this is why time travel stories always make my head hurt...

[ratcreature]

I've been thinking about the ST:AOS timeline. Presumably it is like the TOS reality until the Kelvin is destroyed by Nero. But when I thought about that, how do the timetravel events work that have various future crews (from the regular timeline) interact with the past pre-split? Like how did the events of Star Trek: First Contact happen in the AOS reality? I mean, which version of the future characters have now ended up in the past? Or am I approaching this wrong? This makes my head hurt.

Comments

[soshoni.livejournal.com]

That's a... really interesting question. I hadn't even thought about that.

I found your journal because you made a really insightful comment about the reasoning for Spock's marooning Kirk in a thread and I wanted to get to know you better.

Here's my take on it.

So what was originally hurting my brain over this one is the fact that I was viewing the timeline as a fork. Like so. With the red dot being the point in TNG with First Contact and the grey path being their trip back. Which would mean that once events reach that point in the alternate timeline, they'd go back to the same point and brains would explode.

(http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc267/Soshoni/mybrainisbroke/?action=view&current=first.jpg)

But, if instead of viewing it as a fork, but as the creation of a *parallel* timeline, brains don't have to hurt.

(http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc267/Soshoni/mybrainisbroke/?action=view&current=second.jpg)

Thus, when events finally do reach that point in the alternate timeline, if they do go back, the timeline simply exists for them, like with Schrodinger's cat it doesn't matter until that point. If things change enough in the new timeline that they don't have to, well, it stays like the above one. But if they do, then we have this.

(http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc267/Soshoni/mybrainisbroke/?action=view&current=third.jpg)


Yes? No? Maybe?

[ratcreature]

But wouldn't in your model timetravel changes mean a split with a creation of a past and a future as a whole for all timetravel? Would something like the grey path even exist?

[soshoni.livejournal.com]

For a moment I got all pissy with the website for not e-mailing me that you'd replied and then realized of course it wouldn't, because I'm not actually *on* DW, lol.

So, in my models, time travel changes only result in the creation of a parallel timeline if significant changes are made, whereas in First Contact, the point was that they prevented those changes from being made, preventing the creation of an alternate timeline. They preserved the timeline, keeping that last model and the grey line accurate.

Now, if they hadn't prevented the changes, we'd have something that ended up looking like this. In the terminal timelines, there are no red dots because there was no human civilization to make the attempt at time travel.

(http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc267/Soshoni/mybrainisbroke/?action=view&current=fourth.jpg)

Yeah?

[ratcreature]

I think my problem lies with that I just can't imagine how something like "significant change" would be quantifiable in a way that would work within whatever scientific equations would govern the timetravel, and how/when the extra past would manifest if it doesn't with the timetravel event somehow splitting the universe, but only once "ordinary" actions happen that will have huge consequences down the line. I guess for any of this to make sense I'd need some kind of multidimensional brain or something, LOL.

BTW, with an OpenID account you get notification emails if you want to if you confirm an email address for the account (obviously if there's no email associated nothing can be sent). At least when I didn't have a DW account yet and commented with OpenID I still got mail.

[soshoni.livejournal.com]

Brilliant, thanks for the heads up on the notifications deal.

Sorry I couldn't help make it make sense! Then again, if some random person with MS Paint and internet access could make time travel make sense, we'd probably be living in a much more interesting world.

Hope I didn't confuse you too much more with the extra past bit. My whole deal with the extra past not existing before the time travel, it very well might exist before the time travel, but it's not interacted with until the second time travel, so it's existence can't be 'proved' one way or another.

Anyways, you might see me pop up around your journal every once in a while in the future if you don't mind. And I hope your rat gets better and that it's not anything serious!

[ratcreature]

I don't think anything could have made me more confused than before. The visualizations certainly help, the other idea with an image to explain things I've seen is that timetravel wouldn't create forks nor entirely different realities, but changes sort of "ripple" in all time directions, altering everything, or if the timetravel manages to be of the internally consistent kind the ripples would be there but the actions cancel each other out like in an interference pattern or something like that, so that the future and past away from the incidents wasn't changed.

You are very welcome to check my journal. And thanks for the well wishes for my rat. I'm just about to go drop him off with the vet for the operation, so I hope he'll get through that okay.

[soshoni.livejournal.com]

Just thought of this, but technically I should have a red dot symbolizing Nero and a grey path to the 'beginning' of the AOS continuity. Just kinda pretend it's there.