Nerdy Time Travel question

The worm hole theory is used to explain how an infant Kal-El and a sixteen year cousin, Kara left Krypton at the same time to travel to Earth and Kal-El's spaceship arrive on Earth years before Kara's spaceship and Kal-El grows up as Clark Kent and ends up being older than his cousin Kara on Earth where she does not even recognize him until she realizes Clark must be Kal-El because he is the only other Kryptonian around and he has the baby Kal-El's features, just more matured by age.

As Kal-El tells Kara in Superman, "We may have left Krypton at the same time when you were older than me. But, the worm hole we came out of changed that. We just have to deal with it."

Which is why on Smallville they don't even recognize each other, until they talk to each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUKCp6foTsY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cye1tF0tP90

Smallville put their own artistic twist into the myth in that they had the two spaceships land at the same time on Earth. However, Kara's ship landed in a river and was covered over with Kryptonite that put her in a state os suspended animated as her ship's shielding gave her some protecting from the more harmful effects of Kryptonite radiation.

Every new version of the Superman family myth has some artistic variations. Superman Unbound is more faithful to the worm hole theory.

Kara was sent to Earth because her father Zor-El was the only one to believe his brother, Jor-El that Krypton was doomed. And, Kara, being older, was supposed to look out for Kal-El on Earth. But, the worm hole changed all that.
 
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On further thought, though I maintain that you have all the right in the world to just make up your own time-travel rules (because time-travel is fake and made-up), I must say that I particularly appreciate time-travel movies that have an obvious paradox built in to the story (and that'd be pretty much all of them).
 
The group of Nobel Prize winning Physicists in that video make it real theoretical physics on time travel, black hole, and the creation of the Universe.

I learned something new watching the video. I didn't know Carl Sagan wrote the science fiction book, Contact, which Jody Foster was in.

Take note that the video states Carl Sagan wrote the science fiction novel to be as realistic as possible. Most of the science fiction writers in the groups I am in are the same way.
 
The discussion is really "hard sci-fi" vs. "soft sci-fi" (less examples on that page, but let's be honest, those examples are easy to come up with). Things are not usually one or the other, but fall somewhere on a scale. The harder the sci-fi, the more "accurate" (or at least, within accordance of our current understanding of physics, etc. Bearing in mind that scientific knowledge is not a fixed quantity)

Writing soft sci-fi? Do what you want! Writing hard sci-fi? You need to do the math. Both have merits and both have fans. But with either, as everyone has said, internal consistency is the most important issue.
 
Yeah, take Safety Not Guaranteed, which seemed to get quite a bit of praise from ITers. That's gotta be an example of soft sci-fi, right?

I haven't watched that Michio Kaku video yet. I'd like to. But anyway, I'm under the impression that String Theory is far from having attained orthodoxy. So far, anyway. Maybe it will.

I've watched at least some of the Brian Greene documentaries, which are good and interesting, but I tend to gravitate toward the physicists who express skepticism about String Theory. That's not to knock your or your scientist friends' strongly held beliefs about it, MDMP. I would simply offer an alternative opinion that one is not required to conform to the law that String Theorists might lay down.

I just happened to rewatch Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking the other night. I do own a copy because I love that stuff, but I'm pleased to see that it is on Netflix streaming, if anyone is interested. The kind of time travel that Hawking says is possible is, let's face it, none too promising for adventurous science fiction stories, if you want to go the hard sci-fi route.

He rules out using a wormhole to travel back in time, but not for travelling incredible distances. He talks about flying round and round a black hole to travel into the future, but it's hardly practical or worth anyone's bother. He gives other little examples of travelling into the future, but again, hardly inspiring.

I'm sure I'm not alone if I say that I think, probably, the most entertaining mode of time travel imagined so far in fiction is the flux capacitor in the Back to the Future movies.
 
MDM, "theoretical physics" is not science. It's barely a step above a couple of dudes getting high, while talking about the cosmos.

A worm-hole is not a thing. It's made-up. Fake. Not a single shred of evidence for it's existence. It's a heck of a lot more likely that we'll discover a sasquatch.

Time-travel is not a thing. It's fake, made-up. There's more evidence for the existence of ghosts than there is even a slight possibility for time-travel.

This is not science. It's fiction. And it's fun! So, yeah, bring on the Deloreans and flux capacators! :D
 
This is not science. It's fiction. And it's fun! So, yeah, bring on the Deloreans and flux capacators!

If you think back to when Jules Vern wrote about submarines, travel to the moon and other impossible (at that time) things it would seem that anything the human mind can conceive of can at some point become possible as technology evolves. Does that mean I'll see time travel in my life (59)? Probably not. But I did see man land on the moon, the computer age (for better or worse), and huge strides in technology and medicine. My Grandfather, born in 1899, died in 1979, saw man go from horse and buggy to landing on the moon. I wonder what changes my sons will see.
 
I think the whole idea of science fiction is to take elements of modern technology and possible social/environmental changes, and running with it.

Some of the "greatest" science fiction films have had inaccuracies. In Star Wars, we heard pew pew pews coming from the ships in space, despite the fact that sound can't travel in space. In The Matrix, the machines are using humans' body heat for power. But really, burning the calories pumped into people would yield more energy. In I am Legend, Robert uses his blood to make a vaccine. But he'd have to be infected to create anti-biotics for a cure.

Movies don't have to be completely accurate, especially sci-fi movies. It's fun to test the limits of your imagination. Why would they call it science fiction? Because it's fiction!

Nowadays, it seems like people strive for realism and accuracy. But what's wrong with escaping from reality and having fun every once in a while? :D
 
I find it interesting that the clocks slow down or speed up according to the intensity of the gravitation field the ships were in the experiment in the black hole and worm hole video with the Nobel Prize winning scientists.

They point to that as a way to time travel. It reminds me of the Star Trek episode where the crew of the Enterprise used the gravity of a sun to sling shot through time.

Even in science fiction we need to follow rules so a story does not fall apart. Use the latest scientific theory with the String Theory because it follows rules and if some fan tries to Google your time travel science, they can find it holds true to the String Theory.

I remember taking science in school where they though our solar system was the only one with planets. Now, we know better. We know from long range space probes, other stars have planets that orbit around them too. We even know there are other solar systems with Earth-like planets. That use to be fantasy too.
 
Quick question MDM.

Twelve Monkeys is my favorite time travel movie.

In Twelve Monkeys, when Bruce Willis goes back in time, he returns to his younger body in the exact same place he was at during that time.

In Back to the Future, when Fox goes back in time, he is the same age he was before he went time traveling?

Now which one is correct? :huh:
 
Back To The Future because time remains the same inside the travel vessel. Only the time outside changes.

Brother, I am on several science fiction writers and filmmakers groups. The "Science Fiction" writers and filmmakers have such day jobs as engineers and scientists for NASA, universities, and high tech industries. I too have a day job with a high tech industry.

If you ever tried to make a fantasy out of something that is science fiction, most of the members would verbally lynch you. These people want everything so correct, they made several corrections to my theory about the Neanderthal Man was not destroyed by the Cro-Magno Man, but rather mated with them which is why at the same time both species either changed or vanished. They told me I had a hypothesis and not a theory and made several scientific corrections, but agreed my hypothesis is something that very likely happened.

So does that mean Twelve Monkeys was disliked by the NASA scientists and tech engineers in your group?

Twelve Monkeys didn't follow "correct physics and logic" you claim science fiction films should follow to avoid being "verbally lynched" by the science fiction community. Yet...

Awards and nominations
Brad Pitt was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, but lost to Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects. Costume designer Julie Weiss (Hollywoodland, Frida) was also nominated for her work, but lost to James Acheson of Restoration. However, Pitt was able to win a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture. Terry Gilliam was honored for his directing duties at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival. 12 Monkeys received positive notices from the science fiction community. The film was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films awarded 12 Monkeys the Saturn Award for Best Science Fiction Film. Pitt and Weiss also won awards at the 22nd Saturn Awards. Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, Gilliam and writers David and Janet Peoples received nominations.
 
When time travel is used in horror, it is given more latitude for fantasy than in science fiction. Take for instance when it was used in the most popular soap opera show of all times, Dan Curtis' Dark Shadows. There, they used the travel going into their body of the time theory, unless they did not exist in that time to begin with in which case they appeared as they were from the time they came. But, if the 200 year old vampire, Barnabas Collins traveled back he would go into his body in that past. Victoria Winters who came from the 1960s appeared as she was in the 1960s with her clothes from the 1960s, which helped to get her accused of practicing witchcraft and burned at the stake. She vanished as the witch hunters set her on fire and returned to her own time in the future.
 
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