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

[sevenhundredandthirteen]

No: HPFGUIDX 69679

TIME-TRAVEL and THE TIME ROOM at the Department of Mysteries.

Sharana wrote:

>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. 
<snip>
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.

Me:

You were correct in assuming that I didn't understand you previously. 
I understand now what you are saying.
Yes, I agree with you fully on the second point- `there are other 
ways to mess up with Time.' The events in the Department of Mysteries 
certainly expand the function of time and how it can be manipulated. 
I'm not so sure about your first statement- `there is more than one 
timeline.' Only because we've only seen Time Travel used once. I say 
more on this later after going through all your questions and 
comments. 


Sharana wrote:

 >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). 

Me:

I am assuming that they are Time-Turners. They are, after all, 
hourglasses in the Time Room and Harry suspects that they are Time-
Turners (thanks for pointing out the quote). I see no reason why they 
shouldn't be. In fact, I'd be most disappointed if they ended up just 
being paper-weights. :-D For the sake of this argument, let's assume 
that they are indeed Time-Turners, as there is no evidence to the 
contrary. Also, I think we are both in agreement in thinking that the 
differences in size and shape between them dictates the increments of 
time you travel for `one turn.'


ON THE BELL JAR.


Sharana about the Bell Jar: 

>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. 

Me:

Notice that on the `up-stream' you age forward, and on the `down-
stream' you age backwards.

"As it rose in the jar, it crackled open and a hummingbird emerged, 
which was carried to the very top of the jar, but as it fell on the 
draught its feathers became bedraggled and damp again, and by the 
time it had been borne back to the bottom of the jar it had been 
enclosed once more in its egg." (pg 685 Aus. Ch 34)

The Death-Eater's head sinks into the bell jar and goes backwards, he 
pulls it up and it goes forward.

So it's not actually the jar that is creating a perpetual cycle- it's 
the action of the object inside of it. In actual fact, it's not 
really a loop at all. You see, as soon and the Death Eater pulls out 
his head, it stays as it came out.  The stream of air inside the jar 
seems to be what is creating this `loop.' The bird appears to be in a 
loop because it is light enough  to ride the air-stream. I think that 
if the Death-Eater left his head down the bottom of the jar, his head 
would have stayed as a baby's, regardless of the fact that it was 
still inside the jar.

Of course, this is just my own theory, but it explains the actions of 
both the bird and the Death-Eater perfectly.

Sharana continued:

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)

Me:

Actually, this part of the anomaly doesn't faze me at all. After all- 
this Bell Jar contains pure time- well, that's what my understanding 
of it is anyway. To me it seems highly acceptable that having a jar 
of a concentrated force would make that force act in an accelerated 
manner.

Sharana continued

>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? 

Me:

So, the question you're really asking here isn't `Why the loop?' 
but `Why the limits?' I already said that I don't believe that it's a 
loop at all (see above), but as to the question of why the limits to 
the change
.?? That baffles me actually. Are we to assume that the 
Death Eater merely pulled up his head just I time??? Are we to assume 
that maybe he did age further on than his original age, except that 
because the people observing him were seeing him through a mask for 
most of the time they didn't notice?

 Or perhaps the Bell Jar can only take you as far back as when you 
were alive- and perhaps it counts date of birth, not date of 
conception as being `alive.' This would work for The Death Eater's 
infant appearance, but not so much for the bird- as it does appear as 
an egg. OR, are we to assume that the only reason that it appears as 
an egg because hatching from the egg is really the bird's birth. So 
in actual fact, the egg is just there for the moment that it breaks 
and the bird is born. This theory would also work for the aging 
process forward as well- you see, following that train of thought, 
the Bell Jar could only take you *forward* as far as you have been 
alive- so, no "extra" aging could work because you haven't lived it 
yet. 

This actually answers one of my own questions that I posed earlier. I 
asked why shouldn't someone just put a dead body inside the jar and 
watch it age backward to a time when it was alive. But, if you apply 
the little idea I've just come up with- you'd have to be alive going 
in to be able to age. Perhaps a dead person would age in reverse, but 
stay the same dead person. After all, the Death Eater's head ages in 
reverse, but it doesn't rewind. By that I mean, we don't see his head 
reliving every moment of it's life in reverse at enhanced speed- we 
just see it age backwards. 

Sharana continued:

>4.- And again, why is it looping?

Me:

Well, I suppose I will reiterate what I said earlier because you've 
obviously stressed this point. The apparent loop could be caused by 
the movement of the object inside the bell jar, not from the bell jar 
itself. If you go up you age forwards, if you go down you age 
backwards. If you are inside the jar and light enough to float on the 
stream, you'll perpetually keep going through this cycle.
 
Sharana wrote:

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?

Me:

I would think that the whole concept of having `Time-In-A-Jar' would 
be strange enough to constitute an inclusion in the Department of 
Mysteries. They do have a room on `love' after all- so I don't think 
that the jar is necessarily dangerous. I think that if the Death 
Eater popped his head back into the jar he *could* go forward back to 
his original state- only because I introduced my own parameters into 
the use of the Bell Jar- if you've lived it you can go there. I 
wouldn't think he'd go back any further that his current infant 
state, only because he stopped at the baby state the first time. If 
you think that the motion of going up and down dictate how far you 
travel back in time- seeing as the Death Eater hit the bottom, he 
went as far as you could go. OR if you don't like the idea of the 
direction of movement changing the direction of aging, then there 
really is a loop which is repeating itself- and the loop must go all 
the way to it's extremities before reversing. Either way, the baby is 
the limit.  

And onto inanimate objects
 I think that you could reverse and 
inanimate object, but I would say it would be far less spectacular. 
If I put in a well used pencil, would it grow again to unused?? Yes. 
And I think that it probably would stop once it reached the full 
pencil, not keep going to become a tree- if I keep going with my 
limits theory, that is.


ON THE CABINET FILLED WITH TIME-TURNERS:


Sharana wrote about the Cabinet:

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. 

Me:

Well, what strikes me as odd about the behaviour of the cabinet, is 
that it behaves in exactly the same manner that we previously saw the 
Bell Jar working. This strike me as significant because we are lead 
to believe that there are Time-Turners in this cabinet, and Time-
Turners do not behave in this manner.

The cabinet falls, repairs and falls again. If the Time-Turners were 
activated when it was falling, I would expect to see the cabinet 
vanish, and reappear many hours beforehand (or, many hours forward, 
if we assume that Time-Turners can take you forward in time). Let's 
say for arguments sake that the Time-Turners balanced themselves out 
near perfectly so that each backwards one negated a forwards one and 
the overall balance took it only a few seconds forward in time- that 
still would not explain how it reversed it self and repaired to the 
undamaged unit.

But compare the actions of the unit to the bird in the jar. Bird 
grows, bird un-grows etc. Cabinet breaks, cabinet un-breaks. If I'm 
not much mistaken- the Time-Turners actually contain Time, as in, the 
same sparkling wind that is inside the  Bell Jar. There is only one 
description I can find of Hermione's Time-Turner:

`A tiny sparkling hour-glass' (Ch 21 PoA)
That's only one word describing the hour-glass- SPARKLING.

We have many more words describing the bell jar.
"brilliant, dancing, diamond-sparkling light."
"brilliant glare"
"dancing, diamond-bright light."
"billowing, glittering wind."
"sparkling current."
"shimmering bell jar"
"glittering bell jar"
"glittering wind"
(Ch 34/35 OoP)

I know that one word about the description of Hermione's Time-Turner 
isn't much to go by, but the description of the stuff inside the jar 
certainly matches it. It's sparkling, and so is the bell jar. 

I find it plausible that Time-Turners contain `Time.' They do 
transport people through it after all. And the descriptions match.

Now, following this, if indeed the Time-Turners do contain time, it's 
the solid hour-glass around them which make them act the way they do, 
as opposed to the non-solid `jar' that contains the time in the Time 
Room. What I'm trying to get at is, when the cabinet breaks along 
with the Time-Turners in side of it, the time inside the Time-Turners 
is released from their restrictive hour-glasses- forming one giant 
puddle of Time which the broken cabinet happens to be lying in. It is 
only then that we see the cabinet behave in the exact same manner as 
the bird and the Death Eater's head. In other words- as if the broken 
cabinet had been placed inside the bell jar.

So, my conclusion on Time (the wind stuff) is that it behaves 
consistently, and the object which it is contained in dictates how it 
works.

My conclusion on Time-Turners- The Time-Turners contain time, and in 
the act of breaking they release this time (the glittering wind) 
which acts as it does without a solid object containing it. That it- 
reversing the aging process or accelerating it. (In this case, the 
breaking process which is reversed.)

This, when coupled with my idea that if you move upwards in the wind 
you go forwards, asks the question- Could you make a Time-Turner that 
went forwards in time, so long as you made the wind float upwards, 
instead of tipping it over and letting it fall (as we see Hermione 
do)?????

Anyway, by the time the cabinet reaches its fully-mended state it is 
still off balance as if it has been hit by Neville's stunning charm, 
so, naturally, it falls over again, the Time-Turners break and the 
time is released, reversing the process. What I am saying is- 
the `loop' is not caused by any function of the Time-Turners at all. 
The time just reversed it to a state when it was off-balance, so, 
naturally it continues to fall over. I would think that simply by 
steadying the cabinet before it fell over would stop this 
apparent `loop' from continuing.

I originally said that I though that the actions of the crashing-
cabinet were showing what happens if you break a Time-Turner and 
cause it to malfunction- that is, that you are stuck in a constantly 
repeating time loop. I now am changing my mind. I think that the 
crashing cabinet causes the Time-Turners to break and allows the time 
within them to behave in the manner it usually does (that is, without 
a solid hour-glass case)- in this case, repairing the cabinet, 
effectively sealing itself back in again. The continued crashing of 
the cabinet does not have anything to do with the time inside of it 
(by the time the cabinet is repaired all the time is back safely 
inside the hour-glasses) but only because it was off balance from the 
Stupefy.


Sharana continued:

 <snip stuff that I've now answered above>

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?

Me:

I never thought that a crashing Time-Turner was the same as flipping 
one over. Even if you believe that the Time-Turners were activated, 
that still doesn't explain how the scene reverses itself and repeats. 
Time-Turners don't behave in this manner- they pick something up and 
deposit it back in time. With multiple uses of many Time-Turners the 
cabinet could have been crashed, taken to another time, taken to 
another time, taken to another time, etc or just taken to the sum of 
all the time increments inside of it. It should have stayed broken 
the whole time (just the same as Hermione always stays the same when 
she goes back in time- Tired, overworked etc). BUT- it didn't. It 
behaves much the same way as if it had been put inside the bell jar- 
that is, `age' in reverse.

 Sharana listed all her explanations for the cabinet:
 
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.

Me:

I'm taking back my support for this explanation. 

Sharana:

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.

Me:

Nope, don't agree with this one either- the Time-Turners still didn't 
behave as we are accustomed to. Time-Turners don't reverse, they only 
send the object back in time in the exact state they're in.

Sharana:

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. 

Me:

Still don't like it- even if there were backwards and forwards Time-
Turners I would expect jumps from the effects of one Time-Turner to 
another, resulting in the cabinet vanishing and reappearing
 and it 
still doesn't explain the rewinding of the cabinet breaking.

Sharana:

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.

Me:

Actually, right now it's hard to say whether even the bell jar is 
responding to a different kind of timeline. In fact, I think it still 
obeys the `Singular Timeline theory.' After all, the bell jar doesn't 
deposit anything in time (whether future or past) like the Time-
Turners do- It only enhances the natural speed of processes. That, to 
me, isn't Time Travel at all. The twins and Lee take aging potion in 
GoF. They didn't travel in time- they simply accelerated a process 
which we associate with time. I can go and spin the hands of my clock 
forward- I'm not increasing the speed of time, I'm just accelerating 
the way it's measured (so I'm a few hours ahead of everyone else, 
just like the Death Eater's head is several years behind everyone 
else). 

Actually, at this moment after working through all the questions you 
presented, I don't think that there is any other timeline shown to 
exist- only because we've only ever seen a person travel through Time 
once. I don't think that the bell jar and its contents do make things 
travel through time. They change the rate of growth. They alter the 
direction which this growth moves to. The bell jar, really, just acts 
as a catalyst to change. It can move something forward or backward 
through its lifespan, but doesn't use Time Travel.  The crashing Time-
Turners don't travel through Time either. They behave exactly as 
items in the bell jar do. So, basically, seeing as we've only ever 
seen Time-Travel once, I don't think there can be any evidence for 
any more Time Travel timelines than the Singular `Time happens only 
once' way.

This leaves me with only one explanation which I explainedfully above-
5. The Time-Turners contain Time like the bell jar and when broken 
the Time no longer behaves as a Time-Travel apparatus, but as a 
catalyst to growth.


If anyone would like to pick holes in my theory, please do
  I can be 
convinced that there really is another explanation.
 
 Sharana wrote:

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.

Me:

Hopefully my theories explain what you wanted, and yes I hope Time 
Travel or issues with time come back- if only because it is one of 
the few topics I post about here at HPFGU.


Sharana:

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

Me:

Yes. An idiot, effectively.


Sharana: 

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

 Me:

No problem! I've been having fun
 ;-)

~<(Laurasia)>~