The plot of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time is built, appropriately, upon a foundation of causal loops, with the majority of the action propelled by prophecy. What I mean is: Information travels back from the future and the response to that information creates the events that generate that very same future information. An arbitrary man, Rand al’Thor, must fight the universal embodiment of evil not because he wants to, but because he has been seen as doing so in the future. Thus do the personal motivations of millions of people within this fantasy world bend towards this unknown sheepherder.
Considering how inherent the manipulation of time is to the story of The Wheel of Time, it’s interesting that we don’t see any of the characters directly utilize time travel to fulfill their goals. Or do we? Throughout the series we see four, maybe five, types of time manipulation demonstrated by the characters, but can any of them be used to travel through time? And more specifically, can any of them be used to travel back in time and undo a great wrong, like the boring into the Dark One’s prison?
The Wheel of Time takes places in our universe, and that determines a basic answer to the question of whether time travel is possible in Robert Jordan’s fantasy series. In our universe, time travel forward in time is very possible, both on a practical and theoretical level. But time travel backwards in time, while being theoretically possible, is impossible on a practical level.
Our first method of time manipulation from The Wheel of Time demonstrates why.
1. Gateways
Before we plunge into examining gateways as a method of time travel, we need a small refresher on the concept of relativity. At its core, the concept of relativity in physics revolves around the speed of light being the fastest possible speed in the universe. From there, you can use relativity to predict how space and time will react to you as you speed up towards the speed of light. This results in a concept known as “time dilation,” which dictates that the faster you go, the slower you experience the flow of time. You can use this method to travel forward in time without aging. And at the most extreme speed possible (the speed of light), time would freeze from your perspective. Theoretically, if you were able to travel faster than light, then time would begin to flow backwards for you. You would arrive at your destination before you even left.
In a practical sense, there’s no way to travel faster than light, as Einstein’s famous mass-energy equivalence formula states that this would take an infinite amount of energy. However, a channeler in The Wheel of Time doesn’t need an infinite amount of energy, they just need enough to create a gateway.
Gateways are holes in space that reduce great distances to single steps. In essence, this means that a channeler can travel faster than light by weaving a gateway from Earth to our nearest star Alpha Centauri. In less than one minute, a human could travel a distance that light itself–the fastest thing in the universe–would need 4.3 years to traverse. If that traveler looked back at Earth through a telescope, they would see events occurring 4.3 years ago.
However, this does not mean that the channeler has traveled into the past. Rather, they are now subject to the relativity of simultaneity, which states that the same event can be observed at different times depending on the reference frame (position in space, basically) of the observer. This phenomenon is observable right here on Earth, and it only becomes more extreme the further out into space you go, getting to the point where you could theoretically observe the same event over and over if you kept jumping light years away from Earth. Experiencing this simultaneity doesn’t mean you’ve traveled back in time; just that you’ve changed position in space relative to the event itself. The event has happened, and information about it continues to propagate into the surrounding universe. Just because you haven’t encountered that propagation yet doesn’t mean you exist before the event has happened to another observer.
We can demonstrate this more clearly via a thought experiment. Let’s have Androl make a gateway from Randland to the Moon, where we’ve set up a very precise telescope aimed at the spot on Earth that Androl is Traveling from. The Moon is roughly 11 light-seconds away from the Earth, so once Androl gets there via gateway, he would be able to look through the telescope and see himself eventually step through the gateway. This doesn’t mean that a second Androl would appear through the gateway, it just means that Androl has Traveled far enough that he is able to observe the same event from two different points in space. He first observed the opening of the gateway to the Moon by literally opening the gateway to the Moon. Then he observed the event again 11 seconds later when the light from that event reached the Moon.
Even if Androl saw himself through the telescope and wove a lightning bolt to kill himself before he stepped through the gateway, that lightning bolt would only hit empty ground. Androl would see the lightning bolt instantly through his gateway, but it wouldn’t appear in the telescope for 11 seconds, long after he had observed himself walking through the gateway through that same telescope. (If Androl really wanted to get cute, he could step back through the gateway, wave towards the telescope, then go back to the Moon and watch himself waving at himself.)
Gateways allow observation of the past in extreme instances, but it’s akin to watching a video. The event has already occurred and the observer is just seeing it now. Time travel can’t be accomplished via gateway.
Note: Time travel to the future via time dilation could be accomplished by channelers combining the One Power and conventional spacecraft. It’s possible that channelers could achieve speeds that closely approach the speed of light, as well, since a channeler has access to infinite energy in the form of the One Power. It is doubtful that channelers could use the One Power to achieve the speed of light or beyond, however, even with access to this infinite energy source. Although the source is infinite, the transfer of that energy via channeling is not. At the very least, some degradation or leakage of One Power would occur during transfer (akin to transmission of electricity) regardless of amount. This would leave a constant gap, small but significant, between the One Power and the energy needed to achieve light speed.
2. Balefire
Balefire, a superweapon that burns a thread from the Pattern, is the only tool available in The Wheel of Time that has been successfully used to change the present by altering a past event. The most notable use of balefire towards this purpose comes during the climax of The Fires of Heaven, when the Forsaken Rahvin obliterates Rand’s party in Caemlyn, killing Mat and many others. The balefiring of Rahvin erases the event that caused these deaths, creating a paradox that the Pattern is capable of absorbing, although not without severing Mat’s link to The Horn of Valere.
Although balefire can be used to alter the past, it cannot be used to send someone to the past, nor can the effects of the changes balefire produces be predicted or controlled. As a method of time travel, it is an emergency measure. And even as an emergency measure, it is doubtful how useful erasing the past in a random manner would be in comparison to dealing with the consequences of the present timeline.
It is repeatedly stated throughout the series that balefire is a forbidden and unnatural use of the One Power, and that its unkempt use risks unraveling reality itself. We see this begin to occur near the end of the series, when Rand obliterates an entire castle, and further onwards in The Last Battle, when the forces of the Dark One use it without regard. Cracks begin to appear in the land into which nothing can be seen, cracks that turn out to be gaps in reality itself. This is a preferred outcome for the forces of the Dark One, since they are instituting (or at least believe they are instituting) a new world order that is not dependent on the Pattern or the Wheel. The Dark One will deconstruct all threads in the Pattern once freed, so the use of balefire just gives that process a bit of a head start.
From this, we can surmise that balefire is a preferred tool of the Dark One, so it’s interesting that the One Power is at all capable of creating a preferred tool of the Dark One! This makes Egwene’s creation of an anti-balefire weave in A Memory of Light all the more appropriate, as until that moment the counter-balance to balefire was missing. In fact, one could say that the entire point of The Wheel of Time is to depict a world struggling to restore the balance of creation versus destruction, and that Egwene’s Flame of Tar Valon weave is the decisive turning point in the struggle to restore balance.
The Dark One and his motivations are important to consider when theorizing how time travel could exist in The Wheel of Time. The nature of the Dark One alone is key to determining how time functions in relation to the existing physical laws of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time.
3. The Dark One
The Dark One’s goal is very clear: He (really, “it”) exists in opposition to the Creator and everything that the Creator has, well, created. The Dark One wants to break the Wheel, unravel the Pattern, and let nothingness reign. Although we see the Dark One take joy in the warping of creation during the final battle with Rand in A Memory of Light, and we know that some of the Forsaken think that backing the Dark One means creating a world that they can rule over, Ishamael/Moridin has the right of it. The Dark One’s victory doesn’t mean a dark existence, it means no existence.
The effect that the Dark One has on reality supports this goal. The Wheel of Time opens with dark forces gathering on the margins and an unnaturally long winter having gripped the land. The established patterns of nature are already degrading as the seals on the Dark One’s prison fall apart, and this degradation grows in strength as the series continues. Rand breaks the hold of winter on the land, only for it to be followed by an endless summer. The Dark One’s touch hastens entropy in the northern lands, creating The Blight, and hastens entropy in the minds of male channelers, driving them mad. The Dark One’s touch accelerates time’s effect on matter to an extreme extent.
In addition, the Dark One itself slows time. In A Memory of Light, Rand experiences less than a day when he’s in proximity to the Dark One, while weeks rage on in the world outside of Shayol Ghul. The Dark One’s very touch on the world slows the flow of time in the same relativistic manner that you would experience near the event horizon of a black hole. Rand experiences time dilation even though he’s not moving, living one day as the world lives 20. If Rand had lost and the Dark One had been freed, that same dilation of time would have eventually spread through all of creation. Entropy would have increased, all matter would have fallen apart, and time would have come to a stop.
Stopping time is the same thing as breaking the Wheel, because the Wheel needs forward motion in time to weave the Pattern. Therefore, moving backwards in time would also break the Wheel. Going back in time achieves the same goal that the Dark One is trying to achieve, only to a more extreme extent in that it seeks to halt and reverse the direction of the Wheel instead of just halting it. Both actions stop the Pattern from being woven and stop reality from being created.
Could the Dark One be strong enough to send characters back in time? Possibly. But it has to halt the Wheel first, at which point reality is already lost. This provides an interesting perspective to the concept of backwards time travel within the universe of Jordan’s Wheel of Time. It may not just be physically impossible, it may also be a deeply evil act!
4. Portal Stones, Prophecy, and the Superstructure of Reality
Portal Stones can be used similarly to gateways in that they allow a channeler to hop from position to position within a world, like Rand and company did when they traveled from Tear to Rhuidean in The Shadow Rising. And also like gateways, this method of travel does not allow for any serious manipulation of time.
But Portal Stones can also allow travel between alternate realities, and in The Great Hunt we see Rand visit these alternate realities. The only explanation given for this effect is from Loial, who recalls the following words about Portal Stones:
“From Stone to Stone run the lines of ‘if,’ between the worlds that might be.”
Which isn’t as much an explanation as it is a confirmation of the journeys that Rand and company have taken. Rand’s first trip utilizing a Portal Stone sends him and his party into a seemingly dead world, where grolm roam lands that seem to have large featureless gaps within them. As if the Pattern didn’t bother to fully weave this reality into existence. Rand also experiences irregularities in regards to the distance his party covers in the dead world in comparison to the distance they should have covered in the real world. Further, events that have not yet occurred in the real world have already left an impression on this dead world. Both time and space function differently in the world they visit through the Portal Stone, and Rand and company’s “future” has already occurred in this dead world, so is it possible that a Portal Stone could allow travel to a reality where you could affect previous events in your home reality?
It might be that this is what already happens in The Wheel of Time, and that prophecies, dreams, Min’s viewings, and Aviendha’s “way-forward ter’angreal” trip are the results of certain people being able to “read” the events of an alternate reality that is “ahead” of the main reality, just as Hurin read the smells of Trollocs that had not yet passed in front of them during The Great Hunt. Just as the main reality left an impression on the dead world that Rand visited, so do other realities leave an impression on the main reality in the form of prophecies and visions.
This suggests a superstructure to reality in The Wheel of Time that explains the creation of alternate realities and the interaction between them and the “main” reality. It also suggests that the Pattern often self-corrects, leading to branches of the Pattern that continue as alternate realities, or wither away as dead worlds.
There seem to be three types of “reality” in this superstructure:
Main Reality: This is the world of the series and the most “solid” of the three types of reality. This reality utilizes information from the other two to shape its course, and is a result of the correcting of mistakes made in previous timelines. Rand sees a bundle of these previous timelines during his second trip through the Portal Stone in The Great Hunt, where he is shown realities where he never leaves the Two Rivers, or never channels, or fights the Shadow after it has grown far too strong. In essence, Rand is shown realities that were once the Main Reality, but failed and became…
Sub Reality: This is the kind of dead, gap-filled world that Rand and company visit early on in The Great Hunt. Either the Dark One is free in this world or channelers used too much balefire or, more likely, the weaving of this world was simply abandoned. Either way, the Wheel does not function fully in this world and the entropic effect is the same as if the Dark One were free. The degraded nature of Sub Realities seem to function in the same manner as the Dark One, in that time and space find themselves dilated and compressed. In essence, there is not as much of the Pattern between Shienar and Cairhien in the Sub Reality as there is in the Main Reality, which is why Rand and company don’t need to traverse as much space to reach their destination. The spatial relationship between the two realities could be depicted as follows:
As we see, although the Sub Reality is a reflection of the Main Reality, it must consist of more compressed space since Rand is able to travel across it more quickly without changing his pace. (Although man-made, The Ways function in the same manner, being a compressed Sub Reality with several connections to the Main Reality.) Compressing space dilates time, which would explain why Rand’s second trip through the Portal Stone, to failed timelines and Sub Realities even further degraded, took four months even when it felt to him like moments.
Sub Realities may be quicker to travel through, but they are abandoned realities, dead branches of timelines where someone zigged when they should have zagged. Thus, while visiting them can be extremely informative in regards to knowing what may have been, they are dangerous places to visit.
But they may not be the only places to visit.
Uber Reality: As we’ve determined, Main Reality can become Sub Reality if something occurs that halts the weaving of that Reality, such as the Dark One escaping or another catastrophic event. This means that Main Reality is receiving constant correction in regards to events that must occur for the survival of reality in the form of prophecies, viewings, et al. If these directives from the future are really impressions left on the Main Reality, then that means there’s an Uber Reality “above” the Main one that is farther ahead in time. Like so:
An Uber Reality would be a “true” alternate timeline: One where events occurred differently but where the Dark One stays sealed. Aviendha learned a lot about such a reality when she voyaged through the “way-forward ter’angreal” in Towers of Midnight, and it’s possible that all visions of the future within the series are the result of reading a course of action from an Uber Reality. Since those realities are “successful,” then the actions communicated to the Main Reality would be the correct ones to take in order to preserve the Main Reality. Uber Realities in this regard are really parallel worlds, and some may contain only minute differences from the Main Reality.
To be able to communicate future events to the Main Reality, an Uber Reality would have to be farther along in being woven than the Main Reality. That implies that Uber Realities were actually started first by the Wheel, and that the Main Reality came afterwards, and that there are possibly parallel worlds started after the Main Reality. If this is the superstructure of reality within The Wheel of Time, then that means the Portal Stone is capable of sending characters forward in time to an Uber Reality, or backwards in time to a closely parallel Sub Reality.
This would enable time travel in the Wheel of Time, but not backwards time travel that could change the Main Reality. Just as any travel forward in time through a Portal Stone would result in materializing in a different reality, any travel backwards in time through a Portal Stone would result in the same. In modern physics, we know this as the Many-Worlds Interpretation, which states that any time travel to the past is actually you traveling to a nearly identical parallel world, since your timeline never contained you traveling to the past.
We’ve figured out plenty of ways to travel forward in time in The Wheel of Time, but we’re 0-4 in our quest to travel backwards in time. So let’s go for broke. Let’s travel SO FAR forward in time that we end up going BACK in time!
5. Stasis Boxes / Turning of the Wheel
The Forsaken make use of stasis boxes, relics left over from the Age of Legends that act like watertight boxes where instead of keeping out water they keep out time itself. (I mean, they probably keep out water, too?) Want to travel back to the Age of Legends and stop Mierin-and-the-guy-history-forgot from creating the Bore? Hop into a stasis box and figure out some Rube Goldbergian method that will open the box when the Wheel turns back around to the Second Age. You did it! Now the Third Age is going to be all ice cream and star kisses instead of sniffing and spanking.
But that’s only IF you can figure out a mechanism that will open your box on time. And which can survive the upheaval of an entire turning of the Wheel in which the very face of the planet is broken and re-formed not once but twice. Oh, and you better have a way of calculating how many years are contained in a full turn of the Wheel because not all Ages are the same length of time.
Space travel may actually be the answer to that. In The Shadow Rising, the Forsaken Moghedien mentions humans during her Age being able to travel to other stars. It’s quite possible some Age of Legends spacecraft are still out there, traveling at sublight speeds that would result in them returning tens or hundreds of thousands of years after their departure, having only aged a week.
Although even if that happens, they (and you) wouldn’t actually be traveling to the past. From the WoT wiki: “While the pattern of each Age is fixed by the Great Pattern, the details of a specific Age can vary considerably from the base pattern.” And arguably even the base pattern is eventually altered due to changes accumulated over the course of a few turns of the Wheel. The dinosaurs don’t arise, live for hundreds of millions of years, then get wiped out by an asteroid during every turn of the Wheel, after all. Humanity doesn’t spend only one age learning how to walk upright. There are probably Wheels within Wheels.
So while the Dark One will probably be freed again when the Second Age comes again, it won’t be your past, and as such the circumstances will be different. You could step out of a stasis box in the New Age of Legends and hunt down Mierin and destroy the Collam Daan, only to watch in horror as the-guy-history-forgot (Beidomon) proceeds to bore into the Dark One’s prison from some other institution halfway around the world.
Worse, it could turn out that your assassination of Mierin ends up turning the Main Reality into a failed Sub Reality, since now Lanfear won’t be around to provide Rand with a saidin tutor in The Fires of Heaven. As a result, Rand’s channeling skills would probably never develop to the point where he could cleanse saidin. He would die in the attempt, and the Dark One would win again, Lews Therin.
This is where the thought experiment concludes. We have the answer to our question. Not only is traveling back in time in The Wheel of Time physically impossible, it’s also outright evil, and it would probably scuttle the very Pattern that the channeler was born from/woven into.
That I was able to dig this deeply into the subject is a testament to Jordan’s quiet skill with epic fantasy storytelling. Robert Jordan’s worldbuilding is impressively robust and subtle regarding this topic; demonstrating the limitations of the universe while providing examples of its many, many variations. It’s not often that you get to play in a fantasy world that can sustain theoretical frameworks about time travel!
That’s the Wheel of Time, ladies and gentlemen and wagons-fulla-pancakes. You can go forward, but you can never go back.
Read more about The Wheel of Time Companion here on Tor.com.
Chris Lough is getting rowdy with these theory posts around here, lately. Click the name for more.
Wow, fascinating article. I think you did get one fact wrong when you said that the Dark One desired nothingness. When Rand and the Dark One have their conflict outside the Pattern the Dark One reveals that it is actually his plan to remake the world in his image. The joke was on Ishamael/Moridin the whole time, his tortuous existence would never end.
Wow. I was thoroughly impressed by this and the more I stopped and re-read some of the paragraphs, the conclusion kept becoming clearer. Jordan was a genius at world-building without giving away excessive (/restrictive) details.
And interpreting your concentric semi circles bit on Uber-Main-Sub Reality superstructures and the multi-world theory it would seem to me that there should in fact be multiple threads of each of those realities where each spins off from a small variation during the weaving of the pattern.
So freaking sweet, thanks!
There’s a huge flaw in the premise here I just can’t let go of. You can’t confuse speed and acceleration when you’re talking about relativity. You cannot accelerate past c, but nothing stops you from going faster than c. Effectively Gateways are wormholes and nothing we know at this time makes wormholes impossible. We can’t create wormholes, let alone macro scale stable wormholes, but they’re still possible. And without that, I don’t see how the rest of the argument holds. A single person traveling backwards in time, if it were possible, would not stop or reverse the Wheel in its turning.
The thoughts on uber and sub realities is fascinating, but again neither supports nor refutes the theory that time travel is evil. Similarly even if you overcame the stat stasis box problem, I think you wouldn’t even find Mieran, or Beidoman, or anything you think you’d recognize. The shape of history repeats, yes, and the souls are reborn, yes, but the same people and the same actions? Not a chance.
Last but not least, @1, I think it’s safest to assume that you can’t take the Dark One at their word. (Yes, their. Singular they is the most appropriate pronoun here.) I think they even fooled Rand into believing that the world needed the Dark One. In another turning of the Wheel, I feel like the Dark One could die, or maybe be replaced by someone like Fain (since again it wouldn’t be Fain himself, *even if*the same soul drives the body), or something else. The Wheel is effectively infinite, after all.
And while my commentary is done, I can’t help but sing. “Wheels within wheels in a spiral array, a pattern so grand and complex. Time after time we lose sight of the way, our causes can’t see their effects!”
Unless there’s some timetravelling ter-angreal, say, a blue wooden box bigger on the inside… :)
That picture above combines my two favourite things: WOT and Doctor Who. Yay!
Just to say, of course travelling back in time, if possible, would be evil in a story that ended well and all characters and plots are so tightly interwoven that altering one single thread means altering all of them.
Also, what about Tel’aran’rhiod? I would even theorize that entering in body and then wishing to be back in time could be possible… dreamworld is controlled by thoughts and wishes, isn’t it?
I think that you’ve gotten some things wrong with these theories.
Traveling is using wormholes like in Stargate just without the portal stones. It, in my opinion, is actually quite brilliantly explained in A Wrinkle in Time where it is just a fold in spacetime. When they Skim it is like entering the Mobius Strip from the Necroscope books.
I understood the Portal Stones to be more along the lines of alternate dimensions. That is why the Grolm was there. Waygates on the other hand are more of a pocket dimension for faster travel.
Lastly the Stasis Boxes are just Cryogenic/Suspended Animation chambers like they used in movies like Alien. You step in, fall asleep, and when the timer goes off you’re awoken like Fry was in Futurama.
We were never shown any kind of Tardis because in the universe that RJ created he based upon our own current theories about space and time in that we can only travel forward time. There are no wibbly wobbly timey wimey things. No H.G. Wells Time Machine. Doing that would break The Wheel and be a success for The Dark One since it would be the Apocalypse.
When asked in a q&a if Aviendha used a gateway to time-travel, RJ rafoed instead of saying yes or no.
It’s worth mentioning that RJ had a degree in physics.
It would be awesome if the Companion Guide has entries about the possibility of time-travel, which was a greatly theorized topic back in the day.
Time itself does not stop inside of a black-hole — specifically for events occurring within. To an observer from beyond the event horizon, time would appear to stop , and the events that happen inside the black-hole would never happen (even though they still take place) for the outside observer only. It is not time that is stopping. It is the removal of the variable “when.”
Great article and well thought out. As the Semisonic song, Closing Time, says: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” Thus as long as the Wheel of Time keeps spinning there will be both beginnings and endings, although not the exact same every time.
In my mind, the Wheel of Time somehow has the effect of drawing a small circle and then drawing larger circles around it. Eventually you will have a drawing that looks like multiple complete circles. However, if you were to look at it closely, you would see that each circle does not actually close.
Thanks for reading my musings.
AndrewHB
@7 I was surprised the Avi time-travel Talent wasn’t mentioned in the article. There are certainly some very odd discrepancies in TFoH and TPoD with regards to the time of day after Aviendha weaves gateways.
By the in-universe rules I have thought it would be possible for a female channeler to Travel through time. They Travel by making a similarity between two points, folding the Pattern so there is no distance between them. It seems like they could use the same method to fold a past point so that it intersects with the present. The need for familiarity works too, because they need to know the place where they start from, not where they end up.
I don’t think I understand the hypothesis here, because I don’t see the future as impacting the past in the Wheel of Time? Ages come and go, wind, blah blah blah, but it doesn’t say it repeats ad nauseum without the ability to change? The world was only broken once, this is just the next Age where consequences appear? Further, if the future determined the past, then Aviendha’s vision would have been inevitable, but the Dragon’s Peace happened? I think you have a solution in search of a problem, but that problem isn’t inherent in this story?
@@.-@
I think it’d be easy to find Lanfear if you got the stasis box to work. Ask ‘Aes Sedai, Aes Sedai of the future-past, who’s the most beautiful/powerful/sexiest broken up power couple of them all.’ You’d just need to ask what power couple existed recently consisting of a man and woman channeler who were both at the absolute peak of male and female channeling capability. That’s something that won’t change in reincarnations since its an intrinsic property of their soul. Similarly some people spun out presumably have other traits shared with their reincarnations, since Lanfear is jealous enough of Elayne to make the guess that she’s Ilyena reincarnated (the similar name helps too, but I’ll admit its only conjecture that Elayne and Ilyena are the same soul).
Even if Lanfear and Lews aren’t and never were a couple, Lanfear still has the trait of being the most powerful female channeler. There are more channelers in the Age of Legends so she might have equals in power level, but the strength in the OP follows a curve, so it’d still drastically narrow down your search from a list of all channelers to a very small list of female channelers working on sketchy research into alternative energy.
@10 Isn’t that not timetravel, but because she’s opening gateways into different timezones? Or do the timezones not add up? Like in Fires of Heaven she makes the gateway from the Westlands to Seanchan, so they’re on opposite sides of the globe, there’s no real time discrepancy that its day in one and night at the other. And we can’t assume the earth is even the same size and that timezones would correlate as they should to us since during the Breaking who knew what terrible things male channelers did. They could’ve cut off half the earth or crashed Mars into us. (I’m not sure anyone is strong enough to do that. And with reference to that Androl thought experiment, I’m not sure channelers have the strength to actually make gateways at that distance (though I don’t remember if distance was ever a large concern with power needed to travel)).
Daytripper@1
You’re right. We know this from Pg. 890 in the AMoL (hardcover).
But let’s go down that rabbit hole because it’s fun and I really like Chris’ Uber Reality obsercation and how this relates to the making of Callandor which allowed Rand to renew the Pattern/DO Prison (Pg. 882).
Rand’s body touched the DO’s “territory” visually represented by the gaping void cracks in the cave floor. From that point forward the DO continually tried to pull Rand apart while Rand countered via a huge flow of the Source to “anchor” his existence. While this “physical” struggle ensued, several PsyOps distractions were woven by the DO to emotionally compromise Rand’s resolve to exist and in so doing Rand learned how to weave alternate Kanian libertarian possibilities. This went back and forth: Everyone’s Evil/No One is Evil/Incomplete Personalities/Non-Existence Compromise. Interestingly enough, all of the options required the Patterns participants to give up all or part of who they were. Once the DO had Rand on the emotional rocks, He/It started to parade everyones real (not just sidebar simulations) death and misery by Rand in vibrant cinematic TECHNICOLOR!
Then Rand figures it out. As long as they (the living, orderly, cooperative, complementary, fabric that contains the DO) don’t give up their purpose, then the Pattern as a whole acts as an equal force capable of withstanding, limiting, or completely containing the DO’s machinations (depending on the Age and the choices of the participating threads). That’s when Rand’s voice leveled up to ALL CAPS as he accepted the intent of the Pattern and became a focused, accurate proxy that can go toe to toe with the DO, not just weather the storm.
When Rand focuses in on Mat during the Last Battle everyone can hear Rand since he’s holding that weaving in his projected hand. Then Rand draws the DO into the Pattern thereby limiting a primal force of unlimited energy. Rand then has the choice to come up with a different solution, but decides the the DO is a necessary primal element.
On a side bar, I think we saw hints of this “proxy power” when Nyneave delved Rand’s mind. There she observed a bright light encasing the black thorns of the Taint on his brain. Very symbolic of what the Pattern is designed to do. Limit the DO’s pressure against the sentient inhabitants/threads/reasoning. Rand also pained Dark Friends when he became a better proxy of the Pattern because he confronted them with their debased nature. They were “less than” what they were woven to be, so they can’t even meet his gaze. Rand doesn’t have Dark Friend vision, it’s the Dark Friend’s inability to stand before their failure of conscience and purpose.
This light becomes amplified when Rand comes close to “confronting” the DO as the Patterns selected proxy reborn whenever the DO gains ground. Dark Friends find it even more difficult to look at him so they gouge out their eyes or jump out of tower windows. Arguably, when Rand channels at Maradon his flows seem to seek out Shadow Spawn intuitively, while preserving the recently lost embattlements. Rand did this type of thing before on a smaller scale in the Stone when he came close to embracing who he was; a repressed memory slips through and he accuses Lanfear of her love for power and then he makes the Super Happy Fun Ball that kills only Shadow Spawn. Afterwards he regresses again when he can’t raise a little girl from the dead (e.g., he can’t shield everyone from evil since it’s the whole Pattern’s responsibility to stand against the DO, not just certain threads of it).
Even in his transmigrated burnt out Moridin body, Rand arguably still holds a lesser degree of use since he retains his memories of the encounter rather than being reborn. This was demonstrated when he thinks his pipe alight before “Hi ho, Silver!”ing into the newly restored Blight. Rand’s soul will always will have this Pattern proxy ability, but it is latent unless it is needed or unless Rand skips over the memory wipe process. This makes sense seeing as important character traits are tied to the soul in RJ’s world building. A prime example would be Brigitte being torn out of TAR, but even when she is reborn normally, she will always gravitate towards archery.
So in order for Rand to have this ability to choose to go along with the Creators reestablished system of moral autonomy with unlimited chances for self-improvement, he needs the prerequisite tools and hints that the Pattern provides for him via the Uber Reality. This comes out via foretelling and viewings that give glimpses of the Uber Reality to forge the tool that makes it all possible, Callandor. I’m also of the opinion that Callandor is made up of the Flame of Tar Valon weave. That’s why it can act as an amplifying conduit for a Channeler to tap into and draw upon the DO’s essence while not deteriorating or breaking apart.
In a response to Gateways.
I’m sorry you misunderstand relativity. A gateway would completely allow time travel.
The problem you are having in your example of Androl and the Moon is that you are assuming that they stay in the same frame of reference. What a gateway does is allow a break in the frame of reference which caused problems.
Going to the theory, here is where the problem is.
“This results in a concept known as “time dilation,” which dictates that the faster you go, the slower you experience the flow of time.”
You do not experience time flowing differently. You view everyone ELSE experiencing time slowing down.
Let’s take an example. Everyone at Tor.com gets in a space ship and flies away from earth at a velocity that produces a time dilation of 2. (For simplicity, let’s assume that acceleration is instant.)
Now, in this example, is earth stationary? Or is the ship stationary while the earth flies away from it? The answer is yes, it depends on your frame of reference.
So if I am on the earth and I measure the speed of light it is a constant, the same as it always is. I see myself as stationary and the spaceship is moving.
If I am on the spaceship and I measure the speed of light it is also a constant, the same as it always is. As a result I see myself as stationary and the earth is moving.
Ok, so the faster you go, the slower time goes and as we set up this experiment the time dilation is 2. So for every two seconds that pass in the stationary frame, one second will pass in the moving frame.
However, which is the stationary frame and which is the moving frame is depended purely on where the observer is standing. The person on earth sees them self as stationary, the spaceship sees itself as stationary.
This is where things start to get Strange.
Let’s say the person on earth waits 8 hours. With a time dilation of 2 this means that 4 hours have passed on the space ship.
Let’s say a person on the spaceship waits 8 hours. With a time dilation of 2 this means that 4 hours have passed on the earth.
Now, there is no special reference frames so BOTH of the above statements have to be correct. There is a disconnect but if the ship cannot travel FTL it doesn’t matter. The effect is symmetric so if the ship turns around it will match up again.
Now, lets add something FTL, like say, a gateway. This is where things get REALLY strange.
We are on our ship and eight hours have passed. With a time dilation of two this means that only 4 hours have passed on earth. So Androl creates his gateway and steps out back onto earth 4 hours after the ship has left earth because the ship reference is correct.
Now, the Earth’s reference is ALSO correct. 4 hours have passed on Earth with a time dilation of 2 which means that only 2 hours have passed on the ship. (Remember, a person on earth sees themselves as stationary so time has slowed down on the ship for them.)
So at this point Androl creates another gateway back to the ship. 4 hours have passed on earth so only two hours have passed on the ship. Androl steps out onto the ship 6 hours before he left it.
Time travel.
What about Tel’aran’rhiod? What if what we see with Perrin making contact with wolves who have never spoke to a two legs before being him somehow managing to travel possibly to a time where it had yet to happen? It is described as the true reality. It binds and reflects all world’s and chance. What if it is also outside of time, allowing for movement in more than one pathway?
@15 I would not be surprised if you couldn’t form a gateway between sufficiently different reference frames.
Minor point, but you botched the math on Gateways to the moon.
It takes about 1.3 seconds for light to travel from the Earth to the Moon (250,000 miles / 186,000 mi/sec)
The Realities theory is fascinating, and it is likely that TAR is the mechanism through which the corrective information is relayed. That still leaves the nature of ‘Finn’ space though. Mat was able to deduce that the Finns have the ability to observe the Main reality, as well as look forward in it. While we can’t tell from Mat’s third trip when he rescued Moiraine, time dilation is implied on his first trip through the redstone door in tear (since he, Rand and Moirain must have come a wildly different times to avoid bumping into each other or seeing recent sign of previous people, but came out at roughly the same time), and nearly explicitly stated in the Rhuidean doorway (as we saw the length of Mat’s interview, we know how long Rand took in the Pillars, and we know how long observers say they were in the valley. There’s NO WAY Mat could have been hanging from that tree all that time, so he must have only just moments ago been put there, indicating a time dilation).
The Gateway FTL theory is flawed before it even began. There is no evidence that Gateways enable instantaneous travel. Some math to illustrate.
c = 3*10^8 km/s
Earth dia = 1.275*10^7 meters
Limit of human perception 0.1 seconds
1.275*10^7 / 0.1 = 1.275*10^8 < 3*10^8
So “instantaneous” travel from one end of the earth to the other would be perceived at sub-light speeds.
Is there any evidence that Gateways to the moon were created or possible in WOT, or just vague references to space travel?
@Megaduck
“Now, there is no special reference frames so BOTH of the above statements have to be correct. There is a disconnect but if the ship cannot travel FTL it doesn’t matter. The effect is symmetric so if the ship turns around it will match up again.”
Your argument implies Paradox, but Einstein’s Non-Simultaneity Principle says you can’t generalize between Reference Frames.
You’d be unable to prove the theory without actually doing it.
The Paradox pinches itself out.
Hi William Carr,
That is a good catch, there is a paradox in the paragraph that you mentioned. It’s called the Twin Paradox, you can read about it here,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox
I hand waved over it because I didn’t feel it was relevant to my point that if gateways were FTL they would imply time travel. (Fuzzix is correct that the gateways might propagate at the speed of light so no time travel involved.)
“You’d be unable to prove the theory without actually doing it.”
I’m not sure what your point here is. What I wrote is a simplified explanation of why FTL implies time travel in General Relativity. If you feel that I haven’t understood General Relativity you are welcome to explain why. The example i showed however is a modified version of the Tachyonic Antitelephone Paradox. You can find it with all the math here,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone
Perhaps rather then the Einstein’s Non-Simultaneity Principle you are thinking to the Novikov self-consistency principle? That would imply a solution to the example i provided.
It’s starting to get above my knowledge level however, I can explain the concepts of Relatively. I can’t really critique them though.
@Megaduck
In your example in Comment 15, wouldn’t 16 hours have passed on Earth after 8 hours on the spaceship?
That’s how the twin paradox works – more time passes on Earth than on the spaceship. Right?
OK — so using the OP to accelerate to C is pretty straightforward. Portal and Penny Arcade have it all figured out already.
Open a (very large) gateway near a large, compact, massive object. Jupiter is an option, Earth is an option, etc. Better options have no atmosphere and low particulate counts, but may take longer. The gateway should open perpendicular to the local gravitational field direction.
Now open a second perfectly parallel gateway deeper in the gravitational well. If you can, put both gateways within a vacuum chamber of appropriate size — the distance between gateways can be very small, so the chamber could be a huge pancake.
Gate into the are between the two gateways, and start falling. With something close to Earth, you’ll start approaching C in about 4.5 years. Near Jupiter, 1.8 years. The sun? 80 days or so. Bigger stars? Check their gravitational constant.
When you have adequate velocity, create a gateway that points you in the direction you need to go, somewhere with very low local particulate matter. Close the down gateway instantaneously (possible? This may determine the required spacing between the gateways, and perhaps require a different buffering scheme). Voilà — sublight kinetic flight. If you are using the OP to accelerate as well, you can combine techniques.
Of course, Jordan neglected something that the Jumper books (Gould) thought through in detail — differences in velocity at different points on the globe. So there has to be some momentum compensation happening automatically in the gateway formation process. Maybe that stops you every time. Worth a shot, though, and easy to test personally and at small scale on a trampoline.
I reject the initial premise that prophecy must come from the future. Many things are prophesied that are not based on someone traveling back in time. Some things happen in cycles, with one cycle looking roughly (though not exactly) like another cycle. So to say it was prophesied that Rand would do these things is not correct. Rand was never mentioned in the Karaethon Cycle. But many generalized events were mentioned in vague ways that could have been interpreted in many different ways.
I can tell you about the migration of geese, without knowing the specifics. This is what the Karaethon Cycle foretells.
A minor detail. You got your decimal point re: speed of light and the moon one place too far to the right. Luna is 1 . 1 light seconds from Earth
There is actually a way that Gateways could be used for time travel, though not to before the point in time that the gateway is first opened.
If one end of a gateway is placed on a ship and that ship is accelerated near the speed of light, time dilation means that this end of the gateway would experience less time than the one back on Randland. If the ship went on a circular trip and got a year out of sync, its gateway would lead a year into the past from the ship’s present. Assuming that the gateways never closed, you could move from ship gateway to planet to ship gateway to planet and so on to move a year in time with each transit.
Again, the past most gateway would be the limit, and the closing of the gateways in the future would set a limit on how far you could go forward.
Hi Thewillcar @23
Not quite. The twin paradox takes place when the spaceship returns to it’s point of origin. This is why in my example @15 the spaceship goes out and then keeps going while we run the gateway experiment. It keeps things simple.
Now, we have all seen science fiction, so we know from Hollywood that when you go out near FTL speeds and come back to earth you are still young while everyone else is old. Why does this happen? Based on my example @15 you can see that everything is relative so how does the spaceship and the earth ever reconcile their two frames of reference and when they do why are they not equal?
Based on a straightforward reading of relativity they should both find that the other has aged more slowly, which is obviously impossible. IE This is the twin paradox.
The short answer to this is that in an example where the spaceship returns there are three frames of reference. One for earth, one for the spaceship going out, one for the spaceship coming back. Earth always has the same time dilation, the spaceship has two different time dilations depending on which way it is going.
The total length of the journey will be agreed upon but depending on where the observer is standing, each section will be different.
Lets look at an example .
The spaceship goes out for 10 hour journey earth time. Lets assume the speed is a constant .8C both ways which results in a time dilation of .6. This means that .6*10 results in 6 hours taking place on the space ship.
So when the ship gets back it has a record of 6 hours taking place while 10 hours passed on earth.
However, the ship will see 3 hours going out before they turn around and 3 hours back. Earth however sees 4 hours pass on the ship going out and 2 hours pass on the ship coming back. Both add up to 6 but they don’t agree with each other.
Yes, relativity is weird. If you want more with the math involved I invite you to read The Twin Paradox on Wikidepia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_paradox
I am aware that it can get so technical that your eyes will glaze over so I can also recommend the Atomic Rocket Websites page on FTL.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fasterlight.php
This is an amazing site that tells you all you want to know about building a spacecraft and does it simply and is easy to understand language.
I started reading this article this morning, about seven and a half hours ago. I managed to get a bite to eat, send a couple texts and do some laundry but spent most of the time reading. I read it several times before I got the gist of it. I linked on the references and read those, too. Then I started on the comments and some had to be read multiple times. Alas, even after rereading the information provided in the comments they remained Greek to me. Since I had never read “A Wrinkle in Time”, I searched for and read about the book, the plot, characters, etc, so I could understand how it was referenced. Now, I only have one thing to say:
My brain hurts. I need to lie down.
The talk of things going wrong and main timelines becoming sub timelines is so Homestuckian (if you’ll allow me to adjectivize Homestuck and its myriad timeline/time travel shenanigans), it couldn’t help but appeal to me. Love it. I don’t know if I’d be willing to stake that your theory of uber/main/sub realities is super canon, but I love it.
I love this stuff!
“an arbitrary man,rand al’thor,must fight the universal embodiment of evil…”
seriously?arbitrary?the same soul is doing the same job over and over again
ad infinitum and you call it arbitrary?
sure,his name,appearance,back-ground and some personal characteristics are
different,but eons ago,the pattern did choose this particular soul for a reason,
there’s nothing arbitrary about the dragon.
A simpler answer to the gateway issue is that if we find a means of FTL travel, then it will simply prove that relativity of simultaneity is false after all, and there is actually a preferred reference frame (as was assumed before Einstein; the assumed frame is the frame of the ether, as analysed by Lorentz and Poincare). This doesn’t actually alter any physics except that we can determine the ether frame; time will pass fastest for objects that are stationary relative to it. Objects in motion with respect to the ether will beome physically shorter in their direction of travel, and time will slow down for them. However, all our normal observations will look just the same as under special relativity. Only with the aid of FTL will be be able to see – in the scenario given by @15 – which of the spaceship or the Earth is actually moving faster relative to the ether.
Agree with 33. Just ask the author: Relativity, QM, nuclear chemistry, modern electronics, etc… None of it exists in WoT, the world is based on 18th century science.
You had me right up until you said, “The Wheel of Time takes place in our universe.” No, it does not. Not in the literary sense, but I suppose it does in the literal sense that the books and the words, author, pages, and people who read it reside in our universe. But the events described in the books very decidedly do not take place in our universe. The Wheel of Time universe has many distinctions – not least of which is the universal (heh) awareness the people in that universe have of the One Power, and the ability of some of those people in that universe to manipulate it – and it is very different from our own.
It is a matter of course that there are Aes Sedai who can hurl fireballs from their hands, regardless of the quite understandable reactions most non-channelers have when witnessing such things. The majority of the WoT universe inhabitants are also aware and believe (at least from Andor to Shienar, and Falme to Cairhien) in the existence of Trollocs and Myrddraal, Ogier and Draghkar. Plainly, there are no such creatures that exist in our empirical universe (of which we are aware, anyway). And (sadly, oh so sadly) if there is indeed a True Source, there is no one around able to wield it (and teach others to wield it! Me! Me first!).
RJ said this occurs in our universe. The thing is that we live in an Age where we are (mostly) unaware of the One Power. I don’t have the reference; but, he said that today, less then 1% of people have a form of ESP, in the 2nd through 4th Ages (at least) about 10% of the people can sense the True Source.
Nope, time travel is definitely possible.
Megaduck in @28 mentioned the example of the Tachyonic Antitelephone, but one either needs many worlds theory in which case the question of what the ‘main word’ in TWOT would be could become very complicated very fast or one can basically invoke a rather hand wavey response which would basically remove all possibility of free will when traveling backwards in time. The removal of free will would support your hypothesis that back wards time travel is associated with the DO, buuuut gateways are indeed the only way to break the speed of light and move information that way and Gateways are lethal to shadowspawn so while flimsy I would say it’s probable that abusing gateways to set-up a Tachyonic Antitelephone for time travel won’t remove free will or be evil.
i apologise for my spelling and grammar i’m servery dyslexic and still struggle with these things
i think that most people are missing a major point about the macanics of of travelling. the two ways to travel (depending on the power you use) are either by boring a hole or by creating sameness. the last is the most interesting the true power rips a hole in the pattern and you step out of it entirely. now we know the dark ones prison exist out side of time so we can summarise that that so dose his power my meaning if you step outside the pattern you step outside of time? what to stop you stepping back in in a different time? firstly if you and all things are threads and the threads length is time (like how bale fire burns your thread back through time) is possible that by stepping back in time without unweaving youself you will age forward for the amount of time you travel back with no way to gain back you age without unweaving yourself (i think a little of this happened to rand with the way stones as he travelled to another stone he also travelled forward in time (unintnchaly as that’s the direction hes used to travelling and it is perhaps set in the stone like a default to stop issues with the time line when learning to use them (its inferred that this might not happen with more power/direction). i also feel that skimming is perhaps the easiest way to achieve this without the true power. as the human mind may not be able to learn a time point like it might a location so making a gate way would be very problematic. but skimming as a method seem to go to a place outside the pattern (although not outside time) by altering this weave i might be possible to make time the veritable factor (like you can change gateways to not change location by change the setting to go to the dream world instead (with the same location)) i think this is possible to do with time although i could take immense power (as power and intuition of its use seem to go hand in hand (or possibly alivias children (the imbread ability to channel) and if they had a talent for travelling)) and understanding of “time” as a concept to discover the weave (if much less achle power to create gate ways once the weave is learnt). i feel its probably already been done and can be done with the waystones and there creators but was probably discouraged/actively stopped the same way bale fire was as i would imagine the results would be equally disastrous (possibly the reason no (dose the wheel grind to a stop in a time paradox?) due to the fact the knowledge is wiped completely from existence on there use it perhaps indicates a war like the war of power but about time rather than reality
i like the idea that the flame of tarvalon is what callandor is made from.
Although I am a little late for a comment, I have to add something to the timetravel method with gateways and moving spaceships. If I recall correctly, gateways were not really useful for the Athan Miere, because they are not usable on moving ships. Either the relative velocity between two sides of a gateway has to be small or it is not possible to learn the “location” on a moving vessel well enough for a travelling gateway (skimming would still be possible).
If the relative velocity is a criterion, on a rotating sphere (lika a planet), travelling via gateway should only be possible on a very local scale, so the difference in velocities does not become too big. That obviously is not the case, since we see gateways connecting Randland with Seanchan.
In conclusion I would say that it is definitely not possible to learn your location on a spaceship with velocity near c well enough, when this is not possible on a – in comparison – sluggish raker.
To say “my frame of reference rests, so I can learn my location well enough” on a spaceship would probably not work either, since it does not work on ships. So Travelling and the Principle of Relativity are not compatible.
Hmmm a Doctor Who and WoT crossover…….