5ive Days to Midnight

[bobbrom]

You know personally, I never understood the alternate timeline approach to time travel.

I mean I get that it's a great tool for sci-fi but as an explanation for time travel it never made sense to me.

Take Chuck's explanation with the ping pong ball.

Sure this means there isn't a ping pong ball created out of nothing.

But the issue is that there is an entire universe created out of nothing.

So where you've created all the matter of a universe minus the ball to keep a law of thermodynamics that says that matter can't be created out of nothing.

I don't know about you but I can't see the universe going to all the trouble for a ping pong ball.

[Madner Kami]

So where you've created all the matter of a universe minus the ball to keep a law of thermodynamics that says that matter can't be created out of nothing.

These laws only apply to our particular bubble of space-time. Outside of this pocket, those laws have no meaning. What happens outside is completely beyond our capacity of understanding and probably will be forever and this "outside" (for lack of a better word) already spontaneously spawned one entire universe. It's completely possible and likely and practically certain that it can do so again. It probably has already done so, but we'll never know.

[Linkara]

And bear in mind, the idea that the universe would or would not "care" about a pin pong ball supposes a conscious will at work. As far the universe is concerned, matter is matter and the laws of thermodynamics would have to be obeyed down to the smallest atom.

Sekorski - keep you eeeeeeeyeeeee on the sammich!

[Thebestoftherest]

And bear in mind, the idea that the universe would or would not "care" about a pin pong ball supposes a conscious will at work. As far the universe is concerned, matter is matter and the laws of thermodynamics would have to be obeyed down to the smallest atom.

Sekorski - keep you eeeeeeeyeeeee on the sammich!

One idea I hear is that the two balls would instantly merge Into one.

[Fianna]

The fear seems to be that, if you violate one of the laws of physics, then the laws of physics will stop existing and reality as we know it will be no more. 'Course, there's no way to prove that without testing it.

[Yerushalmi]

I only just watched part 4 (the RSS feed doesn't alert me if a new video is added to an already-existing page, and I forgot about it), so I'm a bit late to the party here. But Mandy's fast funeral arrangements have a perfectly reasonable explanation: she could be Jewish. Judaism mandates that a dead person be buried a maximum of 24 hours after their death - in most cases before sundown.

Unfortunately, the dropped frames in the funeral scene make it impossible to tell what book the funeral service leader is holding, which might prove or disprove this theory.

(This was even used as a plot point in an episode of Castle, where somebody tries to dispose of a dead body by finding a Jewish funeral and adding the body to the same casket, knowing that Judaism doesn't have open caskets and that it would be buried within the day. Unfortunately for the murderer, the double-bodied casket proves unexpectedly heavy for the pallbearers, and they drop it, revealing the ruse.)

[Nobody700]

And now the end of this miniseries. Honestly not the worst Chuck has reviewed, but wow this was unpleasant. Great reviews though, though I did find his parallel reality thing to be rather long and uninteresting. Which is sad cause I do like when Chuck pulls out his brainy specs. Kinda hope someone requests for him to do a really, really bad mini series. We need another Miracle Day to hit.

[PerrySimm]

Overall sounds like an "Avoid" then. Especially disappointing that the time travel rules, which seemed to be going toward predestination, suddenly veer all the way to the other end of causality.

Sure, any story has some degree of arbitrariness to it. Doctor Who gets away with never having consistent rules about time because the time travel itself is hardly ever the point, it's all just a vehicle to drive some other story. But for this story the time travel is part of the conundrum, *and* the story has plenty of physicists, engineers, and police detectives running around. Someone ought to be able to figure out what's going on!!

[Nobody700]

Overall sounds like an "Avoid" then. Especially disappointing that the time travel rules, which seemed to be going toward predestination, suddenly veer all the way to the other end of causality.

Sure, any story has some degree of arbitrariness to it. Doctor Who gets away with never having consistent rules about time because the time travel itself is hardly ever the point, it's all just a vehicle to drive some other story. But for this story the time travel is part of the conundrum, *and* the story has plenty of physicists, engineers, and police detectives running around. Someone ought to be able to figure out what's going on!!

Funnily enough, bad time travel stories is probably the best way to write a good time travel story. It’s a best way to know what NOT to do. Triangle helped me figure out how a time loop should work by knowing how a bad time loop would work.

[FaxModem1]

Well, that was disappointing. Anyone else feel cheated that Sikorski didn't die via choking on a donut?