Doing some research for a sci-fi story

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

nah, we wouldn't know shes asexual from the get go; in fact neither would she. Her discovering that about herself would be part of her arc. No need to bludgeon the reader with that right from the get go

If you are serious about writing this, my suggestion is to interview some asexual people about their own self-discovery and find out what that process was like for them.

My other suggestion is, don't write what you don't know just because it sounds "neat" unless you're willing to invest some serious research time.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Balls.  GO FOR THE HATE MAIL.

[Chelagoras The Boulder]

hmm, I HAVE never had hate mail before...

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

k, well, one of the reasons i wanna be really certain about this is that one of the points of the setting is that upon discovering that time travel is a thing, they immediately sought to capitalize on the tech in the greediest way possible using many creative variations of the whole "going back to deposit all your money in your preferred bank the day they were established and then collecting on all that interest years in the future" scam. In this world, CEOs do this all the time, with varying shades of James Bond-esque supervilliany in mind. So all of these changes results in all sorts of created alternate universes with crazy historical results. Some results in blasted landscapes of what used to be earth, some are markedly better than what would've happened in any case, and some are almost the same except for some specific details.

Problem is, the people investing would have no chance at all of getting a return.  None.

If you send energy, matter, or even information back in time, the universe can't accept it without violating conservation of energy.  That means a split HAS to occur, and the transported energy, etc, has to be in the NEW branch, not the old.  So the rich bastard sending it back just loses it.  AND something, probably something very loud and ugly and most likely LOCAL, is going to happen to account for the loss of energy in THIS universe, the same way "Ashtekar loops" tangle to retain gravity (and thus energy) when mass leaves the universe in the case of a Black hole. 

Uncle Albert takes no prisoners.  The universe will put up with any amount of fuckery, except when conservation of energy is in question.  Hell, "quantum tunneling" is the universe doing "Enron accounting" to accomodate both the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and conservation of energy.

is Quantum tunneling kind of what is going on in that comic i posted?

No, quantum tunneling only affects things we Doktors refer to as "very very small".

Remember, however, that you are made of very very small things. The possibility of them all tunneling at once, while absurdly improbable, is not entirely impossible

can you cite the relevant quote from the bar thread? If the idea is that time doesn't exist (which i rather like btw) what does it matter which direction i move in time, and whats keeping me from moving back to the universe i started from? if time is just an ocean of moments, what makes the point i started from any different from any of the other infinite points i could chose to jump to?

You need to work on coherence.  If time doesn't exist, it doesn't exist.

Buncha crap.  Time is the measurement of entropy.  Since shit falls apart, time must exist.

This "time not existing" concept may (but I'm not sure yet as I didn't read all the way through the original link) be a case of a smart idea being phrased in a stupid and provocative way. A three dimensional universe undergoing processes in time is theoretically equivalent to a very complex but timeless and stationary four dimensional object, just as a moving one dimensional object can be interpreted as an unmoving line and a two dimensional object can be understood as an unmoving sheet.

1. I'm planning on taking liberties with the "you can't go back" thing

1.  Then it's not science fiction, it's fantasy.  You can just go ahead and add the telepathic cats now.

Actually it may not be totally impossible to travel through time, just hugely wildly impractical. If I recall correctly there was some research done several years back at the University of Illinois that suggested that if you could somehow build a structure with the mass of a large star but shaped like a football it could collapse to form a [/url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_singularity]naked singularity[/url], which would allow for all sorts of screwing around with time. The same is true for if one could somehow induce a normal black hole to rotate with sufficient rapidity or accumulate a sufficient electrical charge

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Remember, however, that you are made of very very small things. The possibility of them all tunneling at once, while absurdly improbable, is not entirely impossible

This is the stupidest thing I've heard all day.  I mean, there's a miniscule greater than zero chance that monkeys might fly out of my grotesque & hairy ass, but I'm not about to ask people to suspend disbelief in a science fiction story over it.

[minuspace]

Prelate diog's

This "time not existing" concept may (but I'm not sure yet as I didn't read all the way through the original link) be a case of a smart idea being phrased in a stupid and provocative way. A three dimensional universe undergoing processes in time is theoretically equivalent to a very complex but timeless and stationary four dimensional object, just as a moving one dimensional object can be interpreted as an unmoving line and a two dimensional object can be understood as an unmoving sheet

.


One day they will understand that spatial and temporal dimensions ARE NOT coextensive.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Actually it may not be totally impossible to travel through time, just hugely wildly impractical. If I recall correctly there was some research done several years back at the University of Illinois that suggested that if you could somehow build a structure with the mass of a large star but shaped like a football it could collapse to form a [/url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_singularity]naked singularity[/url], which would allow for all sorts of screwing around with time. The same is true for if one could somehow induce a normal black hole to rotate with sufficient rapidity or accumulate a sufficient electrical charge

Doesn't matter how you get there, the results are the same, as described earier.

[Chelagoras The Boulder]

Actually, fun fact: part of the reason for coming up with this concept was seeing how Modern Doctor Who tries to explain their time travel rules,(ie wibbly wobbly timey wimey) flipping the table, and deciding to write a series partly as a fuck you to Moffett, and partly to explore why time travel stories need rules in the first place.

as for science fantasy, hey, if it means i can have lightsabers and 6 ft tall bear people now, that's all gravy to me brother.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Actually, fun fact: part of the reason for coming up with this concept was seeing how Modern Doctor Who tries to explain their time travel rules,(ie wibbly wobbly timey wimey) flipping the table, and deciding to write a series partly as a fuck you to Moffett, and partly to explore why time travel stories need rules in the first place.

as for science fantasy, hey, if it means i can have lightsabers and 6 ft tall bear people now, that's all gravy to me brother.

You can wallow around in your science fantasy (which we Doktors call "fantasy") all you like.  But you just keep your Ewoks out of my science fiction, okay?

[LMNO]

But they all dance at the end!






We all dance.  At the end.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

But they all dance at the end!






We all dance.  At the end.

We don't wait for the end.  Or maybe it already happened.  We dance, dude.  Oh, shit yeah.  We dance on the bloody, exposed bones of what were our ankles, before we'd worn through our shoes and our feet.  We dance in The Ballroom of Blades, where every square inch of the floor has a butcher knife jammed through it from the basement...By people or things we simply prefer not to think about.

Dancing is a way of life out here in the desert.  We dance for rain.  We dance to make Whitey fuck back off to Europe.  We dance when we run out of bullets.  We dance in the execution chamber in Florence, AZ.

Even if you don't want to dance.  Even if you don't know you're dancing.  LOOK, YOU BASTARDS!  I'M DANCING!  SEE?  I'M DANCING!  TAKE ONE OF THE OTHERS!

[LMNO]

Whoa.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Abk1jAONjw

[Chelagoras The Boulder]

Actually, fun fact: part of the reason for coming up with this concept was seeing how Modern Doctor Who tries to explain their time travel rules,(ie wibbly wobbly timey wimey) flipping the table, and deciding to write a series partly as a fuck you to Moffett, and partly to explore why time travel stories need rules in the first place.

as for science fantasy, hey, if it means i can have lightsabers and 6 ft tall bear people now, that's all gravy to me brother.

You can wallow around in your science fantasy (which we Doktors call "fantasy") all you like.  But you just keep your Ewoks out of my science fiction, okay?

Well, of course. You saw the prequels, you saw what happens when you try to explain why we have space wizards from the future-past. Midichlorians happen. Midi-goddamn-chlorians. 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Actually, fun fact: part of the reason for coming up with this concept was seeing how Modern Doctor Who tries to explain their time travel rules,(ie wibbly wobbly timey wimey) flipping the table, and deciding to write a series partly as a fuck you to Moffett, and partly to explore why time travel stories need rules in the first place.

as for science fantasy, hey, if it means i can have lightsabers and 6 ft tall bear people now, that's all gravy to me brother.

You can wallow around in your science fantasy (which we Doktors call "fantasy") all you like.  But you just keep your Ewoks out of my science fiction, okay?

Well, of course. You saw the prequels, you saw what happens when you try to explain why we have space wizards from the future-past. Midichlorians happen. Midi-goddamn-chlorians. 

This is why we don't cross the streams.

[LMNO]

It was better when Q was around.