Planetfurry BBS

[Asalis]

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately on stories, movies, Tv shows (like doctor who), and cartoons. that deal with time travel. they all seem interesting in retrospective but what really got me thinking was a recent temporal mechanics theory I had heard recently. Its something that I can only describe as Fluidic time.

Heres how it works:

Imagine if you will a bowl full of water, or any kind of body of water you like. Imagine this body of water represents time in all its infinite vastness. Now imagine something like a pebble. This pebble represents a choice being made. It can range from something as simple as deciding what to wear for the day to a fireman inside of a burning building deciding on which person to save when he knows that he only has time to save one.

Now imagine this "choice" being dropped into the body of water that is time. The result is a bunch of ripples that move outward from center of where its dropped. These ripples represent the effects of your choice, and each part of the ripple represents something different.

The portions moving away from you stand for every possible outcome of the choice that has been made. The portions moving towards you represent every possible event that leads up to this choice. (Like for example your in college trying to decide how you should pay off the school loans you've accumulated.) Now heres where things get a bit complicated. The ripples coming towards you may not always represent events going on in this reality but this I can explain better by explain the last portion of the ripples.

The portions of the ripples that are moving to either side, right or left, represent other possible realities that are going on right now. These other realities are attracted close to and become intertwined (not merged) for a time because of the ripples. Any dimension similar is drawn in close to this reality. Some after the choice has been made separate never to come in contact with this point in reality again. others may stay intertwined with this dimension to separate some time later. Other still may separate from this dimension only to be rejoined with this point later on.

Now here's where things get really complicated. This theory on time represents not just one but several other theories rolled up into one not exactly simple explanation. This theory does actually have an answer to the age old question of what if I went back in time to change something and then came back? The answer is nothing.

Say you wanted to go back in time and change a major event in history like killing the guy who shot Abraham Lincoln before the president got shot. When you return to the exact point in the space time continuum the event you changed will have never happened. The reason is because for the exact point you left history has already been determined. choices have already been made in the past that have made this current reality. However by going back and killing the guy before he could kill Lincoln you have in effect created a new time line based upon the results of that action.

Now everything that I just said is only the basics behind liquid time. Theres much more that goes with it. The ripples themselves don't just represent causes and outcomes. These ripples as I mentioned earlier also have the added effect of pulling other similar dimensions related to that choice closer together. these dimensions could all be possible pasts, presents, or even futures all of which are in some ways related to the choice being made right now. More in relation to this particular topic; imagine now the edges of these ripples finally fading off after traveling so far from the epicenter. There is still infinitely more amounts of this body of water that the ripple has not touched. Those beyond this ripples touch represent other realities not related to the point of the ripples origin. This brings to mind the question of what all other possible dimensions and for that matter forms of existence entirely, could possibly exist that we dont even know about? It's questions like these that bring about a possible conclusion that time its self may not be as linear as we may think. Though physically we are only able to experience one event along one path. What would happen if one person, either by natural or artificial means was suddenly able to transcend such barriers. Time for this person would no longer be so solid or singularly defined.

With all that now said I'd like to hear yalls opinion on this. What do you think? You think its plausible? if not the let me hear your ideas.

[Sigurd Volsung]

the problem with your liquid time theory is that it represents time in a three dimensional format when in fact time is four dimensional. Every choice creates a new dimension, so there are billions of new dimensions being formed every minute on Earth. But here's the fun part these mini-dimensions form cable around main themes.

To take your example of jumping back on a time line to kill John Wilkes Booth before he killed Lincoln. Lincoln's death would have been a major event that split a major line of dimensions forming a new cable. Now say Mr. X goes back in time and kills Booth, well that major line doesn't actually split because in a myriad of other dimensions Wilkes still killed Lincoln, all Mr. X really did was change his own future. Now Mr. X gets back into his time machine and jumps back to the moment he left. Instead of going back to the dimension he left he jumps his own personal reality into a myriad of other dimensions in which Lincoln met his end in any number of ways. Mr. X has in effect split himself an infinite number of times within the infinite number of dimensions, and hasn't changed anything for anyone else.

Think of the universe as being made up of a giant shotgun which fires out multiple shot guns, which into turn do the same thing add nausiem. Now you start getting the idea.

[Skazwolf]

Aaaahhh, my head hurts already.

So what you're getting at, is that there are infinite universes for whichever choices you take or don't take?

[Sigurd Volsung]

Bingo! You have just gotten the very principal of time itself.

[Asalis]

[Elfen_Furry]

Think of Time as a cord, in which a universe can travel in one direction upon it. Now think of many cords intertwine into a rope, where events and reactions can travel from cord to cord. Also there are 2 specific cords tied together where only 1 directional travel is possible upon each cord but the two are in opposite directions.

That is simple as I can make it. Anymore and I will putting formulas in here that will prematurely age everyone's hair!

[Howellfan]

Can't contribute much authoritative to this topic( ), but my own 'gut' hunch has always been that somehow when all's said and done, physicists will be able to bring it all the way around to the thermodynamic decay of energy within a relativistic framework. This is of course about as 'amateur' as an opinion can get! Incidentally, why do physicists, who in point of fact know better, let themselves talk about time as if it itself moves or flows, which inplies changing states which implies time, therefore essentially saying time moves through time, i.e. itself, which -again, they know perfectly well - is silly, besides being fundamentally wrong.

Pertinent to the above:my understanding is that you CAN make relativity and quantum physics work together perfectly...IF you leave out the variable of time! Either by imagining subatomic particles as 'corks', if you will, sending out ripples in the sea of spacetime traveling at infinite speeds, or simply not including it in the equations in the first place. Is the universe trying to tell us something? Has any theorist tried to 'derive' time, i.e. get time to 'fall out' of the equations derived from such a 'timeless' starting point, rather that including it a'priori?(Or is that a nonsense question? )

P.S. It strikes me that the above is very much what one might expect if speculations about the universe as 'simulation' or computer program were true, and every interaction of matter and energy were calculated 'between the moments'! Yikes!

[Nicolai Borovskaya]

One alternative, go investigate RAH's ficton theory. It works every bit as well, and I like it better. (For those poor souls that don't know, RAH was Robert Anson Heinlein, one of the very best of the old Grand Masters of Sci-Fi.)

Besides, I'm just a ficton, too, in some other author's universe.

Nicolai