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How do you think time travel should work?


indigoasis
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I recently watched the Back to the Future Trilogy the other day, and it got me thinking about time travel. The concept of it has seen so many interpretations of how it works; traveling through time generally seems to be the easy part, but the effects and repercussions of it differ depending on the series.

So, theoretically, if time travel were possible to it's fullest extent, how would it work?

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Either:

- You can't change the past. Everything you do in the past already happened in your present timeline.

- Multi-verse. You can traveled to the past, but anything you do doesn't affect your present timeline.

 

 

I personally don't think connected parallel time-lines is possible, but who knows.

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Eh...  I am of several opinions on this one.  I assume we are talking in terms of IRL Time Travel...  If we are, then we're cracking open quite the can of worms.  Not just because of the Paradoxes that may arise from the action, but from the possibiliy of a Multiverse.  If we are in a singular Time-line, it is either that

A)  everything is predetermined.  If you travel to the past to prevent, say, the rise of Nazi Germany, then it is you actions either caused what you tried to stop or had no impact overall.

B)  we see what Paradoxes can do.  By using the above example of stopping Nazi Germany, say you achieve you goal. The 1930s ~ 40s come and go without World War 2.  But this in turn causes events to change in such a way that you where never born.  This means that you do not exist, thus you couldn't have traveled to the past to stop the Nazis, thus leading to the world where you did exist, and did go back, etc., etc., etc.  Thus the Paradox.

 

And then on the flip side, Multiverses.  Time Travel in a Multiverse is less 'go backwards in time' as it is 'travel to an alternant plain of existence' due to the fact that you cannot differentiate between your past and another world that just so happens to be identical to your past.  This has... consequences.

This next bit is a slightly off-topic rant about Multiverses, so... Open the following for a little bit of insanity about Time Traveling/Reality Hopping in a Multiverse!

Spoiler

First, a bit of context.  A Multiverse implies that the 'Many Worlds' theory of Quantum Physics is correct.  The theory states that any choice (from deciding to eat for Breakfast to whether a radioactive atom will decay at any given moment) will spawn as many worlds as there are options.  For example, it is possible that you may eat cereal for Breakfast, or maybe bacon and toast or some of that leftover pizza from last night.  There will be a world for each of those.  And then all the diverging choices from there.

 

On one hand, there are worlds quite similar to ours.  Like say, one where you end up as a serial killer.  Or one where the USSR survived while the USA and NATO perished.  Or one where Nazi Germany and the Axis Powers won World War 2.  Or where the CSA won the American Civil War.  Or where the Ottomans conquered the whole of Europe.  Or where the Muslim world is the leading power while the West is little more than a backwater.  Or where the Roman Empire never fell. Or where Alexander the Great's Hellenistic Empire survived his death.  Or where the Israelites became a Empire that conquered Persia. Or where the Sub-Saharan Africans conquered an under developed Europe.  Or one where there are more modern human species than Homo Sapiens. Or one where modern humans Time Traveled and colonized the world over half a billion years ago.  Or where the Dinosaurs never went extinct.  Or where Earth never formed.  Or where Earth was settled by advanced, spacefaring Aliens shortly after the oceans formed. ... ... ... Do you get the point?

 

And then we reach the even more trippy side. Yeah, the prior was the less trippy bit!  The 'Many Worlds' theory could be applied to the early universe.  As far as we (humans) understand, the basic laws of reality where set early on, from Planc time (the smallest possible measurement of time) to several minutes after the 'Big Bang'.  Assuming there was chance involved in those laws being set, you may have a set of worlds where Gravity didn't disentangle from the other Fundamental Forces.  Or one where Electromagnetism split, giving 5+ Fundamental Forces.  This will result is vastly different divergent worlds.

And that will eventually lead to 'Impossible' worlds.  Because, according to the Many Worlds theory of Quantum Physics, anything can and, in fact, MUST exist, you end up with infinite universes where the universe of the Fire Emblem series is the 'real' universe, or another infinite set where the Halo series' setting is IRL life, or the infinite set where the setting of 'insert favorite fiction here' is real...

After that, there are the untold infinites more worlds where our day-to-day, standard Baryonic matter cannot physically exist, thus we cannot visit them to confirm or deny their existence, because doing so would cause whatever was sent into that world to become non-existent. Or even worse, worlds filled with not but music, or is a constantly fluctuating gel of random sub-atomic particles.  Or worlds where time travels backwards, from the end of Time to the begining.  Or a world with more than 1 Temporal Dimension (Aka, multiple Times compared to our singular Time) or with more or less than 3 Spatial Dimensions.  Or a 1-Dimensional World, where all of infinity lies squashed up in a Primordial Singularity. Or a higher dimensional world where a 4-D 'world' like ours is used for entertainment, like we use the 2-D 'worlds' Books, Comics, etc.

 

I could keep going, but I'm sure you get the point by now.  Time Travel/Reality Hopping in a MWT Multiverse is... well, it's trying to move to a specific fiber within the tappestry of infinity.  Good luck predicting how, what, why, when, and where you are... or are not if you hop over into a non-Baryonic World, or somewhere else that a human cannot even contemplate, etc., etc.

Rant over.

TL;DR, the human mind cannot comprehend the entirety of a 'Many Worlds' theory Multiverse, because it is infinite.

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12 hours ago, Ouzyxol said:

First, a bit of context.  A Multiverse implies that the 'Many Worlds' theory of Quantum Physics is correct.  The theory states that any choice (from deciding to eat for Breakfast to whether a radioactive atom will decay at any given moment) will spawn as many worlds as there are options.  For example, it is possible that you may eat cereal for Breakfast, or maybe bacon and toast or some of that leftover pizza from last night.  There will be a world for each of those.  And then all the diverging choices from there.

Hehee. I personally don't think 'Many Worlds' theory exist, or, at least in the manner you attempt to explain where 'any' choice spawns many new worlds since it can be argued that 'choices' don't exist in the first place. Let's use your example of a possible Breakfast, if we were somehow given that same option while keeping the all conditions the exact same, then there is no reason to believe another outcome would happen. The person will always choose the same breakfast in every instance since the conditions (internal reasons + external reasons) is always the same. The person & humankind may not know 'why' they made their decision (at the moment or in the future), but it's safe to assume there was a process. Even if the person wanted to be random like roll a dice, it is technically possible to determine the outcome if we were aware of the all conditions being applied to roll the dice, and those conditions were always the same when rolling the dice, the results would always be the same. 

Let's pretend we look at 4 points of time, that I will be label as time moment A, B, C, & D, and let us just assume that moment A will cause moment B to happen, moment B will cause moment C to happen, and moment C will cause moment D to happen. If moment A always has the exact same conditions (from people's thoughts and knowledge, from the smallest particles that even human still can't detect/obverse, and to largest substance that exist in our interactive universe) and we kept reverting back to moment A, what would cause moment B to be different? Wouldn't it be exactly the same as before, since moment A is always the same. And if moment B is the exact same, then why would moment C be different? This process will keep on happening, meaning if the past is the exact same, then there is no reason to think the present/future will change.

I would argue that the 'Many Worlds' theory is hard to comprehend is because its "actual internal logic" doesn't make sense. For it to exist, the ability to make a different choice in the exact same situation must exist, and I don't think that is possible. A person may have the capacity to have internal thoughts to reach a conclusion & decision, but due to everything (internal + external) that came before the decision, it is theoretically possible to claim that a person was always going to reach that conclusion & decision.

TL;DR, unless something is added to a prior moment that did not exist before, it is not possible to have a multiverse created by the choices a person may have

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8 hours ago, Clear World said:

Hehee. I personally don't think 'Many Worlds' theory exist, or, at least in the manner you attempt to explain where 'any' choice spawns many new worlds since it can be argued that 'choices' don't exist in the first place. Let's use your example of a possible Breakfast, if we were somehow given that same option while keeping the all conditions the exact same, then there is no reason to believe another outcome would happen. The person will always choose the same breakfast in every instance since the conditions (internal reasons + external reasons) is always the same. The person & humankind may not know 'why' they made their decision (at the moment or in the future), but it's safe to assume there was a process. Even if the person wanted to be random like roll a dice, it is technically possible to determine the outcome if we were aware of the all conditions being applied to roll the dice, and those conditions were always the same when rolling the dice, the results would always be the same. 

This bit more or less depends on if you believe that humans are capable of true randomness.  If not, then yeah, humans are more or less just very complex equations. …  Which on further thought, is depressing.

8 hours ago, Clear World said:

Let's pretend we look at 4 points of time, that I will be label as time moment A, B, C, & D, and let us just assume that moment A will cause moment B to happen, moment B will cause moment C to happen, and moment C will cause moment D to happen. If moment A always has the exact same conditions (from people's thoughts and knowledge, from the smallest particles that even human still can't detect/obverse, and to largest substance that exist in our interactive universe) and we kept reverting back to moment A, what would cause moment B to be different? Wouldn't it be exactly the same as before, since moment A is always the same. And if moment B is the exact same, then why would moment C be different? This process will keep on happening, meaning if the past is the exact same, then there is no reason to think the present/future will change.

This argument requires more of a grasp on quantum physics than just the MWT.  For example, the Uncertainty Principle which basically guaranties randomness at the quantum level.  Hence the "whether a radioactive atom will decay at any given moment".  How Quantum Physics translates to Macro Physics is a whole different topic.

And also whether or not reality is pre-determined.  Is randomness truly random, or will it (as per you example) cause A to lead to B, then to C and so on?  Or will A maybe lead to Z, which leads to B, then X, etc.?

We (humans) just don't have enough knowledge to argue it either way.

8 hours ago, Clear World said:

I would argue that the 'Many Worlds' theory is hard to comprehend is because its "actual internal logic" doesn't make sense. For it to exist, the ability to make a different choice in the exact same situation must exist, and I don't think that is possible. A person may have the capacity to have internal thoughts to reach a conclusion & decision, but due to everything (internal + external) that came before the decision, it is theoretically possible to claim that a person was always going to reach that conclusion & decision.

Again, the 'random or not' problem.

Also, you appear to be discounting all 'choices' that don't require human input (Radioactive decay, other random quantum effects, etc.) and also the possible actions of non-rational individuals (Aka, Insanity).

8 hours ago, Clear World said:

TL;DR, unless something is added to a prior moment that did not exist before, it is not possible to have a multiverse created by the choices a person may have

So you believe humans to be completely non-random, while also discounting all the effects of non-human possibilities or mental instability on humans, then?

 

And even discounting the human part, the non-human parts can still cause the same differences between two worlds in a multiverse.  We're talking about infinity here:  it's all inclusive by definition.

 

Bottom line is, applying quantum physics to macro physics is not only problematic, but also illogical, a la Schrödinger's cat and other 'paradoxes'.  One or the other (of quantum or macro) physics is perfectly fine on its' own, but together?  It causes some major problems, which we still haven't solved, despite the decades spent on said problems.

And IDK about you, but I'm not arrogant enough to say that it is one way or the other with absolute certainty, when there are others who are trying to figure it out, that are both better qualified and far more intelligent than me.

Edited by Ouzyxol
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I think 11/22/63 had a really unique way of doing time travel 

Where the bigger of a change you try to make in the past, the harder the past tries to fight you. It's doable, but you have to fight the past trying to stop you

Like moving a cup won't do much, but trying to change a major event will

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On 8/24/2021 at 12:26 PM, indigoasis said:

So, theoretically, if time travel were possible to it's fullest extent, how would it work?

See, I am becoming a tripped because the title says "should" and this says "would", which are very different things.

The way time travel "should work" in fiction is however works best for the story.

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Multiverse theory (although I think that's a bit of a misnomer) is how i imagine it would work, and I'm going to attempt to explain why.

Imagine you are a 2 dimensional being. You exist on a coordinate plane. Thats your entire reality, as you understand it. [left/right] and [up/down] 

Think about how on a 2 dimensional plane you have an X/Y axis. You go up/down by changing coordinates on the (y) axis. Or right/left by changing coordinates on the (x) axis.

Now imagine as such a being, you find yourself in a 3 dimensional model with an X/Y/Z axis.

Where every (z) coordinate represents a different plane; something that you as a 2 dimensional being would essentially perceive as a separate universe or timeline parallel to your own reality.

And now imagine that as such a being, you enter a machine that changes your (z) coordinates in 3 dimensional space.

You are transported to another x/y plane. 

You can move around this new plane on your own in your usual familiar manner of changing your X/Y coordinates. You can go up and down and left and right. But no matter how much you do this; you will never touch or interact with the plane you were transported from. That plane is at all points parallel to the X/Y plane you are currently on. They never meet.
___

Now imagine that time exists, as we understand it, as its own dimension. And that we as beings who live in and perceive 3 dimensions, by engaging it what we call 'time travel,' would essentially be moving along a 4th set of coordinates beyond x/y/z. 

I would conceptualize our experience as 3 dimensional beings engaging in this form of extradimensional travel to the experience of a 2 dimensional x/y being changing (z) coordinates.

Traveling through time would essentially transport us to what we perceive as a parallel universe.  (NOTE: it would not actually be a parallel universe; it would just be another dimension of the universe beyond the 3 dimensions we ordinarily experience and perceive. "Parallel Universe' is how our 3-dimensional brains and the limited capacities thereof would make sense of it)

Essentially, after time traveling, we would be in one of infinite parallel 'timelines' (as we conceive it) where we can do whatever we want. It would have no interaction with or consequence on the timeline we came from. (or any other parallel timeline)  

And if we then traveled back to our timeline of origin, theres no paradox that needs to be resolved or causality loop that needs to be reasoned through.

Everything that happened in the parallel timeline still happened in the parallel timeline. But because by definition parallel means "equidistant and all points and never converging," it never reaches your timeline of origin or effects it in any way. 
 

Edited by Shoblongoo
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  • 3 months later...

IF we find a way to create a stable wormhole we can use time dilation on this wormhole to instantly jump forward and backward through time. Granted what we are actually doing is connecting two points in time together so we can only go forward to a certain point or backward to a certain point. However, using this method there is a chance that some radiation will spill into the wormhole causing something known as feedback. This is bad if this happens and can cause major catastrophes, like global destruction unless...

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