TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Depends on the type of time travel you believe in. My favorite type involves infinitely forking universes, where every event happens and is equally real.
You start with universe A, kick the ball into universe B, and it stays there, which results in an “infinite delay”. If you’re lucky someone in universe C, D, E… etc. kicks their ball to you in universe A. Basically the perceived time delay could be anything. If they decide to kick the ball to your yesterday, the delay is -24 h. They could also choose to send it at the exact same time your ball went to universe B, so that the event would look just like as if there were no time travel portals. It’s up to them really. The delay could be anything they want it to be.
Eq0@literature.cafe 4 days ago
That’s not the time travel I like because it doesn’t create any fun paradoxes!
I support the “unique universe” idea, with all the paradoxes that that can generate. So, you send the ball back to 1969. Has the ball then been bouncing up and down the room since then? You should have seen it when you threw your “new” ball, then!
Or the same ball cannot exist twice at the same time, then somehow the 1969 ball stopped existing when the now-ball got created. And you will never get your ball back because it disappeared in the past.
Or the universe fixes itself, then when your ball disappeared in the time portal, the 1969 version somehow reappeared in the room, but that is the paradox that needs the most “fixing”, so I don’t prefer it
TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
Oh ok, no problem. I can switch to a model that doesn’t shy away from paradoxes and contradictions.
Next, you would need to address what to do with those problems. Can we allow the same thing to exist in two places simultaneously? How about information and items without any origin? Does it matter if the model isn’t consistent or doesn’t make sense? If so, it’s going to be a very flexible tool when writing a scifi story.