this post was submitted on 26 May 2024
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Science Memes

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[–] takeheart@lemmy.world 21 points 5 months ago (2 children)

There's different ideas on how time travel "could" work and one of them is the timeline-split notion upon which you base your idea. In that vain it's solid.

Other ideas are that time travel always results in a loop or that its perhaps only possible under very specific circumstances (ie you can't pick an arbitrary location or time to travel to nor to travel from).

My hunch is that even if time travel were possible there's simply no practical experiment to tell whether you are in a split timeline (and if so how it differs from others), aka it's outside of the realm of scientific // logical inquiry.

If y'all like exploration of time travel go watch the show Travelers some time. It has some interesting premises in that regard.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 11 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There is also the Paycheck method. There is no travel you can only observe by looking through a special "time telescope." Maybe plenty of people observed the party, they just weren't able to physically attend.

[–] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 5 months ago

First I ever hear of the Paycheck method honestly, at least under that name. Reminds me of a short story about the government keeping a secret "chronoscope" machine and the efforts of the MC to democratize that knowledge.

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 2 points 5 months ago

There is also the harry potter version, any time travel is woven into the only timeline. The past is "edited" to always have included the events time travel.

This can be considered similar to the branching method; where the original branch without the events of the time travel simply ends; only the "new" branch continues.