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Showing results for tags 'Time Travel'.
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PaVG #16: Zelda and the Song of Storms Paradox
OcktoByte posted a blog entry in Physics and Video Games
Time travel is a common theme throughout games. Due to the laws of physics, however, time travel is only possible in a few theoretical situations. Time travel backwards through time seems even less likely from a physics standpoint. However, these limitations make for interesting gameplay mechanics. For example, in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, time travel is a major theme throughout the game. As the name implies, you play music through a flute-like instrument called an Ocarina to play different songs with special effects, including time travel. During the game, after you've traveled into the future, you meet a man in a windmill playing a song. He's angry that, years ago, a boy with an ocarina came to the windmill and played that song, making the windmill spin out of control. This is the Song of Storms. Travelling back in time, you can return to the windmill as a child. You meet the man, who has neither met you, nor knows the song. If you play the Song of Storms now, the windmill goes out of control, leading to the events that occurred in the future. This creates a paradox. The man who taught you a song in the future learns that song from a younger version of you. Paradoxes like these only complicate the idea of time travel for physicists trying to determine if it would be physically possible or worthwhile to travel through time.- 1 comment
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If electrons can change the past why can't I?
Leon Sandcastle posted a blog entry in Wise words from Leon Sandcastle
I was reading an article on 10 strange physics facts and a light went off. As I now know, according to the Double slit expirement particles of matter have both the characteristics of matter and of waves. During the expirement one electron has the ability to travel through one of the slits as matter predictably does, to travel through both slits initially and interfere with itself on the final side to form a diffraction pattern or the electron can punch out, grab its hat and jacket and decide to go home instead of going through either slit. What? Modern physics theoretically isn't nearly comprehendable. Also, to observe the electrons actual position relative to each slit changes the complete position of the electron and the electron travels through one slit, as matter predictably would but that isn't my point. According to the expirement, once observed the wave acts as matter would and according to physicist John Wheeler and the expirement on his work in 2007, after the wave travels through the slit or both or neither, to observe it would force it to act as matter and change its past. Granted that means only a fraction of a second is changed but I'd like to know how I could take advantage of this. I was thinking, if the distance between the slit and the screen--in a more practical fashion, a star and myself, possibly a star further than our own sun away had a slit between it and I and I could observe it or maybe if I was accelerated through a slit fast enough to take advantage of my wave characteristics then observed, wouldn't I travel back in time? If I move faster than the speed of light by a specific speed could I change my own past? Could the process of causality work backward for me too? I seriously wonder because I would love to straighten up te transverse things already done.- 1 comment
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