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Time Travel?

12 years ago

I’m having writer’s block on my epic zombie story, so I’m writing this post as a diversion. Feel free to ignore, add to, or dispute, the logic here…

(Note that I love the concept of time travel in fiction – it makes for some awesome stories)

No Time Like The Present

I don’t believe in the possibility of time travel; nor even in time itself (other than as a convenient way of comparison between states of matter). If you look at time, you have an infinite number of divisions of it on either side of big and small. So we literally live an infinite number of smaller segments of it with each passing second, while simultaneously standing still in time compared to a single infinite segment of it on the big side.

To me there is only the present, with everything constantly in a state of change. Because time does not exist, time changes nothing. Change is caused by change itself (cause and effect). A person does not grow old due to time, but due to a shortening of the DNA strands with each division of the cells. After so many divisions, the whole is no longer viable and we die of ‘old age’.

You can mathematically prove the lack of time as a factor of change in existence; and we’re not even sure, if there is such thing as time, whether it is flowing forward or backward. Einstein’s theory of relativity states that time slows down the closer one approaches the speed of light, but I posit that it is not time that slows down, but the atomic structure itself. Sort of like the atomic structure slows down the closer you approach absolute zero. You could put a watch on a spaceship, approach the speed of light and say – the hands are now moving slower, thus time has slowed down. To which I would say, no, the hands of the watch have slowed down, not time.

As for time travel (where it possible), you could never travel forward and/or backward in time to any location on Earth. And if you could, you would die instantly upon arrival. Here’s why –

Time Travel by itself allows one to jump from one point in time to another. The problem is that time travel also needs space travel. As the Earth rotates around the Sun and the Solar System rotates around the center of the Galaxy and the Galaxy drifts through the Universe – the Earth has never been (and probably will never be) in the same fixed point of space more than once.

Traveling anywhere in time, other than the present, would land you in the middle of empty space or worse, at the center of some celestial mass.

So, then – even if you could accurately land on Earth at the desired point of time – you will literally be crushed by the impact or flung out into space. Why? Because of Conservation of Motion.

You will be carrying your inertia (approximately 1,298,000 MPH) from point A to Point B (or not). If so, then you are going to have to align your inertia with the exact direction of your landing point or you face a difference of between 0 and 2,596,000 MPH. Ouch. If you can somehow avoid carrying over your inertia from point A to point B, then you still have a whopping 1,298,000 MPH difference when you get there.

All this is not even going into how your blood will boil with even the slightest change of elevation between your two landing points.

SindriV

Time Travel?

12 years ago

This is assuming that the time traveller is affected by change in temperature, change in pressure and that he/she has blood, because since a story involving time travel would obviously be fictional, the character himself may possess fictional traits as well.

Zero

Time Travel?

12 years ago

Is this part of the story or just the logic tied to it?

I like what you wrote, but I guess I'll touch on a couple things, just my understand and all that, mostly from what I remember from a discussion I had last year. Without going so much into quantum physics (that I won't even pretend to understand), it's widely held that time is relative. It's pretty much as you describe it - our way of measuring changes in states. There's not just "time," just like there's not just "space;" it's all considered spacetime. There's a 3-dimensional universe (space) moving along a linear 4th dimension (time), both existing and acting as a singular unit.

As for past, present, and future - they're more descriptive terms. Past is the word for things that were, etc etc. Simply because the present-present supersedes the past-present, however, doesn't not mean it doesn't exist (or, rather, that it never happened). To say "time" doesn't exist is to say that motion doesn't either - consider Xeno's paradox. You have to run 10 meters, but before that you must reach a midpoint of 5m, but before that you must reach 2.5m, and so on for infinity. It would thus stand to reason that motion is non-existent, as you'd be required to travel an infinite number of midpoints in a finite amount of time... but we know that to not be the case. While time isn't "causing" you to move (or grow old or any of that, like you mentioned), your movement constitutes the passing of time.

Also, I'm just a bit confused on something. You mention that traveling at the speed of light would slow down the atomic structure of a body (as if approaching 0 kelvin), but then you mention something about blood boiling. Do you mean due to increased molecular activity? I might just be reading it wrong :0

BerkaZerka

Time Travel?

12 years ago

This is just an idle post for the heck of it =)

The blood boiling thing was actually in reference to instant changes in elevation causing the bends (nitrogen build up in the blood; like what divers experience when ascending to fast). The bends can also occur in atmosphere when ascending too fast above 5000 or so feet in unpressurized aircraft.

I also recall reading somewhere that instant changes in pressure and gravitation cause very rapid increases in body heat (only a few degrees – but that the brain can’t take the shock of even a sudden two or three degree change). Not sure on the science of this, but the decompression sickness/bends above is quite factual.

BerkaZerka

Time Travel?

12 years ago

Yeah, I'm sure something like Cthulhu's buddy Azathoth would be fine

ThisisBo

Time Travel?

12 years ago

Time is relative, based on what humans saw and decided to keep track of. That's why "time flies when you're having fun". Before humans came along, there wasn't time in the sense we know it, things simply were.

Also, our concept time is based on how fast light hits our eyes. For example: the particle that CERN shot that broke the speed of light showed up a second before it left. It wasn't becuase it went back in time, it's because it went faster than light is processed by our brains.

As for time travel itself, I don't currently believe it could happen.

Swiftstryker

Time Travel?

12 years ago

So, I need a really fluffy pillow if I'm going to travel from A to B?

SindriV

Time Travel?

12 years ago

Yes. That would most likely do the trick.

BerkaZerka

Time Travel?

12 years ago

LOL!

BerkaZerka

Time Travel?

12 years ago

So then, as far as time travel goes in fiction, which type do folks prefer?

I like the Single Timeline type, where going back in time and killing your past self would cause you to no longer exist.

The Divergent Timeline fiction can also be really cool, but I still prefer the above.

If I was to write time travel fiction, I’d also want to figure out a plot device that would allow the protagonist to be able to kill his past self, but not simply cease to exist. Either doing so would somehow push him ‘out of time itself’ or ghost him to the real world.

Or there is the option where you can only be in one place (of time) at a time, so if you go back to the past, where your past self is living, the moment you arrive, he vanishes on the spot. Of course, the moment he does, then you’ve altered the Timeline and ???

Oh well.

SindriV

Time Travel?

12 years ago

My favorite idea of time travel which I used in one of my stories is a combination of time travel and parallel universes. Basically, so there is no way to change a time-line, you just create new ones (if you go back in time and kill yourself, you don't erase yourself from your time-line, you just create an alternate time-line in which you are killed by yourself, which then exists in parallel to the original time-line).

BerkaZerka

Time Travel?

12 years ago

Yeah, I liked what you did with the Perfectus 7 story :)

Zero

Time Travel?

12 years ago

One of my favorite books is called Slaughterhouse-Five, and it deals with time travel in a fairly "unique" way. It's an existential novel, where the protagonist doesn't necessarily have the ability to change the events of his life by traveling through time, but rather re-experiences key points in his life. Love that book

CovElite

Time Travel?

12 years ago

Ever read "Welcome to The Monkey House" by the same author?

Fireplay

Time Travel?

12 years ago

so you say that you like the idea where each important action in somebody's like creates a seperate universe with a seperate timeline? TVtropes Omniverse much?

BerkaZerka

Time Travel?

12 years ago

Personally, one of the reasons I prefer the single timeline trope is because there is just too much waste of matter to say that there is a universe for every single combination of interaction between every single atom (and smaller) in each universe. It makes for a good story (like the Quantum Leap series on TV), but it is completely incomprehensible in application.

For example, you could jump from your reality, to one where everything is exactly the same, except there is one less iron molecule in the center of an asteroid orbiting a solar system trillions of trillions of trillions of trillions of light years away from earth. You would be just as likely to arrive there, as in the one where nazi dinosaurs have taken over the earth shortly after JFK was assassinated…