Time Travel, Time Paradoxes and How they work (linear time) ~TnkTheories

     Hello once more to another Theory by the whatever goes brain of Tsinik. To be able to understand everything I am about to explain I highly recommend reading my previews theory, "What is Time". You will need to have an understanding for the "Time is the different states of the 3d object we call universe". If you can understand that then you don't really need to read the previews one. Though I would appreciate the support.

     So let's get started shall we? What is a linear time? In simpler words it's a timeline. Yes, I am serious, no I am not dumb. I think. Anyways. To understand when time travel would work we will examine the following cases:

• Whether time is a single point and previews states are not saved anywhere.
• Whether once something changes the next states get deleted or remains running .
• If time is saved, is it in DFS mode or BFS mode.

I believe I should start by explaining those two acronyms. They are quite easy to understand actually. DFS means Depth First Search. It is when you check one child of a node in a tree or graph then immediately check the first child of that child, and so forth. 

BFS means Breadth First Search and it is when checking all children of the node we are on then going on to check their children.

     Let's get started with single point theory. We as mortals feel the effects of time yet if we look behind us we can't see the previews states. So one theory is that time is a single point. If it is a single object that keeps getting its state updated then we would have no record of the previews states.  Usually when you make a real time game you keep logging previews states to save as backup but you don't save each state the game is in due to immense amounts of storage this requires. So imagine the data you would need for storing even one state of this universe. If this is the case then that would mean that time travelling would be impossible due to the simple fact the past and the future don't exist. Well this bullet was easy. Onto the next one.

     We need to understand that if the previews states are saved, then what rules apply. If they are then they must be saved in a form of an array. Each state pointing to the next. For sake's argument we will set that each state also points to the previews other wise time travelling to the past would become impossible unless you knew where the head of the list is saved ( that is the start of time) and then move from there to the point you want to go. Sounds complicated right? That is why we will set that each state in time points to prevState and nextState. That would mean these objects would look a bit like this:

struct Universe{

     int id; //why not?

     Universe prevState;

     Universe nextState;

}

For the next step we take that time moves in a DFS kind of way. That would mean that travelling to the past would be possible if you knew where that info is stored and go to it. So let's say we went. Now that state has a change. That means that state will now choose a new nextState. So the million dollar question is. Does the previews nextState get deleted? Does it exist but without it being linked to this state? Or does this state have a lot of next states.

Here is how these three cases would look like.

As we can see above the timeline you left always gets erased thus resulting in only having one time line.

Here we just see the timelines exist but they are hanging from just your pointer or if that pointer doesn't mean anything then from nothing.

I believe you have seen this enough time to understand it.

     It is noteworthy that in all three cases, time travel can happen but to the past. As far as paradoxes go they are all wrong. Let's take the grandpa paradox. The grandson travels back in time. Now his data exist in this state. Doesn't matter if he is created or not in the future. His data is already here. It's like the admin added it. Doesn't need to have come from somewhere. So he kills his granpa. There is a new next state. He now exists in this time line. Doesn't matter that he won't get born again. His data is here. If there is a garbage collector that looks for null pointers, and now there is no pointer pointing to him since he never got born, then simply that garbage collector will remove him. That doesn't mean that his granpa will get resurrected or something. Those actions happened. So now he stopped his bloodline and is either living in that timeline or he also vanished after doing the deed. If the previews next state exists yet then that would mean that there is a pointer pointing at him so he won't get erased. If it gets deleted it will catch up to him at some point and erase him. Unless they don't look for the missing data and just erase the states. That also means that he will just exist in this timeline.

     There is the chance of it being only one timeline where you go to the past and everything up to the last state recorded gets updated. That would still not have a paradox since as I pointed out, your data is now here. Even if you never get born in the future, your data was manually placed here thus you exist now.

In the above video we see the garbage collector effect where it follows our brave soldier even in the new timeline. If there wasn't any garbage collector he would have lived. However timeline was slower than the collector.

     Now if it was a BFS time system he would definitely survive since that means nothing gets erased. As we've seen BFS guarantees multiple time lines. Though BFS is quite unlikely since there are infinite outcomes which would mean we would have never left the first step.

     The trick to this is understanding traveling to the future. If we are using linear time then it most likely is impossible. From where you stand you would always be at the end of your time line. Even if you traveled back in time first that creates a new timeline. That means you are still in the last state of that time line. If you could go to another time line's "future" it isn't traveling to your future it is traveling to another dimension where that time got to move further. And for that to happen you need to be in a universe where the states don't get deleted. Otherwise if they do, there will never be a future to go to. The only way for it to work would be if there weren't multiple timelines but only one and that each state after the point you time traveled to gets updated. That would mean that after you go to the past you can go up to some point to the future, depending on how fast time works.

As you can see, since it created another timeline when he traveled back in time, even though the i at that time line was 8 by traveling to the future, which was his old timeline, the i was again 1, as if nothing changed. The time traveling you see be done in movies where they go in the future is a different kind of time. It is not a time line but circular time. This will be explained next time.

     I think that is all I need to explain for time travel in a linear time. If you didn't understand something then go ahead and ask me. I might have left something out so do ask. For the how you can time travel then... How should I know? I am not an official scientist! Thank you for reading.

     I would suggest reading my other posts:

What is Time ~ This is my starting point for time theories
How to be happy ~ This is just something important a lot of people need to read. So please for the good of others read it and share it.
Helping Courses for JAVA part 1 ~ maybe there is someone out there that want to learn.
(The other posts are not as important so it's ok)