If I Could Turn Back Time: would I?

Anyone idly listening to BBC Radio over the last couple of weeks may have caught snippets of an oft-repeated radio interview with Professor Ronald Mallett, a man so convinced that time travel is possible that he's now trying to raise funds to realise the results of his Space-Time Twisting by Light project.

Of course he's not the first to claim he's cracked it; neither will he be the last. News this week that scientists concluded that the results of a lab test meant they had broken the speed of light (violating a key part of Einstein's theory of special relativity) has cracked back open the debate and set forth a stream of reproachful articles from time travel researchers who have been ignored and ridiculed for years. But, supposing just for a minute that time travel were possible (and people who have been indulging in the future haven't let it slip when they visited us in the past - our present), would we do it?

The obvious answer is yes. Who hasn't been fascinated by the concept of getting up close and personal with history? Aside for solving age-old mysteries, mining lost sources of knowledge and answering the big questions we all want to be able to push and shove at our own personal histories a little... a Lottery number here, a flutter at the bookies there, pushing an ex-boyfriend off a cliff (that's just me, then?). But the dreaded time paradox rears its ugly head; what if by changing a sequence of events you wound up so manifestly altering the course of history that you yourself were not even born.

The old example is somehow killing your father (we're a murderous, careless bunch, us time travellers). But it doesn't even have to be that extreme. Every 80s child in the world briefly fell in love with Marty McFly as he battled to ensure that his parents fell in love with each other. Surely just the act of appearing for a few minutes in a time other than our own puts further, unexpected splinters in the mass of possible outcomes that exist at every single moment?

The answer according to some scientists is that it's actually impossible to change our own present to that extent. At least, I couldn't change things for the me that's typing this now because there's no such thing as "time" as we know it so what I'd be travelling to is a suitably close and similar parallel universe. (We'll leave aside the notion that that means accepting parallel universe theory - I find it convincing but I also find it hilarious that staunch proponents of it have conceded that it requires just as much faith to accept this as it does to accept the existence of God but that this is just better... because they said so). So in other words I might royally screw things up for Alex Roumbas in the nearest possible alternative Earth, but the Alex Roumbas in this one is still on track. Moral dilemma a-go-go (if you're doing it to a possible version of yourself is that somehow better than doing it to your actual bodily self?) but at least I'll be around to consider it for a while longer.

Obviously I'm massively simplifying the science and technology we're considering here. For one because I only understand tiny fractions of it and for another because in a few hundred words of opinion just going over the basics is a challenge. But really what I wanted to do was open the floor to a debate; an uninformed debate for some of us, perhaps, but no less worthy for it. If time travel were possible could you resist the allure due to worries about the possible damage? (I doubt I could). Would you be more interested in personal history or in finding out what happened to Anastasia and Lord Lucan? Or do you prefer to stick to watching Doctor Who and leaving it at that? Enjoy speculating.

Alex Roumbas is Deputy Editor of Shiny Shiny. At least in this world.