Erwin Dennis Umali
2010 - 23119
Initial disclosure: I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of time travel. In fact, back in high school, I’ve watched (and was mesmerized) by the Naked Science documentary shown in class already, leading me to research more into the subject than I initially expected. Especially appealing to me was the concept of a multiverse -- a span of infinite timelines branching on every possible combination of circumstances. This effectively destroyed all notion of time paradoxes; since every possible outcome was already plotted out, ‘travelling in time’ essentially meant going to and from different timelines.
What’s especially interesting to me is that this concept, combined with time travelling, black holes, and a dash of fantasy, was used in depicting a compelling story in contemporary Japanese media.
Warning: while I tried my best, this paper will still contain some spoilers regarding Steins;Gate. It won’t be too revealing, but you have been warned.
99% Science, 1% Fantasy
Originally slated as a visual novel on Windows PCs, the Steins;Gate anime revolves around a ragtag team of Tokyo college students who somehow create a device that can send messages to the past. This opens up a thrilling, melodramatic story that, personally, is well worth the time. However, the intriguing thing about Steins;Gate is how it delved deep into the intricacies of time travel, both in popular culture, and in its scientific aspects.
Different theories
The initial clincher for Steins;Gate was how it actually tackled several time travel theories -- and debunked each of them. It discussed string theory, wormholes, black holes, and how each could be potentially used to traverse the fabric of spacetime; but each of those needed a humanly impossible component, so, initially, one would think that, indeed, time travel would be impossible, even in that fictional universe.
John Titor
However, someone makes a virtual appearance in an online forum, claiming to be from a dystopian future. He introduces himself as John Titor, and explains various aspects of time travel in his ‘time machine’, that were considered to be impossible.
It was interesting to note that John Titor actually ‘existed’ in our real world, with the same claims to fame on time travel. While his claims were mostly debunked, his ‘appearance’ became a cultural phenomenon, and many time travel buffs still attest to his authenticity. It was nice to see this referenced and tackled in the show, bridging the story not just scientifically, but culturally as well.
However, in the show, the John Titor the protagonist knew about did not match any records in his world. Somehow, the history the protagonist knew was different from everyone else’s. This was explained through an interesting concept which the show called world lines.
World Lines and Attractor Fields
This was probably one of the most interesting aspects of the show for me. Steins;Gate revolves around the existence of an infinite multiverse. Each of these universes has a path, or a world line, which it follows a specific, minute set of events. Slight variations of events exist in slightly different world lines. Similar world lines are bundled into what was called an Attractor Field. Major events set attractor fields apart from each other -- in one attractor field, for instance, World War II might not have occurred, so they diverge greatly in terms of events.
Steins;Gate uses these concepts to its full extent, and destroys the notion of paradoxes along the way, enabling viewers to further suspend their belief (and awe at the concepts as well, I suppose).
So then, who makes time travelling possible? Well, interestingly, Steins;Gate features a pretty well known organization...
CERN/SERN
… the creators of the Large Hadron Collider, CERN -- or, rather, SERN, because copyrights might pose a problem to the producers. In the show, SERN is secretly developing a method to travel through time for the purposes of ruling the entire populace. Interestingly, SERN plans to do it through the LHC, or the Large Hadron Collider.
But what could an unbelievably large particle accelerator do? Well...
Kerr black holes
It can create mini-black holes. At least in theory, particle accelerators can generate what is called a Kerr black hole, a special gravitational anomaly that, when traversed a specific way, can make you come out before you came in -- essentially transporting you to the past.
This is an actual, legitimate, scientifically-backed time travel theory, and what’s interesting is that the show finds a way to use this to the fullest. But, of course, matter wouldn’t survive in a black hole, much less escape from one, so how does time travelling actually happen? Well...
The miracle exception
The “1% fantasy” in the show, then, is how the time traveling happens. To deal with the problem of survivability in black holes, the show resorts to sending data through them instead.
So, somehow, the protagonist can make a call with his cellphone, and all his memories (terabytes of it, mind you) are extracted, get perfectly compressed into mere kilobytes, is sent through an artificial Kerr black hole created by a humongous CRT (which is technically a mini-particle accelerator), and ends up some place in the past, routed back through a phone call, which, when answered, ‘overwrites’ the receiver’s memories. By all means, this sounds like utter science fiction, because it is.
Also, the protagonist has the ability to discern which world line he’s in, which, by our current understanding, should be an impossibility, since there isn’t a ‘vantage point’ you can stand on to view all the world lines, much less determine which is which.
However, apart from this, everything in the show revolves around concepts and theories we already know about time travelling. What’s amazing is that Steins;Gate manages to create a compelling story on known science, as well as educating the viewer a lot on our collective knowledge on time travelling.
All in all, Steins;Gate excited my inner time traveller, and educated me further into the intricacies of going around the fabric of spacetime. It did an excellent job raising questions regarding the ethics of time travel and humanity’s motivations behind it; will time travelling be just another avenue for power and dominance?
It also becomes a philosophical quandary -- if we’re able to prove that there’s an infinite number of universes out there, each depicting every possible outcome, does what we do even matter? What does that make of the human struggle if you know that, possibly, in another world line, in another attractor field, the rest of humanity is content and happy?
Needless to say, I’d recommend Steins;Gate to any sci-fi fan in a heartbeat.
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