Ultimate Fantastic 4 #27 discussion [spoilers]

[Bass]

Actually, nobody really knows how time travel would work. Remember at one time, everybody thought that the Earth was flat. This is like that. All we can do is speculate as to what would happen. Everybody has their own opinions.

Actually, its' not true that civilisations thought the Earth was flat. While in some mythologies is was considered to be of various shapes and sizes, very few people, especially cultural doctrines, ever record a widely-held belief that the world was flat. An 19th century American author said this, and it stuck.

But Columbus, for example, and the Queen's court that sent him to the New World, didn't think the world was flat. There's no record that they did.

In so far as I know.

 

[Victor Von Doom]

Actually, nobody really knows how time travel would work.

Uh...I though Doc and Marty explained how all that worked...........and quite entertainably I might add. :lol:

 

[Nas-T!]

I'm back FROM the future!

Uh...I though Doc and Marty explained how all that worked...........and quite entertainably I might add. :lol:

I SO agree with this it's not even funny.

Let's see if I can shed some light on this, huh? After all, I did just see the "Back to the Future" trilogy again for the bazillionth time about a month ago.

Okay; first let's explain the basics of "The Butterfly Effect" as explained in the "Chaos Theory".
Look at it this way: one must remember that every single object, animal, plant, human (let's stick with humans for this one), etc all occupy space within the Earth's atmosphere. And the Earth (and its atmosphere) occupy space within the universe.
Molecules (i'm gonna work in the "large" units to make it easier to understand) of air float around us at all times. By simply moving your finger, you are moving the molecules of air around it. And if there are billions upon billions of said molecules (all of different gases in different formations or whatever) all next to each other taking up space around the world, then by moving the air molecules around your finger, you are forcing the molecules next to them to move, and the molecules next to those molecules, and so on.
Therefore: the simple movement of your finger has moved molecules of air (in whatever random denomination) around the world.8)

So the whole thing about a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a typhoon makes much more sense when you look at it like that.

That's the first part.

Now to explain this in the context of time travel within Ultimate Fantastic Four #27 and, hopefully, comics in general (there are always odd exceptions to the rules, but that's why the 616 has a Time Variance Authority to make sure continuity stays as solid as possible - our "spiders" are essentially the TVA of the Ultimate Universe).
As I understand it, Reed and crew travelled back in time to warn pre-accident Reed that Victor would change the super-positioning code, and that he should make sure that his code is the one being used instead.
Reed does this and the "accident" no longer exists. Instead, the teleportation experiment is a success.
Now, who's to say how this affects the planet...or the universe as a whole?

Reed's teleportation experiment opens up new channels in transportation and who knows how many other fields. Suddenly enormous amounts of food can be transported effortlessly from, say, the USA to Ethiopia (theoretically speaking).
No doubt the practical applications of such a device being developed by the military/US government would see them trying to "protect" the technology a.k.a keep it for themselves and other 1st World Countries.
And, hey, who better to champion the cause of the "little people" than Thor, right? He's a hippie...who knows what the hell he'd do to get those teleporters distributed worldwide.
Maybe he'd even find a way to become President of the United States? Maybe he just took complete control without a vote and then lulled everyone into submission with a nice, fat superpowered paycheck?

My friends, the possibilities are endless.

And, hey, I got my name and letter printed in this here comic book! Hee-haw!

Texas Tornado...AWAY!!!!

 

[cmdrjanjalani]

I don't really agree with the Butterfly Effect. A lot of events need several catalysts and causes before they occur, not to mention that other things may replace the original cause and could still produce virtually the same effect with minor discrepancies. That would be like saying that America would have never been discovered if Colombus never sailed on an expedition or that without Thomas Edison, we won't have electronics. The movie inspired that concept while entertaining, was too ridiculous in terms of the different radical changes that have happened.

I'm not saying that one thing or person doesn't have the power to change people or events, but this is a theory which is based on supposedly logic, and it has to be something consistent and repeatable.

Time travel's fun to debate with, but some of your arguments are getting silly. You have to understand that time travel and no one has any idea what the effects would be. Will you change your immediate future if you go back in time, or will the new actions you made cause the development of a parallel universe? We just have to assume that in the Ultimate Universe, one facet of this theory is finally proven as fact in their world so we can ride along with how Millar decided to concoct his crazy new world.

 

[E.Vi.L.]

If you play Poker and replay a particular hand in your head you will realize that a particular outcome could have been completely altered by a single decision down the line but that another one couldn't. Usually, you could always positively affect your own fate if you could go back in time and warn yourself. But even armed with knowldge of how the hand is gonna develop, there are some result that could be impossible to achieve. There are some hands that you just can't win. You can always fold and help yourself, but you can't always win the hand and affect everybody else with a different set of decisions.

If you carry that to real life, I'd say you can always affect individual lives through time travel, but it would often be impossible to alter the big picture. Much more so than a Poker game, some historical events were the results of countless variable which you just can't affect on your own. You'd need a whole army of henchmen time travelling with you to do that.

If you could go back in time in 1928, could you stop the crash of 29? No. You could get filthy rich by investing heavily in the market throughout the year and then selling everything and buying gold just before the Crash. But you couldn't stop the crash. What would you do? Warn people? Plenty of people did. The Kennedys are rich because JFK's dad did exactly what I suggested. There were hundreds of people who saw the crash coming. One more person, even a time traveler, couldn't do squat to stop this train wreck. Too much momentum. Much of History is like that. Very few historical events can be for certain attributed to a tiny few variables that single hypothetical time traveler could alter.

That's why Whole alternate universe are a bit hard for me to swallow. In the Butter Fly effect movie, note how it's just his life and that of his friends that are dramatically altered by his decisions. The rest of the world goes on unchanged.

That being said, let's see where Milalr is going with this. Just because these stories stretch the suspension of disbelief farher than usual doesn't mean the story can't be good.

PS : Just so you know, modern Physics posits that time travel (in the past) is impossible. And the odds of the likes of Einstein being wrong on Time travel are just a little better than the odds of Newton being wrong on gravity. So we are just speculating for fun, here.

 

[Nas-T!]

I don't really agree with the Butterfly Effect. A lot of events need several catalysts and causes before they occur, not to mention that other things may replace the original cause and could still produce virtually the same effect with minor discrepancies. That would be like saying that America would have never been discovered if Colombus never sailed on an expedition or that without Thomas Edison, we won't have electronics. The movie inspired that concept while entertaining, was too ridiculous in terms of the different radical changes that have happened.

I'm not saying that one thing or person doesn't have the power to change people or events, but this is a theory which is based on supposedly logic, and it has to be something consistent and repeatable.

Time travel's fun to debate with, but some of your arguments are getting silly. You have to understand that time travel and no one has any idea what the effects would be. Will you change your immediate future if you go back in time, or will the new actions you made cause the development of a parallel universe? We just have to assume that in the Ultimate Universe, one facet of this theory is finally proven as fact in their world so we can ride along with how Millar decided to concoct his crazy new world.

I like this post. It's why I agreed with that statement about Doc Brown and Marty McFly having explained this all to us before!

Sure we don't know what time travel would really do in real life. Yes time travel to the past is almost 100% impossible. But this is where that tried and true line "it's JUST a comic book" comes in handy.
Because that's what it is. We're investing our cash in the lives of a bunch of fictional characters, and we love em and treat em just like real people. I love that, but it can't always be as real as the real world.
Not even Alan Moore kept the realism whole when he did "Watchmen" because it was impossible to tell that story the way it was told without elements of science-FICTION entering into it.

And I love the poker explanation as well. But while I agree that there are more circumstances that lead into an event than just the ones we see or hear about, who's to say that a large enough change cannot affect several outcomes?

As an example; Peter Parker's Uncle Ben was shot by a burglar who broke into their house looking for a loot that had supposedly been stored in the house many years before, unbeknownst to the Parker family. This burglar just happened to be the same guy Peter encountered a few days before, when the guy robbed the TV studio Peter was performing at as Spider-Man.

Peter blames his Uncle Ben's death on the fact that he was bitten by that spider. However, even if he were to go back and prevent the spider bite, he could not prevent the burglar from entering the house and shooting his uncle. Perhaps his presence at the Parker home that night could change something else; like maybe his Aunt May or even he himself gets shot or nobody, but in the end, the burglar still would've showed up at their house.

And what would Peter have become because he was not Spider-Man? A scientist? An arrogant, brash young man who would do anything to make it to the top (if you look hard enough, it's there in his character somewhere to be these things)?
And could his corporate climbing not change the world drastically? Maybe he hires someone to kill Norman Osborn, his competitor? Maybe he gets killed himself. And then how would his behavior affect the lives of the people he interacted with when he was Peter/Spider-Man (in the normal timeline).
Wouldn't the lack of Peter in their lives change the way they lived them? Would Gwen Stacy have lived and married another man, thus changing that man's fate and the fate of countless others tied to his life?

All I'm saying is; there are too many variables from even a change to the smallest action to say that Reed stopping the experiment could NOT, potentially, change the world to what it is in "President Thor".

Anyway, let's all sit back and enjoy the ride, shall we?

I should start a chain-reaction/time travel game in the Games forum. We can work out a scenario post by post, and then go back with the knowledge of how it turned out the first time and change things (albeit realistically) to see what other outcomes we could end up with.

 

[cmdrjanjalani]

Very interesting post, E.V.I.L. Wait, so time travel is impossible just in the past? Well to be honest, I really hope time travel is impossible. Because we don't know what crazy stuff can happen if we accidentally meddle with whatever has happened before. Someone trying to demonstrate the Grandfather Paradox in real life would be something I would not like to see.

It's kind of weird that Millar decided to go all-out in wacky science fiction but decided to make the Ultimates in a more realistic approach.

 

[E.Vi.L.]

Wait, so time travel is impossible just in the past?

Yes, but think about it ; being able to send someone in the future but not being able to bring him back would be the equivalent of creating a human time capsule!

No temporal paradox could be created in such a scenario.

In theory, teleportation is possible. Traveling through time in the future would simply be teleporting someone not only somewhere else, but sometime else.

As a one way ticket, it would be interesting only to people who REALLY don't like the current time period.

Then again, I could just invest 10 000$ at a 5% compound interest rate and teleport 1 000 years in the future... I'd have 15 463 189 207 319 500 000 000 000$ when I arrive.

At the current inflation rate it would be be the equivalent of 68 742 402 311 693 200$ in todays US$

Nice huh? Of course that's assuming that none of the hundreds of things that can go wrong with this plan occurs in the next 1 000 years. I'd estimate the odds of that at less than 2%.

But with a 2% hope of getting 68 742 402 311 693 200$ for your 10 000$ investment, you still have a positive expectancy of 1 374 848 046 223 860$!

I'm gonna stop here. Should have stopped 7 paragraph ago.

 

[Bass]

Depends on what the nature of time is.

If tim is like gravity and space and linked, then the ability to travel forward would also allow travel backwards.

But, what if time is not a linear progression. If, like space, all of time already exists, then our perception of it is linear, not time itself.

Therefore, moving around in time would be like moving around in space.

But then, we talk of time using past, present, and future tenses, yet not all cultures use these tenses. Is it possible that our language prevents our understanding the true nature of time?

 

[Ultimate Houde]

Bass, I have always thought of time as this, a thing that doesn't really travel forward or backward, it's just there, like space itself.

 

[TheManWithoutFear]

This time travel conversation is giving me a headache.

 

[ProjectX2]

This time travel conversation is giving me a headache.

It's time travel. Think about it too much and your head will explode.

 

[E.Vi.L.]

If tim is like gravity and space and linked, then the ability to travel forward would also allow travel backwards.

As I said, as far as current Physicists are concerned, the answer is no. It's impossible.

And some of these guys work on proving that alternate dimensions exists so it's not exactly like they are close-minded orthodox thinker that are affraid to think outside the box and want to imagine a safe and predictible universe!

 

[Bass]

But physicists are full of bull. That whole "light speed is constant" rubbish. Einstein just couldn't be bothered to put in the work.

There's a reason psychics and physicists are spelt so similarly.

It's because they're both wrong about everything, but can sometimes, be unnerringly correct.

PARADOXES AND CONTRADICTIONS UNITE.​

 

[E.Vi.L.]

PARADOXES AND CONTRADICTIONS UNITE.​

I'd rather they didn't.

Otherwise reality will become as muddled as your brain!

 

[Goodwill]

When is 28 coming out?

 

[thee great one]

When is 28 coming out?

On a wednesday.

 

[ProjectX2]

On a wednesday.

Interesting.

 

[ultimatedjf]

When is 28 coming out?

Probably next week. (Not this coming Wednesday.)

 

[E]

When is 28 coming out?

Currently scheduled for 3/22.

 

[plungingforward]

That would be like saying that America would have never been discovered if Colombus never sailed on an expedition or that without Thomas Edison, we won't have electronics.

That isn't it at all. The "Butterfly Effect" (in broader terms "a sensitive dependence on initial conditions") is something different entirely. Gleik's "Chaos" and Waldrop's "Complexity" cover it well, if you'd like to know more.
(I'm sure you could find something online.)
Some of the posters above get into it a bit, but if your jumping-off point is what you said above, those posts probably won't be enough.
(Sorry if I sould like a snooty jerk. I just find Chaos, et al, interesting.)
If that movie (which I haven't seen) implies that the "butterfly effect" is as you've described, it is wrong-headed.

As for President Thor, I've not read much Ultimate FF, but because this features an actual Ultimate, it has piqued my interest. Then I saw the zombie reed, and that tells me I've probably got another trade to read... what issues feature the zombies?

 

[Super_Human]

This book has so much re-readable value.