Talk:World Line Convergence/@comment-28963345-20160710033433/@comment-29816397-20180531072236

It is and isn't scientifically possible. I mean, the theory of world line convergence doesn't conflict with with current established scientific theories. Sending text messages back in time does, as does texting an entire consciousness by having your past self pick up the phone when your future self calls. Since that part is impossible (mostly, anyways), it makes the world line convergance thing a bit harder to consider "plausible".

I'll go more into detail now, but it might sound like a tangent. It'll come together at the end, I promise.

The theory itself isn't all that insane, though. In the real world, time is an actual "thing" instead of a concept. As in- it can be moved, altered, bent, displaced, frozen, and so on. It essentially runs on the same mechanics as physical space, which is why people often say "space-time", and why things that bend the space around or in it (like black holes) can also bend the time around or in them. A good rule of thumb is to pay attention to light. Does light travel at "lightspeed"? If yes- time is normal. If it slows down or stops, much like when approaching the Event Horizon of a black hole, then no. In that case, time will do the same thing the light is doing.

Time, as an actual thing with measurable properties, wants to do what it does with the least resistance. This is where the "1% divergence" thing comes into play. Time is akin to a gigantic ocean, with normal waves and currents. When someone messes with things, like with time travel, they are altering a section of the "water" quite a bit. It may be a splash from kicking the water which can be felt by those nearby, or it may be throwing a frigging grenade in it which can be a drastic change for those close and a still significant one for those even further away.

But in the case of the entire ocean? Things won't really change all that much. Even if you dropped a nuke (ignoring the effects it has on the atmosphere, since that's waaay more complicated than I want to think about), which will cause effects that can potentially impact the entire ocean, over a few years things will return to the way they were due to how complex and interconnected the ocean is with a bunch of other systems (gravity, rotation of the earth, chemical composition, angle of the sun's rays hitting the earth unevenly due to the Earth's tilt on its axis, etc.).

So even if you go back in time and do something drastic like kill the person who gives birth to your first boss, things won't change as a whole too much. Your life will be different, and by extension so will those close to you. But in a hundred years? Things will inevitibly reach the same, or similar, conclusion due to *other* interconnected factors. If WW4 took place in space in 2260 when your first boss was born and became your boss, WW4 would probably still happen if that person was never born, unless they had a meaningful impact on some very soon-to-be important people. Even something that drastic probably would only be a 0.5% divergent alteration, and wouldn't change even a single percent of the current "ocean" that is Time itself.

These important things that have a bunch of redundant dependencies are the "convergent" points. If timeline A had your boss being born, and timeline B did not, in 2261, WW4 ends either way, so after that point, it doesn't really matter which timeline you are in, since they both had that specific event at that specific time. They would be almost identical. But there are many, many convergent points, so eventually those two timelines would literally be the same. All because time is massive and all parts of it will want to maintain consistency and keep the same systems going on. Eventually, it will.

These are the "attractor fields" that try to keep reality as uniform as possible accross all world lines.

In order to break something significant from being a cornerstone Convergence Line, you need to change things very drastically. Something needs to be done to cause at *least* one percent of a change in the grand scheme. Doing so will break away from that one convergence line, and bring you to a new set of timelines with a completely different attractor field and convergence line.

Bringing it back to the Light thing, light will always go from one point to another in the shortest possible path. Any path light is traveling to get to the direction it's headed *will* be the shortest possible path it can take, no matter what. Current scientific theories also seem to point to this being the case across all possible realities as well (yes, it is stupidly complicated. Light is weird). The theory states that in any possible reality that light could exist in, it will only exist in ones where it goes from point A to point B in the shortest, most direct path avaible at the time, and any reality in which this doens't happen can't exist (or stops existing, but that's just silly). Essentially, no matter what could exist, the only version of any possible universe that can exist is one where light does the same thing from A to B. The only way to alter this rule is to change where point B is, by bending light or blocking it, or something along those lines.

This is the reason why I stated earlier that the Convergence Line thing isn't entirely impossible. If time and light tend to do similar things in the same situation, then it's possible it does the same thing as light does. It finds the most direct path from the starting point (point A) to the convergence point (point B). The only way to truly change that immutable fact is to change what point B actually is. Without that, it'll find any possible reality where it reaches point B.

In the case of the Steins;Gate universe (spoilers ahead), mayuri dying was a "Divergence Point" in the world line attractor field  most of the first story takes place. No matter what he changed, reality itself kept the "point B" as the destination, and kept making her die. Any reality in which she didn't die doesn't exist as a possible reality until a significant change causes point B to be something else. Within the attractor field, Time itself will keep that point as a convergent point, and it's too big for any "kick in the water" to prevent. Within that attractor field, no matter how many branches exist, or how many world lines there are, they will reach that destination until someone causes enough of a change.