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Started by Sabby, May 13, 2011, 08:56:38 AM

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Sabby

This actually may be in the wrong place, since I am not presenting this as an actual theory on how time traveling would work. Its more a counter to its use in Hollywood x.x if it should go somewhere else because of that, tell me and I'll move it, or a Siren can just do it.

With that clarified, this is how my own brand of time travel works. I give you my blessing if you'd like to use it in your writing :)

Picture that this is Time.

|------------------------------------------------------------------|

The start is obviously the start, where as the end is not the future, but the present. Time does not extend past the present. This means that when you travel back, you are not just crossing a distance of time, you are slicing that part off and starting a new present. You want to travel to here...

|______________________________X_______________|

You do that, and Time resembles this...

|______________________________|

What was between X and the Present is GONE. Time Travel can NOT be used to correct mistakes. You cannot use it to stop John Connor from defeating you Skynet, because when you push that button, your time period is erased forever.

And no, events will not carry out in a similar, but precarious fashion, threatening to repeat events if you don't intervene. Life is chaos. It is an endless succession of random events piled one atop the other. If you throw a hand full of sand at a glass floor, the spread of sand will ALWAYS be different. To expect the random actions of human thought, physics, and the universe in general, to play out even remotely similar when simulated twice, is impossible. Identical futures do not happen.

So this should make traveling forward impossible, right? If the Present is the end of time, and time is growing constantly, then theres no Future to travel to. This is still accurate, but forward jumps are possible. When you travel forward, you are actually not traveling at all. You are staying still, displaced from time all together for a certain period. When the designated time comes, you re-enter Time. This is the blink of an eye to you, but really, you have been a temporal figment frozen for hundreds of years.

So, forward jumps cause no negative effects, but backward jumps are permanent. Are there any other risks or factors? Yes. While its still true that going back means your future is gone, it actually splits the time stream in two.

1. |___________________________________|

2. |________________X__________________|

3. |_______________Oxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
                                    \___________________|

What you've done when returning to X is split off to start a new timeline. The original still exists, but is inert. Its a figment, a ghost. The basic fundamental laws of space, time, physics, matter, the building blocks that make reality possible, remain on the main Time Stream, while the new Splinter Stream forks off, using the Main as its foundations but otherwise completely new and fresh, with infinite possibilities.

So... what happens if you go back twice? Or three times? Lets go back to half way during this new Splinter Stream...

1. |____________________Oxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
                                              \______________|

2. |____________________Oxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
                                              \______Oxxxxxxxx|
                                                            \_______|

Okay, we now have a second inert Time Stream, and a new one branching off. Its attached to the inert stream, not the Main, and so has to obtain its fundamentals through the dead Stream. Not too tough. The Stream can handle it. But what if we travel back past the point of the Split... Lets go back just before the very first Split.

1. |____________________Oxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
                                              \______Oxxxxxxxx|
                                                            \_______|

                                     ____________________|
                                   /
2. |______________OxxxxxxOxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
                                              \xxxxxxxOxxxxxxxx|
                                                            \xxxxxxxx|

Look at that... only three jumps, and look at how much dead weight you've left on the Time Stream. With only the straight line representing Time, and the x's representing dead Time, there is only ever one Split in your time. Traveling to a point after it means the new Splinter Stream has to dig through more dead layers to get its fundamentals. Traveling to a point before the Split kills the entire Splinter Stream, but then your new one should have clean and complete access to the Main Stream, right? Yes and no... lets have a look at a Time Stream with multiple Splits without shortening it. The Time Stream is 1000 years long.

                                                 
                                                        __________________________________________[PRESENT-0800]
                                                       /                                     [3]xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[0800]
                                                     /                                      /
                                                   /                               [2]xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[0750]
                                                 /                                /
[0000]___________________[5]xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[1]xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[1000]
                                                            \
                                                              [4]xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx[0550]

The people in this Time Stream first traveled back from the year 1000 to the year 500, half way back. This created a Splinter that went on towards the year 750. For whatever reason, another jump occurred to shortly after the first. This one lasted 50 years longer then the last, before needing to be scaled back to around the year 300. That reality lasted until 550, then went back to 250. That is their current Stream... now look at the straight line. It stretches 800 years, with another 200 to reach the Main Streams end. After that, it will be completely free of the dead Splinters.

But from the year 500 to the year 750, it runs parallel to Stream #2. From 550 to 750, it runs parallel to # 2 and #3. From 750 to 800, it runs next to #2 again. From 350 to 550, it also has #4. Look at 500 to 550. A very small window, but there are three dead Splinter Streams here, 50 years worth of events. While normally, these do not influence a current Streams events, having to sift through so much constantly to reach the Main Stream will cause a higher probability of similar events. The more dead Streams parallel, the more the events are imposed.

Very large events, like wars, or natural disasters, are impossible to repeat like this, because of how many factors are involved. However, if running parallel to both a time of war and a time of depression, similar tones can be imposed on the Streams. Or, if in one dead Stream a box were to fall, and in the main Stream, there is a box that so happens to be in a similar place, with the potential to fall, it will.

In other words, the dead Streams will NOT impose great change on the current Stream, but if they do cross in a small way, then the crossing events can happen similarly or even identically.

This is only 5 instances of Time Travel. Perform dozens, and keep going, you run parallel to more and more dead Streams, and the probability for 'bleeding over' increases. There is only one possible fix for this, and that is traveling forward past the time of the Original Stream, where no dead Streams can influence your time. The time between your jump and your arrival happen as per normal, however, so the new world you go to will still have suffered Bleed Over.

I hope I've made sense of all this ^^ I'm sure theres some holes in it somewhere, so if you see inconsistencies and have suggestions, please share :)

TheGlyphstone

So, the Copenhagen/Multiple Worlds theory of time travel?

I think Primer did this prominently.

Oniya

Do you subscribe to the interpretation that those 'dead' time streams - while you can't access them - continue to exist for the people that didn't travel backwards?
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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Sabby

No, because Time Travel here isn't like a vehicle that you travel in. There is only one constant stream from the beginning to the end, a straight line, just one thread. That one thread continues to grow. To split it realigns it, meaning whatever it just split from ceases to move forward. Every millisecond that passes right now exists for only that, a millisecond, and once it passes, it is locked.

In other words, nothing really exists except the immediate present. Every second that passes is locked, frozen, and will remain like that forever. So no, once you decide to travel and change your current Time Stream, the one you left does not move ahead, thus nothing ever takes place.


TheGlyphstone

But if you then travel back in time and erase all time 'forward' of your arrival point, wouldn't you have never existed to travel back in the first place, or invented/owned the time machine that allowed you to do so? Where did you come from, if time is a single unbranching line where your birth moment is no longer going to happen?

What happens if two people own time machines, and both of them happen to hit that button and travel back at the same moment? Whose timestream is 'real'?

Shjade

Quote from: Sabby on May 13, 2011, 11:03:02 AM
In other words, nothing really exists except the immediate present. Every second that passes is locked, frozen, and will remain like that forever. So no, once you decide to travel and change your current Time Stream, the one you left does not move ahead, thus nothing ever takes place.
That seems like an awfully selfish interpretation of time. One person goes back so everything else that exists in the universe dissolves? I find this doubtful.

Further, given you're suggesting identical or nearly identical futures can't happen because life is too random to happen the same way twice, the odds might go up slightly with two or three splits, but I don't see why it would be more or less likely for it to happen depending on where/when the split happens: random is random. Time doesn't have a location anyway. It's not as if going back to point X and then immediately after point X and then an hour after point X makes the time closer together or farther away. Granted, not like I know any of this for sure either; I just have difficulty seeing a reason for the exact position of your time of arrival having any impact on later trips in the long term, particularly if, as you say, every trip you take erases everything between your startpoint and endpoint. What is "dead" time and why would it linger? What's there in it to leave it remaining? Is the universe your special individual left behind stuck in infinite limbo? If that's the case, increase my initial assessment from "awfully selfish" to "ridiculously self-important." Not your self, mind you, just the theory holding up one individual as being the linchpin for all of existence, particularly when it can be any individual. It makes no sense.
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◕/◕'s
Conversation is more useful than conversion.

Oniya

There is a phenomenon in chaos theory called 'sensitivity to initial conditions'.  Lorenz discovered this when he tried to recreate some results on a weather simulator using an intermediate set of results that had been rounded to something like 4 decimal places:  The functions that he plugged them back into showed behavior radically different from the original.

On the flip side, there are also things called 'basins of attraction', where small changes are nullified over time.  The path of an individual raindrop in a storm is probably not going to make a heck of a lot of difference except in rare instances (the raindrop could strike that tiny crack at just the right angle to short out the wiring to the critical component in the ...). 
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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Requests updated March 17

Sabby

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on May 13, 2011, 11:07:30 AM
But if you then travel back in time and erase all time 'forward' of your arrival point, wouldn't you have never existed to travel back in the first place, or invented/owned the time machine that allowed you to do so? Where did you come from, if time is a single unbranching line where your birth moment is no longer going to happen?

What happens if two people own time machines, and both of them happen to hit that button and travel back at the same moment? Whose timestream is 'real'?

This Time Travel displaces you (I guess this would depend on how exactly you use it. Make it a big box or a car or whatever floats your boat, I guess) that device goes back along the straight line that is the Time Stream, and where it stops is like placing a wedge in a stream. It splits the water, which then goes to a new stream, while the old one dries up.

To the 'two time machines question' whoever went back first :P they go back, dragging the present with them and creating a new fork, leaving the other team where all time remains after its passed. Frozen.

Quote from: Shjade on May 13, 2011, 11:56:48 AM
That seems like an awfully selfish interpretation of time. One person goes back so everything else that exists in the universe dissolves? I find this doubtful.

Further, given you're suggesting identical or nearly identical futures can't happen because life is too random to happen the same way twice, the odds might go up slightly with two or three splits, but I don't see why it would be more or less likely for it to happen depending on where/when the split happens: random is random. Time doesn't have a location anyway. It's not as if going back to point X and then immediately after point X and then an hour after point X makes the time closer together or farther away. Granted, not like I know any of this for sure either; I just have difficulty seeing a reason for the exact position of your time of arrival having any impact on later trips in the long term, particularly if, as you say, every trip you take erases everything between your startpoint and endpoint. What is "dead" time and why would it linger? What's there in it to leave it remaining? Is the universe your special individual left behind stuck in infinite limbo? If that's the case, increase my initial assessment from "awfully selfish" to "ridiculously self-important." Not your self, mind you, just the theory holding up one individual as being the linchpin for all of existence, particularly when it can be any individual. It makes no sense.

I set out the examples under a situation where a machine is created, and they use it to go back, and from then on, that team of people use the machine to scale back events such as wars. Why see half the world wiped out when ya can just have another toss of the dice, right? Thing is, they don't properly understand how the travel works, just that it does. I don't really know what I was thinking with the 'dead streams influence current stream' stuff, but it felt like something I had to cover :/

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Sabby on May 13, 2011, 12:26:27 PM
This Time Travel displaces you (I guess this would depend on how exactly you use it. Make it a big box or a car or whatever floats your boat, I guess) that device goes back along the straight line that is the Time Stream, and where it stops is like placing a wedge in a stream. It splits the water, which then goes to a new stream, while the old one dries up.
That doesn't really solve the problem of where you came from, though - especially since under your theory, there will be no identical or near-identical futures, so once you travel back, not only does the timeline you originally started in cease to exist (and thus invalidate your existence), there will never again be a timeline that you do exist in, so you can't even set up a stable time loop by inventing a new time machine in the current timestream.

Quote
To the 'two time machines question' whoever went back first :P they go back, dragging the present with them and creating a new fork, leaving the other team where all time remains after its passed. Frozen.
And if they both hit the button simultaneously (or, say, one button wired to trigger two time machines), but aimed back at different points in time? If there can be only one time path, who or what decides which of the attempting branches takes dominance?

Sabby

To the first, I honestly have no idea what your trying to get at... they get in machine, they go back, they get out. Where is all this 'they stop existing' stuff coming from?

And to the second, thats actually an awesome hypothetical... I really never thought of that! I guess if they used the same co-ordinates, they would just both go there, but if they went to different places, the one that went further back would become the new Present where as the other is dropped in dead Time and probably wouldn't even leave the temporal displacement... ever.

Assallya

Quote from: Sabby on May 13, 2011, 12:26:27 PM
This Time Travel displaces you (I guess this would depend on how exactly you use it. Make it a big box or a car or whatever floats your boat, I guess) that device goes back along the straight line that is the Time Stream, and where it stops is like placing a wedge in a stream. It splits the water, which then goes to a new stream, while the old one dries up.

I'm curious, in your first thought experiment, what force is it that dissolves the universe in favour of its new path?  Where does this universe go?

Regardless of how this occurs, how would the arriving time traveler survive this occurrence if his arrival precipitated it.  According to causality wouldn't he have to arrive or be arriving for the dissolution of the current timeline to begin...  and thus wouldn't he be swept up in the dissolution?

In your second phase of the thought experiment you refer to the figment universe, again created by the traveler's arrival.  What force displaces it and prevents the masses of the two different timelines from impacting upon one another?  Additionally, what prevents the traveler from being torn apart by these forces or being trapped in the figment timeline.  There are, after all, two of you now for all the infinitesimal fractions of a second it takes for this effect to propagate.   Which version of the traveler goes into the figment reality?

Oniya

I think I can explain Glyphstone's question.

Quote3. |_______________OxxxxxxxxxxTxxxxxxxxxx|
                                    \___________________|

Let's say that T is the point in time that the time machine was built.  The Time Traveler (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) gets in and sets the dial.  At the time that he reappears at the branch point, everything after the branch point on the original timeline ceases to exist - including the building of the time machine.  Without a 'building the time machine' point in the new timeline, there shouldn't be a time machine for the Time Traveler to travel in.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

gaggedLouise

#12
The best method I ever heard of to access new technology for actual time travel was the one adopted by some Cali students in the seventies. They frankly assumed there would be some visitors from the future (and from other planets) walking around the U.S. in the present age, so they organized two "time traveller conventions" and set up billboards and ads in advance. The idea being to attract the attention of said ETFFs, so that they could get there and tell us about their techniques.

"However" as a Wikipedia article put it, "as far as is known, no time travellers attended these conventions".   ::) ;D

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TheGlyphstone

#13
Quote from: Oniya on May 13, 2011, 01:43:02 PM
I think I can explain Glyphstone's question.

Let's say that T is the point in time that the time machine was built.  The Time Traveler (for so it will be convenient to speak of him) gets in and sets the dial.  At the time that he reappears at the branch point, everything after the branch point on the original timeline ceases to exist - including the building of the time machine.  Without a 'building the time machine' point in the new timeline, there shouldn't be a time machine for the Time Traveler to travel in.

Precisely - it's not that they stop existing (that would solve the problem) - it's that by traveling back beyond Point T (as Oniya demonstrated), they now have a time machine before the time machine was built - and more importantly, will never be built, since there are no identical futures and the future where it was built is frozen. Same problem if we substitute Point B for Point T, B being the Time Travller's birth date...he exists in a world where he cannot be born, creating a paradox.

Quote from: gaggedLouise on May 13, 2011, 01:54:01 PM
The best method I ever heard about to access new technology for time travel was the one adopted by some Cali students in the seventies. They frankly assumed there would be some visitors from the future (and from other planets) walking around the U.S. in the present age, so they organized two "time traveller conventions" and set up billboards and ads in advance. The idea being to attract the attention of said ETFFs, so that they could get there and tell us about their techniques.

"However" as a Wikipedia article put it, "as far as is known, no actual time travellers attended these conventions".   ::) ;D

Obviously. If there will be time travellers, there will be Time Cops in charge of making sure casuality doesn't get screwed up - so any time travellers who come back will be in disguise, to avoid disturbing history...if they had shown up at the convention as intended, time travel could have been developed earlier than it was supposed to, disrupting reality.

Sabby

Nah, the device itself comes with you. And I use a Stream chart more for practicality, so its easy to follow, I doubt time is a giant flowing spool of thread... I'm getting a lot of questions about the same thing, so I must be mucking it up x.x I don't wanna pound away at it though, so I'll try and be a bit clearer...

Time is a straight line. The present is the end of time. A Time Travel machine pushes the present back along its own path. Where it stops, Time resumes as normal, in exactly the fashion it was, but with the device and travelers inserted. All from there moves on new. Any time that has been scaled back is inert.

Already I'm thinking of removing the dead streams imposing the main one and adding some other kind of drawback >.<

QuoteSame problem if we substitute Point B for Point T, B being the Time Travller's birth date...he exists in a world where he cannot be born, creating a paradox.

Nope, doesn't work that way. Gets out of machine, breaths, eats, ages, dies. There are no paradoxes. I wrote this specifically as a counter to Hollywood time travel, so thats kind of the point x.x oh no, my parents aren't hooking up! I'm slowly fading from a picture of my family in the future! Annoys the fuck out of me.

Assallya

Quote from: Sabby on May 13, 2011, 02:06:52 PM
Time is a straight line. The present is the end of time. A Time Travel machine pushes the present back along its own path. Where it stops, Time resumes as normal, in exactly the fashion it was, but with the device and travelers inserted. All from there moves on new. Any time that has been scaled back is inert.

Ah!  Now I get what you're at.  They did this, rather surprisingly, in the Stargate series.  Again and again Samantha Carter warned against creating paradox and then they did create a paradox, changing history in such a way that it was impossible that they could ever have traveled in time and with this paradox- nothing happened.  Surprisingly they didn't linger on the one time Carter was completely totally incorrect about something :)  They just moved on with the story.

My friend who was watching it with me was horrified.  The idea of ignoring paradox just blew his mind.  For him, because of so many hollywood movies espousing it, had gotten it into his head that you can't have time travel without paradox.

I tried running a superhero game a long while back where the protagonists other selves from a fading alternate timeline invaded theirs.  Unfortunately, the players disappeared before I could really get going.  (A friend told me they did this with DC's Infinite Crisis(?) as well, with a benevolent Lex Luthor and evil Superman trying to restore the alternate timelines and thus repair the world they came from before it faded)

TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Sabby on May 13, 2011, 02:06:52 PM
Nope, doesn't work that way. Gets out of machine, breaths, eats, ages, dies. There are no paradoxes. I wrote this specifically as a counter to Hollywood time travel, so thats kind of the point x.x oh no, my parents aren't hooking up! I'm slowly fading from a picture of my family in the future! Annoys the fuck out of me.

Ignoring the paradox doesn't make it go away, that's just handwaving it, and is just as bad as anything Hollywood produces. The Time Traveller exists, this is indisputable...so either there is a place he came from, or he exists despite having never been born...that is a paradox. You can have no consequences of the paradox, but it still happened.


Personally, my favorite 'time travel' stories are the ones where time is immutable, also known as the stable time loop. If your grandpa complains about his bum leg from an enemy shooting him during the war, and you go back in time to stop him from getting shot, you will fail. Either he will be shot before you can stop it, or maybe you will end up accidentally shooting him yourself...either way, it will happen, because if you succeed, you invalidate the reason for trying in the first place.

Sabby

I honestly have no clue where your coming from now... I don't know what else I can say x.x

Assallya

I would disagree.  There's no evidence that paradox has any effect nor will there be until we possess the capability of time travel.  Of course, who would dare test it?  Thus, I think it the purview of the author to determine, within a framework he has devised, if paradox has any effect.

Doctor Who, for example, has a rather strange view of paradox.  Apparently paradox causes a release of energy proportional to just how paradoxical an event is and passing through the time vortex regularly creates a resistance to this paradox reaction.   In addition, by some strange quirk, a paradox also weakens the fabric of the continuum making it possible for things outside to breach within.

Will

Time travel always requires a heavy dose of suspension of disbelief.  No matter how it's presented, it's going to be full of logic-holes.  It violates all kinds of natural laws.  What you suggest isn't really any better, just different.
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TheGlyphstone

I guess there's not much else to ask then - just saying that as a theory of time travel, this is no more or less plausible than what most time travel movies have produced. You mocked Back To The Future, but it (at least, the first one) is one of Hollywood's relatively better depictions of some of the problems time travel could both cause and solve.

If you want 'realistic', or at least consistent time travel, you have to go into literature. Squishy speculative fiction - the area between soft sci-fi and hard sci-fi - is pretty rich in time travel narratives, most of which are far superior to Hollywood in terms of making sense.

Oniya

#21
I would recommend the novel 'All You Zombies' for one that gets particularly interesting.  For a more technical, but still very readable work on time travel, check out Rudy Rucker's 'The Fourth Dimension'.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

TheGlyphstone

Ah yes, "All You Zombies" - though at less than 5,000 words, I think it only counts as a short story. Definitely a classic.

Oniya

Shows what happens when I go from memory and try to get too specific.  ;D >
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17