Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

If I travel back in time and do nothing, just being an observer, would that change the past?

+0
−0

This is how time travel in my question works:

You go back to a certain point in time, physically, regardless of means. Be it a spaceship or a time machine.

So you've reached to the past. You know certain big things are going to happen because you are from the future, you've had your history class.

You've decided not to do anything about it, just being an observer. You just eat and sleep everyday.

Will this kind of behavior change the past?

If so, is it because daily activities still involve interaction with people in the past and thus triggers butterfly effect?

Also, I've read it somewhere saying that even "do nothing just watch" would change the past. It doesn't obey the physical law because the person who travels backwards in time absorbs light and thus is interacting with the past universe and therefore changing it.

I don't quite understand this whole "the person who travels backwards in time absorbs light and thus is interacting with the past universe" thing. What light is this person absorbing? Why is this person absorbing light? Could someone explain it? Thanks!

(There is only one single timeline of course. I'm not going into a parallel universe)

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/140383. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »