--- In PotaDG@yahoogroups.com
, Haristas@... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 2/16/06 9:54:34 PM Eastern Standard Time,
> whitty@... writes:
>
>
> > Rory since you are my mentor, maybe you can explain why a
timeloop is impossible?
> >
> >
> >
> > Michael
> >
> >
>
> Because the universe just ain't made that way! It has to do with
the Chaos Theory or some such thing. Everything affects everything
else and you can't predict the future because there's an infinite
number of varibles.
>
> Oh boy! I can hear Patrick already!
>
> -- Rory
*** ... and we're off!
When you say "you can't predict the future because there's an
infinite number of vari[a]bles", you're ignoring the fact that we're
not talking strictly about the Future; we're also talking about the
Past experiences of Cornelius, Zira and Milo prior to their "jump"
from the year 3955 to 1973.
The perception of people (like Hasslein) living in 1973 is that
anything in the year 3955 represents the Future... and this is due to
RELATIVITY. Relative to Hasslein's own "spacetime coordinate frame-of-
reference" the so-called 'possible' destruction of Earth is in the
Future -- it hasn't happened yet.
But Einstein proved that there is no such thing as a 'Future' or
a 'Past', strictly speaking, when you have different frames of
reference -- which is precisely the case when two different referent
frames are, relative to each other, ACCELERATING.
Relative to Hasslein, the Ape-onauts come from "the Future" -- or,
what Dr. Hasslein himself would assert, from "a possible Future."
But relative to the Ape-onauts, the world of 1973 is in the FUTURE of
the world they left behind in 3955. "Before" they were on Earth in
the year 3955, and "later" (for them) they were in orbit watching the
Earth's destruction, and still "later" they underwent re-entry and
landed on Earth... but THIS "later" Earth is in the year 1973, and it
is LATER for them yet EARLIER from the frame-of-reference of those
who did not ACCELERATE with them in that ANSA spaceship.
An electron traveling from Point A (at Moment 1) to Point B (which it
encounters at Moment 2) is INDISTINGUISHABLE from a positron
traveling from Point B (at Moment 2) "forward" for it --
yet "backward" for a Perceiver in supposed "Real Time" -- to Point A.
BOTH reference frames are real. A positron traveling along its
virtual path (also called a "worldline") may seem -- to us -- to be
traveling BACKWARDS through Time, but from its own point of view, the
Universe in which we orient ourselves is itself traveling "backwards"
through Time as it zips along merrily going "forwards" along its own
spacetime-track.
The "path" along which the Ape-onauts travel, from Point Z (3955) to
Point A (1973) is perceived by us as BACKWARDS through Time, yet the
Ape-onauts perceive it as FORWARDS through Time... and as they travel
along that pathway, the EARTH-TIME clock appropriately clicks
backwards, from 3955 to 1973.
As they perform that journey, they lock into place a Causality Loop
that MUST be fulfilled in order to satisfy basic Physics: the
Conservation of Mass/Energy. It took ENERGY for that spaceship to
make the "jump" from 3955 to 1973, and that energy had to come from
somewhere and had to transform into another equivalent form of
energy. If that "us"-perceived Future doesn't happen, then the energy-
state equation of the Ape-onauts-In-1973 won't be balanced out by the
equivalent energy-state equation of the Ape-onauts-In-3955.
As Einstein might put it, the "E" has to EQUAL the "M x C squared".
If the Mass-Energy of the combined Ship-plus-ApeOnauts on one side of
the equation (in 1973) isn't balanced out by the Mass-Energy of the
combined Ship-plus-ApeOnauts on the other side of the equation (in
3955) then the Ape-onauts cannot have existed in 1973 to begin with.
But they DO exist in 1973 -- AFTER they pre-existed in 3955,
according to their own relativistic frame-of-reference.
If the square of the hypotenuse doesn't equal the added squares of
the two other sides of a triangle, then it ain't a right triangle.
Whenever there is an equals sign in an equation [=], rather than a
less than or greater than [< or >] sign, then the Constants and
Variables on the LEFT side of the = sign absolutely MUST be balanced
by equivalents on the RIGHT side of the = sign.
[Ape-onauts in 1973] = [Ape-onauts in 3955]
The "equation" above is only missing one item: the Energy required to
propel the 3955 Ape-onauts into a Time Warp. If we are to isolate the
matrix [Ape-onauts in 3955] and then multiply by a Variable
representing this Energy input, then the other side of the equation
[Ape-onauts in 1973], if isolated, would have to balance out with the
same Variable DIVIDED from it.
Thus, if [Ape-onauts in 1973] is set as "A" and [Ape-onauts in 3955]
is set as "Z" and if "E" represents the Energy input necessary to
propel "Z" along the virtual path ("forwards" from Z's perspective
yet "backwards" from A's perspective), then the equation would read:
Z x E = A
or,
A x E^(-1) = Z
or,
A / E = Z
From another perspective, you could interpret Z as having an initial
condition of, say, 100% Kinetic Energy... with the trip back from
3955 to 1973 representing a transformation of that energy into
Potential Energy, so that Z has 100% Potential Energy.
The energy CANNOT BE DESTROYED. It can only be transformed. From K to
P or P to K. Whatever energy source caused that ship to zip backwards
from the spacetime coordinate it occupied in 3955 to the spacetime
coordinate it "later" occupied in 1973 caused there to be a
transformation of that energy in the form of an Acceleration. In
Einsteinian terms, there can be no change-in-Time unless there is an
equivalent change-in-Acceleration. And it takes ENERGY to change the
velocity of a spaceship (acceleration is the change in velocity,
from "rest" to "nearly the speed of light" so that Time undergoes
some form of Dilation according to the Lorentz Equations -- or some
Hasslein-adapted version of the same).
We know that these ANSA ships have engines which are capable of
reaching velocities "nearly the speed of light" -- Taylor tells us
that in the opening scene of "PLANET". We know that "time bends" when
the ship has accelerated near to that topmost velocity, of light.
What is confirmed in "ESCAPE" is that under certain circumstances,
these ANSA ships are capable of undergoing travel through a path in
which "time bends" back on itself. Virgil, in "BATTLE", speculates
about a ship traveling FASTER than light in order to travel BACKWARDS
through Time, but then complicates matters with an impossible
hypothetical (regarding an orchestra conductor who travels through
Time and eventually convinces himself not to conduct a broadcast
which he himself has already conducted and listened to -- which is a
goofy paradox that doesn't really balance out mathematically.
Virgil is thought to know "everything about everything", but there's
no greater danger than a person who thinks he (or she) knows
something that just ain't so. And, in matters of Science, if you
can't put it into numbers then it's WRONG. It ain't Science if it
doesn't balance out the equation. That's as true of this Time Travel
stuff as much as it is the transformation of Mass into Energy in the
nuclear explosions that destroy human civilization between "CONQUEST"
and "BATTLE". Each "critical mass" undergoes a transition EXACTLY
according to the famous equation: E = MC^2. A teeny weeny little
mass, such as a Gram, is equivalent to 900 QUINTILLION ergs of
energy. It's the transformation of many such Grams of plutonium and
uranium into equivalent amounts of energy that cause the cities of
the Earth to become flattened... that cause those 'paradises' to
become wastelands, deserts, Forbidden Zones.
If you want your POTA to be not just Fiction but SCIENCE Fiction,
then it has to meet the standard that separates mere 'fantastic'
fiction from Science Fiction. Burroughs' versions of Mars (Barsoom)
and Venus are not SF. The science in his books ain't up to snuff, and
I don't doubt that he knew it -- but he knew he was writing Fantasy.
It all boils down to what genre you think POTA is supposed to fit
into: satiric Fantasy or satiric Science Fiction. The Narnia books
are Fantasy. Is POTA?
I don't think so. I consider POTA to be satiric Science Fiction. It
has Spaceships and Time Travel and questions of Evolutionary Biology
and Global Thermonuclear War. Aside from Time Travel, the
movie "WIZARDS" had all those elements, too, but was overtly a
Fantasy. A Fantasy story can have elements of Science in them and
still be a Fantasy... but a Science Fiction story cannot contain
Fantasy elements and still be considered Science Fiction -- at least,
it can't according to guys like Isaac Asimov. The moment you
introduce an element that is unscientific, you don't have SF. Case in
point, Larry Niven's novel "THE MAGIC GOES AWAY". In it, he imagines
a "magical" past... but it isn't Fantasy, since he posits a
hypothetical substance which, like our fossil fuels, was once
abundant on the Earth but has since been depleted -- used up by the
magicians who had it in the past. Niven wrote an SF novel that was
able to contain "magical" elements that don't violate the conceptual
frame of SF.
"PLANET OF THE APES", an inherently Satirical story, is rooted in the
genre of Science Fiction. In order to BE in that genre, it has to
obey certain rules of the genre. The "talking animals" motif has to
be treated SCIENTIFICALLY rather than in a "fabulous" way (i.e. as in
one of Aesop's Fables). The ANSA propulsion system has to be treated
scientifically, rather than magically (i.e. like the mystical way
John Carter, in Burroughs' Barsoom novels, travels from Earth to
Mars). And the Time Travel motif has to be scientific according to
the state-of-the-art: in a post-Einstein world, such elements in an
SF story demand as much rigor as a post-Catastrophe story involving
Nuclear Weapons requires Mass-to-Energy transformation details that
are accurate.
Or it ain't SF. Period. End of discussion.
Patrick
