Ok first off, I am not a scientist, I don’t know the ins
and outs or the actual mechanics of time travel and theories to time travel,
and no, I don’t think we could actually time travel, but if we could that would
be so awesome! Yet dangerous.
But this is a subject I love to chat with people about on
a Science Fiction level. I love to talk about the different ways Time Travel
could work. No not like how would we make it happen, but if we put aside the
idea of a time machine, or being whipped round the sun and all that jazz, and
just think about what could happen if someone did go through time. How would it
work? What would happen?
First let’s look at the Butterfly Effect.
The original idea behind the Butterfly Effect theory as I
remember it, (sorry if I am wrong, feel free to correct me), is that a
butterfly flaps its wings on one side of the world and causes a tidal wave on
the other, the main moral being that the smallest thing can have big effects or
make big changes. So let’s apply that theory to time travel.
Let’s say a friend of mine goes back in time and stops me
from going to my school and instead gets me to go to another, in an attempt to
help me enjoy my school life as I didn’t enjoy it so much in the school I did
go to.
When that friend returns to the present, that little
change could have huge effects. The friend that went through time I might no
longer know, as I met them in the school. I may not have grown with the same
personality as the people that made me the way I am, I would have never of met and
therefore they never had an effect on me.
That is the direct effect, the change would go further,
not only would it affect my life which has had the main change, but anyone I have
met could be affected. Friends might make different choices in life as I never influenced
them.
Even the littlest change, something that I could have
done could have big effects.
Let’s say on the original time line while at school I killed
a wasp. In the new time line I’m not in the school so I don’t kill the wasp,
therefore it stings someone. That person, let’s say it’s a guy, gets an allergic
reaction to the sting and is rushed to the hospital, the nurse that gives the
guy the injection to counter act the sting falls for the guy and they go out,
they fall in love, they get married.
Me, not killing a wasp has caused a man and women to meet
and fall in love. To steam further the nurse and the man with the sting will
not meet their original loves, and will now affect the family and lives of the
new people they would not have met before. The changes would go on and on, just
from not killing a wasp.
The counter to this theory is the belief of fate and destiny.
Fate will contradict the butterfly effect in time travel, maybe not fully but
key events could still happen.
Let’s go back to that wasp that I kill in the original
time line but lives in the second. When it stung the guy it stopped him from
meeting a girl later that evening while he was heading home, that girl is the
girl who he would have originally fallen in love with and spent the rest of his
life with. But that girl that he meets on the way home is the nurse who just so
happened to give him the injection after being stung by the wasp that was never
killed in the new timeline. So regardless of the change they still met. This
would be considered fate or destiny. So the butterfly effect worked but not to
the extreme consequences put forward without fate.
Fate and destiny is presented well in a couple of films,
for instance Final Destination.
If you haven’t seen any of the Final Destination films, but
plan to, scroll down past this section.
In Final Destination a group of people are meant to die.
One person has a vision of it happening and saves some of the people from
original accident that was meant to kill them. The thing is fate has other
plans and death circles around and attempts to have these people die. So even
though they were saved fate says they were meant to die and therefore they do.
Another example is in the book and films called “The Time
Machine.” I have only seen the most up to date film, but I am going to assume
that the story is the same.
In the time machine a scientist creates a time machine to
go back in time to stop his girlfriend from being killed by a mugger in the
park. But every time he goes back she still dies, just in different ways, and
no matter what, there seems to be no way of changing that fate. Fate says, she
must die.
That is just two ideas of the consequences from time
travel.
Over time I will write more blogs on time travel covering
things like, multiple time lines and alternate universes, single timelines, and
more.
I hope you enjoyed what should be the first of a few interesting
blogs.
Matty.D signing off.
