posted
Yes, time, temporal reality, and time travel. (playing Ocarina of Time reminded me that time travel was going on in Star Trek, so I decided to post about it...)
My current understanding is that they are doing lots of time travel in this new series. The question is: Is time travel "real"?
If it is "real" then the travellers are truly, dearly, going backward in time (or forward) and can alter the future or past. If my more rational theory is correct, then they are entering parallel universes that are more (or less) temporally advanced then the "real" one.
Considering how seriously the temporal organization took the paradoxes, I am afraid that they think time travel is "real." I do, however, have a new theory which may be able to support them despite the paradox.
Specifically, going back in time is a reversal absolute. If one goes back, then you might imagine oneself in a protective "bubble" watching events go in reverse until the designated time frame ocurrs. This makes time travel extremely powerful, because it is the only thing by which THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE IS AFFECTED!
So, in essence, my concept for "real" time travel is not so much you going back in time, but rather, causing time to flow backward (or forward faster) while you are not affected by the results.
That seems (to me) to be more rational than simply "going back in time." However, unfortunately, this means that if someone goes back in time to kill you before you are born (and he is destined to succeed) then you cannot go back to prevent him because you are already dead.
How annoying. What's everyone else's opinion about this?
IP: Logged
posted
No one actually on Enterprise (the vehicle, and who was supposed to be) has done any time travel aside from the usual one second per second postive motion.
Anyway, uh, beyond that I'm a little confused as to what you're getting at. The Time Travel Problem, if there is one, is that moving backwards in time does not seem to be absolutely outlawed by the laws of physics, but it is outlawed by the laws of common sense. Toss causality out the window and you just make a lot of people mad.
So to preserve the one people have gone looking for ways the other might prevent traveling backwards through time. And one of these possibilities is, as I think you mention, that the universe gets split into an infinite multitude of parallel universes whenever anything happens, including the visits of future tourists or what have you.
Of course, that's dependant upon there actually being multiple universes, an interpretation that is not universally accepted.
So, anyway, the fact that causality does seem to exist suggests that there is some limiting factor on screwing around with time, but as to what that is, nobody's quite sure yet.
Now, if you're talking specifically about Star Trek, well, we've seen lots of different kinds of time travel, and thus the powers that be have a large bag of precidents to pull from.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
I conclusively proved that time travel would never be possible to me during my lifetime when i wrote a note to myself telling myself to go back in time to March 15, 1995 and visit myself. I never showed up.
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
The travel-back-in-time ep is a certainty; I'll bet whey won't be able to resist going forward to some familiar period of Trek, to say nothing of travelling to the time(s) of the various interstellar meddlers.
quote:Originally posted by CaptainMike: I conclusively proved that time travel would never be possible to me during my lifetime when i wrote a note to myself telling myself to go back in time to March 15, 1995 and visit myself. I never showed up.
So... stupid....
THe note was obviously lost, or you realized that traveling back would be a mistake... hehehe
Registered: Aug 1999
| IP: Logged
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
I still have the note, and regardless I have the date, time and place memorized.
The only other thing that would affect it is me somehow deciding not to travel back in time. But after seven years, my resolve remains true.. i would leave my life behind in a second to go back. I think I'd have a good time reliving the 90s.
So either time travel will remain impossible, or i will find some purpose in my life that i dont want to give up just to go back in time and ogle my former life.
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
Of course, that only applies over the duration of your life, which could be anything. You might die tomorrow, and time travel might be developed on Thursday.
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
my grandkids are probably gonna be ungrateful snots, too busy listening to new-new-wave music and protesting world war III while smoking jex and wearing their pants inside out. damn punks. they probly wont listen to me when i tell them about soylent green either. thank god for suicide booths!
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
and plugging their damn heads into the mentalnet BBS.. why, back in my day we had to type out our messages with our hands, and i didnt hear no one complaining...
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
whats the point of travelling thru time when u could always get hit by a bus, tomorrow, later today (or is that earlier today) or even yesterday (or was that happening next week)....ack u can never tell what happens next!
Buzz
-------------------- "Tom is Canadian. He thereby uses advanced humour tecniques, such as 'irony', 'sarcasm', and werid shit'. If you are not qualified in any of these, it will be risky for you to attempt to decipher what he means. Just smile and carry on." - PsyLiam; 16th June
Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged
OnToMars
Now on to the making of films!
Member # 621
posted
::typing::
Fuckin' A, what a bitch...There must be an easier way...
Accoriding to my Engineering Physics major (which is about one step down from Astrophysics)friend was telling some of us about this very topic the other day.
If you were to buid a time machine, then once completed, traveled back in time to meet yourself building the machine, you wouldn't find anybody.
As a result of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, you would alter that which you are observing, which is the universe at a specific point in time. By observing the universe, you alter it, and thus end up observing an alternate universe instead.
So, if you went back and killed your grandfather, you'd be fine, there would be no paradox. You would still be alive, because in YOU'RE universe, nobody killed your grandfather. The past, in that regard, is unalterable (and therotically, in the future). You just have one less duplicate self in the multiverse.
And Infinity - 1 = Infinity
-------------------- If God didn't want us to fly, he wouldn't have given us Bernoulli's Principle.
Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
Chris StarShade
Ex-Member
posted
I believe I mentioned that possibility.
Time travel would then, in effect, just be shifting to an alternate universe where time started before or after time in your original universe.
Unfortunately, we'd either have to be in the middle of such universes, or suffer Infinite Regression to allow that kind of time travel to happen...
IP: Logged
Topic Closed
Printer-friendly view of this topic