Events In Time Room. (Was: PoA: an explanation of the time/patronus paradox )

[sharana.geo]

No: HPFGUIDX 68088

Hi Laurasia, I was hoping you would pop in :-D

Laurasia wrote:
> Please, for anyone who said that OoP makes the 'second gunman'
> theory more plausible, I'd apreciate it if you answered my first
> question and tell me why!!!

I do not wish to discuss the events of PoA. From our previous 
conversations, all that happened in PoA is clear to me, and yes, I 
agree with you,  the one-timeline theory makes complete sense, it 
makes more sense than the "Second Gunman (as Stlcole names it) 
Theory, but that doesn't mean I'm dismissing the second Theory, 
because it is possible.

I realize that I didn't express myself clearly before, answering 
your question: I'm not saying that OoP makes the "Second Gunman" 
Theory more plausible than the One-Timeline Theory to explain what 
happened in PoA. I'm saying that the events in OoP suggest that the 
one-timeline Theory isn't the only way of time-travel (so to say, 
mess with time, whatever you like to call it) that we are 
experiencing in the books. And as a consequence it opens up the 
plausibility of other type of theories including the "Second Gunman" 
type although I'm not applying it to the events in PoA, but to the 
events of OoP.

Uh, let me rephrase this...

For PoA:
1.- The One-timeline Theory in PoA works fine for me.
2.- I'm still open to the possibility of the "Second Gunman" Theory. 
(I try to have an open mind). l recognize it does not seem to be the 
explanation in THIS case.

For OoP:
1.- I can't use the One-timeline theory to explain the events in the 
Time Room.
2.- So there must be other Theories that explain these events. 
3.- These other Theories are NOT meant to contradict nor invalidate 
the One-timeline Theory, just to complement them.
3.- One of them may be the "Second Gunman" TYPE of theory. 
Particularly in the sense that there is a starting point that causes 
a loop. 

I hope I'm expressing myself clearer. I need Theories to explain 
what is happening inside the Time Room, and obviously as we are 
talking about time, in my previous post I used the PoA events 
comparing them to the OoP ones, to establish the fact that we can 
not use the One-Timeline Theory to explain what is happening inside 
the Time Room. 

I wish to focus on what happens in the Time Room in OoP, only.


Laurasia wrote:
> I suppose we must assume that these hour-glass objects are time-
> turners, though I can't see and exact reference to them as Time-
> Turners.

In page 794 (US ed) it says:
... while the glass cabinet that Harry now suspected had contained 
Time-Turners continued to fall, shatter, and repair itself on the 
wall behind them.

Of course, in the middle of all the chaos going on, Harry assumes 
that the hourglasses are Time-Turners, he doesn't have much time at 
that moment to think thoroughly on the subject. I called these 
hourglasses Time Turners because I don't have a better name for 
them, but I believe that at least some of them are different types 
of Time-Turners than the one used in PoA (as we observe a different 
behavior). So from now on, I'll just refer to them as Hourglasses.

Laurasia:
> To summarize if you don't want to go back and read the whole thing

No problem, don't mind, in fact I did...

> - I suggested that the crashing cabinet full of time-turners was
> actually a malfunctioning Time-Turner. Because they don't seem to
> follow any rules we have already seen about Time-Turners.

Exactly, they don't follow any rules we have already seen about Time 
Turners so far. This is just what I wish to focus on. Why does this 
happen? Because they are malfunctioning? I'll get to that later...

Laurasia:
> Whereas the cabinet actually reforms into its unbroken self.
> This either suggests that there is a different form of Time-Travel
> to which we are not yet aware of, or, that the Time-Turners were
> malfunctioning. I support that they were malfunctioning, as, they
> were all smashed and not turned over. 

I do not wish to dismiss so quickly the idea of a different form of 
Time Travel, and you even agree with me...

Laurasia:
> I think that the bell jar is another type of time travel. It
> doesn't send you physically back through time- it was not like the
> Death Eater's head disappeared and reappeared many years before
> (so that there would be tow of them at the same time)- it just
> reversed the aging of whatever was inside the jar. The head of the
> Death-Eater aged backwards, but it didn't actually go backwards
> through time. You see, the aging took time to occur. Real time, as
> in forward moving time. It just made him look younger- how he once
> looked years ago. (This brings up other issues, such as, why not
> put a dead body in the mist from the bell jar so that it ages in
> reverse to a time when it was not dead...) 
>
> So, I think that the bell jar *does not* actually send things
> through time (as in, take this person in their current state to
> another time (year, month etc) entirely)- but it just reverses
> natural processes which occur over time. The bell jar reversed the
> effects which took years to occur over time, it did not actually
> send anything backwards in time. (That is, the baby stayed in the
> year 1996, it wasn't transported into, say, 1950)

The bell jar is really interesting, to put it in your words: 

1.- It not only reverses the aging effect of whatever is inside the 
bell jar, it also forwards it again to its original state and it 
loops: big head -> baby head -> big head-> baby head... and so on 
until you take the head out of the jar. 

2.- And this aging process that took years in our normal time, 
happens in a matter of seconds inside of the bell jar. (An 
accelerated process aging backwards (to 1950), and equally 
accelerated process going back forward to 1996)

3.- Why the loop? Why did the aging process stop when it reached a 
baby state? Why didn't it go further back? Also I am assuming that 
the reason of the aging forward process stops when the head gets to 
it's original (1996) state, because it's the original one, but what 
determines this, why didn't it age further? 

4.- And again, why is it looping?



I believe that the events in OoP suggest that there are other ways 
to mess up with Time other than what we learned in PoA.

I did not explain myself in my previous post on some assumptions 
that I made, so I will do it now. 


On the Cabinet:

In my previous post I mentioned time-bubbles, but I didn't explain 
what I meant by a time-bubble. The cabinet loop seems to be a mess 
in Time that occurs in the immediate vicinity of the cabinet. I 
imagine a bubble surrounding the cabinet and that everything inside 
this bubble is affected differently than everything else outside the 
bubble. In this case, there is a Time-loop, each loop lasts just a 
few seconds, in which the events repeat it self. The cabinet topples 
over, we see glass everywhere, and then we see everything reversing 
it self, the glass withdraws and the cabinet stands up, and this 
loop continues. I can't find an explanation to this behavior using 
the one-timeline theory, and I believe we agree. Because of this you 
believe that the hourglasses are malfunctioning. I'd like to dig 
into this a bit more.

If in the cabinet there was only one hourglass and when it fell to 
the floor it malfunctioned, I would believe this as an explanation, 
although it would not explain how the infinite loop that we are 
seeing, is happening. What theory explains the loop that occurs 
inside the bubble?  

On top of this, the book describes the cabinet filled with 
hourglasses, we can only speculate as to how many of them activated 
themselves when the cabinet fell, and of these, how many were 
malfunctioning? What if several hourglasses activated themselves at 
the same time? Is this the explanation of what we are watching?

How can this be fixed? Will the Wizards just pop their hands inside 
the bubble grab each hourglass and stop it? Will this work?


On the Bell Jar:

With the Bell Jar we seem to have another kind of bubble 
(delimitated by the size and shape of the bell jar), in fact the 
bell jar isn't solid glass, in page 790, it says "the head sank 
through the surface of the bell jar as though it was nothing that a 
soup bubble" and "it came to rest... with his head lying inside the 
jar full of the glittering wind". So inside this bubble the events 
occur in a different way than outside the bubble.


Laurasia wrote:
> The jar of 'time' as Hermione observes has different effects than
> the time-turners (it physically moves whatever's inside it back
> through their history), so I'm not going to refer to it.

I understand you did not want to refer to it at that moment because 
you were focused on defending the One-Timeline theory in PoA and the 
Bell Jar obviously responds to different laws. But as I'm trying to 
focus on other things, I'd like to come up with a Theory to explain 
how this Jar works. What purpose does it have? (Other than 
experimentation)  Did the Wizards invent it? Do they give it a 
practical use?

The Jar is in the Time Room so (at least) from the Wizards point of 
view it does have to do with messing (experimenting) with time. 
These must be the kind of things that lead them to believe that 
messing with time is very dangerous, after all the Death Eaters Head 
has suffered maybe a fatal consequence. If he pops his head back in 
the Jar now, will it return to its "1996 state"? Maybe not. Maybe it 
somehow saves the state of the organism at the moment it pops inside 
and loops backwards from there, the moment the organism pops out of 
the Jar, this "Original State" is lost. So now the Death Eater pops 
his head back in the Jar but it can't recover his "1996 State" as 
this information was lost, the loop starts with his baby face and 
goes backwards from there. Ugh, ugly. I think that Death Eater is 
doomed. This is purely speculation, of course, anyone has any idea 
how this Jar works? What happens with inanimated objects?



As I see it at the moment: the Cabinet loop may have at least 4 
explanations:

1.- As you said, a malfunction, although as I said before if it were 
just one hourglass, I'd no doubt agree with you, but I'm not totally 
convinced.

2.- As there were many hourglasses, we may be watching the effect of 
several hourglasses activated at the same time, in the same place, 
and each one of them with different settings, according to the way 
they fell.

3.- Same as (2) but considering the possibility that in the Cabinet 
there where different kinds of Time-Turners mixed up (for example 
different kinds of units: Hermione's Time-Turner used an hour unit, 
each turn enabled to "go back" one hour, but there could be other 
Time-Turners with different units, such as seconds, minutes, days, 
weeks, etc.), so the chaos generated is even bigger. 

4.- Just as the Bell Jar works with a different Theory than the One-
Timeline one, the Cabinet event may respond to a third different 
kind of Theory, that is yet to be established.


I'd like to try to find out an explanation on what exactly is going 
on in the Cabinet's bubble, as to have an idea as how are the 
Wizards in the MoM try to fix this mess.

What do you think? Anyone?


Laurasia wrote:
> So, whilst I do think that this passage in the Time Room at the
> Department of Mysteries is intriguing- it doesn't change my views
> on Time-Travel, mostly because we've seen Time-Turners being used
> in a way we've never seen yet.

I agree with you, it doesn't change my view about Time-Travel, it 
just opens the possibility of other ways to mess with Time related 
stuff, that we need new Theories to explain them, this is the 
discussion that I'm trying to raise with my post..

And as I said in my previous post, I believe that these Rooms play 
an important part in Books 6 and 7. In this case speaking of the 
Time Room, I do not believe JKR mentioned it for nothing. Especially 
considering how confusing the Time-Travel issue has been in PoA 
(speaking generally, not only for HPfGU's members). Every other room 
deserves a deeper examination, but those are other stories...

Um... What is a Git? An idiot? This word does not appear in my 
dictionaries.

Is it just me or is Yahoo behaving incredibly slow at frequent 
intervals these last few days...

Thanks to all who made it down here... :-D

Sharana...