[HPforGrownups] Digest Number 3419

[jonathan at techtobiz.com]

No: HPFGUIDX 72624

>
> KelMc again
> So you think it's possible then to go back to your own present and
> not have to live through the actual time again? What if, for
> instance, after saving himself with the patronus he said " Well,
> that's it for me. Too bad about Buckbeak and Sirius, but I've got to
> get back to that chocolate," and tried to go forward to himself in
> the hospital ward?
>
>Could he just appear there? Would there be two
> of him or not because the present Harry is just going back/forward to
> the time after he gets locked in?

There are two philosophical schools of thought on the subject of time travel and your perception of events:

One is the "loop" approach - you exist as two separate entities when to the past time travel occurs - there is the version of you that is experiencing that set of time for the first time, and then there is the version that is "looped" or experiencing that same set of time for the second time. In this case the first version has no knowledge of the second, while the second is aware of the first.

An interesting side effect of this "time looping" is the question of what happens if you encounter yourself? Considering that both versions of you are in essence sharing the same matter, what happens if you decide to shake hands with your former self?

The second approach (not used as much in SciFi literature) is the "melded identity" approach. In this style of time travel there is only one physical version of you, and when you time travel to the past you "merge" physically with your former self, and now live through the same time set either "remembering" the future, or only subconsciously aware of it (there is an episode of Star Trek - TNG that dealt with this exact form of time travel - Data saves the day, of course).

The interesting twist to this type of time travel is the fact that even though you may retain memories of the future, you cannot change your actions in that time set, or that you don't remember the future. Unlike the "looped" version of time travel, this style is much more restrictive, and in my opinion not nearly as much fun.

In HP3 it's apparent that JKR used the first approach to the time travel issue. Assuming that you could turn the time turner both forwards and back, you could travel forward in time and skip some event (I'm thinking a potions class...) but if you did that you would not have "existed" during the time period that you had skipped through (unless you had experienced that time at another point - like if you turned three hours forward, and then two hours back. You would not have existed during the first hour of the original three hours, but from the second hour on you would have been around).

So in this incredibly long winded response, yes, you could skip ahead to the chocolate. Advancing yourself in time (according to the HP time travel approach) would have the same result as if you had lived through that time (you would still arrive at the door just in time to slip in - either just coming from rescuing Sirius and Buckbeak, or by just appearing there with your time turner in hand).

And in the interests of wrapping up the subject in a neat bow, there is nothing that we know currently about our universe that would keep us from actually travelling in time. The problem is that we are not even close to being able to actually set up the conditions that would allow for time travel (things like your basic wormhole, or a convenient super-massive black hole, or even a rather large rotating cylinder made of neutron star matter).
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