Why one can't personally see their own future

[Iron Man]

Say that a mysterious, mad eyed, white haired stranger comes up to you and gives you a time machine. He tells you to use it at your own risk, and to try your best to not fuck up history. What is your first instinct? Mine would be to go to the future and see how my life turned out. A few number punches to the keypad and one hell of a light show later, you are 30 years into the future.

As you try to track yourself down, you only find your family and their descendants. They say that this "insert name here" has been missing for years, and presumed dead. Now, why is that? Here's the answer:

At the very point you go to the future, a new timeline is created, that is absent of yourself, because you weren't there to live your own life (you were going to the future).

If you already heard of something similar, then this is just review. If you haven't, and this sounds like a bunch of bullshit, here's a crude picture to clear things up:

[backtobackawesome]

u cant go to the future silly

[Iron Man]

u cant go to the future silly

Hypothetically speaking, if time travel existed and time machines were just invented. I apologize for not making that clear.

[huginnmuninn]

so... what are we debating about?

[Iron Man]

so... what are we debating about?

If people believe otherwise. Other than that, I guess it is for shits and giggles.

[Rage of the Menace]

u cant go to the future silly

Mmmmyes you can.

According to most physicists, if you travel at 99.99999999-% the speed of light, the universe will do everything to try stop you from exceeding that limit. Decreasing the time and increasing your mass.

Hypothetically, if you were on a train travelling at such a speed, you would move approximately 3.65 days into the future per second. You wouldn't be moving as in time machine, but you would have slowed the time around you so much that it would seem you are actually moving forward in time.

True story.

[backtobackawesome]

Mmmmyes you can.

According to most physicists, if you travel at 99.99999999-% the speed of light, the universe will do everything to try stop you from exceeding that limit. Decreasing the time and increasing your mass.

uh no

[Abigballofdust]

uh no

Well, we don't know what would happen if a STL (slower than light) object went LS. There's theories ranging from it never reaching the speed of light to it actually collapsing the universe.
But the part about moving into the future at 0.9¯c is completely true. At least till today.
If we ever manage to get to such speeds even as 0.1c we would still be travelling in time at a pretty good rate.
But it'd take enormous amounts of energy we can't produce still.

A space shuttle travelling at 17500mph during orbit reaches only 2.6095e-5c (0.0000261c) so going 0.1c would be 67.060.000mph.

[UnknownError]

tOO MANY BIG WORDS itt

timetravel would suck cause like thats boring if you know whats gonna happen i like to go with the flow

[Iron Man]

I personally wouldn't want to time travel anyway...too much risk of fucking something up.

[Sudds3]

I wouldn't go to the future....I'd throw the machine away! But if I did then my timeline would be fucked up, it would just have a little bump in it, I was in 2012 then 2042 then back to 2012, I didn't miss anything except about 1 day. But if you mean you can't go back in time then your fucked! You just deleted yourself from the past 30 years and you would continue your life, at the same age you were un 2012, but in 2042.