In the February 1995 issue of Analog, Donald Kingsbury has an interesting
piece called "The Janus-Headed Arrow of Time: Entropy and Time Travel."
He points out that any conception of time travel involves the concept
that SOMEWHERE there exists a "universal memory." In fact there is no
evidence that such a memory exists, and the existence of black holes
suggests that "the past communicates with the future via a "lossy"
transmission." Kingsbury's argument is that, just as there are
multiple futures possible when we start at this moment, so are there
multiple pasts! :
"Am I daring to say that if we backtrack through time, our footsteps
won't fall into the same tracks? Absurd, Mr. Kingsbury -- such rude
behavior would imply that our Universe has a history of alternate pasts!
But that is exactly what I am saying. The past that we remember is not
the only past that we have.
Common sense -- as well as the physics establishment, 1994 -- tells us
that the universe has only one past. (If you believe this, I can probably
convince you that an electron is a particle.) Follow me in a bit of simple
Aristotelian logic:
- Quantum mechanics tells us that the Tree-of-Now branches up into
alternate futures -- see Wheeler and Everett.
- The equations of quantum mechanics, for example, Dirac, circa 1929,
are time symmetric.
- Therefore the Tree-of-Now MUST root down into alternate pasts.
Contrary to everything you have ever been told, there is no entropic
arrow of time. Entropy turns out to be Janus-faced, peering both into
the future and into the past. We find a second arrowhead where we were told
that the feathers would be."
This may solve all those Heroquest adventures! People are travelling to
ALTERNATE pasts! Doing so doesn't change the present; it just gives a
different explanation for what exists in the present! In doing that, it
may be a good way to change the future! In fact, the best way to change
the future, but it doesn't change the present! Maybe this is what the
God-Learners were doing with all their religion shuffling?
Jim Chapin
End of Glorantha Digest V1 #67