• Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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    18 hours ago

    a knot is still a thread. It can still proceed as normal.

    Also, tangled knots happen in space. What kind of space can time get tangled within?

    • chaosCruiser@futurology.today
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      9 hours ago

      Imagine that humans traveling through time are like ants walking along a thread. If there’s a tangled mess of knots and chaos, the ants could walk all over the place. If the thread is not in contact at any place, the ants would be left with no choice but to keep on going in one direction.

      Knots would serve as time traveling points where you can freely jump from one part of the timeline to another. Depending on how tangled the thread is, there could be multiple time jump opportunities.

      • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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        8 hours ago

        I don’t think it makes sense to be walking on top of a thread of time, as if we are separate from time. Our being is inseparable from the thread of time. The fibers in the fabric are our experience, we are the fibers, and we still travel through a one-directional thread, no matter how tangled.

    • ALostInquirer@lemm.eeOP
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      18 hours ago

      Also, tangled knots happen in space. What kind of space can time get tangled within?

      Now that’s another fun question! It also makes me wonder, how would space behave in tangly time?

      Would the space in which time gets tangled be primarily around extreme phenomena like black holes, or the very beginnings of the universe (or a universe, if one wants to get into multiverse angles)?

  • astrsk@fedia.io
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    16 hours ago

    Since we would be inside the frame of reference, I don’t think we would know it was happening, like imagine you’re inside a tube that is knotted. You’d go through the tube like a slide at the water park, no way to see that it’s a knot, even if we can detect the turning and tumbling, there’s little we can reference from inside to determine it’s crossing around itself.

  • cynar@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    Spacetime (you can’t talk about time only) or at least its substrate does get in knots, best we can tell. We call them fundimental particles. String theory/membrane theory are still very much theoretical physics right now, however, so it could be completely wrong.

    The other alternative is a closed timelike curve. According to relativity, there are valid solutions that create such a curve. Theoretically, you could fly into one, traverse it, and exit before you entered at the start. This does require several black holes, moving at stupid speeds, orbiting each other, however. It’s also theoretical. While the equations allow it, we know they are incomplete. Physics seems to have blocks on anything that can mess with causality. It’s likely something, currently unknown, kicks in to stop the closed timelike curve from forming.

  • TootSweet@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    I doubt the term “time tangled in knots” is sufficiently well-defined for any reasonable answer. At least in terms of real-world physics.

    If you’re talking about scifi technobabble time tied in knots, my answer is “Looper.”

    • ALostInquirer@lemm.eeOP
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      18 hours ago

      True! It is intentionally insufficiently defined to inspire and encourage imaginative replies!

  • IchNichtenLichten@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    What size is the membrane separating one point in time from another? If the membrane is the size of the observable universe we wouldn’t see a difference. If it’s the size of your living room you’d be fucked because your living room only exists at any given point in space time for a very very short time.