Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Time

I have been wanting to share my thoughts about time travel.  I know that it is, as it stands now, impossible.  I am going to ignore that fact.  I do not even want to go near the science and math required to understand why that is so.

What I want to share with you is how I think time travel effects time; history, future, present, and such. I have included some images, (that I have drawn myself, so be kind) that should help you understand my ideas.  I recognize there are probably flaws in my logic.  Should you find any, post a comment, and then I will think on it, and get back to you.

First we need to understand how time works.  If there has been no time travel,  it is constant, and never ending in either direction.

Think of an endless line of ants.  (Weather or not ants really walk in a line I do not know, but lets pretend.)  Now, unfortunately, this line needs a "lead" ant to make sense, but try to remember, really there is no beginning.

In this idea of ants, the "lead" ant chooses to go somewhere, and all the other ants follow blindly.  If the lead ant runs into an obstacle, the other ants will also run into that obstacle.  The lead ant makes his choice; around, over, under, and the like.  The other ants follow.

Got it? Good.  Now lets turn every ant into a moment in time.  This moment is as small a measure of time imaginable.  In the present moment, "we" (everyone, everything, everywhere) is doing the exact same thing that was done by the "we" that is one moment in front of us.  And the "we" a moment behind us will do exactly what "we" have done this moment.

So IF we could time travel, and just observe, not interfere (ignore the fact that even looking interferes) we would see exactly the same thing happen in every moment we look upon.  Just like every ant that has to go around that rock, every moment has to pass through, or already has passed through, your birth, and your death.   There are infinite moments  in both directions and the exact same things will happen for each moment, no matter how far away they are on this line.

For instance, take ant A.  He has already went around that rock.  B just finished going around the rock.  C is half way done with the rock.  D is just starting to go around the rock.  And E has yet to even see the rock, but will go around it eventually.

Now lets look at moments.  A is long after your death.  B is your death.  C is your mid-life crisis. D is your birth.  And E is long before your birth.  A has been in every position on this line, and E will go through all those positions as well.

I hope you got that, because now we are moving on.  Lets look at what time travel does to this model.  Lets say the ants are walking on a stick.

Some one comes along and moves one end of the stick.  The ant just on the end of that stick is going to be the new "lead" ant for all the ants behind him. There is no way for him to know how to get back to where he should be, so he starts his own line of ant and leads them forever.

Lets turn the ants back into moments.  The end of the stick represents a time traveler, and either on purpose, or by accident, he changed something.  The time traveler did so during the first moment when it was at the tip of the stick.  The first 7 moments are the same, unchanged.  The moments on the stick and the ones behind are also unchanged, but have different futures in store for them.  The new "lead" is now in new territory.  Some, but not all, the events happening in that moments are new, never before experienced events.

Now, the stick could be moved back to where is was, and all but the two will be back to "normal."  But for those moments not in the line, things will always be different.  Time has been changed for those moments.  Time can be changed at any moment, resulting in altered realities.  Time can be altered in an already altered timeline. The result would be many different timelines, all chopped up.  And if you could draw them like I have here.  Then squish them back to one line, there would be no gaps, and no overlap.  It would be one continuous line.

This is a very simple model. Perhaps I will expand on it later in another post. Obviously there are lots of things that could come up to change how this works.  If you have any questions about how this model works, or if you find holes in it, let me know, I would like nothing more than to perfect this model about time.

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