
But if it’s a big “Baseball Encyclopedia,” there’s physical evidence of future events. I don’t personally believe a person could remember EVERY baseball statistic from an entire year; that’s tens of thousands of data items. But you could put it in a book. I’d be convinced.
TVAA:
Well, I think time travel won’t alter history. That was easy!
I like the idea of telling them when a supernova will appear. They are an instantaneous phenomenon, and they happened a long time ago as revtim pointed out. They could point a telescope at the specific spot in the sky, at the specific minute, and record the whole thing. The trouble is, they are rare. You’d have to wait for years.
Also, it doesn’t differentiate seeing the future from coming from the future as Apos cleverly noted.
I think you’d have to bring back a technology that is far beyond their ability to produce. Considering that Pentium IV or Mac would outclass their biggest mainframes, a simple laptop might do the trick.
Only till 1989A became visible in the GMC-
You could predict the nice little scatter of neutrinos that were detected as well (although you could possibly affect that detection slightly by your presence)
er this is prediction, isn’t it-
that means there is an (equally unlikely) explanation available…
this would also be true of any technology you take back-
“You predicted that MP3 Player and built it in your secret 1970 laboratory”
“No, I didn’t!”
That’s not true. As you can see on this list, a supernova is discovered every few days now thanks to automated search telescopes. Many of them are so far away that the host galaxy doesn’t evn have a name. Even in the 70s, I think there was a supernova discovered every few weeks.
To avoid the charge of psychic *prediction * as opposed to time travel you could go back in time repeatedly to the same date, carrying a particular object if necessary-
er…
for instance the Warren Commission’s Magic bullet-
and the simultaneous appearance of several versions of the same individual, each holding a verifiably identical object, but each one a different age to the others
would be difficult to explain
Originally posted by Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor
A record of upcoming earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves & hurricanes.
Human events wouldn’t alter those at all.
Not so, because if you warned them of an event and everyone was evacuated then someone may survive whose death caused an event in the future, maybe a mad dictator, maybe discovering a cure for cancer, maybe teaching someone how to do something who in turn will change the world, i think the simplest answer is the one TRIGONAL proposed simply show them the designs.
However this would then mean your time machine was not the first as your was invented in whenever you came from, but thanks to you, you invented it in 1970 and therefore have not time travelled, or proved you time travelled…back to the drawing board…
Originally posted by Bosda Di’Chi of Tricor
A record of upcoming earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves & hurricanes.
Human events wouldn’t alter those at all.
Not so, because if you warned them of an event and everyone was evacuated then someone may survive whose death caused an event in the future, maybe not becoming a mad dictator and starting war, maybe discovering a cure for cancer, maybe teaching someone how to do something who in turn will change the world, I think the simplest answer is the one TRIGONAL proposed simply show them the designs.
However this would then mean your time machine was not the first as yours was invented in whenever you came from, but thanks to you, YOU invented it in 1970 and therefore have not time travelled, or proved you time travelled…back to the drawing board…
Yeah… I was just reading about some supernovae that happened over a single weekend recently…
they received the nicknames Denethor, Bilbo,Frodo and Smeagol…
You people in California, for the next hour I am from the future. For people in Hawaii, I am from 3 hours in your future. (OK I’m being silly)
[HIJACK]
If I were from the future, what could I possibly benefit from telling any of you about it. I wouldn’t want my identity known because then I’d have a whole bunch of visitors show up to watch me leave for 1970. One of those visitors might be mad enough to assassinate me before I left. I could try to conceal my true identity, but then it would make it difficult for me to prove I’m from the future.
There may be people from the future amongst us already, but I don’t think any of them would be dumb enough to reveal themselves. They wouldn’t risk placing themselves in danger.
How do you know I’m not from the future? How would you prove I have been here since 1970? I’m sure as hell ain’t going to help you find out.
[/HIJACK]
Sorry for the hijack, but it brings up an interesting question. Why would a time traveler want to prove they are from the future?
I would simply walk up to people in the street and shout “I’m from the future! FROM THE FUTURE I TELL YOU!”
This would of course be acompanied by wild gesticulation and frantic arm waving.
I’m sure I’d be taken to meet the president and later to the UN in no time.
Although you’d have a devil of a time getting your cell phone to actually work in 1970, what with no cellular radio transceiver towers for it to talk to.
I suppose it would depend on your definition of causality. Let’s say our universe is, in fact, one singular chain of events moving inexorably onward. Roughly translated, once you travel ‘back’ in time you have/had/are duplicating yourself, albeit as a different entity as the ‘you’ you might encounter in the past. If this is actually the case, and assuming that you aren’t particulary interested in self aggrandizement, I would assume that taking any piece of sufficiently ‘advanced’ technology that is self contained (a gameboy or a laptop computer comes to mind) would be enough to prove your bona fides to anyone who was interested. The other part of that problem would be finding someone who was interested in your story enough that it would make a difference (shades of Dr. Sam Beckett?) or at the very least wouldn’t kill you for your tech in order to reverse engineer and subsequently set him/herself up as the head of a multibillion dollar corporation. In other words, don’t show off Windows XP to billg.
If in fact, our reality just happens to be defined by a precise or at least approximate combination of chance, coincidence and choice exercised by every particle of the ‘universe’, there really is no point in trying to convince anyone as anything you bring ‘back’ could conceivably be too far advanced for the Incan priest caste that rules the americas, or hopelessly outdated by the longbrain’s standards of positronic computation. Or they might just kill you for the shiny thing and those nifty New Balance walkers.
Ooookay. Apparently I can’t edit my post. In any case, the first sentence should read: It would depend on the actual nature of time and its relation to the universe.
A disclaimer: I was testing the nature of causality, and yes, two Mike’s Hard Lemonade with dinner causes lapses in proofreading.
