Time travel [Oh man...]

[Xannari Ferrows]

Why am I doing this? Maybe I shouldn't. Yeah, just click the back button and be done with it. Come on... Why is it not working!? I'm being held hostage! ...Wait, fingers? What are you doing?? Stop it!

 

I-I don't know if I can do this. Tons upon tons of analogies are going to be needed... Alright, let's go...

There are 3 basic theories to time travel that I know of [creative liberties for names taken. Also, stories for the first two listed below]

Fated linear

Temporal chaos

Multi-linear

Can you guys think of better names? These ones are cheesy.

 

I guess let's start with fated linear:

This is the belief that everything will happen in a specific sequence of events, and although we believe we are in control of what those events are, everything we do is already written down, just like me writing all of this. You can't change what's on the giant celestial script; you trying to is just written on it to begin with. This is the most believable theory in my book. Story time [explanation]:

 

Spoiler

 

You are exploring through the forest, and happen to hear a faint noise nearby. A weird sound, like a mix of a crash and computational noises. You check it out, noticing a sphere on the ground next to a tree, slightly damaged, but it is made of metal, and has an interface on the front reading out some numbers. You get a look at it, noticing "Time Stamp", "O-Time Stamp", and "Return". You, having no idea what this thing does, decide to check it out after seeing no one nearby. The "Return" setting is the most appealing, since it has no numbers beneath it, so you go ahead to push that, unaware of what is going to happen. The sphere glows, and the top hemisphere starts to spin. A flash of light appears, pooling into a sustained field of energy, where you are pulled in slowly. Just before you can get all the way inside, you hear a voice shout "Wait!" nearby, but see no one. You black out.

After regaining consciousness, you look around you, but don't see the sphere, rather instead a bunch of high tech-looking tools and a console. Out of pure curiosity, you take a look at the console, noticing sophisticated blueprints and many little bits and pieces spread all over. It's baffling to look at at first, but after studying it for a while, it starts to look rhythmic. Trying out the interface, you pan around the blueprints, not noticing the title for some time. After realizing, you notice [lucky enough] that these are the blueprints for the sphere you had earlier. It appears to be a time machine of sorts, but you have not seen any of the materials that lay around you, and figure this must be quite a bit in the future, when computation is far more advanced. Regardless, you search around the room for more clues, seeing as how your sphere is gone. Looking through cabinets, peeking though doors, and... Hey, what's that?

Well lucky you, the two halves of the sphere! They are separated, but the mentally assembled shape is familiar to you, so you take them out, trying to figure out how to put them together. Taking a look at the console helps you with that, but also explains the functions of the 3 basic settings. "Time Stamp" is to describe what time and location you will be at when using it, "O-Time Stamp" is where the sphere itself will be, and when, after it is used, and "Return" takes you back to a pre-set time and place, but you see below that it says the return can cause a slight miscalculation of the two times and places of both you and the sphere due to rounding errors that need to be fixed. You get the two halves together, and start to punch in some numbers trying to lead back to where you were before, but don't know that you have to account for you and the sphere being in slightly different places. The light appears again, you are pulled through, bracing yourself to not fall unconscious this time.

You land in the middle of a forest after reaching the other side, and see no sign of the sphere. Getting up and searching for it for a minute, you see a small flash of light, and hear the wild sounds of the energy field. You run toward the spot where it's coming from, screaming a loud "Wait!" to try and get the attention of the person who's using it. But, you were too late, as by the time you get there, no sign of a person or the sphere remains.

Fascinated by your experience beyond all words, you tell your stories to your family and friends, but they seem to mark it off as fiction, believing the such things are impossible. Irritated by the unaccepting words, you decide to dedicate your own time to finding out the secrets of the sphere, keeping up with the latest of technology for many years to come, making sketches and blueprints, developing formulas, constructing prototypes, and writing in a footnote about the miscalculation problem.

 

 

That was far longer than it needed to be. And this is just the first theory! Come on now!

I at least hope that explains it. This gives me a headache.

Moving on to possibly it's opposite, Temporal Chaos:

This is the belief that you have control of what happens in the future due to your actions now, and that it could be changed, but out of all the possible things you could have said or done, only one of those will happen at any given time. Making decisions now will affect what happens later, and if you were able to change it, you could, rather than what you said is set in stone. This theory in my opinion isn't really believable, because it leads to paradoxes. Being able to control fate would be cool, but the word fate has meaning and application, right?

Anyway, story time:

 

Spoiler

 

After returning from your work to find your sphere halves taken, you start to search all over for anywhere they could've gone, hoping that whoever stole it doesn't know how it works. About an hour later, you happen upon a slightly damaged sphere, lying in a few bushes. It is removed, and cleaned. Searching for clues as to who did this, you notice strange things around the room. The footnote of your blueprints on the console, the cabinets and doors left open, and a hint of a fingerprint on the "Return" button. You then start to put the pieces together: The voice that screamed "Wait!", the footnote, the damage to the sphere, and the reason why it ended up where it did a long time ago. It was all you!

Considering the events, what happens next? You figure you want to stop the encounter from happening by going to the time the sphere was released into the woods, and removing it from the scene. After considering other options, you decide to go ahead with the first.

Entering in the correct two time stamps, you proceed into the past just before the other sphere enters the same time. The flash of light happens, and it hops through, hitting a tree and receiving a small dent. You pick it up, placing it inside your clothing, when the unexpected happens: You, alternate-past you, and the two spheres disappear.

Why is this? Well, if past you had never encountered the sphere, you would never have had the experience that leads to it's creation, meaning there's no sphere to use.

 

 

Beware the consequences of changing anything if this is what you believe.

Headaches aside, the last one is actually quite simple: Multi-linear:

This is the belief that, at no one time, only one thing is happening. Every decision, action, even thought, it taken into account. Everything that you could have said, done, thought about does happen, but not simultaneously in the same spot. Everything that could take place at any given moment leads to it's own chain of events that takes place outside of your influence.

There's not really a story for this that could work. Want me to try? I can do it, but it's gonna be scary if it happens.

Do you have any theories of your own how time travel works [assuming time is not just a construction], or do you think one of the above it correct? You tell me.

Edited December 23, 2015 by Xannari Ferrows

[Darnok]

You should first post that would prove existence of time and if you will prove that you will get Noble prize

(isn't that strange that science is using time as one of basic units while it still wasn't proved it exists? )

[Xannari Ferrows]

You should first post that would prove existence of time and if you will prove that you will get Noble prize

(isn't that strange that science is using time as one of basic units while it still wasn't proved it exists? )

Funny you should mention that. I am actually a firm believer that time is just a construction. For all we know, we could all be dead, and our brains are still processing all the information in sequence that we have accumulated.

[rtxoff]

The Vulcan Science Directorate has determined that time travel is impossible.

[Dodgey]

You should first post that would prove existence of time and if you will prove that you will get Noble prize

(isn't that strange that science is using time as one of basic units while it still wasn't proved it exists? )

I really want to ask you to expand on this concept of time not existing but at the same time i really don't want to.

[RainDreamer]

Is time related to velocity?

[Brethern]

I don't believe in fate, so the second option is most appealing.

[hugix]

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.

[StrandedonEarth]

Time is nature's way of preventing everything from happening at once.

I think we already have the only form of time travel that is possible: the ability to capture moments in time and take them with us, to view later. In this way we can view the past but not interact with it. It's called "photography"

[xenomorph555]

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but *actually* from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.

How foolish, everyone knows it's actually based on divergence world line attractor fields. Now if you excuse me *pulls out phone*...

EL PSY KONGROO

[Kerbart]

I replied to this two weeks ago. Not sure why the reply isn't showing up.

[rtxoff]

I replied to this two weeks ago. Not sure why the reply isn't showing up.

Hehe, that's a good one. It's lost in time man, lost in time! ;-D

[justidutch]

I do wish that time was more like sugar; when you run out of it you could go over to the neighbours and ask to borrow some.

[Xannari Ferrows]

I do wish that time was more like sugar; when you run out of it you could go over to the neighbors and ask to borrow some.

Ya know, time is like both fire and water. Destroys things, corrodes things, and always beats paper.

[Requia]

The problem with fated linearity is its trivial to come up with a situation where things HAVE to change. Build a time machine that sends radio signals back in time and set it up to only turn on if it doesn't receive a radio signal. If it doesn't receive a signal, it sends the signal back in time, if it receives the signal from the future, it doesn't send it. Run the experiment a million times, is some fantastic coincidence going to break it for unrelated reasons every time?

[monstah]

​Can you guys think of better names? These ones are cheesy.

Here.

If you didn't already know this site, I'm sorry for ruining your life.

[Xannari Ferrows]

That's linear dynamic you're thinking about. In a timeline of fate, if a signal is received, so a signal isn't transmitted to be received, the signal did not come from the one in the future. Whatever the reason for it isn't known, but in a fated linear timeline, things always happen in a specific, unchanging order.

I kind of like that temporal chaos name. I'll go ahead an rename that silliness.

Edited September 23, 2015 by Xannari Ferrows

[GeneralVeers]

Actually, there's a bigger problem--and not just with fated linearity, but with all three.

How do you test any of them?

How do you test whether or not everything is already preordained due to our current quantum state? If fated linearity is how it really is, you end up with the problem of "proving a negative"--which actually isn't a logical contradiction all the time, because some negatives can be proven (I once saw a guy mathematically prove that Santa Claus can't exist, because delivering presents to millions of children in a single night requires velocities that violate Einstein's laws of relativity). Bottom line, if it's impossible to change our course through time, how do we prove it can't be changed? There's no way to do it.

In order to test such a thing, you would have to do several tests--each one starting at the same point in space-time, and in the same quantum state. After the first test run, you're out of luck; even if you go back in time to before the experiment started, the universe is still in a different state because there's an extra "you" in the lab--the version that just travelled back in time to before the experiment started. There's no way to do a second test-run, leaving you stuck with the possibility that the course of events you just travelled--doing the experiment and then going back in time to before it began--was the way it was all supposed to happen in the first place.

So, as far as I can see, proving that the universe follows either fated linearity or linear dynamic seems impossible.

Multilinear is probably possible, but complicated. By the way, Xannari, if you were looking for a story about this one, any sci-fi story about parallel universes would do it. A multilinear universe, (i.e. one with multiple timelines that all happen, each in its own "parallel universe") requires more than one dimension of time; the second dimension of time being "sideways" in time to different possible timelines. To test this, rather than the usual police-box time machine that can travel in four dimensions, you need one that can travel in five. In other words, we've gone from "Doctor Who" to "Sliders"......

[Xannari Ferrows]

How do you test any of them?

...I didn't get that far. I was just assuming everyone had a belief. We could go saying that it was written that you would try to test the effects of going back in time, effectively setting things straight for getting negative results simply by existing. No way to know.

Multilinear is probably possible, but complicated. By the way, Xannari, if you were looking for a story about this one, any sci-fi story about parallel universes would do it.

OoOoO OoOoO you just reminded me! A spatial scission! There was an episode of Voyager that kind of introduced that idea [probably without thinking too much about it, but I was fascinated by it]. I suppose the only problem with this is the two timelines interact with each other [which they really shouldn't], but I could probably make some modifications [and a lot of them].

[crestofawave]

well im more a temporal chaos type of guy, now, what would happen if you could time travel back in history, would you see anything at all as its allready gone? or would you believe in a paralell time sphere? could you really change the past to alter the future if nothing is there? but if nothing at all is there...then whats there

[GeneralVeers]

...I didn't get that far. I was just assuming everyone had a belief.

Hah! Belief. I am a scientist; I believe in nothing.

Seriously, though, since this isn't something metaphysical, I seek evidence or proof before believing it. Any one of your three theories could be the correct one, and there's no way to find out which.

OoOoO OoOoO you just reminded me! A spatial scission! There was an episode of Voyager that kind of introduced that idea [probably without thinking too much about it, but I was fascinated by it]. I suppose the only problem with this is the two timelines interact with each other [which they really shouldn't], but I could probably make some modifications [and a lot of them].

Oh, it gets better. LOTS better. Get out your Star Trek: The Next Generation DVD's!

There was one episode where Worf somehow transited into a parallel universe; his rank and uniform were different, Riker was captain of the Enterprise (I forget where Picard ended up in this alternate reality). Oh, and the other thing Worf discovered as he scratched his head and wondered what the hell was going on? He discovered Dianna Troi was his wife. Booyah. (or is it "Kapp'Lah"?? I don't think the Klingons have a "booyah")

That's not the good part. Well, yes it is, because Troi is thermonuclear HOT in this episode, but I digress. Later in the episode, the spacetime fissure Worf fell through eventually ruptures. All the other parallel universes start collapsing together into a single space-time--and all around the Enterprise, thousands upon thousands of other Enterprises start appearing! (the Enterprise the "real" Worf was on had been in a battle against a Bejoran ship at that point......the Bejorans decided to turn around and go away. Fast. Lol.)

Hilarity should have ensued as literally hundreds of thousands of Enterprises fill up space around the fissure and start trying to talk to each other and figure out how to close the rupture.....but the writers screwed this part up pretty badly, and the close of the episode was pretty bland. They missed all kinds of opportunity for funny. But it was still a lot of fun with parallel universes.

[Robotengineer]

I prefer the time travel theory proposed in Orson Scott Card's Ruins trilogy. Time travel is possible, but every time you go back in time and modify something and then go back to the future, it won't be the same future you left.