IKC FHew 7C6110 Time travel is an incredibly attractive idea. The potentials seem limitless and attractive, in both directions. Imagine for a moment leaping forward to a time when they have cured that devastating illness. Or stepping back to a time where a terrible mistake was made and correcting it? Even just to go back in time and observe great events in history would be amazing. But are there restrictions? Is it as simple as popping in yesterday with a drink of coffee and a briefing on what to avoid tomorrow?
We have many stories from our own history of ‘Time Travel’, from Archer’s involvement with the ‘Time War’ and Kirk’s journey back to save the Humpback Whales, The Enterprise C’s brief journey to the future and back, The Bozeman/Enterprise Time loop to Sisco becoming embroiled in the San Francisco Bell Riots and including the assertions of a “Time Agency” encountered by the Voyager crew. I intend to look at three theories of ‘Time Travel’ and each of these events, as well as the opportunities discussed at first, and of course the ‘Grandfather Paradox’, in the light of these theories to see if there is a best fit and what conclusion we can draw about how we should approach incidents like this in what we still call the future.
Firstly, let me state that time travel is possible. Indeed, each of you has a time machine in your home. You regularly enter it and emerge eight hours in the future. It is called a bed. This room you are in is speeding forward through time at exactly 60 seconds a minute, a truly staggering rate. We know that as we travel through space, we travel through time, and the faster we go the more time for us slows, but I will not lecture you on the concepts of special relativity. Most of you will have done that by your first years of secondary schooling. Instead I am looking at a model of time travel as extreme as the Transporter once appeared; to dematerialize form one point in time and to re-appear at another without seeming to traverse the intervening moments.
The major concern about this kind of time travel was identified for humans by science fiction writers in the mid 20th century, and is referred to as the Grandfather Paradox. Put simply, if time travel were to exist, it would be possible for me to travel back in time and kill my own grandfather before he had a child, thus eliminating the possibility of my own birth, meaning I could not have come back and killed my grandfather, and so on ad infinitum. It was this paradox that led the Vulcan Sciences to discount Time Travel entirely, and indeed many still hold that the phenomena we witness in the accounts I have mentioned were not true time travel.
If time travel of the kind we are interested in is possible there must be a way to counter the effects of the Grandfather Paradox. But what is the nature of this restriction and what other implications does this have on our travels?
There are three models of time travel that we will look at, which I shall refer to as Sequential, Parallel and Fractured. I will deal with each and explain them in turn, and touch briefly on some of the less well accepted models, and try and tie this into an alternative model which is consistent with reports we have of time travel. I am going to use a theoretical traveler called John smith to illustrate our journey and the complexities he might face under each regime of time.
A Sequential model is the most intuitive one, where time is laid out like a road and one may step into and out of the flow at any point along the causeway of causality. A parallel model suggests that, there are multiple lanes running parallel but at different speeds and, rather than stepping back into your own stream at an earlier point you step into another, alternate stream of time. Finally the Fractured model does not lend itself well to a real analogy of Roads without introducing concepts of road blocks and dead ends. Rather it deals with realities as collapsed probability waves.
The Sequential model says simply that there is no restriction on the Paradox. We are either extremely lucky that it has not occurred, or it may have indeed occurred on numerous occasions. How are we, as entities who only have knowledge of this time stream when our errant traveler does not exist, to discern that he is no longer here? According to this theory we may have had friends and family members that have been removed from existence or even brought into existence by actions of time traveler in our past. This should not be alarming, as our existence is established as being a result of actions by those in our past; that is what history is. This theory leaves Space-Time as a potential mash of causality scattered with orphaned travelers Like John Smith who have no place within it and for some reason are suicidally bent on killing all of their Grandfathers.
There are other implications of this. Take our example of traveling forward to find a cure. If John Smith were to travel forward in time and return with the cure for a deadly disease, there would no longer be any impetus for medical Science to research that cure, meaning it will never be developed, so when John arrives it will not exist meaning he cannot return with it to cure people and medical research will need to ... oh dear.
It seems that, although initially and instinctively we feel that the Sequential model should be the case, logically it cannot be. One may argue that if we go to observe then we cannot affect causality and do not invoke any of the issues identified. I suggest those people go back and read some Heisenberg; the mere act of observation changes a system.
One suggestion, without any real scientific support, is the theory of Narrative Continuity; that is that the form of time is fluid to within small constraints but there is a general shape that it conforms to. Even if John Smith returns with a cure, that same cure will still be developed for some reason so it can exist. If John were to kill his ancestor, then genetics would adjust to produce the same John by a different set of parents. At best this is wishful thinking, at worst it is totally unscientific; an example of theories developed in desperation to defend a personal preference rather than the best fit.
The Parallel model seems to offer some alternative, since the existence of Parallel universes is well established, most notably the Mirror universe. If John Smith is in fact traveling back in time by stepping into an alternate universe and killing THAT version of his grandfather, he can continue to exist as his own heredity is undisturbed. Unfortunately, if he was to return to his own time he would find his grandfather still alive and well, or at least no different to when he left.
This model nicely explains the events surrounding the Enterprise C. In the heat of battle it slipped out of our universe into one where the Federation and Klingons were still at war. Observing this universe hardened their resolve to return to ours, even at the cost of their lives.
It doesn’t explain the circumstances for Sisko. If you do research into the Bell riots you will see images of Captain Sisko involved in the events. This would mean both our Sisko visited and alternate universe and we were visited by an alternate Sisko at the same time. Not impossible, but Occam’s razor pushes us to at least look for a simpler, more probable, explanation.
This brings us to the Fractured model, though the name is misleading. Put simply this is an iteration of the Novikov self-consistency principle. The chances of anything occurring to disrupt the time line to create a paradox is 0%. Even if John Smith were to attempt to kill his own grandfather he would fail. This is a neat little package which eliminates any messy stuff. It does rather sound like we are just saying, it doesn’t happen because it can’t, and doesn’t provide any real explanation as to WHY the probability is 0%. It is also rather alarming in that there is no other phenomena in the universe with a probability so absolute.
However, if we link this with the Parallel model we may find a workable hypothesis, which I will call the Alternative theory. Let me illustrate. John Smith gets into his ‘Time Travel Machine’ and steps across to an alternative universe. Because of his history he is most likely to access those universes that are consistent with him. He kills his alternate Grandfather but when he tries to return to his own universe he is far more likely to arrive in one where his Grandfather died, or simply not be able to travel forward as no realities exist containing both he and no Grandfather.
This is a reflection of the Schrodinger probability experiment, and I will demonstrate using John Smith again. He and I have a bet on two hidden coin tosses. John says it will be two heads; they land head and tails, but not in any particular order. John looses the bet and travels back in time. He arrives just after the first coin has come down heads. From this point a Novikov would say the next coin would HAVE to be tails as it is an already established result and there is a 0% chance of changing it. A Parallelist would allow for a different result but state it would not change the result that occurred in my ‘Home’ universe. A Sequentialists would say that if it could come down as anything but then the memory of it ever having been different (and the impetus for John to have traveled in time are removed. From here, under the Alternate theory, John has a good chance of returning to the future where he lost the bet but there is a chance he can return to a future where the coin toss was two heads since according to the Uncertainty Principle the Coin exists in BOTH states till observed.
We have an example of this happening with Lt Cmdr Worf while he still served on the Enterprise. For a short time he slipped between universes, each becoming less like the original. Initially he was unaware of the transfer. It was possible to determine his specific signature and link it to the causality to which he was most aligned belonged.
There is another option, which has been bandied about by pseudo Science for centuries, the so called Destruction resolution. Supporters of this theory say that in the case of a temporal paradox of any sort, space time would simply break and either destroys the entire universe, or that part of it that is affected by the change. While we have plenty of evidence of time travel and apparent paradoxes, I refer particularly to the events around Captain Archer’s involvement in the Time Cold War, we see no evidence of any destruction of the universe, complete or otherwise.
I offer as a final suggestion that, anyone likely to kill their own Grandfather, has already done so, therefore no one in this time will ever go back and kill their grandfather.
So let us look at a few of the recorded cases of time travel and see which theory fits best. Note that we are not touching on any time travels performed under the effects of the Q entity, as it is well known that it was capable of constructing new pocket realities and no certainty that any journeys to the past were that at all.
Archer’s Time Cold War: Certainly there is no suggestion that this fits into any Sequential model. The fact that Archer was able to visit a point in space-time where travel in space-time was impossible reinforces that this can’t be Sequential, and certainly doesn’t invoke the destruction of the universe. His travels back in time to stop the poisoning of Ancient Earth do reinforce a Novikovian ideology, by making Archer the agents on Non-change. The Alternate Parallel model seems to be the best fit, since it allows for being from another universe to visit our time stream and affect it before moving on to yet another time stream which has been affected by the changes they made.
Kirk’s Whale Rescue: Unfortunately this set of events can fit into any of the models. A Whale from a parallel universe is brought to ours, with the removal of them from the past having 0% impact on the course of history. No real insight here.
Enterprise C at Narendra III: As suggested above this seem to reinforce the Parallel universe model, since a Novikovian would hold that their return to the past or not would make no difference to the war with the Klingons, and a Sequentialist would get caught trying to prevent the war that motivated them to prevent the war that... etc. In fact this may bolster the Alternate model, since their return was designed to ensure that the future would not take the path they had witnessed, collapsing the probability wave.
USS Bozeman: this is an interesting one because it involves an incredibly rare phenomena; a time loop. When people think of loops they, rightly, think of a repeated action ad infinitum, such as a looped sound on a recorder. A time loop is not quite like that a Time Loop can best be thought of as a wave form passing through a point like the classical double slit experiment. The single entity, the Bozeman, was able to pass through two or more times at the same time. The lived and died a countless number of times at the same instant. This is impossible in a Sequentialist model, and under the Fractured paradigm there would be no way to escape, since there would be no way to alter any behaviour. It is only under the Alternative model, with a wave form probability that escape is possible. In fact, escape is almost mandatory, since no matter how small the chance, given an infinite number of loops the probability will be certain.
2364 Paul Manheim Experiment: This is another interesting one, where Lt Cmdr Data witnessed and interacted with himself at different points along his own time line. What is most telling about this though is that there was only one iteration which was in sync with the failed experiment, and as he closed of the experiment the alternatives of him were observed to collapse till only the one remained. Like the Bozeman, this lends itself to the Alternate Parallel theory.
Benjamin Sisco at the Bell Riots: Again, though possibly the strongest evidence of time travel, this case also gives us very little to help us determine a correct model. We may accept Sisko’s involvement in both a Sequentialist model, and Novikovian would point to his involvement in the events as an example of their 0% chance stance. We cannot even rule out that we were visited by an alternate Sisko, just as stated before, though this seems unlikely. However, if we start from a model that Sisko did change the past, then the Alternative model says we would be very unlikely for him to exist in a universe where that did not happen; so the existence of Sisko who ‘travelled’ in our universe almost ensures there is a past to match.
Voyager and the Time Agents: The existence of Time Agents who belong to some organisation that has taken on responsibility for maintaining a coherent time line has been encountered again and again. I must state that I am sceptical, but for the sake of this discussion I will allow for their existence. If the Universe were Sequential then there would never be any crimes to “rectify” since there would be no future record of time being different for anyone to travel into the past to repair. Under the Fractured model, there is no point since there is a 0% effectiveness built into attempts to alter time. If then we accept the Parallel or Alternative models, then our time agents are suddenly an agent to force all realities to mimic their own, which they have deemed ‘best’ though some agency we do not know of.
Many of the concerns are summed up in this, though; the idea that there is only ONE TRUE timeline and it could be damaged or disrupted. But this is like saying there is only one path to the moon, and traveling by any other means or path would somehow destabilise the ONE TRUE orbit. Space and time are inexorably linked, and what holds true for one, must be true for the other.
Taking all of these events into consideration, the majority or events seem to support an Alternative Parallel model, where travel in Space-Time is travel through probability. Perhaps this is what Q meant when he last spoke to Picard:
“That is the exploration that awaits you. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknown possibilities of existence.”
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