Initial/Older study of Time Travel [Present]

This post is the older version of Time Travel [Present]. I needed to improve and update the whole thing but I didn't want to delete the feedback or the post. I created a newer and more up to date post of this topic but I'm keeping this post on blogger so people can see the development.

As this research is into Time Travel I thought I would first talk about some of the ideas and theories behind the subject, as well as paradoxes. I shall first begin with the different idea’s and rules about Time Travel as it will make explaining paradoxes a bit easier.

-:Introduction to Time Travel:-

 There are lots of theories and examples of Time travel. One of the first ones is a flexible time line that can be re-written. The most popular example of this is the “Back to the Future” films. In these films the character, Marty McFly, ends up going back in time by accident and interfering in his mum and dad first meeting. This means that they never fall in love, get married and have kids. In other words, Marty and his siblings would never exist if he went back into his own time (thus erasing himself from time). In the second film he ends up having to go back to the same era and time again to stop a new alternative future from happening. He had already been to this era before though in the first film so has to avoid both himself and his parents; if he didn’t he would end up creating a paradox that could rip a hole in the space-time continuum.

Another idea is a single fixed time line that can’t be altered. A popular example of this would be “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”. In the film the character Hermione has the ability to turn back time with a “Time turner”. After Harry’s godfather, Sirius Black gets captured and the hippogriff Buck Beak gets executed they go back in time to fix these. They can’t run into their past self’s or let anyone else see them. They are able to save Buck Beak by dragging him away while their past self’s have left Hagrid’s hut but the Minster and Executioner have seen the bird. They then use Buck Beak to fly to the top tower and save Sirius after he has been captured. Thus the original time line was never really altered but the outcomes of the events had changed.

With Time Travel thought you have to be very careful, otherwise you can create a paradox. I shall use “Back to the Future” again as this has a great example in it. Marty McFly and the Doc end up going to the future to help Marty’s kids. In the process though Marty finds a Sports Almanac, which has all the results of all the sporting events in Marty’s original time period (1985). He ends up buying it so he can use it to be rich. The Doc explains that he can’t take it back, if he did and used it to bet he’d have changed the future they were in. He throws it away and tells him to never do that again. A rival character from the past though, Biff, grabs the book and uses the Delorean to travel back to the past to give it to his younger self (Biff is so old though that the younger Biff doesn’t recognise him so he doesn’t create a paradox). When Marty and the Doc go back into the past (or their original time) they have entered an alternative 1985, which is the result of what happened when Biff got the Sports Almanac and become the richest man in the world. They then had to travel to the past to stop young Biff getting the book so they would end up back into the original 1985.

Doc uses this blackboard to explain how Biff came from the future to alter the past, creating an alternative 1985 to the original they previously lived in.

-:Worm Holes:-

One of the ways that we could travel through time is by Wormholes. Wormholes were first a solution of Einstein's equations that he created back in 1915. The theory he created was "General Relativity", in this theory Einstein explains how the space-time can actually be curved by the influence of matter. This theory is very popular and is used to explain my different things in everyday life, like the orbiter of the planets or why when your travelling in a car it feels like your not moving at all. 

Wormholes are a tube like shape that connects one part of space-time to another which is simply through the curvature of space. This idea has ben put into several Science Fiction stories to explain how they travel through large distances in such a small amount of time. The idea behind wormholes as an scientific idea are rather unstable. Einstein's first theory has been proven very unstable. Physicist were able to confirm in the 1960's that not even a ray of light could pass through  the wormhole entirely before it collapsed. 

[http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/04/30/article-1269288-095FBC16000005DC-551_634x447_popup.jpg]

Scientists have still not been able to find out whether wormholes could in fact exist, they are still merely solutions to an idea. They have worked out that travelling forward in time is possible. This is possible if your able to travel a the speed of light, once you reach this speed light moves slower and there for time moves slower too. If the construction of wormholes is actually a reality then you would have to create one that was big enough for a human to pass through but also un-able to collapse. Although to make sure the tunnel wouldn't collapse you would have to construct it from a negative mass, although that would mean creating it from particles that have a negative mass (which don't exist). Stephen Hawking discovered that if you did create a wormhole big enough you would have the problem of light, particles and radiation passing through it. The more radiation that leaked through the more it would damage the wormhole and it would eventually collapse.


-:Paradoxes:-

If you have the idea of Time Travel then you unfortuently will have paradoxes. A paradox is a string of events which end up contradicting themselves. Here is a list of a few that have been developed through the writing of science fictions;

-:Grandfather Paradox:- 

This is probably the most popular and most well know paradox associated with Time Travel. The idea behind it is that if you were able to create a Time machine and went back into the past and ended up killing your own Grandfather. This would mean that the time traveller’s Grandmother would have never have had the time traveller’s father and in the end would have never had the time traveller. This would mean that he would have Time Traveller had just destroyed his own existent as well as the Time Machine that he had created. This could mean they suddenly evaporate from existence or they fade slowly into nothing.

“Why pick on grandfather? It seems that the only way to prove that time travel is impossible is to cite a case of killing one’s own grandfather. This incessant murdering of harmless ancestors must stop. Let’s see some wide-awake fan make up some other method of disproving the theory.”

[1933 letter to Astounding Stories, as quoted in Nahin’s Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction ]

-:Bootstrap paradox:-

This is another paradox that has been presented in Science fiction. The idea is that if a Time Traveller went into the future and saw a patent, then went back into the past and submitted the patient who originally created the patent in the first place? This is a very unusual paradox as it breaks the law of that the patent had to be created at some point. This quote gives a good idea on how the paradox works;

“It is occasionally possible to trick someone else into paying for your lunch, but at some point every lunch has to be paid for.”
[http://timeandquantummechanics.com/2009/12/15/paradox-noise/#more-49]

This paradox was first created by Robert Heinlein in his book “The Door into Summer”, it was the main theme for his book. The story is that Dan Davis (the main character) is tricked by his business partner and fiancée into working into animation for 30 years. He then wakes up in the future and has the ability to go back into the past to get his revenge!

-:Zombie Paradox:-

This is another paradox which was created by Robert Heinlein, this time in his short story "All You Zombies".He is a quote from a site summing up the story;

"A baby girl is mysteriously dropped off at an orphanage in Cleveland in 1945. "Jane" grows up lonely and dejected, not knowing who her parents are, until one day in 1963 she is strangely attracted to a drifter. She falls in love with him. But just when things are finally looking up for Jane, a series of disasters strike. First, she becomes pregnant by the drifter, who then disappears. Second, during the complicated delivery, doctors find that Jane has both sets of sex organs, and to save her life, they are forced to surgically convert "her" to a "him." Finally, a mysterious stranger kidnaps her baby from the delivery room.

Reeling from these disasters, rejected by society, scorned by fate, "he" becomes a drunkard and drifter. Not only has Jane lost her parents and her lover, but he has lost his only child as well. Years later, in 1970, he stumbles into a lonely bar, called Pop's Place, and spills out his pathetic story to an elderly bartender. The sympathetic bartender offers the drifter the chance to avenge the stranger who left her pregnant and abandoned, on the condition that he join the "time travelers corps." Both of them enter a time machine, and the bartender drops off the drifter in 1963. The drifter is strangely attracted to a young orphan woman, who subsequently becomes pregnant.

The bartender then goes forward 9 months, kidnaps the baby girl from the hospital, and drops off the baby in an orphanage back in 1945. Then the bartender drops off the thoroughly confused drifter in 1985, to enlist in the time travelers corps. The drifter eventually gets his life together, becomes a respected and elderly member of the time travelers corps, and then disguises himself as a bartender and has his most difficult mission: a date with destiny, meeting a certain drifter at Pop's Place in 1970."

[http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/grandfather_paradox.html] 

[http://timeandquantummechanics.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/all-you-zombies-205x300.jpg]

This story brings up a lot of questions for the reader, such as who were Jane's Mother and Father? Who is her daughter? Who is the drifter and bartender? In the end the answer is that it was all Jane in the end. This paradox really can make your head spin, especially when you try to unravel the idea behind it all. The author did a great job avoiding all the plot holes in the story which would have made the paradox void.

For me the paradox makes sense, right up until the baby being Jane as well. You could argue that the baby isn't Jane's anymore as she has to change into a man but it's still rather confusing. This really contradicts the "Grandfather paradox" as Jane has ended up become all her family relative, her own lover and even the bartender she met.

-:Predestination Paradox:-

 The final paradox I’m going to talk about is the Predestination paradox. This one is quite like the Zombie paradox but, for me, one of the most interesting paradoxes. This paradox is probably the most controversial as it takes the control of someone’s life out of their hands and places it with some sort of higher power, maybe destiny or fate.

I shall create an example to explain this paradox. Let’s say in the past a friend died in a car crash and you end up gaining the power to travel back into the past. You then decide to go to the day that your friend died and try to save them. In this paradox it has ended up that you were originally at fault for causing your friends death, maybe by driving the car that killed them yourself or distracting the driver and they ended up hitting your friend. 

This presents the idea that time is indeed in some sort of loop, no matter how many times you went into the past to save your friend they would always end up dying. If this was actually possible in real life then it might create a “casual loop” or a “closed time loop”, which unfortunately the time traveller would be stuck in it forever. This idea can scare people as it places the idea that they have no control over their own lives at all, that their whole lives have been written and they can’t be changed.

I would like to believe that Time Travel to exist but after this research I don't think we will have any proof for a long time of it'd being a scientific fact. This is mainly due to the fact that all this research has proved that Time Travel is possible future wise, but going into the past is a lot trickier. Plus all the ideas of wormholes and paradoxes make anyone from actually coming from the future to tell us about it not only dangerous but very, very tricky. I do like to believe though that people in the future have already conquered the science behind time travel and are using it to improve man-kind. 

I guess this throws up more questions in its self though. If Science fictions stories have taught me anything is that there is always someone using it for evil intensions. Plus after the "Predestination Paradox" research it's really got me thinking to whether we have any control over our lives at all. I've always liked to believe that if I work hard and choose the choices best for me in life that I can change its out-come. In the end though what if I can't? What if my life is already written out for me and I can't change it? This idea does scare me but it is a rather interesting idea. It's a battle between Free-Will and Fate! I think I shall try and research into this idea more next as it could turn out a lot of interesting results.

-:ALT1997, We are not Time Travellers:-
Alex Varanese is a freelance Graphic Designer from San Franisco, California in America. He's created designs for big companys such as Nike and Playboy. He's also a fan of the fil trilogy "Back to the Future" as his profile picture on his website is him dressed as the main character, Marty McFly. Enough about the designer though, I want to talk about some work he created. He created a 14 pieces series on the 17/06/2010 called "ALT1997, We are not Time Travellers".
"What would you do if you could travel back in time? Assassinate Marilyn Monroe? Go on a date with Hitler? Obviously. But here's what I'd do after that: grab all the modern technology I could find, take it to the late 70's, superficially redesign it all to blend in, start a consumer electronics company to unleash it upon the world, then sit back as I rake in billions, trillions, or even millions of dollars."

Here are just a few from the other 14 that he created. The whole idea behind these designs are "What if we travelled back in the past, taking our modern technoligy and making money out of it?". This means many of the items have a wood finish to them and the same colours and typefonts that were most popular back in the 1970's.

I really like these images he's created and like that the initinal idea of Time Travel inspired him to create these. He's really kept the authencity of the items, the designs and colours from the 70's are still very well known due to it only being 40 years ago, plus vintage and retro designs are very popular in todays culture. It reminds of of the old Nintendo console my parents bought when I was a very young child. The idea of using Time Travel in something could mean that it could come from any time era which really opens it up for designers. There always seems to be an element of futuristic technoligy though or at least the technoligy needed to Time Travel. I could expand my research futher into the idea of mixing modern day technoligy with other era's of time, showing a complete contrast in the original concept of Science Fiction.

-:SteamPunk:-
Steampunk is a hard thing to explain as it can mean a few things to many people. One way to describe is that it's a sub genre of science fiction. It uses the techonligy from the 19th centery (and the main power source; Steam) and mixes it with a rebelious side towards it (in other words, the "punk") It really can apply its self in several ways and overall it's really not clear what to class it as.
It has a very uniquie visual style to it though, it's very reconigiseable aswell as very noticable. Steampunk has been applied to several different things: books, films, comics, video games, graphic novels, TV shows, costume and much more. 

“To me, it’s essentially the intersection of technology and romance.” – Jake von Slatt

Here is an example of some "Steampunk" style images:

There's a strong use of bold colours such as red, gold, brass and wood. It's very industral with exposed wires and cogs, showing the bare mechanics of machines (rather than hiding all the technical parts of machinery behind plastic like we do today). It's a very artistic sub gerne though and it allows for great creativity for anything. I can see why people tie Steampunk in with other gerne's like romance, it has an elegent and old fashioned feel to it all.



-:The Girl who leapt through Time:-
The girl who leapt through time is a film about a young girl who has the ability to leap through time. With her new powers she tries to alter time to her advantage but unfortuently it doesn't turn out the way she wanted it to. The more she leaps through the less leaps she has left and realises she has a strange, numbered tattoo on her arm. It slowly counts down to just a few leaps left, with her last ones she tries to fix all the things she did wrong. In the end she ends up losing the person she loves and he gives up his last leap for her. The art style is very Japanese with the manga characterisitcs (the big eyes and little nose). The film was realesed in 2006 in Japan.

 It sounds like a very moving story and full of emotion and romance. It also shows the conciences of time travel and how sometimes in the end its better to leave everything to fate rather than trying to change and alter it. It's a very interesting way to travel through time though and I think it's one of the first examples where the person doesn't use a vehicle, they can travel through time on thier own.


-:The Time Travellers wife:-

The Time Travellers wife is a film that was released on 14th August 2009. It's a romance, drama, science fiction about a Chicago librarian who has some sort of gene that makes him travel through time without his control. It tells a story about who this makes his relationship with his wife difficult. The film was originally based off a book released in 2003 and written by Audrey Niffenegger.

I'm starting to notice a theme here, there seems to be love ties with Time Travel. With the other film as well it was about a girl who could leap through time and ends up not being able to be with the guy she loves. This one is about a girl who can't be with the man she loves because he keeps travelling through time. Both have the same concept but with some little twists. It's quite interesting that the science fiction genre has been mixed with the romance genre.

 
-:Dr Who:-
Dr Who is a TV show thats been running for almost 50 years now. It a TV show with a science fiction/action genre about a alien Time Lord called "The Doctor" who travels through time and space to help others on distant planets or even closer to home. The show is very popular and is one of BBC's most popular shows.The show has many iconic items and themes in it which makes the merchendise for the show very vast! I'll show a few iconic and modern items that are for sale right now.

-:Sonic Screw Driver:-

The Sonic Screw Driver is a device that the main character, the Doctor, uses in his adventures. It's able to unlock any door and detect life forms, as well as hack into computers. The only thing the item doesn't work on is wood, which is used as a comical side of the Doctor. It's not a weapon, its a screw driver.... but sonic! The device opens up at the top and glows a green light. It also makes a weird noise which changes pitch depending on what it is doing. This is the toy version which is avaible to buy from any good toy shop or online. It's a great little toy for kids who want to be just like the Doctor. If I was younger and was a fan of Doctor Who I would defiently ask for this from my parents. It looks so cool with it's unusual design and the fact it makes light and noise is always fun. It's great for kids to be creative and use their imagtians to play and pretend to be the Doctor. I really like the design of it and the colour sceme works well together. It has a very science fiction feel to it and looks like something out of "Star Trek".

-:The "Tardis" merchandise:-

The Tardis is a big, blue police box which the Doctor uses to travel through time and space. It's a lot larger on the inside and contains all the Doctors macherniey to make his travelling possible. It's a very iconic part of the series and is very popular in modern day culture. Even people who don't watch the series know the name of it, thats how well known it is. Of course there is a LOT of merchandise being sold with it's image on and here's a few. This is a Tardis mug. It's a mug the shape of the blue box and has a lid for it.

 

-:"Dr Hoo" T-shirt:-

This is a fan created t-shirt by Mallory Dyer and is a delightful pun on the wording of the show "Dr Who". I found it on a site called Threadless which lets designers submit their own designs to be printed on shirts. It shows all the Doctors from the show in Owl form to link to the "Who" and "Hoo". I thought it was a fantastic design and show that the show has a telnted and creative fan base.

Link to Doctor Who music to this music!

-:Never Shout Never: Time Travel:-
Coming soon...

Found this on eBay whilelooking at this on eBay to see how popular it is.

-:Rabbids: Travel in Time:-
Rabbids: Travel in Time in a Wii game created in

-:Molly Moon's Hypnotic Time-Travel Adventure:-
Coming soon...