Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you, but the way you through around the term "alternate reality" makes it sounds like you believe all of these realities exist simultaneously... If that's the case, my next question would be "Where?" Where do these alternate realities exist? Another "plane" of existence? On another "invisible" spectrum? Another time-space continuum?
You're applying a spacial concept to something that deals with different states of the same matter and space-time. That's like asking "When are the other realities?" It's nonsensical, like your statement about there only being "one timeline at a time." If I had a wormhole that led to my living room 10 minutes in the past, I stepped through that wormhole and trashed the place, and then I returned to my reality where my living room weren't trashed, both living rooms are in the same spacial location.
Dealing with the broader implications of alternate realities that you're trying to allude to, I don't have those answers. In the absence of evidence, I don't even accept the claim that alternate realities exist. I'm only arguing that it's the only way we know of for backwards time travel to make sense. On an unrelated note, the multiple worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics and/or time travel doesn't even violate conservation of matter/energy.
Because that sounds more in line with faith than science, and what I mean by that is science has no means of proving any of those things even remotely exist (aside from visualspectrums...) so any "knowledge" of their existence in them is a matter of faith rather than science.
It would be faith if I accepted the claim that alternate realities exist without reason. I don't accept that claim.
As far as wormholes, they are irrelevant. You are making presumptions based on a sci-fi approach to how wormholes work and Star Trek (especially) is incredibly inconsistent regarding this.
There's quite a lot of science involved in the concept of wormholes, and they're permitted by the Einstein field equations of general relativity. All you have to do is account for a negative energy density, which is absolutely possible. Wormholes are also the most feasible form of possible time travel, as far as we understand.
The first thing to contemplate is...there are no true paradoxes.
Boldly asserting there are no paradoxes doesn't resolve those paradoxes.
The most common time travel "paradox": Man goes back in time and alters events in a way that prevents any future time travel, which in turn, prevents him from ever going back in time in the first place...
There is no paradox here because the moment the man arrives in the past (let's say 1960) any events taking place between 1960 and his "present day" no longer exist. He's essentially pressed the reset button on that period of time. The events leading to his being in the past have been erased, but that doesn't change the fact that he's in the past (which has now become the present). The man is simply the only remnant of that "reality".
That's a paradox, and now you're the one violating concepts like the law of conservation of matter/energy. I understand what you're trying to argue about possible time travel, but you're failing to comprehend the paradox. If time travel were just like a VCR, then altering the events that lead to time travel erase the act of time travel. For example:
- March 5: I pick an apple and eat it.
- March 6: I build a time machine.
- March 7: I step inside my time machine and go back in time to March 5.
TIMELINE RESETS
- March 5: I pick an apple and am about to eat it when, in a blinding flash of light, I arrive from the future and shoot the guy and then myself.
- March 6: No one builds a time machine.
- March 7: No one steps inside the time machine to go back in time to March 5.
TIMELINE RESETS
- March 5: I pick an apple and eat it.
- March 6: I build a time machine.
- March 7: I step inside my time machine and go back in time to March 5.
And that goes on forever.
Alternatively:
- March 5: You and I meet up. We decide that if a particular wall is red when we look at it on March 6, we're going to go back in time to March 5 and paint it yellow. If it's yellow on March 6, we're going to paint it red, all regardless of what it is on March 5.
- March 6: We see the wall is red.
- March 7: We go back in time to March 5 with yellow paint.
TIMELINE RESETS
- March 5: You and I meet up. We decide that if a particular wall is red when we look at it on March 6, we're going to go back in time to March 5 and paint it yellow. If it's yellow on March 6, we're going to paint it red, all regardless of what it is on March 5. Meanwhile, we arrive from the future and paint the wall yellow.
- March 6: We see the wall is yellow.
- March 7: We go back in time to March 5 with red paint.
TIMELINE RESETS
- March 5: You and I meet up. We decide that if a particular wall is red when we look at it on March 6, we're going to go back in time to March 5 and paint it yellow. If it's yellow on March 6, we're going to paint it red, all regardless of what it is on March 5. Meanwhile, we arrive from the future and paint the wall red.
- March 6: We see the wall is red.
- March 7: We go back in time to March 5 with yellow paint.
And the timeline resets forever. The problem is that time moves linearly. What happens on March 9? However, things like wormholes potentially allow objects (and people) to move to different points in time. This doesn't change the directional flow of time for the universe. I refer you back to my rope around the Earth example, because it really exemplifies how backwards time travel is paradoxical, with or without a rope, if you assume causality can be violated but there aren't multiple realities. You have yet to resolve those paradoxes. If you think someone can go back in time and prevent him or herself from being born without it a.) causing a paradox, or b.) involving alternate realities, then you don't know what a paradox is.
So this leads to the most frightening prospect of time travel...
At the press of a button, we all cease to exist as we are now.
Should the traveler(s) travel to a time prior to our births, there will of course be the chance that we will never exist.
For the reasons I mentioned above, this is not how time travel would work because a.) You're not interrupting the directional flow of time for the rest of the universe, and b.) it has the potential to be paradoxical.
Grasping at theories like multiple universes or alternate timelines (in my opinion) are no different then believing in an afterlife.
You're right that belief in alternate realities and timelines isn't much different from belief in an afterlife. Good thing I don't accept any of these claims as true. It is true, however, that a multiple realities approach is the only one that resolves the paradoxes and is, as far as we know, physically possible if time travel is possible.
And now I would love for someone to tell me precisely how wrong I am while following it up with exactly why and how they definitively know the answer.
You're wrong when you say backwards time travel isn't paradoxical without a multiple realities approach the same way I know A=A is always true. I've demonstrated the time travel paradoxes pretty clearly, and you haven't resolved them yet. If you can resolve the paradoxes another way, be my guest.
The Borg may have been thwarted in preventing first contact, or even altering the trajectory of Zefram Cochrane's warp flight, but the timeline remains contaminated, as the crew of the Enterprise-E did a less than thorough clean-up job: In the Enterprise episode "Regeneration", Borg drones were discovered 90 years later in the Arctic. These drones assimilated the scientists who discovered them, along with their transport, made their way into space. and were able to transmit Earth's spatial coordinates to the Borg in the Delta Quadrant which conveniently would not be received before the 24th century...
You seemed to have missed the entire point of my response, which was that because causality was never violated, there's a near 100% chance that the timeline the Enterprise-E originally came from also included the events of Regeneration. I suggest you reread my post. Based on how the time travel likely occurred as I explained it, if someone who had witnessed the events of Regeneration had also been on the Enterprise-E, it would have looked like the timeline weren't changed in any way.
thus entertaining the possibility of a temporal causality loop or predestination paradox.
Infinite timelines like the ones I described involving First Contact can sometimes give the illusion of a causality loop or a predestination paradox. The only requirement is that there is an initial catalyst in a timeline that leads to the series of events that appears to be a causal loop. For example:
- Timeline 1: I (TL1) build a time machine, grab a gun, and go back in time to scare my friend at a time and place I know he's going to be.
- Timeline 2: I (TL1) arrive from the future, trip, and accidentally shoot my friend (TL2) in the past. Seeing my friend shot by a mystery figure, I (TL2) travel back in time with my gun to prevent this tragedy.
- Timeline 3: I (TL2) arrive from the future, trip, and accidentally shoot my friend (TL3) in the past. Seeing my friend shot by a mystery figure, I (TL3) travel back in time with my gun to prevent this tragedy.
Now you have an apparent causal loop. If causality isn't violated or a series of events leads to a situation in which causality isn't violated, what appears to be a causal loop on the surface can appear. The above example and how I described First Contact demonstrate this.
If you throw in the many-worlds interpretation, nullify the causal loop and allow the Enterprise-E to return to an unaltered future, (how?)
A wormhole necessarily allows for the travel between altered and unaltered realities and timelines. I refer you to my rope-around-the-Earth "example."
If you throw in the many-worlds interpretation, nullify the causal loop and allow the Enterprise-E to return to an unaltered future, (how?) any timeline with the events of "First Contact" in its history must diverge from the "Prime" (Enterprise, Abramsverse). Nero's 2233 incursion merely compounded the Borg incursion of 2063. If the temporal incursion of 2233 created an alternate reality, how is the 2063 incursion any different?
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. Depending on how you look at it, the 2063 incursion isn't any different from the events of the 2009 film. Backwards time travel necessarily formed alternate timelines. The difference is the Enterprise-E's own past includes their actions in past with the Borg; nothing was changed because of the infinite loop of identical timelines. You're right that there had to have been a prime timeline that catalyzed the whole thing in which time travel from the future didn't occur, but it's statistically irrelevant. I refer you back to my explanation of First Contact. Had someone on the Enterprise-E been around during the events of Regeneration, they would have remembered the Borg being there because their past already includes the Borg incursion. That's the only difference; Prime Spock's past does not include the Nero incursion.
