Temporal paradox
Encyclopedia
Temporal paradox is a theoretical paradox
ical situation that happens because of time travel. A time traveler goes to the past, and does something that would prevent him from time travel in the first place. If he does not go back in time, he does not do anything that would prevent his traveling to the past, so time travel would be possible for him. However, if he goes back in time and does something that would prevent the time travel, he will not go back in time. Thus each possibility seems to imply its own negation - a type of logical paradox.
A typical example of this kind is the grandfather paradox
, where a person goes back in time to kill their grandfather before he had any biological descendant. If they succeed, one of their parents would never exist and they themselves would never exist either. This would make it impossible for them to go back in time in the first place, making them unable to kill their grandfather, who would continue to produce offspring and restart the situation. But if they fail, their grandfather would be alive and produce offspring, one of whom would eventually conceive the time traveler and the whole scenario would start over.
The animated television series Futurama
shows a more lighthearted side of the paradox. In the episode "Roswell That Ends Well
", the main character, Philip J. Fry
, travels back in time with his friends to 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico
. Remembering that his grandfather works at the base, and told that killing the man would nullify his own existence, Fry becomes obsessed with protecting him. Fry's efforts prove counterproductive: he locks the man in a shack to protect him, failing to realize that an atomic bomb is being tested on the grounds. When he does not disappear, he assumes that the man could not have been his grandfather and thus proceeds (unknowingly) to sleep with and (accidentally) impregnate a beautiful woman, who apparently is the younger version of his grandmother, thereby becoming his own grandfather.
In the 1972 Doctor Who
adventure Day of the Daleks
, Sir Reginald Styles is targeted by 22nd Century guerrillas, who believe he's behind the deaths of VIP delegates. Because of those deaths, the Daleks were able to take over Earth in their time. However, a fellow guerrilla who was left behind was to blame, which was the true cause of their timeline ensuing.
In the game "Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time", Alister Azimuth tries to fix his mistake of causing the fall of the Lombaxes, but if he was successful in traveling to the past, time would rip itself apart and the universe would collapse on itself.
In the machinima
series Red vs. Blue
, Church is sent back in time via the combined energy of a bomb and a weather machine. He attempts to fix past events, as well as preventing the explosion, but his attempts are ultimately responsible for most of the events that took place beforehand in the series, including his own death.
In the Japanese manga
Doraemon
, the future grandson of the lead character—Nobita—comes back in time to meet his grandfather in his primary school days intentionally to change the life he is in. Nobita questions the existence of his grandson that if he did marry the girl he likes (instead of the one he dislikes but conceived the father of his future grandson), what would happen to his grandson. His grandson, along with Doraemon, replies that there are multiple paths leading to the same future, and they will still exist even if Nobita married another girl. The plot never explicitly told of when the history was altered, but later events in the plot did show a future where Nobita married the girl he likes and lived a better, wealthier life and yet, future characters showed no signs of remembering the original history. However, when being asked of Doraemon's reason of being in the past, he replies that his role is to make sure Nobita marries the girl he likes, which mentally still reserves logic.
In the television series Lost
, Jack and Locke enter an underground research facility on the island in 2004, and watch an orientation film made by the mysterious DHARMA Initiative
organisation in 1980. The film makes reference to an "incident" having occurred on the island at some point in the 1970s, necessitating the construction of the underground bunker, as a method of containing a limitless amount of electromagnetic energy, and preventing a global catastrophe. In the show's fifth season, some of the main characters begin moving erratically through time, before eventually becoming stuck in 1974. Three years later, these same characters unwittingly become the cause of the incident.
says that anything a time traveler does in the past must have been part of history all along, so although the time traveler can have a causal influence on events in the past, it is impossible for anything the time traveler does to "change" history. So, for example, any attempt by the time traveler to kill one of his ancestors before they became a parent would be guaranteed to fail for some reason or another (perhaps the gun would jam, or perhaps the traveler would just have a change of heart), so the grandfather paradox would be avoided. This theory, however, is capable of causing bootstrap paradox
.
. If a person is about to travel back in time, he will end up in a parallel universe. So if he kills "his" grandfather, a paradox would not occur because the grandfather that he had killed is the grandfather who lives in the universe he currently is in.
An example of this occurs in the Japanese anime series Dragonball Z in which Trunks, the son of Vegeta and Bulma, comes from the future. In the present, Trunks was not even born. He warns of the arrival of androids which are more powerful than even Goku and Vegeta, and forewarns the death of Goku in his past. However, by giving the medicine which can cure Goku and undertaking extensive training, Trunks and the Z Fighters manage to defeat the androids as well as Cell. When Trunks returns to his present, though, his universe is still the same with Goku and other Z-fighters still dead, the only difference being that at that point of time, Trunks, because of his training with the Z-fighters, had become strong enough to defeat the androids and Cell of his own time.
An example of this occurs in The Legend of Zelda. Toward the middle of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
, the protagonist, Link, is sealed in slumber for seven years. When he awakens, he finds the world in a ruined state. At the end of the game, the antagonist, Ganon, is defeated and sealed within the Sacred Realm. Princess Zelda, then, sends Link into the past to right the wrongs Ganon created. By doing so, he creates two worlds, one in which Ganon is sealed away in the Sacred Realm, and one in which Ganon was merely imprisoned by the King. Additional evidence is stated by Eiji Aonuma when conversing on timeline placement of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
, where he says that the games are parallel.
This was also in a DC anthology, which included among other series, one comic with Superman
. In the comic, Superman attempts to change many of the world's great events, including Lincoln's assassination. When he comes back to his own time, nothing had changed. However, he discovers a parallel version of the world with the altered history.
" in the timeline. All history after the time traveler visited would be affected by minute changes the traveler had made in the past, and the history, depending on how severe the time traveller's actions were, would sooner or later be completely changed. This has been coined the "timeline corruption hypothesis." The 2004
film The Butterfly Effect
and the Multiverser
RPG system prefer this view. There's also the Ray Bradbury
science fiction short story "A Sound of Thunder
", in which the butterfly effect is caused by a real butterfly.
Note that the timeline corruption hypothesis is not intended to solve the temporal paradox. It seems to be part of the multiple universes hypothesis, in which a change in the timeline creates a new universe.
The most well-known example of this theory is the 1985
film Back to the Future
, in which the protagonist Marty McFly goes back in time and interferes with his parents' first romantic encounter, thus erasing his own existence (as well as that of his siblings). However, the effect only happens gradually, exemplified by a family photo in his possession: each of his siblings begins to disappear limb by limb, starting with the oldest and working down to him (the youngest of the three). This allows Marty to correct the error and restore the timeline, albeit with a few minor changes that are due to his interference.
This effect has one contradiction - If a person, somehow, causes himself to not be born in the past, then he would not have been able to do the thing that caused him to not be born for he would have not existed, thus causing time to corrupt.
This theory also figures prominently in the 1989
sequel Back to the Future Part 2 in which McFly's enemy, the now-elderly Biff Tannen, travels from 2015 back to 1955 to give his younger self a copy of a sports almanac with the final scores of professional sports games from 1950 to 2000. The younger Biff uses this information to change history, so when Doc and McFly return to 1985 from their own mission in 2015, they find Hill Valley drastically changed. Marty proposes going back to 2015 to stop Biff from going back to 1955, but Doc explains that it would do no good since they were on a different timeline and 2015 would also be different. The only way to restore the timeline is to return to 1955 and take the almanac away from Biff so he will not use it to change history. Note that this does not create a bootstrap paradox
because Biff, from timeline A, traveled back in time and created timeline B, thus there is a clear(ish) logical reason as to where the almanac came from.
This idea also appears in a Family Guy
episode, in which Peter goes back in time with the help of "Death" so that he can relive his teen life. When he arrives in the past, rather than spending time with his present-day wife, Lois, Peter ignores her. His actions cause a corruption in the timeline, and when Peter returns to the present day, all of reality is radically different.
The timeline corruption hypothesis is also used in the Red Dwarf
episode, "Tikka to Ride
", when the Red Dwarf crew travels back in time (with Lister's intention of ordering 500 curries) and accidentally kills Lee Harvey Oswald
, saving Kennedy
's life. Three years later, in an alternate reality, it is revealed that through a series of chain events, the USSR won the Space Race and put the first man on the moon, meaning that the Dwarfers never travelled into deep space in the first place, trapped in an alternate 1966. The Dwarfers manage to correct this by trying to make Oswald shoot from a different floor, before making an impeached
Kennedy assassinate himself, as the man on the grassy knoll.
Philip K. Dick
also explored timeline corruption paradoxes. In the story "Orpheus with Clay Feet
", Slade, a character from the future, goes on a time travel vacation to the past where he can visit famous science fiction writer Jack Dowland and become his muse. Slade, however, fails to inspire Dowland as he had hoped, and Dowland never becomes the master he should have been.
Timeline corruption is an important motif in Star Trek: Enterprise
. Captain Archer and the Enterprise crew become embroiled in an ongoing Temporal Cold War
with the Suliban
Cabal, a race of hostile aliens from the future who deliberately manipulate the timeline for their own ends. One of the results was that Earth's early 20th-Century history was changed so that the Nazis
controlled much of Europe and proceeded to invade North America. Of course, the humans had to find a way to stop the Suliban and restore the timeline. Similar events occur in other Star Trek series.
In the videogame World of Warcraft
, the Bronze Dragonflight (tasked with the safety of the timelines) frequently asks the heroes (players) to help them fight the Infinite Dragonflight, who would want to change important events of the past. Although this may vary depending on the point of the view of the player, most of the events are negative ones - Thrall's escape from his prison, leading to the formation of the new Horde, enemies of the Alliance; the opening of the Dark Portal, in which a corrupted Medivh opens up a link with the world of Draenor, starting the orcish invasions of Azeroth and ensuing wars; and the Culling of Stratholme, a defining moment in which Prince Arthas's fall to madness leads to the rise of the undead Scourge and his eventual merge with the Lich King - but they insist that the outcome of preventing such events would be "much worse".
The videogame series Command & Conquer
contains a miniseries called Red Alert
, whose three games depict what "happened" when Albert Einstein traveled back in time to prevent Hitler from rising to power. This resulted in the Nazi regime never coming to power, allowing the Soviet Union to become a formidable threat to the Allied Nations; instead of just tension during the Cold War, the Soviets launched a full-scale invasion against the United States. Later in the series, the Soviets steal the time-travelling technology for themselves to kill Einstein, preventing his technology from helping the Allies; however, this leads to Japan's Empire of the Rising Sun emerging as a new superpower.
In the videogame The Journeyman Project
, a Temporal Distortion Wave threatens to alter the present. The player is tasked with retrieving a CD-ROM
disk that has the correct timeline stored on it. Upon returning to the present from the far distant past, it is revealed that the timeline has indeed been corrupted by four key events in the recent past. This idea of avoiding corrupted timelines is seen throughout the Journeyman Project Trilogy. Although, it is only a story element in the later games as opposed to a major gameplay moment.
Realistically, there is absolutely no way to travel into the past without causing irreparable damage to the timeline as there are far too many variables. Example: One atom travels back in time one million years. Its slight gravitational effect changes the position of every subatomic particle in the universe to eventually move less than a micron. That change may be enough to cause a neuron in one person's brain to fire or not fire causing or preventing a cascade effect. This changes what this person thinks and does thus altering far too many variables to list therefore changing the entire course of history. The effects of any larger object would be far more devastating. If the theory of temporal corruption is correct, time travel would be extremely impractical to say the least.
An example of this is seen in the film The One, in which a character travels across time or dimensions, destroying copies of himself to cause them to merge — thus increasing power for the original character. A similar idea is seen in Margaret Peterson Haddix's book series, The Missing, in which any records of original time are kept in tracers, and those traveling back in time can merge with their own tracers.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
, as well as its sequel and television spin-offs (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures - both animated
and live-action
), feature numerous uses of this hypothesis. Bill and Ted, constantly realizing that their plans are foiled by the lack of a certain item, decide to later travel back in time and deliver themselves the necessary item, often indicating a specific place in which the item will appear. Upon searching the location, the item is invariably there.
. Also if it is that any time machine made will allow only one way travel, i.e. into the future, or if it is that we can go into the future, but while returning, we can only return to the present (i.e. not set the dial to go back more than we used to go into the future, or before the time machine is invented), this theory fails. Wormholes, which are suggested to allow backwards time travel, demonstrate this, as you cannot go further back in time than when the wormhole was created.
There are also other possibilities: someone in the future will build a time machine and many people will use it to travel back in the past, but we do not know this because: "no one can travel so far in the past to reach our time" or "no one has revealed that time-traveling is possible" or "no one that revealed that time-traveling is possible, was trusted" or "anyone with the knowledge to sufficiently understand temporal mechanics enough to build such a device, will also be enlightened enough not to interfere with the known written past" or "the time machine will be destroyed if you go back before it is created."
An example of this can be seen in the film The Time Machine
, where the main character creates a time machine to save his dead fiancé, but upon doing so, she is killed another way. When traveling to the future, he finally finds out that if she did not die he would never create the time machine. Thus it is impossible to save her. Even though this does not create a physical paradox, it creates a mental one in which the time traveler, who still builds the time machine for the same reason, remembers a different cause for that reason.
Another example is the TV series Doraemon
, where in one episode the main character travels back in time to save someone from being hit by a car. Doraemon then states that 'if history is altered, it will always repeat itself to make up for the event that did not occur'. However he also states that 'the event might happen on another person, or be a completely different event altogether', raising the question how did the time traveler know about what was supposed to happen in the first place?
This theory is also happens in the TV series Lost
when Desmond who can see into the future sees Charlie dieing by lightning and saves him by building a big metal pole. Instead of dieing by this he then sees him dieing by trying to save Claire from drowning and he saves him from that too, Eventually he dies from drowning in the DHARMA Intiative facility the "Spying Glass".
For example, if one tried to stop the murder of one's parents, he would fail. On the other hand, if one traveled back and did something to some random person that as a result prevented the death of someone else's parents, then such an event would be successful, because the reason for the journey, and therefore the journey itself, remain unchanged preventing a paradox.
In addition, if this event had some colossal change in the history of mankind, and such an event would not void the ability or purpose of the journey back, it would occur, and would hold. In such a case, the memory of the event would immediately be modified in the mind of the time traveler.
An example of this would be for someone to travel back to observe life in Austria in 1887 and while there shoot five people, one of whom was Hitler's parent. Hitler would therefore never have existed, but since this would not prevent the invention of the means for time travel, or the purpose of the trip, such a change would hold. Also for it to hold, every element that influenced the trip must remain unchanged. This would void someone convincing another party to travel back to kill the people without knowing who they are and making the time line stick, because by being successful, they would void the first party's influence and therefore the second party's actions.
Say you had the grandfather paradox which is where you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he had any offspring so you are not born which means you never killed your grandfather which means he did have offspring which also means you were born so you could kill him and this would go in an infinte loop but with this theory say you went back in time and killed your grandfather you would still be there and still be alive so although you killed your grandfather before he had offspring you are still there.
Paradox
Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
ical situation that happens because of time travel. A time traveler goes to the past, and does something that would prevent him from time travel in the first place. If he does not go back in time, he does not do anything that would prevent his traveling to the past, so time travel would be possible for him. However, if he goes back in time and does something that would prevent the time travel, he will not go back in time. Thus each possibility seems to imply its own negation - a type of logical paradox.
A typical example of this kind is the grandfather paradox
Grandfather paradox
The grandfather paradox is a proposed paradox of time travel first described by the science fiction writer René Barjavel in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent . The paradox is this: suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveler's...
, where a person goes back in time to kill their grandfather before he had any biological descendant. If they succeed, one of their parents would never exist and they themselves would never exist either. This would make it impossible for them to go back in time in the first place, making them unable to kill their grandfather, who would continue to produce offspring and restart the situation. But if they fail, their grandfather would be alive and produce offspring, one of whom would eventually conceive the time traveler and the whole scenario would start over.
Solution
Temporal paradox has been used to argue that time travel must be impossible, because it is capable of resulting in a paradox. Kip S Thorne, however, said that none of the supposed paradoxes formulated in time travel stories can actually be formulated at a precise physical level: that is, any situation in a time travel story turns out to permit many consistent solutions.Time line protection hypothesis
This theory states that a time traveler, no matter what he had done, would not be able to create a time paradox. A person traveling back in time to terminate his grandfather, could have appeared in a wrong place, or had his gun jammed, thereby allowing his grandfather to have descendants. The natural law would prevent the traveler to alter the time travel he had done in the first place.The animated television series Futurama
Futurama
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
shows a more lighthearted side of the paradox. In the episode "Roswell That Ends Well
Roswell That Ends Well
"Roswell That Ends Well" is the nineteenth episode of the third production season of the TV show Futurama. This episode, which won an Emmy Award, originally aired on December 9, 2001 as the season premiere of broadcast season four. It was written by J. Stewart Burns and directed by Rich Moore...
", the main character, Philip J. Fry
Philip J. Fry
Philip J. Fry, known simply as Fry, is a fictional character, the main protagonist of the animated science fiction sitcom Futurama. He is voiced by Billy West using a version of his own voice as he sounded when he was 25.-Character overview:...
, travels back in time with his friends to 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico
Roswell, New Mexico
Roswell is a city in and the county seat of Chaves County in the southeastern quarter of the state of New Mexico, United States. The population was 48,366 at the 2010 census. It is a center for irrigation farming, dairying, ranching, manufacturing, distribution, and petroleum production. It is also...
. Remembering that his grandfather works at the base, and told that killing the man would nullify his own existence, Fry becomes obsessed with protecting him. Fry's efforts prove counterproductive: he locks the man in a shack to protect him, failing to realize that an atomic bomb is being tested on the grounds. When he does not disappear, he assumes that the man could not have been his grandfather and thus proceeds (unknowingly) to sleep with and (accidentally) impregnate a beautiful woman, who apparently is the younger version of his grandmother, thereby becoming his own grandfather.
In the 1972 Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
adventure Day of the Daleks
Day of the Daleks
Day of the Daleks is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 1 January to 22 January 1972.-Synopsis:...
, Sir Reginald Styles is targeted by 22nd Century guerrillas, who believe he's behind the deaths of VIP delegates. Because of those deaths, the Daleks were able to take over Earth in their time. However, a fellow guerrilla who was left behind was to blame, which was the true cause of their timeline ensuing.
In the game "Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time", Alister Azimuth tries to fix his mistake of causing the fall of the Lombaxes, but if he was successful in traveling to the past, time would rip itself apart and the universe would collapse on itself.
In the machinima
Machinima
Machinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation...
series Red vs. Blue
Red vs. Blue
Red vs. Blue, often abbreviated as RvB, is a set of related comic science fiction video series created by Rooster Teeth Productions and distributed through the Internet and on DVD...
, Church is sent back in time via the combined energy of a bomb and a weather machine. He attempts to fix past events, as well as preventing the explosion, but his attempts are ultimately responsible for most of the events that took place beforehand in the series, including his own death.
In the Japanese manga
Manga
Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...
Doraemon
Doraemon
is a Japanese manga series created by Fujiko F. Fujio which later became an anime series and an Asian franchise...
, the future grandson of the lead character—Nobita—comes back in time to meet his grandfather in his primary school days intentionally to change the life he is in. Nobita questions the existence of his grandson that if he did marry the girl he likes (instead of the one he dislikes but conceived the father of his future grandson), what would happen to his grandson. His grandson, along with Doraemon, replies that there are multiple paths leading to the same future, and they will still exist even if Nobita married another girl. The plot never explicitly told of when the history was altered, but later events in the plot did show a future where Nobita married the girl he likes and lived a better, wealthier life and yet, future characters showed no signs of remembering the original history. However, when being asked of Doraemon's reason of being in the past, he replies that his role is to make sure Nobita marries the girl he likes, which mentally still reserves logic.
In the television series Lost
Lost (TV series)
Lost is an American television series that originally aired on ABC from September 22, 2004 to May 23, 2010, consisting of six seasons. Lost is a drama series that follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island...
, Jack and Locke enter an underground research facility on the island in 2004, and watch an orientation film made by the mysterious DHARMA Initiative
DHARMA Initiative
The Dharma Initiative, also written DHARMA , was a fictional research project featured in the television series Lost. It was introduced in the second season episode "Orientation". In 2008, the Dharma Initiative website was launched. Dharma's interests were directly connected with fringe science...
organisation in 1980. The film makes reference to an "incident" having occurred on the island at some point in the 1970s, necessitating the construction of the underground bunker, as a method of containing a limitless amount of electromagnetic energy, and preventing a global catastrophe. In the show's fifth season, some of the main characters begin moving erratically through time, before eventually becoming stuck in 1974. Three years later, these same characters unwittingly become the cause of the incident.
Novikov self-consistency principle
This Novikov self-consistency principleNovikov self-consistency principle
The Novikov self-consistency principle, also known as the Novikov self-consistency conjecture, is a principle developed by Russian physicist Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov in the mid-1980s to solve the problem of paradoxes in time travel, which is theoretically permitted in certain solutions of general...
says that anything a time traveler does in the past must have been part of history all along, so although the time traveler can have a causal influence on events in the past, it is impossible for anything the time traveler does to "change" history. So, for example, any attempt by the time traveler to kill one of his ancestors before they became a parent would be guaranteed to fail for some reason or another (perhaps the gun would jam, or perhaps the traveler would just have a change of heart), so the grandfather paradox would be avoided. This theory, however, is capable of causing bootstrap paradox
Bootstrap paradox
The bootstrap paradox is a paradox of time travel in which information or objects can exist without having been created. After information or an object is sent back in time, it is recovered in the present and becomes the very object/information that was initially brought back in time in the first...
.
Multiple universes hypothesis
This theory states that there are infinite number of universes, all-together known as multiverseMultiverse
The multiverse is the hypothetical set of multiple possible universes that together comprise all of reality.Multiverse may also refer to:-In fiction:* Multiverse , the fictional multiverse used by DC Comics...
. If a person is about to travel back in time, he will end up in a parallel universe. So if he kills "his" grandfather, a paradox would not occur because the grandfather that he had killed is the grandfather who lives in the universe he currently is in.
An example of this occurs in the Japanese anime series Dragonball Z in which Trunks, the son of Vegeta and Bulma, comes from the future. In the present, Trunks was not even born. He warns of the arrival of androids which are more powerful than even Goku and Vegeta, and forewarns the death of Goku in his past. However, by giving the medicine which can cure Goku and undertaking extensive training, Trunks and the Z Fighters manage to defeat the androids as well as Cell. When Trunks returns to his present, though, his universe is still the same with Goku and other Z-fighters still dead, the only difference being that at that point of time, Trunks, because of his training with the Z-fighters, had become strong enough to defeat the androids and Cell of his own time.
Branching universe hypothesis
This theory says that a backwards time travel would make the universe branching.An example of this occurs in The Legend of Zelda. Toward the middle of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
is an action-adventure video game developed by Nintendo's Entertainment Analysis and Development division for the Nintendo 64 video game console. It was released in Japan on November 21, 1998; in North America on November 23, 1998; and in Europe on December 11, 1998...
, the protagonist, Link, is sealed in slumber for seven years. When he awakens, he finds the world in a ruined state. At the end of the game, the antagonist, Ganon, is defeated and sealed within the Sacred Realm. Princess Zelda, then, sends Link into the past to right the wrongs Ganon created. By doing so, he creates two worlds, one in which Ganon is sealed away in the Sacred Realm, and one in which Ganon was merely imprisoned by the King. Additional evidence is stated by Eiji Aonuma when conversing on timeline placement of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, released as in Japan, is an action-adventure game and the tenth installment in The Legend of Zelda series. It was released for the Nintendo GameCube in Japan on December 13, 2002, in North America on March 24, 2003, in Europe on May 2, 2003, and in Australia on...
and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
is an action-adventure game developed by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development, and published by Nintendo for the GameCube and Wii video game consoles. It is the thirteenth installment in The Legend of Zelda series...
, where he says that the games are parallel.
This was also in a DC anthology, which included among other series, one comic with Superman
Superman
Superman is a fictional comic book superhero appearing in publications by DC Comics, widely considered to be an American cultural icon. Created by American writer Jerry Siegel and Canadian-born American artist Joe Shuster in 1932 while both were living in Cleveland, Ohio, and sold to Detective...
. In the comic, Superman attempts to change many of the world's great events, including Lincoln's assassination. When he comes back to his own time, nothing had changed. However, he discovers a parallel version of the world with the altered history.
Timeline corruption hypothesis
Another idea is that any change in the timeline, even without personal interaction, while allowable, would cause a "butterfly effectButterfly effect
In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state...
" in the timeline. All history after the time traveler visited would be affected by minute changes the traveler had made in the past, and the history, depending on how severe the time traveller's actions were, would sooner or later be completely changed. This has been coined the "timeline corruption hypothesis." The 2004
2004 in film
The year 2004 in film involved some significant events. Major releases of sequels took place. It included blockbuster films like Shrek 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Passion of the Christ, Meet the Fockers, Blade: Trinity, Spider-Man 2, Alien vs. Predator, Kill Bill Vol...
film The Butterfly Effect
The Butterfly Effect
The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 American sci-fi psychological thriller film that is written and directed by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber and starring Ashton Kutcher and Amy Smart...
and the Multiverser
Multiverser
Multiverser is a multi-genre role-playing game published by Valdron Inc. that has the player character moving from dimension to dimension with each dimension being based on varying rules of reality which determine what is possible in that dimension...
RPG system prefer this view. There's also the Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury
Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...
science fiction short story "A Sound of Thunder
A Sound of Thunder
“A Sound of Thunder” is a science fiction short story by Ray Bradbury, first published in Collier’s magazine in 1952. As of 1984 it was the most re-published science fiction story up to the present time...
", in which the butterfly effect is caused by a real butterfly.
Note that the timeline corruption hypothesis is not intended to solve the temporal paradox. It seems to be part of the multiple universes hypothesis, in which a change in the timeline creates a new universe.
The most well-known example of this theory is the 1985
1985 in film
-Events:* 3 December - Roger Moore steps down from the role of James Bond after twelve years and seven films. He is replaced by Timothy Dalton.* The Academy Award for Best Picture was won by Out Of Africa, while the highest grossing film was Back to the Future.* Bliss wins AFI Award for best Movie...
film Back to the Future
Back to the Future
Back to the Future is a 1985 American science-fiction adventure film. It was directed by Robert Zemeckis, written by Zemeckis and Bob Gale, produced by Steven Spielberg, and starred Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson. The film tells the story of...
, in which the protagonist Marty McFly goes back in time and interferes with his parents' first romantic encounter, thus erasing his own existence (as well as that of his siblings). However, the effect only happens gradually, exemplified by a family photo in his possession: each of his siblings begins to disappear limb by limb, starting with the oldest and working down to him (the youngest of the three). This allows Marty to correct the error and restore the timeline, albeit with a few minor changes that are due to his interference.
This effect has one contradiction - If a person, somehow, causes himself to not be born in the past, then he would not have been able to do the thing that caused him to not be born for he would have not existed, thus causing time to corrupt.
This theory also figures prominently in the 1989
1989 in film
-Events:* Batman is released on June 23, and goes on to gross over $410 million worldwide.* Actress Kim Basinger and her brother Mick purchase Braselton, Georgia, for $20 million...
sequel Back to the Future Part 2 in which McFly's enemy, the now-elderly Biff Tannen, travels from 2015 back to 1955 to give his younger self a copy of a sports almanac with the final scores of professional sports games from 1950 to 2000. The younger Biff uses this information to change history, so when Doc and McFly return to 1985 from their own mission in 2015, they find Hill Valley drastically changed. Marty proposes going back to 2015 to stop Biff from going back to 1955, but Doc explains that it would do no good since they were on a different timeline and 2015 would also be different. The only way to restore the timeline is to return to 1955 and take the almanac away from Biff so he will not use it to change history. Note that this does not create a bootstrap paradox
Bootstrap paradox
The bootstrap paradox is a paradox of time travel in which information or objects can exist without having been created. After information or an object is sent back in time, it is recovered in the present and becomes the very object/information that was initially brought back in time in the first...
because Biff, from timeline A, traveled back in time and created timeline B, thus there is a clear(ish) logical reason as to where the almanac came from.
This idea also appears in a Family Guy
Family Guy
Family Guy is an American animated television series created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series centers on the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their children Meg, Chris, and Stewie; and their anthropomorphic pet dog Brian...
episode, in which Peter goes back in time with the help of "Death" so that he can relive his teen life. When he arrives in the past, rather than spending time with his present-day wife, Lois, Peter ignores her. His actions cause a corruption in the timeline, and when Peter returns to the present day, all of reality is radically different.
The timeline corruption hypothesis is also used in the Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
episode, "Tikka to Ride
Tikka to Ride
"Tikka To Ride" is the first episode of science fiction sit-com Red Dwarf Series VII and the 37th in the series run. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 17 January 1997...
", when the Red Dwarf crew travels back in time (with Lister's intention of ordering 500 curries) and accidentally kills Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald was, according to four government investigations,These were investigations by: the Federal Bureau of Investigation , the Warren Commission , the House Select Committee on Assassinations , and the Dallas Police Department. the sniper who assassinated John F...
, saving Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
's life. Three years later, in an alternate reality, it is revealed that through a series of chain events, the USSR won the Space Race and put the first man on the moon, meaning that the Dwarfers never travelled into deep space in the first place, trapped in an alternate 1966. The Dwarfers manage to correct this by trying to make Oswald shoot from a different floor, before making an impeached
Impeachment
Impeachment is a formal process in which an official is accused of unlawful activity, the outcome of which, depending on the country, may include the removal of that official from office as well as other punishment....
Kennedy assassinate himself, as the man on the grassy knoll.
Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
also explored timeline corruption paradoxes. In the story "Orpheus with Clay Feet
Orpheus with Clay Feet
Orpheus with Clay Feet is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick originally published in 1964 in Escapade magazine. The story has a self referential time travel theme, and was published under the pen name "Jack Dowland".-Synopsis:...
", Slade, a character from the future, goes on a time travel vacation to the past where he can visit famous science fiction writer Jack Dowland and become his muse. Slade, however, fails to inspire Dowland as he had hoped, and Dowland never becomes the master he should have been.
Timeline corruption is an important motif in Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek: Enterprise
Star Trek: Enterprise is a science fiction television series. It follows the adventures of humanity's first warp 5 starship, the Enterprise, ten years before the United Federation of Planets shown in previous Star Trek series was formed.Enterprise premiered on September 26, 2001...
. Captain Archer and the Enterprise crew become embroiled in an ongoing Temporal Cold War
Temporal Cold War
The Temporal Cold War is a fictional conflict waged throughout history in the Star Trek universe, predominantly during the 22nd century AD...
with the Suliban
Suliban
The Suliban are a starfaring race in the fictional Star Trek universe, seen throughout the series Star Trek: Enterprise. A Suliban sect known as the Cabal served as the show's primary antagonists in the first and second seasons....
Cabal, a race of hostile aliens from the future who deliberately manipulate the timeline for their own ends. One of the results was that Earth's early 20th-Century history was changed so that the Nazis
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
controlled much of Europe and proceeded to invade North America. Of course, the humans had to find a way to stop the Suliban and restore the timeline. Similar events occur in other Star Trek series.
In the videogame World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
, the Bronze Dragonflight (tasked with the safety of the timelines) frequently asks the heroes (players) to help them fight the Infinite Dragonflight, who would want to change important events of the past. Although this may vary depending on the point of the view of the player, most of the events are negative ones - Thrall's escape from his prison, leading to the formation of the new Horde, enemies of the Alliance; the opening of the Dark Portal, in which a corrupted Medivh opens up a link with the world of Draenor, starting the orcish invasions of Azeroth and ensuing wars; and the Culling of Stratholme, a defining moment in which Prince Arthas's fall to madness leads to the rise of the undead Scourge and his eventual merge with the Lich King - but they insist that the outcome of preventing such events would be "much worse".
The videogame series Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer
Command & Conquer, abbreviated to C&C and also known as Tiberian Dawn, is a 1995 real-time strategy computer game developed by Westwood Studios for MS-DOS and published by Virgin Interactive. It was the first of twelve games to date to be released under the Command & Conquer label, including a...
contains a miniseries called Red Alert
Command & Conquer: Red Alert series
Command & Conquer: Red Alert is a series of real time strategy video games set within the Command & Conquer universe. The series is well known for having some of the most quirky and outlandish units in the genre....
, whose three games depict what "happened" when Albert Einstein traveled back in time to prevent Hitler from rising to power. This resulted in the Nazi regime never coming to power, allowing the Soviet Union to become a formidable threat to the Allied Nations; instead of just tension during the Cold War, the Soviets launched a full-scale invasion against the United States. Later in the series, the Soviets steal the time-travelling technology for themselves to kill Einstein, preventing his technology from helping the Allies; however, this leads to Japan's Empire of the Rising Sun emerging as a new superpower.
In the videogame The Journeyman Project
The Journeyman Project
The Journeyman Project is a time travel adventure computer game developed by Presto Studios.-Gameplay:The game features a first-person perspective. The protagonist sees a display, a rectangle shaped visor . This user interface helps to reduce the movie size and maintain relatively high frame rates...
, a Temporal Distortion Wave threatens to alter the present. The player is tasked with retrieving a CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
disk that has the correct timeline stored on it. Upon returning to the present from the far distant past, it is revealed that the timeline has indeed been corrupted by four key events in the recent past. This idea of avoiding corrupted timelines is seen throughout the Journeyman Project Trilogy. Although, it is only a story element in the later games as opposed to a major gameplay moment.
Realistically, there is absolutely no way to travel into the past without causing irreparable damage to the timeline as there are far too many variables. Example: One atom travels back in time one million years. Its slight gravitational effect changes the position of every subatomic particle in the universe to eventually move less than a micron. That change may be enough to cause a neuron in one person's brain to fire or not fire causing or preventing a cascade effect. This changes what this person thinks and does thus altering far too many variables to list therefore changing the entire course of history. The effects of any larger object would be far more devastating. If the theory of temporal corruption is correct, time travel would be extremely impractical to say the least.
Temporal merging hypothesis
This is the opposite of the multiple universes hypothesis, in that each action committed in time travel actually overlaps one reality with another. For instance, if a time traveler were to meet his double from another time, the double would merge with the time traveler, making the traveler a part of the time he is visiting. The same would hold true for events. Two events would merge into the nearest event which does not produce a paradox (a dead grandfather in one universe but not in another would either create a dead grandfather in both universes, but alter the person's heritage so as to allow this, merge both timelines so that the person would fade from all timelines upon return, or produce a mean between life and death such as a coma).An example of this is seen in the film The One, in which a character travels across time or dimensions, destroying copies of himself to cause them to merge — thus increasing power for the original character. A similar idea is seen in Margaret Peterson Haddix's book series, The Missing, in which any records of original time are kept in tracers, and those traveling back in time can merge with their own tracers.
Choice timeline hypothesis
In the choice timeline hypothesis, history changes the instant the time traveler decides to travel back in time, thereby rendering his actions in that regard pre-destined. This theory is the most consistent with our understanding of the dimension of time.Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is a 1989 American science fiction–comedy buddy film and the first film in the Bill & Ted franchise in which two metalhead slackers travel through time to assemble a menagerie of historical figures for their high school history presentation.The film was written by...
, as well as its sequel and television spin-offs (Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures - both animated
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures (1990 TV series)
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures is a 1990 spin-off animated television series following the misadventures of two time-travelling slackers as they travel into the distant past and future...
and live-action
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures (1992 TV series)
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventures is a live action spin-off following the misadventures of two time-traveling slackers as they travel into the distant past and future...
), feature numerous uses of this hypothesis. Bill and Ted, constantly realizing that their plans are foiled by the lack of a certain item, decide to later travel back in time and deliver themselves the necessary item, often indicating a specific place in which the item will appear. Upon searching the location, the item is invariably there.
Can-Not Because Has-Not
This theory states that the present is not the forefront of time, and so we are our future selves' past. Thus, if sometime in the future a time travel device were created, someone from the future would have already brought it back to us, thus establishing itself as "already" existing in our time as a result - and likely copied and recopied. Since our present selves are still wondering about time travel, this theory states that we will never be able to build a time machine, because if we are still wondering, then no one from the future has built a time machine and brought it back with them to us, and if no one in the future has built a time machine, then we in the future will not build a time machine, and no one can ever build a time machine because no one in the future has built one. This theory is demonstrated in an episode of the TV show Big Bang Theory where Leonard and Sheldon sign a roommate agreement that states if either one of them ever invents time travel their first trip back would be to their present location 5 seconds after the signing of the contract, they are subsequently disappointed when the 5 seconds pass and nothing happens. This theory, however, creates a Causality LoopCausality loop
A causality loop can refer to the following:*A temporal causality loop, or predestination paradox, more commonly referred to as a causality loop, is a theoretical phenomenon, which is said to occur when a chain of cause-effect events is circular...
. Also if it is that any time machine made will allow only one way travel, i.e. into the future, or if it is that we can go into the future, but while returning, we can only return to the present (i.e. not set the dial to go back more than we used to go into the future, or before the time machine is invented), this theory fails. Wormholes, which are suggested to allow backwards time travel, demonstrate this, as you cannot go further back in time than when the wormhole was created.
There are also other possibilities: someone in the future will build a time machine and many people will use it to travel back in the past, but we do not know this because: "no one can travel so far in the past to reach our time" or "no one has revealed that time-traveling is possible" or "no one that revealed that time-traveling is possible, was trusted" or "anyone with the knowledge to sufficiently understand temporal mechanics enough to build such a device, will also be enlightened enough not to interfere with the known written past" or "the time machine will be destroyed if you go back before it is created."
Self-Healing hypothesis
This theory states that time would heal itself from the paradox. A person is about to alter an event in the present by traveling back to the past and altering the events that cause the events in the present day to happen. Then there will be another set of events that will cause the present-day events to happen, and so there will be reason for him to travel back in time, and thus the paradox would never happen.An example of this can be seen in the film The Time Machine
The Time Machine (2002 film)
The Time Machine is a 2002 American science fiction film loosely adapted from the 1895 novel of the same name by H. G. Wells, and the 1960 film screenplay by David Duncan...
, where the main character creates a time machine to save his dead fiancé, but upon doing so, she is killed another way. When traveling to the future, he finally finds out that if she did not die he would never create the time machine. Thus it is impossible to save her. Even though this does not create a physical paradox, it creates a mental one in which the time traveler, who still builds the time machine for the same reason, remembers a different cause for that reason.
Another example is the TV series Doraemon
Doraemon
is a Japanese manga series created by Fujiko F. Fujio which later became an anime series and an Asian franchise...
, where in one episode the main character travels back in time to save someone from being hit by a car. Doraemon then states that 'if history is altered, it will always repeat itself to make up for the event that did not occur'. However he also states that 'the event might happen on another person, or be a completely different event altogether', raising the question how did the time traveler know about what was supposed to happen in the first place?
This theory is also happens in the TV series Lost
Lost
-In cinema or television:*Lost , an ABC drama about people who become stranded on a mysterious island*Lost , a short-lived reality television program*Lost , an American thriller starring Dean Cain...
when Desmond who can see into the future sees Charlie dieing by lightning and saves him by building a big metal pole. Instead of dieing by this he then sees him dieing by trying to save Claire from drowning and he saves him from that too, Eventually he dies from drowning in the DHARMA Intiative facility the "Spying Glass".
Destruction resolution
This theory states that any paradox would cause the destruction of a universe, or at least the part of the time & space affected by the paradox. In this hypothesis, if a person travels back to kill his grandfather before one of his parents is conceived, then it will cause himself to disappear. History would erase all traces of the person's existence, and the death of the grandfather would be caused by another reason. Thus, the paradox would never occur from the historical viewpoint.Temporal Modification Negation Theory
This theory is partially similar to other theories on time travel. While stating that if time travel is possible it would be impossible to violate the grandfather paradox, it goes further to state that any action taken that itself negates the time travel event cannot occur. The consequences of such an event would in some way negate that event, by either voiding the memory of what one is doing before doing it, by preventing the action in some way, or even by destroying the universe among other possible consequences. It states, therefore, that to successfully change the past one must do so incidentally.For example, if one tried to stop the murder of one's parents, he would fail. On the other hand, if one traveled back and did something to some random person that as a result prevented the death of someone else's parents, then such an event would be successful, because the reason for the journey, and therefore the journey itself, remain unchanged preventing a paradox.
In addition, if this event had some colossal change in the history of mankind, and such an event would not void the ability or purpose of the journey back, it would occur, and would hold. In such a case, the memory of the event would immediately be modified in the mind of the time traveler.
An example of this would be for someone to travel back to observe life in Austria in 1887 and while there shoot five people, one of whom was Hitler's parent. Hitler would therefore never have existed, but since this would not prevent the invention of the means for time travel, or the purpose of the trip, such a change would hold. Also for it to hold, every element that influenced the trip must remain unchanged. This would void someone convincing another party to travel back to kill the people without knowing who they are and making the time line stick, because by being successful, they would void the first party's influence and therefore the second party's actions.
Whatever Happened Did Happen
Although it is a less common theory and is not mentioned much there is the theory that when you do something to stop something it followed that path in time even if it creates a paradox.Say you had the grandfather paradox which is where you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he had any offspring so you are not born which means you never killed your grandfather which means he did have offspring which also means you were born so you could kill him and this would go in an infinte loop but with this theory say you went back in time and killed your grandfather you would still be there and still be alive so although you killed your grandfather before he had offspring you are still there.
See also
- Bootstrap paradoxBootstrap paradoxThe bootstrap paradox is a paradox of time travel in which information or objects can exist without having been created. After information or an object is sent back in time, it is recovered in the present and becomes the very object/information that was initially brought back in time in the first...
- CausalityCausalityCausality is the relationship between an event and a second event , where the second event is understood as a consequence of the first....
- Chaos theoryChaos theoryChaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
- Cosmic censorship hypothesisCosmic censorship hypothesisThe weak and the strong cosmic censorship hypotheses are two mathematical conjectures about the structure of singularities arising in general relativity....
- Time loopTime loopA time loop or temporal loop is a common plot device in science fiction in which time runs normally for a set period but then skips back like a broken record. When the time loop "resets", the memories of most characters are reset...
- Grandfather paradoxGrandfather paradoxThe grandfather paradox is a proposed paradox of time travel first described by the science fiction writer René Barjavel in his 1943 book Le Voyageur Imprudent . The paradox is this: suppose a man traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveler's...
- Predestination paradoxPredestination paradoxA predestination paradox is a paradox of time travel that is often used as a convention in science fiction. It exists when a time traveller is caught in a loop of events that "predestines" or "predates" them to travel back in time...
- RetrocausalityRetrocausalityRetrocausality is any of several hypothetical phenomena or processes that reverse causality, allowing an effect to occur before its cause....
- Science fictionScience fictionScience fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
- Time travelTime travelTime travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Time travel could hypothetically involve moving backward in time to a moment earlier than the starting point, or forward to the future of that point without the...
- WormholeWormholeIn physics, a wormhole is a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that would be, fundamentally, a "shortcut" through spacetime. For a simple visual explanation of a wormhole, consider spacetime visualized as a two-dimensional surface. If this surface is folded along a third dimension, it...