Showing posts with label Timelines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Timelines. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Completely Conjecture: Timelines.
Warning, lots of geometry terminology inside.
Also interesting to look at: [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjsgoXvnStY ]
There's been lots of science fiction written about the subject of time- something which we perceive to be linear and irreversible.
I have several questions, though:
If time is linear, could we wrap this line around another dimension and make it circular? Everything would repeat, ultimately- and the trick would be creating a chord across the timeline and then travelling across it.
If that's not possible, than bringing two points that are not adjacent to one-another close enough together through some sort of compression would work too, right?
If we can't work silly tricks on time, how can we manipulate it, then?
We operate in a three-dimensional cross-section of the four-dimensional timeline which is theoretically a part of the fifth-dimensional plane of our universe which is a cross-section of the sixth-dimensional volume that encompasses the possible universes that our universe could've been....
That's heavy.
The trick, then, would be something that can achieve interaction (or perhaps observation only, if our actions can change the "direction" our line travels in the "plane") on a dimensional scale >4. What I mean by that is something that affects not only time (and our perception of it) but also something that affects probability and what is "possible".
If you want to be a hoss about this, then you need to go one dimension further and utilize something that manipulates (with extreme accuracy and precision) the starting conditions of the universe (or our position on whatever axes you might choose to define that dimension in).
This is complex.
Furthermore, is this possible within the constraints of our peasant-tier 3-dimensional selves?
How would one go about constructing something that acts on more dimensions than it was built in?
Would it be possible to manipulate higher dimensions from our currently observable one?
If we make choices that influence what timeline we participate in (assuming free will is correctly abstracted and not "simple electro-chemical reactions"), how would one go about "crossing" between higher dimensions (or would they be other timelines?) and/or collapsing them into something observable?
There's another idea posed by Michael Crichton's Timeline, which suggests something like an infinite number of universes are intertwined in a rather large and tortuous multiverse which encompasses all of possibility. Actions in one universe affect the outcome of another, which affects the outcome of another, and so forth.
In one case, traveling laterally across the multiversial "plane" permits time travel in the sense that if a parallel universe started 10 years later and followed the exact same developmental path, you could cross to the same "absolute" point in time and be ten years "behind" relative to "your" time.
More scare-quotes, as usual. Food for thought.
What is our universe?
What is "time"? Space-time?
Would you "time-travel", given the opportunity?
Also interesting to look at: [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjsgoXvnStY ]
There's been lots of science fiction written about the subject of time- something which we perceive to be linear and irreversible.
I have several questions, though:
If time is linear, could we wrap this line around another dimension and make it circular? Everything would repeat, ultimately- and the trick would be creating a chord across the timeline and then travelling across it.
If that's not possible, than bringing two points that are not adjacent to one-another close enough together through some sort of compression would work too, right?
If we can't work silly tricks on time, how can we manipulate it, then?
We operate in a three-dimensional cross-section of the four-dimensional timeline which is theoretically a part of the fifth-dimensional plane of our universe which is a cross-section of the sixth-dimensional volume that encompasses the possible universes that our universe could've been....
That's heavy.
The trick, then, would be something that can achieve interaction (or perhaps observation only, if our actions can change the "direction" our line travels in the "plane") on a dimensional scale >4. What I mean by that is something that affects not only time (and our perception of it) but also something that affects probability and what is "possible".
If you want to be a hoss about this, then you need to go one dimension further and utilize something that manipulates (with extreme accuracy and precision) the starting conditions of the universe (or our position on whatever axes you might choose to define that dimension in).
This is complex.
Furthermore, is this possible within the constraints of our peasant-tier 3-dimensional selves?
How would one go about constructing something that acts on more dimensions than it was built in?
Would it be possible to manipulate higher dimensions from our currently observable one?
If we make choices that influence what timeline we participate in (assuming free will is correctly abstracted and not "simple electro-chemical reactions"), how would one go about "crossing" between higher dimensions (or would they be other timelines?) and/or collapsing them into something observable?
There's another idea posed by Michael Crichton's Timeline, which suggests something like an infinite number of universes are intertwined in a rather large and tortuous multiverse which encompasses all of possibility. Actions in one universe affect the outcome of another, which affects the outcome of another, and so forth.
In one case, traveling laterally across the multiversial "plane" permits time travel in the sense that if a parallel universe started 10 years later and followed the exact same developmental path, you could cross to the same "absolute" point in time and be ten years "behind" relative to "your" time.
More scare-quotes, as usual. Food for thought.
What is our universe?
What is "time"? Space-time?
Would you "time-travel", given the opportunity?
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