Temporal Mechanics

So you are the type of mad scientist that not only wants to master the world, but to master time as well?

Well sadly, we lack plans for a flux capacitor, or used car ads for Delorians - however there is some theories you could start with.

The destiny effect is where any system effects real time, any rules governing it, make it self regulating.

What this basically means is time to a certain degree is self correcting. This means that sometimes the end doesn't justify the means, it occurs despite it.

Or in contemporary culture, that there is in effect something a little like destiny - certain things will always happen at a certain time at a certain place.

A very simple example is this - you are a mad scientist, you built a car capable of traveling at or near the speed of light - but being a car it is governed by certain rules - for example it can only drive on a road. It cannot pass through solid objects. It cannot drive on the wrong side of the road. It cannot leave the road as the surface is unsuitable.

What this means is - let us say you drove a car to the milk bar. In a normal car this would take 10 minutes at 100km/h. If you left at 9:00am you would arrive at the milkbar by 9:10am. Today, you decide to test out your light-speed car. At 9:00am You jump in, a second later you are halfway to the milkbar (5 minutes away by normal car) - but there is another vehicle blocking your way traveling at 50km/h. It will take this vehicle 7.5 minutes to arrive at the milkbar, and you cannot overtake it. This vehicle will arrive at the milkbar by 9:12.50am As you are stuck behind this vehicle all the way, you will arrive at the milk bar by 9:12.50am as well - lets say you drove the normal car - at 100km/h you would have encountered this slow vehicle at 9:08:50am. The slow vehicle would still arrive at the milkbar by 9:12.50am, and you being stuck behind it would also arrive at the milkbar by 9:12.50am.

Basically the destiny effect has due to the rules governing travel; in both cases forced you to arrive at the milkbar at the same real time and place. Although your perceived time may be different (traveling at the speed of light time perceived by you would have passed at a different rate than external “real time”) Externally you arrive at the same point and time.

Time isn't a fixed line, like a river traveling in one direction. If anything it is more like traveling backwards up a river, it branches into countless tributaries.

It is important to remember that time/space/time space/space time is effected by every possible decision or variation that could have ever occurred. But because of the Destiny effect, every single time stream is also unique and somewhat fixed, however because variation and choice also apply; there is an infinite number of alternate time streams too- also known as quantum universes or the multiverse.

So what does this mean for time travel? It means that pure time travel is impossible. But travel between points in time in alternate realities IS possible. the difference to you the observer is likely moot. But to anyone watching you depart, you typically simply cease to exist.

From this point it is all purely theoretical - but if you were to travel into the future - the type of future you see would vary depending on your method of travel, equally the same applies to travel to the past. Certain cheats like “suspended animation” are not really time travel; as you do not effect your point in the multiverse, merely your time index on the current time line. But technically you are in the future.

However should you make changes to the past - what effect if any depends on how you got there. For example, if you used space distortion or some other exotic way to physically go into the past along your time line, and altered a major event - all that has changed is your own position in the multiverse, you have simply traveled to a time line where the events you thought you changed had always happened. Should you return to the time you started - you would find yourself in a different quantum universe - the future point of the timeline where the events you changed in the past had always been changed. To the observer, when you departed for the past, you would simply cease to exist, and they would not see you return.

But - alternately - should you use some rip in space, or “short cut” like a worm hole to travel to the past, and change an event - this is where things get really interesting. There are a few possibilities -

1. You travel to the past, and change an event. Then travel back up the worm hole to the point you started. You would discover, that nothing in the present had changed - that the other end of the worm hole is in fact now a parallel universe.
2. You travel to the past, and change an event. The Worm hole would then cease to exist, as you have now moved yourself to a different quantum universe by altering the time line. You would be trapped in the past - and to any observer at the point you started when you went through the worm hole you ceased to exist.
3. You travel to the past, and change an event. On trying to return you would discover the worm whole is now unstable, or has perhaps split into two inside.
4. You travel to the past, and change an event. At this point the worm hole would prevent you traveling back into it, as it is unstable, and is now “jumping around” to different future points, you may find odd things like hundreds of yourself popping out of the worm hole continuously, or one parallel universe may collapse into another. This may mean a given worm hole can only ever be used once as once something passes through one or both ends become unstable, being torn across the various parallel universes it now connects. As such this may mean all worm holes only work in one direction. (sounds like a black hole)

Returning to the backwards river analogy. It is like being in a boat, If you travel 5km down river to the past, and change something - it is like diverting the river to from a different tributary. When you float back up river 5km to the present, you would find that you are now 5km up the wrong tributary - and unable to get to the correct one.

1. You cannot travel at or faster than the speed of light.
2. As you go faster time as you perceive it outside slows down. To others you are speeding up. This is not just an illusion, time is actually being distorted. That is how time and reality works in the first place, if it didn't we would all be frozen in place.
3. Space and light can be distorted. Just because you cant travel at the speed of light, nothing stops you bending it, and cutting the corner.
4. If space is sufficiently distorted, you get the same effect as the opposite of traveling at the speed of light but without needing to move. This is known as the event horizon. Assuming you can escape it, this would allow travel to the future.
5. If by effect you travel faster than the speed of light in real space, it would allow you to travel into the past. Space folding can do this. Aka worm holes. If one side is in the past.
6. Traveling into the future is easier than traveling into the past. Any fool can do it.
7. Traveling into the past is difficult, because there is no feedback to a researcher, anything sent to the past ceases to exist in the current quantum universe. It may or may not be easy to travel back, but since you don't know what happened after you sent something - you cant add to our knowledge of it.