When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

[Michael Hopcroft]

Here's another odd pseudoscience query: if an individual is caught in a time paradox as a result of which they simulatenously both exist and do not exist, what happens to them? Do they just die? And what would someone who was accompanying them see in the instant the paradoxical effect took hold (the instant history was changed downtime)? The person disappearing or fading away? A flickering effect as the person slips in and out of reality? And would this be an instant effect or would it last for as long as the person's natural lifespan (i.e. until they would die naturally anyway)?

[Nyrath]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Well, this isn't what you want to hear, but the point of a paradox is that it is impossible. You cannot both exist and not exist, at least not without bending reality all out of shape.

 

The possiblity of creating a time paradox is one of the big arguments for the impossibility of time travel. Physicists have tried to salvage time travel by postulating some as-yet undiscovered law of physics which would prevent paradoxes from occuring. The four top candidates are Parallel Universes, Consistency Protection, Restricted Space-Time Areas, and Special Frames. The reason they go to this trouble is that apart from paradoxes, there is nothing in physics that forbids time travel.

 

But this probably does not answer your question. To answer your real question, I'd advise that you read a copy of GURPS: Time Travel to see how to deal with this in a role-playing game context.

[Rapier]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Here's another odd pseudoscience query: if an individual is caught in a time paradox as a result of which they simulatenously both exist and do not exist' date=' what happens to them? Do they just die? And what would someone who was accompanying them see in the instant the paradoxical effect took hold (the instant history was changed downtime)? The person disappearing or fading away? A flickering effect as the person slips in and out of reality? And would this be an instant effect or would it last for as long as the person's natural lifespan (i.e. until they would die naturally anyway)?[/quote']

Ah, this old chestnut. No one knows, and there are as many viewpoints as there are people. The best advice I can give you, is set in your chair for about 5 minutes. Shut off the TV, the stereo everything. Sit in total quiet, close your eyes and think about it. What do YOU think would happen. There you go.

 

This is one of those cases where you are the best judge.

 

Of course, having said all that I have used a number of these depending on the circumstance. A ripple has walked across reality and behind it is a changed landscape. People have faded out as the liklihood of them existing decreases. People have disappeared with a !POP!. People have suddenly sprouted full grown beards, changed custume colours from red to green. It all works and is all completely valid. Drop back 10 and PUNT!

[Metaphysician]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Another option: assuming it is possible to actually cause a paradox in your time travel system, have the effects be unpredictable. IOW, inducing a paradox might cause the persons involved to vanish from space-time, with it closing up around them so that nothing else changes. It might cause the individuals involved to spin out into some weird time-loop or parallel universe ( possibly in combination with the first ). It might cause some minor change to occur spontaneously, resulting in no real net change at all and paradox disrupted.

 

Or, it might cause an area for several parsecs around to become like the world of Rifts on steroids, with a completely chaotic space-time structure.

 

Naturally, there is *some* rhyme and reason behind what happens, and I'm sure the Elder/Extinct God-Like Aliens know it, but *you* don't.

[sinanju]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Here's another odd pseudoscience query: if an individual is caught in a time paradox as a result of which they simulatenously both exist and do not exist' date=' what happens to them? Do they just die? And what would someone who was accompanying them see in the instant the paradoxical effect took hold (the instant history was changed downtime)? The person disappearing or fading away? A flickering effect as the person slips in and out of reality? And would this be an instant effect or would it last for as long as the person's natural lifespan (i.e. until they would die naturally anyway)?[/quote']

 

Assuming, for the sake of argument that "an individual" means YOU...

 

Congratulations! You've crashed the universe. Blue Screen of Death appears on God's monitor. He curses and presses [CTRL][ALT][DEL] and reboots the universe and loads the backup.

 

If it happens again, God investigates, then opens a command line and types: DEL MICHAEL_HOPCROFT.EXE because that program is obviously more trouble than it's worth. Then he reboots. Again.

[Pfathai]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

One possibility is the occurence of what I call a "Chronal Ghosting."

 

Basically, when you cause a person or object's existence to be unlikely, but not impossible, their particles, in a phenomenon similar to quantum tunneling, spend part of their time not existing (or, more accurately, being wherever they "would" be), flickering at an immeasurably fast rate, but not all at once. The upshot of this is that if this causes the subject's density to fall below a certain threshold, the become immaterial (Desolidified), like that hologram guy from Quantum leap. In fact, I might just incorporate this into my space opera setting (which has extensive reality-manipulation technologies, the least of which being FTL and time travel)

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

One possibility is the occurence of what I call a "Chronal Ghosting."

 

Basically, when you cause a person or object's existence to be unlikely, but not impossible, their particles, in a phenomenon similar to quantum tunneling, spend part of their time not existing (or, more accurately, being wherever they "would" be), flickering at an immeasurably fast rate, but not all at once. The upshot of this is that if this causes the subject's density to fall below a certain threshold, the become immaterial (Desolidified), like that hologram guy from Quantum leap. In fact, I might just incorporate this into my space opera setting (which has extensive reality-manipulation technologies, the least of which being FTL and time travel)

This seems like a very gamable concept. If you see a friend start to turn into a "chronal ghost", you will natrurally want to take some sort of action to save them! And if the "ghost' can still interact with the world before fading away completely, will he realize something si up and possibly be able to rpovide hints as to how he might possibly be saved?

 

Another gameable concept related to time paradoixes is what i call "rememberers": a sub-set of the population in a paradoxical situation who still exist in the world after hisotry has changed without having been changed themselves! They remember the way the world was before hisotry was changed, and thus those around them might think them insane ("Hitler LOST? Are you NUTS?") Rememberers have great incentive to return the timeline to normal, and may be the only people who have a real clue that time travel exists besides the time travelers themselves 9because SOME effect must have caused hisotry to be different for them than it was for everybody else).

[Guest bblackmoor]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Here's another odd pseudoscience query: if an individual is caught in a time paradox as a result of which they simulatenously both exist and do not exist' date=' what happens to them?[/quote']

 

There are really only two ways to handle time travel.

 

1) Temporal Inertia - Nothing important changes. It might seem like things change -- you can kill Hitler, for example -- but the effect on the time stream is minimal.

 

The underlying assumption here is that there is one time stream.

 

2) Temporal Multiplexing - Anything can change, but it only effects people who are in the time when it changes. You can go back in time and kill your parents -- all the cool kids do, you know -- and when you come back to your "present", any evidence of your existence is gone. You never were. So why are you still here? Because you removed yourself from the time stream: if someone else had killed your parents, you'd be gone. But you weren't in the time stream when that change occurred, so you were not affected.

 

The underlying assumptions here are that there are nigh-infinite time streams, all existing simltaneously and instantaneously, and that it is merely human perception that creates the illusion of "causality". When you "travel" in time, you cease to be anchored to one stream. When you "change" something", you are actually shifting your existence to an alternate time stream.

 

I have always found time travel fascinating. Ironically, I nearly always hate time travel TV episodes and movies, because it's an excuse for the writers to be lazy.

[Guest WhammeWhamme]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Assuming, for the sake of argument that "an individual" means YOU...

 

Congratulations! You've crashed the universe. Blue Screen of Death appears on God's monitor. He curses and presses [CTRL][ALT][DEL] and reboots the universe and loads the backup.

 

If it happens again, God investigates, then opens a command line and types: DEL MICHAEL_HOPCROFT.EXE because that program is obviously more trouble than it's worth. Then he reboots. Again.

 

Actually, I like this theory.

 

Observable Facts:

Sometimes, when individuals travel back in time, they instead "cease to exist". They simply disintegrate. Curiously, this seems to happen mostly to those who double back on their own time line; those who travel into the past of (say) other worlds have no such problems, and those making brief trips are also generally safe.

 

The Truth:

If you would cause a Temporal Paradox, the Universe solves it in the simplest possible fashion. They simply delete you from existence at the moment you headed back in time. This includes anything you attempted to take with you.

Anything else you did on your jaunt through time... didn't happen.

 

And somewhere, a little extra energy gets added to a stellar object.

[AlHazred]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Somewhere I read a short story (might have been in Intergalactic Empires, book 1 of Asimov's Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction series) where a civilization's scientists finally invent time travel. Coincidentally, just as they make the breakthrough, their sun goes nova - the universe protecting itself from the irritation, like an oyster...

[Reneshat]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

I've always liked the concept that you can time travel all you want, but that has already been involved. You go back in time, but in the past you were there because you went back in time. This would say that free will and chaos are simply illusions though, seeing how if you go back in time, your future actions have been predetermined by the past. Infinite Muliverse is also a nice concept, but those are the only two concepts I consider feasible.

[Curufea]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

I'm of the "universe doesn't care where matter comes from" school of thought on time travel.

 

Where matter in the past/present/future is not connected to matter that travels in time outside of the laws of physics.

 

Going to a different time period is equivalent (timeline speaking) of going to a different parallel dimension, such that you can't affect your own past (you will be affecting the development of someone who could potentially have become you instead), and any changes made will affect the future.

 

Therefore - you can kill your own parents and still exist, and you can kill Hitler and change history.

 

Of course, it means that as soon as you time travel, you can never go home again. But with serious manipulation you could possibly create a near likeness to where you once lived.

[AlHazred]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Another gameable concept related to time paradoixes is what i call "rememberers": a sub-set of the population in a paradoxical situation who still exist in the world after hisotry has changed without having been changed themselves! They remember the way the world was before hisotry was changed' date=' and thus those around them might think them insane ("Hitler LOST? Are you NUTS?")[/quote']

IIRC, this has been used in some settings regarding the events surrounding the 1938 Mercury Theater War of the Worlds radio play.

[DocMan]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

I've always subscribed to the theory that time travelling creates a paradox immunity for the traveller. If I go back in time and kill Hitler, I know why I've done it, no one else does. If I go back in time and kill my grandfather before he met grandmother, I still exist because I started existing when I stepped back into the time stream. If I travel into the future and argue with my future self and he kills me, he ceases to exist and everyone wonders who killed this guy who looks remarkably like me except he can't be because he's too young.

 

Doc

[Fireg0lem]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Another option, this one with more psuedoscientific theory:

 

I go back in time, and do something that makes me not exist. A "ripple" travels through time and rewrites history from that point forward, taking into account my actions in the past, until it reaches the point where I time-traveled. If I no longer exist, then at that point I could not time-travel, so a second ripple goes backwards through time, and then erases me from the past. This creates a new time-ripple, this time going forwards, and having the same result.

 

Now, this would seem to create a neverending loop, but...use the idea that events are not predestined, that at a basic level the universe is random. So every time a ripple rewrites history, it will do so in a slightly different way. Since the time-ripple takes no time, this will happen an infinite number of times between ticks of the clock - until eventually a reality appears that resolves the problem. What this translates to is that, if someone creates something that would result in a paradox, history rewrites itself into a likely form that would prevent the paradox - no matter how bizarre it might be - and it always was that way from a temporal perspective.

 

For example, I build a time machine and go back in time and kill my grandfather. As soon as I do this, a time-loop builds and rewrites history. Now, my family changes between ticks of the clock one of the tiny handful of possible matches that could possibly produce someone who would be physically identical to me, and I went back in time and killed some random person because I'm also psychotic.

[Curufea]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

I dislike the idea of ripples, or other gradual changes to a time stream.

 

Exactly how fast do you measure changes in time? It's nonsensicle - you can't stand outside of time to observe how long time takes to change.

[Metaphysician]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Its very simple. Each ripple takes as much time as the sound "Quack. Quack."

 

:-D

[Curufea]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

I always find it amusing in movie and TV series with time travel, where Party A is in Time Period B and Party C is in Time Period D, and for some strange reason they are in a rush to get McGuffin X to do something or other, or be in a certain place before it's too late for those Party A folk back in Time Period B.

If you have a time travel device, especially one that takes X amount of time to recharge before being used, just remember to change the settings for a different time period.

Geez.

 

I bet you the writers aren't roleplayers.

[Guest Worldmaker]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Somewhere I read a short story (might have been in Intergalactic Empires' date=' book 1 of Asimov's Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction series) where a civilization's scientists finally invent time travel. Coincidentally, just as they make the breakthrough, their sun goes nova - the universe protecting itself from the irritation, like an oyster...[/quote']

 

 

That's a story by Larry Niven. Cannot for the life of me remember the title.

[Guest Worldmaker]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Here's another odd pseudoscience query: if an individual is caught in a time paradox as a result of which they simulatenously both exist and do not exist' date=' what happens to them? Do they just die? And what would someone who was accompanying them see in the instant the paradoxical effect took hold (the instant history was changed downtime)? The person disappearing or fading away? A flickering effect as the person slips in and out of reality? And would this be an instant effect or would it last for as long as the person's natural lifespan (i.e. until they would die naturally anyway)?[/quote']

 

 

I've always used the "conservation of matter" theory. Not scientific, but it works for me. To whit:

 

I go back in time and murder my father before he met my mother, thus preventing my birth and thus (at leas it is supposed) my ability to go back and prevent my own birth. But (and here's where the conservation of matter comes in) I, the now-orphan-in-time, will actually still exist, because my physical state is present prior to the discontinuity.

 

All my memories are now false ones, since I remember my parents and my brothers (who, since I am the oldest son, got erased from existence... their fault for not bothering to take the trip back with me.)

 

Its unscientific, and not too intuitive, but it sure solves a bunch of problems.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

That's a story by Larry Niven. Cannot for the life of me remember the title.

Hmmm...it wasn't "Inconstant Moon", was it? I know the one you mean, but it's been a long time since I read it...

[Guest Worldmaker]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Hmmm...it wasn't "Inconstant Moon"' date=' was it? I know the one you mean, but it's been a [i']long[/i] time since I read it...

 

 

No, Inconstant Moon is one one where the main characters spend the night celebrating their last night on earth, because the moon's been getting brighter and brighter and they have realized what would cause that.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

No' date=' Inconstant Moon is one one where the main characters spend the night celebrating their last night on earth, because the moon's been getting brighter and brighter and they have realized what would cause that.[/quote']

Nuts. Well, back to the ol' electronic brain... [/Marvin the Martian]

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

Okay, there's one I can think of by him that has a name that sounds like a serious paper instead of a piece of fiction, and I can't remember if it is a serious paper or a piece of fiction:

 

"Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation"

 

Could that be it?

 

Edit: Despite the chaos that is my apartment since the move, I managed to find Convergant Series and verify it. Yes, "Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation" is indeed the short 4-page story in which this happens.

 

[austenandrews]

Re: When caught in a time paradox, what happens?

 

I once had a setup involving divergent timelines, with "time tunnels" passing between them. The endpoints of the tunnels moved through each timeline at the normal temporal rate for that timeline (justifying the "race against time in different time periods" business that Curufea doesn't like). Changing the past would create a divergent timeline, from which there may or may not be an "escape tunnel." It was also possible that a slightly-divergent timeline could be made to re-converge, thus allowing time travelers a method of escape from a divergent timeline with no tunnel. Conversely, if time travelers sought out paradox on a larger scale, the entire timeline could become unstable and eventually collapse into quantum nothingness (not without some warning on the PCs' handy temporal sensor and an ensuing escape adventure). All of which, of course, was just another variation on the usual handwaving time travel mumbo-jumbo. But it seemed playable enough.

 

A more unusual idea is to exploit quantum uncertainty retroactively. We know quantum uncertainty theoretically produces divergent futures. Technically the same effect applies in the other direction, giving us convergent pasts. This is odd because it produces a causality condition opposite from the norm. The usual wisdom is that the farther back in time you go, the more a timeline disruption is magnified, and thus the greater the chance of paradox. With convergent pasts, though, the farther back you go the more freedom you have, because the universe has more opportunity to correct a possible paradox before the point of convergence arrives.