I Love Time Travel - Part 22 - Interstellar and Harry Potter's Wand

Let's all be grateful to this guy right here.

            Medium-sized spoilers ahead.

            What I know of quantum physics I learned from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s reboot of Cosmos last year.  I had Physics in high school, but I did not pay attention. I was too busy… not paying attention. Interstellar is a film about travelling through a black hole, and putting the theory of relativity through practical paces. There is no time travel per se, and what I gleaned from it was merely an observation about the entire idea of time travel.

            So, it is a bit of a tease that I wrote about this movie.  Sue me.

            McConaughey’s character, an astronaut on a mission to find another habitable planet, unexpectedly finds himself adrift through a black hole. During a sequence that is sure to break some brains, he observes his daughter from decades before. (I kinda saw this coming. ) It is time travel by observation only, and the slightest of interaction.  What Interstellar and the science behind black holes does is alter our perception of time.  It is, as mentioned it the film, another dimension; one that can be manipulated and bent. 

            That is the physics behind what we have theorized about the mechanics of time and gravity.  What is also understood is that there is no backwards.  There are no working theories behind travelling backward through time.  As of today, it is a concept.  An idea.  A fiction.

            That’s where I come in. 

            I’ve watched all of these movies and read a sizeable stack of books about time travel.  One thing is clear, the way in which time travel works is completely up to the writer.  Can you go back and kill Hitler or not? What happens when you come back?  Can you come back?  We don’t really know if it is anything more than an idea, so we can shape that idea to fit our narrative.  There is no wrong way to do it scientifically.  It only makes sense if we make some sense out of it for the reader.

            Harry Potter’s wand can shoot out spells, remember spells, have relationships with other wands, and, it knows exactly who is wielding it.  We know this because Jo Rowling said so.  Those are the physics of this magical stick that doesn’t exist. George Lucas created a laser beam that just stops in midair after about 3 feet.  It is a lightsaber, and we bought it.  I have to try and sell my version of disturbing space-time.

 I am attempting a story of my own.  It is big and it is made out of a few other projects that stumbled or ran out of steam.  I have to make a very big decision how the time travel will work. I get to do it.  I get to create time travel.  It is like creating a tiny system of governance for one small world. It has to be consistent, and obey the laws that I establish.  I get to also make the laws and decide when to disclose them. I am the creator!  My ego aside, I am hesitant, because it needs to be just right for the story I want to tell.

Loop time travel? Single string? Consciousness time travel won’t work.  A combination?  Can combinations work?

Every single idea of time travel is fraught with paradox. It is one of the reasons we can’t get our heads around it.  It is a zero in the denominator.  It is undefined. I have to make an excuse for the paradox, or accept that there is no way around it. I have to remember that this is fiction first; I’m not trying to prove my favorite flavor of travelling through time would actually work. 

So there was a method to the madness of writing all these blog things where I break down time travel stuff.  It’s all a bit of research.