Time Travel discussion

http://imgur.com/p1ZMJrt

Aha! Another Redditor. :)

I also posted the link over on the movies discussion topic.

Mcgyver5 wrote: "http://imgur.com/p1ZMJrt"

Thanks, Mcgyver5, for pointing me to this time travel chart. Of course, the most interesting time travel plots are like chess moves that place the piece off the board but are still valid.

@hg47

Mcgyver5 wrote: "http://imgur.com/p1ZMJrt"

Awesome! Thanks for sharing that.

hehe, Army of Darkness made it to the chart ;)

good one

The three theories of time travel:

https://i.redd.it/113sh5f2bikz.jpg

I don't agree with the way it's worded, especially on the third, but still it was an interesting summary of types of time travel.

There is another type, I think, where "Time doesn't want to be changed" For example, the universe in the Doomsday Book makes it impossible to create paradoxes by landing the time traveler a safe distance in time and or space from anything that might cause a paradox. this may be a sub-type of the fixed timeline, though.

Mcgyver5 wrote: "There is another type, I think, where "Time doesn't want to be changed"

That would have been in the remake of The Time Machine. No matter how many times he goes back to change things, time restores itself to its original path. The change is just a little blip that gets corrected within a short time. Not sure how that would have handled killing one's own grandfather though. :)

A fourth type might be that the past cannot be changed, but the future can. But maybe that would just be variation of the multiverse view.

But my view is that any time travel backwards MUST change the future, unless one is in "viewing mode" only. Traveling back physically would cause your own (advanced?) microbes to mix with the atmosphere of the past, just by the act of breathing. I remember an article claiming this was proof that time travel doesn't exist -- any travel backward (or forward) would cause diseases to those without resistance (even the traveler), just as it occurred with Europeans traveling to the New World, and then returning.

The multiverse view also has the aspect of traveling between the alternate universes (aka inter-dimensional travel). As seen in Sliders or SG-1 (i.e. the "mirror"), or in Jeffrey Lord's book series about Richard Blade.

It always shocked me that SG-1 introduced the mirror. Why would they be so interested in galactic exploration, yet ignore dimensional exploration?

I've rambled enough... :(

11.22.63 is where the "Time doesn't want to be changed" quote comes from. It will “push back” if the character tries to make big or paradoxical changes. When Jake tries to call his own father, a car veers out of control and smashes into the phone booth. I think this is different than a fixed timeline.

Randy--LOVED your statement about "viewing mode only"..After I gave the "grandfather paradox" much consideration I thought I had found the way to deal with it...This is NOT a plug for my book, but I dealt with the paradox by having the Time Traveler enter into a ghostly existence where he could watch the past but not interact with it...Like a actor watching his performance in a film but unable to change his actions...