Temporal Anomalies, Time Travel, Cool Geek Stuff

Anyone interested in the complexities of how time travel could affect the "flow" (for lack of a better word) of time should check out this site:

http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Rampart/6040/index.htm

It has a couple of really good discussions of how various time travel plots in movies could play out based on some of the theories the site presents. If you don't go through any of the other ones, at least read up on the "12 Monkeys" scenario. It's a lot of fun following the lines of thought in these essays!

Aren't there any normal people left who enjoy sci-fi for what it is - fiction? Not everything has to make perfect logical sense, and if you look at humans not many things do. And as for that page - I am surprised how someone is willing to spend his time writing obvious stuff. Unless, of course, it is targeted at people who think Star Wars is a documentary film...

Chill man, it's just for fun! The whole thing more or less hinges around the ideas expressed in a game called multiverser, but it's still kind of amusing to try and weed out a theory of how exactly the movie's mind worked so to speak.

Think about it: in 12 Monkeys, it's not necessarily always obvious, but every time Cole goes through a time travel, he alters the way history plays out. In the original world, we have no way of knowing how the virus even started, or, for that matter, when or where. But, by the end, through Cole's interference, he has effectively set the virus up to be released in the Philly airport on December 13, 1996 by Goines' assistant. On top of that, depending on whether or not someone called the carpet cleaner's number to tell the scientests that Cole failed in his attempt to shoot the assistant, and that it is indeed Goines' assistant who releases it on 12-13-96 in Philly airport, this particular timeline will either:

a) If the call is NOT placed by Cole or Railly - the timeline will infinitely repeat itself (remember - the nightmares of Cole seeing himself shot are part of what initially elist Railly's help to begin with - which is critical in setting up Goinses' assistant as the perp instead of the 12 Monkey Army) with Cole always being shot (and never necessarily realising that it was indeed his own adult person that he saw shot in the airport) and still always attempting to kill the assistant despite this. The world will die, and time will forever loop like this.
OR
b) if the call IS successfully placed, then the scientists will reconstruct it and know that they cannot rely on Jose's presense and Cole's attack to ensure that the future is changed. They will adopt a new plan and create a wholly unforseeable (unless some writer writes it ) new timeline.

Kind of helps untangle some of the messier plotlines once you digest all that... but again... it is all just in the name of amusement. I liked the movie because it was a pretty cool movie. I'm not one of those people who gets all pissy because Star Trek has stuff that isn't scientifically sound It is, after all, just a story.

>>Think about it
Erm...you lost me Sorry, can't relate - never seen 12 chimps.

>>because Star Trek has stuff that isn't scientifically sound It is, after all, just a story.
/me pulling his hair out "NOOOO don't say it!!! I know you don't mean that!!!"

Err.. yeah... what I MEANT was that Captain Kirk just told me he was going to beam you up to work on the warp reactor.... yeah... ummm... Klingons or Romulans or Bill Gates or something fried it... yea... that's it