Reckonings & Reminiscences

Being tagged

I.Abstract

After watching/reading lots of stuff about time travel, one wonders why is it so complicated to come up with a theory which explains all the phenomenon shown. In this paper, I propose an explanation which suits all the cases that were observed till date, TimePlane.

II.Introduction

Time travel started fascinating mankind in the 19th century, when suddenly the heads of the states realized that they can no more space travel on earth and colonize. At this point of time, most of the big powers, set up clandestine organizations to investigate the possibilities of time travel in order to attain world dominance. Later that century, Henry Gwells, a particle theory physicist in Her Majesty’s secret service, submitted his work to their organization, the name of which is still unknown. The then Queen Victoria called off the research as it was realized that nothing can be done by traveling in time and it was way too much expensive for The British at that time to even continue for further results. After this the physicist published his works, with some changes, as sci-fi novels under the false name Herbert George Wells and he became famous[1]. Hundred years later, a diary was found by Simon Wells the great-grandson of H.G.Wells. It’s believed to have the details of an experiment which made the Queen abort the research hundred years ago. Though the diary mysteriously disappeared shortly afterwards, Simon Wells made a movie based on the original book by his great-grandfather with the an allusion to that experiment.

The protagonist fails to save his love-interest even though he travels back in time and gets her away from the place where she died earlier (This was not there in the original book). This concludes that whatever one does, the time line fixes things automatically, which makes time travel useless[2]. But the real life incidents of Marty McFly, a resident of Hill Valley, California in 1985 conclude that one can actually change things around by time traveling[3]. In 1999, by communicating through time, John Sullivan actually saved his father Frank Sullivan and many other people[4]. Thanks to John Connor, we postponed the judgment day twice (In movies, the script was compromised, in order to satisfy the studios and fans as it was already too late for a sequel)[5].

To explain all this, I propose a concept called TimePlane

III. TimePlane

When comes to time, everybody thinks of it as a straight line extending to infinity on both sides. It is, in fact, an infinite plane. The, so called, TimeLine is just one of the infinite possible lines on a plane. From left to right on a plane, the time index extends from -inf to +inf. From bottom to top, ‘possibility’ index extends from -inf to inf. It is clear that the smallest possible difference in what would have happened would ultimately effect the grand scheme of things[6]. So, literally, at any point of time, we have infinite possible ways for the entire world to behave. Smaller the distance between two ‘possibilities’ on the graph, more identical the two worlds are.

For the sake of explanation, assume that the initial TimeLine is parallel to the time axis. When a person changes something in time, then from that point of ‘time-possibility’ the TimeLine deviates from the original one at an angle. So, if in the new TimeLine one looks at the history, they see along the dotted line in the graph shown below and hence the past is changed and so does the future. And the world follows this red line and any more tampering, rotation takes place at that point. All TimeLines, except those that are parallel to ‘possibility’ axis are possible. The world moves at a rate of 1 second per second along horizontal time-axis irrespective of the TimeLine. In other words, the horizontal component of movement of world is 1 second per second towards right.

The amount of deviation depends on how much tampered, what was tampered etc,. The smaller the angle of deviation, the identical the two worlds are and vice versa.

From this we can conclude that, the experiment Mr. Gwells performed around hundred years ago didn’t deviate the TimeLine much which made the two worlds look alike (including the death of protagonist’s love interest). In[3], the “tamperments” were drastic enough for worlds to change dramatically. In [4], there was a gradual change in angle of deviation at several points of TimePlane.

Some people’s time traveling weren’t that fruitful. Like Miss Hermione Granger[7]. In the TimeLine the world was going at that point, the incidents were such that the intervention of future selves is needed. If she hadn’t traveled back with Mr. Harry Potter, then the actual change would have occurred. They traveled in order not to change the TimeLine.

In ATF agent Doug Carlin’s case[8], the TimeLine required him to travel back and do somethings in order not to change it. But he chose differently and changed the TimeLine which ultimately killed himself and saved hundreds of lives.

IV. Conclusion & Future work

Recently, Hiro Nakamura and Peter Petrelli[9] are trying very hard to make this world a better place to live. From their results we can investigate the possibility of TimeCurve instead of just TimeLine.

V. References

1. Unknown British Secret Agency Website.
2. H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine”
3. Steven Spielberg’s “Back to the Future”
4. Gregory Hoblit’s “Frequency”
5. James Cameroon’s “The Terminator”
6. Butterfly Effect, the phenomenon.
7. J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter”
8. Tony Scott’s “Deja Vu”
9. Tim Kring’s “Heroes”