"It doesn't make sense to me. I don't see how a bunch of instantaneous events could result in going back in time. :/"
For an event (the brother dying) to instantly cause another event (the pain) to happen would imply that the effect travels faster than the speed of light. Like, imagine if guy in the comic travels to some planet that is light years away. Now, imagine one of his remaining sibling kicks the bucket on Earth. If he could feel it instantly, the feeling has traveled faster than the speed of light, since even the light beams coming from the Earth (reflected from the sun) would take years to reach him in this other planet, and everything else would take at least the same amount of time to reach him as the light would, or more time (since nothing travels faster than the speed of light).
Now, there is a concept called the relativity of simultaneity.
It states that whether two events are simultaneous or not is relative. For example, consider a car traveling from point A to point B with a speed of x. Let the points A and B be packed with dynamite. We will call the midpoint between A and B C, and at that point we will place a helicopter hovering a few meters above the ground. Now, at the same time the car passes C (i.e. when it is below the helicopter), the helicopter pilot blows up the dynamite packages on both places. Since he is standing still, the pilot will perceive the blasts as taking place at the same time. But since the car is moving towards blast B, the light and sound of explosion B will reach the car faster than the one from A, so from the driver's perspective explosion B will take place earlier than explosion A. Since all frames of reference are equally valid, it follows that simultaneity is relative.
At this point my understanding falters, but apparently as long as all things travel at or slower than the speed of light the math works out so that there is no time travel, but if you can travel faster than light it is possible for some frame of reference to experience an event before it happens due to the relativity of simultaneity. The physicist in the comic plans to take advantage of this to send messages to the past. If he can send information through time, maybe he can even violate causality and prevent the first guy's brother's death, even though it was his death that gave him the idea in the first place.
This all stems from Einstein's theory of relativity. If you want an to learn more, Relativity: The Special and General Theory (which was written by Einstein himself) is a good popular science introduction. It is out of copyright, and therefore freely available on the internet archive
, as well as on this other side
. It also doesn't hurt to read what The Other Wiki has to say on its article on time travel.
edited 11th Nov '09 3:09:03 AM by jaimeastorga2000
Legally Free ContentYou've basically got it there. If it helps to put things in Layman's Terms, time itself travels at the speed of light. That's a really simplistic way of looking at it, but it illustrates the point surprisingly well.
The closer you come to the speed of light, the slower time apparently goes for you*. If you could somehow go faster, you'd go backwards in time.
*
edited 10th Nov '09 6:18:19 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Bull Moose party.
FUCK YEAH that was Theodore Roosevelt's party so it's a party for the badasses.
edited 11th Nov '09 3:38:13 AM by Kinkajou
INT is knowing a tomato is a fruit. WIS is knowing it doesn't belong in a fruit salad. CHA is convincing people that it does.I laughed out loud because it's true - so much of the modern "political debate" in this country comes in the form of canned rhetoric dispensed by whichever side you happen to align with. Even when it's completely inappropriate to the venue.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"So Carl Sagan's this awesome, huh.
edited 18th Nov '09 1:01:40 AM by Kinkajou
INT is knowing a tomato is a fruit. WIS is knowing it doesn't belong in a fruit salad. CHA is convincing people that it does.That brings back memories. But the alt-text for this one is lame, if you ask me.
Exits, pursued by a bear.I was of the impression that that could only keep him from getting you for a while. Anyways, won't you eventually crash into something if you're holding down the "go faster" button?
edit: Actually, hey, you know what this reminds me of? In Exile 3, there's an out-of-the-way town in Upper Exile which is currently still being constructed. A number of lizard-men were sent to help as a gesture of peace, but them being cold-blooded and needing lots of fires (and thus firewood, not easy in a cave and especially not easy with the pervasive giant bugs threatening anyone who goes outside) to function properly, it's not working out well and tensions are high. The entire town is dominated by this problem; lizard people complaining to you about their situation or who are too weak to even get out of bed and do their jobs, humans complaining about the lazy lizard people, humans trying to be understanding but having a hard time not being angry, and work that's not getting done. And as far as I could tell, there was nothing you could do about it. Ever. There was a problem, but it was a problem that couldn't feasibly be solved by sword, or in fact by any simple solution. Like most real world problems. The problem was there, but unlike most problems in an RPG, it had nothing to do with you and you had nothing to do with it. You just observed it. I thought that was fairly unique, within that game and within the genre, and I'll never forget that town.
Which is why I try to apply some level of personal discontinuity to what I found out when playing the Updated Re-release Avernum, which was that I had just failed to find and talk to the right npc about the right subject (which was a trivially easy to find with dialogue trees replacing keywords). He told me to clear out a nest of monsters which I had already cleared out in every run, thinking that the magic item hidden (forget what) behind it was supposed to be my reward, and that if I did it would become safe for the town to gather enough firewood for the lizard people to function properly. The problem is apparently so thoroughly fixed that the quest-giver is willing to join you as a party member. All the text involved in the special encounters in that nest had led me to believe that cleaning out this nest represented little more than a superficial thinning of the total number of bugs in the area, and obviously wouldn't solve anyone's problems in the long run, so to say this solution was disappointing is a massive understatement. The entire town stopped being a unique piece of a world that's bigger than your adventuring party and became a glorified, extended "Kill X monsters" quest (and a long one too—you have to fight, like, ten separate full-scale battles against growing numbers of bugs, all in the exact same spot, at your leisure with time to heal between. As something for an explorative player to find and mess with, it worked well and the reward was all you could ask for. As a quest with the feeling that you have to do this, it gets really old, really quick) and a stunning example of exactly what I initially thought it was a subversion of.
Sigh. Yeah, in my mind, that town will always have had to deal with its own problems.
edited 24th Nov '09 10:40:20 PM by Brickman
I remember Ski Free!
I didn't actually read the comic for a few seconds, I just thought "Hey, I remember that!!!"
Did it come with Windows or was it an extra?
She's playing with fire! He's not ready for Nibbly Pig!It came with my Hewlett-Packard Windows 95 computer. Top of the line in its day. My parents bragged to their friends about the 4x CD drive, I think.
[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.

It doesn't make sense to me. I don't see how a bunch of instantaneous events could result in going back in time. :/