FrankTrollman wrote:Using very accurate clocks we have in fact confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that the things around us are not in chronological sync with one another. And you know what happens when an object from the past meets an object from the future? Absolutely nothing. Despite being on different positions of the time line, two objects meeting in the here and now treat each other precisely and exactly as if neither one was time traveling at all.
Do we even have a reference for how things that aren't traveling through time interact?
EDIT: And is the word "interact" even meaningful for them?
Last edited by RadiantPhoenix on Mon Jan 27, 2014 2:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
Potter time travel is where you think about using your time machine for a problem and instead find a note that tells you DON'T USE YOUR TIME MACHINE FOR THIS!. And then later you have to go back in time to leave yourself that note, because you already did.
And thinking about not sending the note just finds more notes about THAT IS A REALLY BAD IDEA, only if you keep it up there's blood on the next one, and then one looks like you might be dying as you wrote it. Because you did write it already, in your future.
And that's the trick, the only things that don't get notes are things where you're certain you could have already done that and no one would've told you get. So if you happen to see your future self, ignoring them gives you more room to do things once you're them, because you don't have to know what it is yet.
Really interesting tricks with that is where you can always know what to do in a strange situation, because you can just reach into your pocket and find a note telling you, the one you'll put there after you see how well that works. Also, help can arrive because you can go back in time and call for it after they've rescued you. Anything can happen if you just dedicate a bit of future-you's time to having set it up already.
I really see no need to add alternate realities to that. Just keep tasking post-apocolypse people on the escape ships to have already set in motion just what you need to get the escape ships built.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
FrankTrollman wrote:Using very accurate clocks we have in fact confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that the things around us are not in chronological sync with one another. And you know what happens when an object from the past meets an object from the future? Absolutely nothing. Despite being on different positions of the time line, two objects meeting in the here and now treat each other precisely and exactly as if neither one was time traveling at all.
Do we even have a reference for how things that aren't traveling through time interact?
EDIT: And is the word "interact" even meaningful for them?
It's called light, or electromagnetic radiation. By moving at the speed of light through the near-vacuum of space, it cannot move through time. Doing so it behaves like a particle at both ends, and they behave like waves while moving, because they really are waves of probability.
Which is to say, things not travelling through time move at the speed of light in 3-space alone, have no rest mass, and are energy vectors.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
FrankTrollman wrote:Using very accurate clocks we have in fact confirmed beyond reasonable doubt that the things around us are not in chronological sync with one another. And you know what happens when an object from the past meets an object from the future? Absolutely nothing. Despite being on different positions of the time line, two objects meeting in the here and now treat each other precisely and exactly as if neither one was time traveling at all.
Do we even have a reference for how things that aren't traveling through time interact?
EDIT: And is the word "interact" even meaningful for them?
That's a really funny question when you know the answer. Look around your room and pick an object at random - voila, you found some! No, not the object you're looking at. It's the light hitting your eyes.
I know time seems like the sort of thing that would be important, and yet the reality of it is rather underwhelming. If you want a fun way to think about it, spatial velocity is a measurement of a system's interactions with the universe around it, while temporal velocity is a measurement of a system's interactions with itself (or within itself). Not moving through time means the only interactions you can have are with external objects/forces. That is why the sarcastic (and very accurate) quip to "what happens if you're driving at the speed of light and you turn on your headlights?" is "you can't." So long as a system (you and the headlights) is travelling at the speed of light, the system can't change internally (you can't turn on the headlights). But that system will still experience slamming into an object and exploding, in exactly the same way photons are exploding on your eyeballs right now.
Last edited by DSMatticus on Mon Jan 27, 2014 3:30 am, edited 2 times in total.
tussock wrote:I really see no need to add alternate realities to that. Just keep tasking post-apocolypse people on the escape ships to have already set in motion just what you need to get the escape ships built.
That's a very good point actually. Sure, alternate realities aren't necessary, but they make it a hell of a lot easier, as each new reality created increases available resources and productivity by another earth. But more importantly, I'm using them as I want to explore the concept anyway.
Come to think of it, it's also possible for people to just stay on Earth forever if they don't feel like leaving by creating new timelines whenever doomsday approaches. Hmm... with this as an option, would tons of worlds put in tons of effort to evacuate the planet? Well, if resource scarcity isn't an issue, they'd probably look into space travel for fun, but the whole planet doesn't have to evacuate.
as for time colonists:
didn't south park do something like that?
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
South Park had one episode where people from the future came back to the past to get jobs because there were none in the future to be had. For lower than dumping prices. Basically, it was a riff on the whole mexicans taking american jobs and the white southerners being very much against that.
Welcome, to IronHell.
Shrapnel wrote:
TFwiki wrote:Soon is the name of the region in the time-domain (familiar to all marketing departments, and to the moderators and staff of Fun Publications) which sees release of all BotCon news, club exclusives, and other fan desirables. Soon is when then will become now.
Peculiar properties of spacetime ensure that the perception of the magnitude of Soon is fluid and dependent, not on an individual's time-reference, but on spatial and cultural location. A marketer generally perceives Soon as a finite, known, yet unspeakable time-interval; to a fan, the interval appears greater, and may in fact approach the infinite, becoming Never. Once the interval has passed, however, a certain time-lensing effect seems to occur, and the time-interval becomes vanishingly small. We therefore see the strange result that the same fragment of spacetime may be observed, in quick succession, as Soon, Never, and All Too Quickly.
If changing the past doesn't change the present and you can't get anything good from the future, there's pretty much no reason to call the thing that you're doing "time travel." You're just going to alternate Earths, some of which are technologically backward.
That clears it up. Thanks. I think I'll have to read that one or two more times, as I'm pretty sure I didn't get the story entirely.
Frank: Running around an immutable timeline is still generally considered to be Time Travel. That said, yeah, I think I see your point. Methods 2 & 3 aren't time travel. They're... I'm not really sure. Other realities aren't necessarily technologically backward. If you deliberately introduce new technology into the 19th century of a new timeline, it'll be way more advanced than our timeline currently is right now by the 2000s (of their time). I'll edit the topic to be a story about 'time travel and alternate realities'.
Last edited by radthemad4 on Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
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