Timeline for Addressing paradoxes with Weapons designed to hit a target in the past
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 27, 2022 at 4:26 | comment | added | JBH | ...photons that got away during the linear translation back in time) at some moment after the detonation.... wait! That's exactly what you just said. OK, another interpretation is that the time travel pushed the weapon only as far back in a single step as necessary to arrive at the opportune time. If it's an energy weapon, that would be a pretty brief period. A missile might give rise to the paradox @VLAZ is talking about. This is the problem with time travel - the rules must be set by the OP because there is no scientifically "right" answer. | |
| Sep 27, 2022 at 4:24 | comment | added | JBH | @Chronocidal I believe that's not true. If the weapon is pushing itself back in time to arrive at the opportune moment, then it can be seen at those past moments by the enemy at the same moments. But what would they see? Here's where a rule of the OP's world should be put into play because time travel is a game like no other. One way of interpreting the time travel is that at each infinitely small placement in space the affected object is moved back to the moment of initiation. In this case, the enemy would see a solid bar for a fraction of a second (those reflected (*continued*) | |
| Sep 26, 2022 at 0:50 | comment | added | Chronocidal | @JBH More importantly, the target would only be able to see the missile (moving away from them) after they've already been hit and exploded… And the attacker can only see the explosion after they fire the weapon. | |
| Sep 24, 2022 at 1:23 | comment | added | JBH | @VLAZ Unless there's a world rule Nosajimiki hasn't mentioned, information cannot travel faster than the speed of light. If we're talking about an energy weapon, it can't be detected before it hits. If we're talking about a missile, that migh be another issue, except that the missile is travelling backward in time as the enemy ship is traveling forward and it's moving from a spatial location ahead of the enemy ship. It's an interesting thought game, but I still don't see a paradox. If anything, they'd be seeing the missile moving away from the intended point of impact. | |
| Sep 23, 2022 at 9:43 | comment | added | VLAZ | I'd argue there is more of a paradox. Let's say you shoot a target as soon as it's detected. And it takes, 5 minutes for the shot to reach there. So, how it's resolved is that essentially you shot 5 minutes before into the nothingness. This would be fine except, what if the target detects the shot (5 minutes before detection/shooting) and corrects course. And as a result, in 5 minutes time, your ship will not detect the enemy ship. Therefore it does not need to shoot. | |
| Sep 23, 2022 at 6:18 | history | answered | JBH | CC BY-SA 4.0 |