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Post by AluK on Jun 9, 2020 1:34:38 GMT
Someone needs to get Kat to play Chrono Trigger (and maybe give Cross a chance, too).
Lots of insights and ideas on how to time travel, mess up with timelines and create some chaos (and maybe defeat a god and save the world).
Kat does remind me of Lucca.
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Post by gpvos on Jun 9, 2020 4:18:48 GMT
I think someone suggested that Kat and Annie meet up with Jones to discuss timey-wimey issues? Or was that just myself from another timeline? Anyway, I wondered if Kat and Jones ever met. According to the index, they met at least twice ( at school and at the Jones impact crater), but they haven't been shown to interact. |
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Post by crater on Jun 9, 2020 5:41:59 GMT
Oh no.... does that mean there might be a Kat out there who also.... has to kill Annie ;_; ?
maybe that's what Kat is truly scared of.
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Post by theonethatgotaway on Jun 9, 2020 7:27:22 GMT
Wait, wait, I just came up with something that might fix all of this! Well... fix is a big word. This Kat doesn't want to go through the heart-ache necessary to learn how to break time, but she knows that That Kat did learn how to do it. So what if... instead of breaking TIME, This Kat breaks DIMENSIONS! And This and That Kat make a trade! A working, time-travelling Tic-toc for one of the Annies! Every Kat has an Annie, there's no more Double Trouble in this dimension, This Kat doesn't have to go through the pain to learn how to break time!
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Post by migrantworker on Jun 9, 2020 8:47:58 GMT
Wait, wait, I just came up with something that might fix all of this! Well... fix is a big word. This Kat doesn't want to go through the heart-ache necessary to learn how to break time, but she knows that That Kat did learn how to do it. So what if... instead of breaking TIME, This Kat breaks DIMENSIONS! And This and That Kat make a trade! A working, time-travelling Tic-toc for one of the Annies! Every Kat has an Annie, there's no more Double Trouble in this dimension, This Kat doesn't have to go through the pain to learn how to break time! The method of breaking dimensions is comparatively trivial and is therefore left as an exercise for the reader.  |
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Kuraimizu
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Post by Kuraimizu on Jun 9, 2020 15:25:56 GMT
okay we can identify a number of things that need some theorizing.
chronologically
1. Jones, a time travelling indestructible robot from the future sent back in time to observe history.
2. The seed of Bismuth that gave birth to the court of Gunnerkrigg
3. The Time travelling Tik-Toks that have overlooked the court and robots since the beginning
4. The knowledge that lead to the Creation of the Golems
5. The creation of the Robots
6. The original death of Annie when she fell off of the bridge
7. The original Kat that invented time travel to save Annie, knowing she'd never see the result.
8. How many time loops did it take to eventually save Annie on the bridge?
9. There were 6 Tik-Toks, did it take 6 time loops to save Annie?
10. Did Loup split time when Annie came to meet him, or did he only clone her?
11. Will Kat from the reality that Loup may or may not have stolen Annie from, come looking for her?
12. Or does Kat think that Annie is dead, and that Loup killed her?
13. What would be Kat's plan to save Annie from Loup?
14. Tik-Toks, worked to safe Annie from the Bridge, But won't work against a God. What would be Kat's Anti-Loup plan?
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Kuraimizu
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Post by Kuraimizu on Jun 9, 2020 15:36:18 GMT
Wait, wait, I just came up with something that might fix all of this! Well... fix is a big word. This Kat doesn't want to go through the heart-ache necessary to learn how to break time, but she knows that That Kat did learn how to do it. So what if... instead of breaking TIME, This Kat breaks DIMENSIONS! And This and That Kat make a trade! A working, time-travelling Tic-toc for one of the Annies! Every Kat has an Annie, there's no more Double Trouble in this dimension, This Kat doesn't have to go through the pain to learn how to break time! Time-travel, and Dimensional-Travel is the same thing. if you can't break the fabric of space time, and step into the Void between realities you can't travel backwards or forwards in time. and you can't travel to another reality until you can travel back in time to when the timeline split and follow forwards to the time you want to enter that alternate reality. because to travel to a single timeline, is a lot more difficult than making blind time travel and producing a lot of time clones. you need a map, which means you need to be able to observe the entire multiverse, like a God or you need to follow the timeline as if it was a network of roads and highways. given that the tik-toks and Jones exist, you might have to back track to the start of the Gunnerkrigg Court, or you might have to back track to the start of the solar system, just to find the Original prime reality where Annie died in. and where Kat hasn't become a Goddess yet. |
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Post by netherdan on Jun 9, 2020 17:50:47 GMT
I think Kat is missing the point that she did build the Tic-Toc, a potentially time travelling robot bird, without the need of Annie having to die, and so Annie's death wasn't detrimental to the creation of the bird, but quite the contrary! According to Kat, Annie being alive to tell her is the primary condition for her making the Tic-Toc in the first place! No no, it is exactly the opposite. 'True' time travel requires traveling within your own spacetime on a line. So true time travel creates causal loops (but not alternate dimensions or possibilities). This you can logically get phenomena like 'djinn', objects that don't begin or end anywhere because they are passed on and backwards through time in a way that makes them their own causal antecedent, even in the future. That kind of things always annoyed me. Objects like that don't make sense because they would get older and older and older with each 'loop', until they break or turn into dust, or cosmic radiation, or something. I was thinking about it and it can be partially solved by the assumption that anti-matter is nothing but time-reversed matter and that "time travel to the past" also includes reversing the clock of the atoms in the object to a previous state. That obviously would present its own challenges since no physical object would be able to travel to a point in time prior to its creation and every bit of "information" stored in it (be it written, memory, electrically stored, degradation, etc) would also be reversed. So a sentient time traveler would have no memory of said time travel and if not from external sources they would also have no way of telling that they did travel. Also, atoms long lost by the time traveler instance in this assumption of time travel method would not be "drawn back" from wherever they currently are, so imagine that we lose thousands if not millions of skin cells every day, about 50 to 100 strands of hair, some millilitres of water from respiration... And now imagine all your metabolic processes being reversed into their base components without the "previous" ones being in place and you could imagine that the results of this method could be quite gruesome for any biological being, but also that sending a robot back to before they were built would probably result in anything from a bunch of components to a mix of plastic and metal lumps or dust arriving in the destination. Another fun implication is that sending anything to the future would result in the traveler experiencing time at the incredible pace of one second per second, so even if from the outside perspective the traveling instance seems to disappear and reappear one hour later, it would still experience the whole hour from its perspective, probably trapped in an immovable void state. Heh, I'm aware that this is definitely not how Tom would write his take on time travel, mostly because it's boring and/or gory, but was a fun thought experiment! Someone needs to get Kat to play Chrono Trigger (and maybe give Cross a chance, too). Lots of insights and ideas on how to time travel, mess up with timelines and create some chaos (and maybe defeat a god and save the world). Kat does remind me of Lucca. Now I'm really torn between the chapter bonus pages being about Arthur's input on the robot cult or Paz's apologies to Kat with a Chrono Trigger game night. And I'm not even sure that game can be finished in a single night! (maybe if you blaze through all the story bits but then how would her look out at the horizon through her window afterwards?) |
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Post by AluK on Jun 9, 2020 18:03:15 GMT
Now I'm really torn between the chapter bonus pages being about Arthur's input on the robot cult or Paz's apologies to Kat with a Chrono Trigger game night. And I'm not even sure that game can be finished in a single night! (maybe if you blaze through all the story bits but then how would her look out at the horizon through her window afterwards?) If you already know the game like the back of your hand and really, really rush through, you might be able to finish it in less than 20 hours. Can't see a newcomer doing it in less than 30. It's more like a "game weekend", or even a week of game nights, game, really. And that's only the main story, critical path stuff. Knowing Kat (and in light of her current predicament), she'd want to try all the 13 alternative endings. |
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Post by netherdan on Jun 9, 2020 18:47:32 GMT
Now I'm really torn between the chapter bonus pages being about Arthur's input on the robot cult or Paz's apologies to Kat with a Chrono Trigger game night. And I'm not even sure that game can be finished in a single night! (maybe if you blaze through all the story bits but then how would her look out at the horizon through her window afterwards?) If you already know the game like the back of your hand and really, really rush through, you might be able to finish it in less than 20 hours. Can't see a newcomer doing it in less than 30. It's more like a "game weekend", or even a week of game nights, game, really. And that's only the main story, critical path stuff. Knowing Kat (and in light of her current predicament), she'd want to try all the 13 alternative endings. It might be implied by a "One week later" panel in the second bonus page, but I wouldn't mind 2 weeks worth of bonus pages about Chrono Trigger either! |
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Post by AluK on Jun 9, 2020 18:58:42 GMT
It might be implied by a "One week later" panel in the second bonus page, but I wouldn't mind 2 weeks worth of bonus pages about Chrono Trigger either! Tom could throw in a meta joke and have one of the pages be one where Kat, Paz and everyone else is now a bird, like the Dino Age ending  |
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Post by Runningflame on Jun 9, 2020 19:57:23 GMT
I think Kat is missing the point that she did build the Tic-Toc, a potentially time travelling robot bird, without the need of Annie having to die, and so Annie's death wasn't detrimental to the creation of the bird, but quite the contrary! According to Kat, Annie being alive to tell her is the primary condition for her making the Tic-Toc in the first place! Ooh, good point! So, possibly, Kat couldn't have invented the tic toc if Annie died, because Annie wouldn't be around to give her the seed of the idea. That would mean there are only two possible kinds of universe: one in which Annie died and there are no tic tocs, and one in which Annie was saved by tic tocs and there are tic tocs. And since we are clearly in the latter kind of universe, why assume the former exists? (All of which boils down to questioning Kat's axiom, "That loop must have started at some point." Must it? "A circle has no end," to quote a precocious teenage heroine from another, older sci-fi story.) But it just now occurs to me: how would external observers find out that there was time travel involved? Wouldn't they just see an object that pops into existence at a certain point in time, exists for a while, and then vanishes again? Or in other words, how could you tell the difference between a self-caused object and an uncaused object? (Or, for that matter, an object whose cause is simply unknown?) |
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Post by saardvark on Jun 10, 2020 1:26:33 GMT
Wait, wait, I just came up with something that might fix all of this! Well... fix is a big word. This Kat doesn't want to go through the heart-ache necessary to learn how to break time, but she knows that That Kat did learn how to do it. So what if... instead of breaking TIME, This Kat breaks DIMENSIONS! And This and That Kat make a trade! A working, time-travelling Tic-toc for one of the Annies! Every Kat has an Annie, there's no more Double Trouble in this dimension, This Kat doesn't have to go through the pain to learn how to break time! Time-travel, and Dimensional-Travel is the same thing. if you can't break the fabric of space time, and step into the Void between realities you can't travel backwards or forwards in time. and you can't travel to another reality until you can travel back in time to when the timeline split and follow forwards to the time you want to enter that alternate reality. because to travel to a single timeline, is a lot more difficult than making blind time travel and producing a lot of time clones. you need a map, which means you need to be able to observe the entire multiverse, like a God or you need to follow the timeline as if it was a network of roads and highways. given that the tik-toks and Jones exist, you might have to back track to the start of the Gunnerkrigg Court, or you might have to back track to the start of the solar system, just to find the Original prime reality where Annie died in. and where Kat hasn't become a Goddess yet. Im seeing time as (at least) two dimensional, so "dimensional-travel" is really just travel between "separate" linear timelines through a second (cross-timeline, if you will) time dimension. |
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Post by saardvark on Jun 10, 2020 1:33:03 GMT
I was thinking about it and it can be partially solved by the assumption that anti-matter is nothing but time-reversed matter This has scary implications if a time traveler ever meets up with him/herself at a different time.... potential instant destruction of both if not kept well separated! |
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Post by Kuraimizu on Jun 10, 2020 1:48:31 GMT
I was thinking about it and it can be partially solved by the assumption that anti-matter is nothing but time-reversed matter This has scary implications if a time traveler ever meets up with him/herself at a different time.... potential instant destruction of both if not kept well separated! The only exciting thing about anti-matter is it's considered to be spinning in the opposite direction as regular matter and has the opposite charge. anti-matter isn't reverse-time matter, that would break the laws of physics, mostly because of how entropy works. Antimatter works the same way regular matter does, the only major difference is the charges are in the wrong place. |
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Post by zbeeblebrox on Jun 10, 2020 3:48:33 GMT
That's heavy, doc
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Post by antiyonder on Jun 10, 2020 4:31:05 GMT
If you already know the game like the back of your hand and really, really rush through, you might be able to finish it in less than 20 hours. Can't see a newcomer doing it in less than 30. It's more like a "game weekend", or even a week of game nights, game, really. And that's only the main story, critical path stuff. Knowing Kat (and in light of her current predicament), she'd want to try all the 13 alternative endings. It might be implied by a "One week later" panel in the second bonus page, but I wouldn't mind 2 weeks worth of bonus pages about Chrono Trigger either! Maybe with a black bonus page stating "But the future refused to change". |
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Post by Angry Robot on Jun 10, 2020 8:08:46 GMT
"A circle has no end," to quote a precocious teenage heroine from another, older sci-fi story. "I understood that reference." - Steve Rogers |
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Post by saardvark on Jun 10, 2020 8:21:37 GMT
This has scary implications if a time traveler ever meets up with him/herself at a different time.... potential instant destruction of both if not kept well separated! The only exciting thing about anti-matter is it's considered to be spinning in the opposite direction as regular matter and has the opposite charge. anti-matter isn't reverse-time matter, that would break the laws of physics, mostly because of how entropy works. Antimatter works the same way regular matter does, the only major difference is the charges are in the wrong place. The Feynmann-Stueckelberg interpretation of antiparticles in quantum mechanics does indeed consider antiparticles as time-reversed particles. I'm unclear if this is meant to be taken as "reality" or merely a sort of computational tool. Also, its an observational fact that if you bring matter and antimatter together, you get mutual annihilation with energy release of pure matter conversion E=mc^2. Best fuel there is, if you can get it! So it is not *just* charge and spin reversed matter (though you're right, it is that as well). |
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Post by zaratustra on Jun 10, 2020 9:08:09 GMT
Kat shouldn't worry, like, one of the great things about time travel is that you don't need to hurry about it.
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Kuraimizu
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Post by Kuraimizu on Jun 10, 2020 9:52:59 GMT
The only exciting thing about anti-matter is it's considered to be spinning in the opposite direction as regular matter and has the opposite charge. anti-matter isn't reverse-time matter, that would break the laws of physics, mostly because of how entropy works. Antimatter works the same way regular matter does, the only major difference is the charges are in the wrong place. The Feynmann-Stueckelberg interpretation of antiparticles in quantum mechanics does indeed consider antiparticles as time-reversed particles. I'm unclear if this is meant to be taken as "reality" or merely a sort of computational tool. Also, its an observational fact that if you bring matter and antimatter together, you get mutual annihilation with energy release of pure matter conversion E=mc^2. Best fuel there is, if you can get it! So it is not *just* charge and spin reversed matter (though you're right, it is that as well). Okay I looked into that a bit, and it seems strange. from the way they describe it, the electron would turn into some neutron version of an electron as it sheds a photon then sheds another photon as it turns into a positron, and starts going back in time. but that would cause all sorts of problems, not the least, that you have a new third particle that is literally not moving in time. and they don't always create 2 photons. not to mention the causality problems if you magnetically trapped the positron after creating it. if the positron is moving opposite in time to us, it's past is our future, and vice versa. meaning if you magnetically trap a positron that is split from a photon, you are preventing it's past from occurring in our future, but it's future was our past, causing a causality paradox for the positron. if you never release it, is our future set in stone? |
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Post by netherdan on Jun 10, 2020 12:30:40 GMT
I was thinking about it and it can be partially solved by the assumption that anti-matter is nothing but time-reversed matter This has scary implications if a time traveler ever meets up with him/herself at a different time.... potential instant destruction of both if not kept well separated! I think they would be able to annihilate with any regular matter, not just themselves. But then again, the time-traveling object would only be comprised of anti-matter while being sent back, reversing the "age" of its atoms in the process (but not necessarily reversing all of its damage). Upon arrival, its "clock" resumes ticking forward which in effect would be the same as it turning back into regular matter |
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Post by fia on Jun 10, 2020 17:57:52 GMT
No no, it is exactly the opposite. 'True' time travel requires traveling within your own spacetime on a line. So true time travel creates causal loops (but not alternate dimensions or possibilities). This you can logically get phenomena like 'djinn', objects that don't begin or end anywhere because they are passed on and backwards through time in a way that makes them their own causal antecedent, even in the future. The thing you describe later is not true time travel, but "dimensional travel", which suggests that our spacetime is causally coextensive with a different one - which makes little sense because if it's causally coextensive it is not a different spacetime at all. EDIT: On a second reading, maybe we are agreeing on the substance, if not the terminology? Maybe I misunderstood your post. I don't think many people consider that dimensional travel because it isn't an alternate dimension until such point the time traveler arrives. That and a nebulous definition of what counts as a dimension and how that is distinct from timeline. Personally my main suspension of disbelief for time travel is the absence of black holes. Unless the travelers are intangible all that matter coalescing in significant points in history would lead to a space-time collapse. Key question: Why would a whole spacetime (a "dimension") split into two (add an "alternate") just because one microscopic part of it (the traveler) traveled to a different part of that same spacetime? I can't compute that. The only way it's computable is (1) if 'time' really is a separate entirely nonspatial entity, but relativity seems to rule that out? And Kat would know about it, since the double-split experiment and even more complicated mathematical physics was shown to them ages ago in class? Or if (2) each and every time a quantum superposition collapses there is a split in spacetime which somehow duplicates all of the entities in each alternative scenario. But it can't be (2) because we've just heard the assertion again that "new timelines" are only created some of the time; and if this version of dimensional split were relevant, there are literally infinite numbers of worlds where Annie dies before now and after now and where Kat dies before now and after now, and so on. Basically everything that is even remotely possible has/is/will happen on that version of 'reality'. |
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Post by warrl on Jun 10, 2020 19:28:46 GMT
7. The original Kat that invented time travel to save Annie, knowing she'd never see the result. Not necessarily. If she thought she was inventing time travel but actually invented dimension-hopping, she would expect to see the result but - unless she dimension-hopped herself - never actually see it. (And even then... the tic-tocs have been around for so long that the robots think they predate the court, so if Kat did exactly the same dimension-hop she'd be dead of old age before Annie was born.) We don't know and can never know. All we know is that sufficient Tik-Toks survived to the date of Annie's fall, to do the job. Maybe with some extras. The number of time loops that occur is the largest number of Tic-Tocs that ever existed at one time, divided by the number that Kat will make. (This is assuming that all Tic-Tocs get sent back to the same point in time, or close enough for our purposes.) Since we don't know how many Kat will make (it's at least 1), or the largest number that ever existed at one time, this is a thing we can't learn by that route. However it's possible that at some point in the future of the comic Kat will just *say* how many times she sent Tic-Tocs into the past. |
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Post by Dvandaemon on Jun 12, 2020 8:01:51 GMT
I don't think many people consider that dimensional travel because it isn't an alternate dimension until such point the time traveler arrives. That and a nebulous definition of what counts as a dimension and how that is distinct from timeline. Personally my main suspension of disbelief for time travel is the absence of black holes. Unless the travelers are intangible all that matter coalescing in significant points in history would lead to a space-time collapse. Key question: Why would a whole spacetime (a "dimension") split into two (add an "alternate") just because one microscopic part of it (the traveler) traveled to a different part of that same spacetime? I can't compute that. The only way it's computable is (1) if 'time' really is a separate entirely nonspatial entity, but relativity seems to rule that out? And Kat would know about it, since the double-split experiment and even more complicated mathematical physics was shown to them ages ago in class? Or if (2) each and every time a quantum superposition collapses there is a split in spacetime which somehow duplicates all of the entities in each alternative scenario. But it can't be (2) because we've just heard the assertion again that "new timelines" are only created some of the time; and if this version of dimensional split were relevant, there are literally infinite numbers of worlds where Annie dies before now and after now and where Kat dies before now and after now, and so on. Basically everything that is even remotely possible has/is/will happen on that version of 'reality'. The only answer I can think of is that reality is already being defined by subatomic parts of it. So any masses of it taking different courses is significant enough for the whole thing to be split. It's no skin off reality's bones to do the whole thing over but different, it already did everything the first time around. |
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Post by saardvark on Jun 12, 2020 12:24:53 GMT
The Feynmann-Stueckelberg interpretation of antiparticles in quantum mechanics does indeed consider antiparticles as time-reversed particles. I'm unclear if this is meant to be taken as "reality" or merely a sort of computational tool. Also, its an observational fact that if you bring matter and antimatter together, you get mutual annihilation with energy release of pure matter conversion E=mc^2. Best fuel there is, if you can get it! So it is not *just* charge and spin reversed matter (though you're right, it is that as well). Okay I looked into that a bit, and it seems strange. from the way they describe it, the electron would turn into some neutron version of an electron as it sheds a photon then sheds another photon as it turns into a positron, and starts going back in time. but that would cause all sorts of problems, not the least, that you have a new third particle that is literally not moving in time. and they don't always create 2 photons. not to mention the causality problems if you magnetically trapped the positron after creating it. if the positron is moving opposite in time to us, it's past is our future, and vice versa. meaning if you magnetically trap a positron that is split from a photon, you are preventing it's past from occurring in our future, but it's future was our past, causing a causality paradox for the positron. if you never release it, is our future set in stone? I looked into it and I think its just a "mathematical solution" of the Dirac equation not meant to be taken as reality. Its sort of "well this is technically a solution" - a negative energy electron moving backwards in time - "but we don't like that (negative energy, time travel), so we will posit the existence of "- a positive energy positron (electron antiparticle) moving forwards in time. The corresponding Feynmann diagrams look like this, and are claimed to be equivalent:
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