Interesting time-travel site

D

Dman176

Guest
Last night, I was fooling around on google and found an interesting site:

www.mjyoung.net/time/index.htm

It discusses numerous problems that have arisen in time-travel movies: the "grandfather" paradox, causality loops, the "uncaused" cause (i.e. sending an object back in time to someone in the past, who in turn gives that same object to the person who sent it into the past), "fixed" timelines, etc. I'm assuming the person who made up this site is an author.

While it does not mention Quantum Leap per se, it analyzes almost every major time-travel movie in extreme detail: the Terminator movies, Back to the Future, Frequency, Millennium, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, 12 Monkeys, and many others.

Now, I thought I understood time-travel fairly well; in fact, I seem to have a somewhat weird comprehension of the subject that comes very easily to me... This person has looked over EVERY aspect of time-travel with a fine-tooth comb, and in many cases, has OVER-analyzed some aspects, in my opinion. Perfect example: the Bill & Ted movies obviously follow the "fixed timeline" theory, meaning that no matter what the time-traveler does, it will not create a paradox because the trip has ALREADY happened; the webmaster analyzes the two movies under the assumption that history occurred differently the "first" time around. The point with a fixed timeline is that it ALWAYS plays out exactly the same way each and every time ? if someone is going to eventually travel back to, let's say 1963, and try to stop the JFK assassination, then it has already happened. The time-traveler was either destined to fail, or inadvertantly caused the very event he/she was trying to change.

The person who made this site would probably make a good argument that the world of Quantum Leap would destroy the universe every time Sam leaps: whenever Sam changes history, he is in effect negating the need for his "past" self to leap back there and change it in the first place. If you stop and really think about it for a minute, it's true if you look at it from that perspective: theoretically speaking, after the changes made in "Mirror Image," the Al Calavicci who's native to the "post-MI" timeline would no longer try to get Sam to talk to Beth during "M.I.A." because "his" history doesn't need to be changed. This would result in an "infinity loop," with history being changed and unchanged, and the cycle repeating itself ad infinitum... in fact, assuming Sam's journey eventually came to an end, the Sam Beckett of the "final" timeline would never even need to step into the Accelerator at all, because there'd be no history to change, thereby undoing all he's done... anyone got a headache yet? :p (Hmm, didn't I already cover this in my "Second Genesis" story?) ;)

Overall, I would recommend everyone to check this site out though... it's very intriguing and poses some insightful quandaries about time-travel and why a lot of stories don't work logically. I'm even contemplating e-mailing this person with MY analysis of the Back to the Future trilogy. I have a much simpler explanation to explain why, for example, when 1985-Doc is reunited with Marty in 1885, he doesn't remember learning of his "future" death in 1955 when he was younger. Just give me a chalkboard and a bunch of charts, and I could map it all out for you, with Timeline A, Timeline B-1, B-2, etc.! ;)


Hmm, perhaps it time I tried writing my "simple" time-travel original story...
 
You know...every time I try to analyze the concept of time-travel, I go through the same process you just went through in your post, Damon, with the "infinity loop" idea. My mind doesn't seem to let me comprehend a given example past a certain point because I get to a point where I become too confused and can't logically figure it out anymore, i.e. a person changing something in the past therefore negating the need for them to go back into the past in the first place and possibly negating the entire given situation. I'm going to have a field day with this site, thanks Damon! And I mean that in a non-sarcastic way :p .
 
It looks like you're doing some time travelling yourself, Chris! :b (I'm talking about your devling into the past discussions, of course. :lol )

I agree, the inifinity paradox is complicated, which is why I choose to subscribe to the "dried-up river" notion that I believe I have mentioned at one time or another somewhere on the site.

With this theory, more applicable to Sam's situation, despite the fact that Sam is from the "original" timeline (the one where Donna's father dies in Viet Nam and doesn't marry Sam, the one where Jackie Kennedy dies along with her husband, etc.), he will continue to leap because he is no longer in his original history. This is why even if, say, Al was killed by something Sam did, he would continue leaping but would no longer have contact with Al at the Project until he somehow undoes Al's death (case and point: "A Leap for Lisa").

I think that's the one that makes the most sense for QL, but it can also be applied to the Trek series when they have constant time-travel paradoxes.

... Mike. ^_^