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'The Chronology Protection Case'

A Review of the Movie

By Ray PercivalPublished 5 years ago 5 min read
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The Chronology Protection Conjecture (TCPC)—this is the idea that we, as human beings, are intimately entangled with the evolution of the cosmos and that it (the cosmos) simply will not allow us to tamper with certain possible paths into the future—or the past. Traveling back in time and accidentally changing history, killing your grandfather so that you were never born in the first place, or imperceptibly upsetting the course of events in subtle ways that later blossomed into catastrophic changes to the present, is now traditional science fiction. But if it were possible, historians wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, their work constantly upset by time-tourists. Stephen Hawking rescued historians from this fate.

Stephen Hawking guessed that the universe would be too unstable to exist in a state fit for life or any long-term structures. But we need a stable universe for any laws to hold. Hawking propounded this conjecture (TCPC) to account for why the universe prevents time-travel and thereby saves its law-like structure from unravelling into space-time mush. We simply don’t see time-travel tourists from the future. Historians can get a good night’s sleep. (The best retort I’ve heard to Hawking is by David Deutsch, who replied that of course we won’t get tourists from the future until we have built suitable receiving stations for them. To reinforce Deutsch’s point, it would be like a remote less-developed country expecting to receive tourists without first building an airport.)

The movie The Chronology Protection Case takes-off from this idea (TCPC), originally applying to the whole cosmos, and elaborates how it might impact individual human lives. Building on the novelette of the same name by Paul Levinson, it’s an intriguing idea, worked out with panache. The action is presented in a charming black-and-white, grainy, format enhancing mystery and suspense—we are playing with the shady, delicate controls over our life-or-death future. It may also be an allusion to the cosmic background microwave radiation left by the Big Bang. The director and actor Jay Kensinger provides an absorbing performance as Dr. Phil D’Amato, with whom one identifies as he desperately tries to resolve an ominous succession of puzzling deaths, including that of a scientist testing TCPC. Are these deaths connected, and if so, how? Randomly? Or, is it the cosmos showing its irritation at having its coherent structure tampered with? It’s a well-paced movie, with gripping moments and deft use of subtle piano music. Invite your friends round to watch it. There’s lots of material for a good conversation afterwards.

Before you invite your friends for your movie night, you may wish to brush-up on your cosmology. For example, what’s the difference between the TCPC and the Cosmic Censorship Conjecture (CCC)? The latter was adduced by mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose. The idea here is connected with the concept of a black hole, a region of space-time that is characterised by what physicists call a “singularity,” where the laws of physics “break down.” (A ruthless philosopher might argue that it’s not a forgivable “break-down,” but a blunt refutation of the proposed law(s). If it doesn’t work in practise, it’s false in theory.) In the case of a black hole, matter is so compressed that it becomes infinitely dense, and it’s this infinity, when you place it in the equations, that messes things up, giving us indeterminate answers rather like the results of trying to divide by zero. In most gravitational fields, there is an escape velocity, which means that if you project an object upwards fast enough it will not fall back down, but keep moving out into space. On Earth the escape velocity is 11.186 kilometres per second or 33 times the speed of sound. In the case of a black hole, because of its extraordinarily strong gravitational field, even light – travelling at 300,000 kilometres per second—cannot escape. But since the speed of light is the fastest possible speed, there is no way of observing via any signal what goes on in a black hole. Hence the censorship metaphor. There are no “naked” singularities to see.

You might also enjoy reading-up on other connected ideas about the evolution of the cosmos and our place it that. For example, astrophysicist Frank Tippler developed a theory that life will eventually become the dominant factor in how the universe evolves. Part of Tipler’s theory makes use of the idea of unitary time evolution. We normally think of an event A happening in the past causing an effect B that comes after the cause. However, Tipler invokes quantum theory to the effect that there is no real difference between an event in the past causing an event in the future and an event in the future causing an event in the past (or present). For quantum theory all we need is the core logical relationship of cause and effect, stripped of any reference to time: “Event A is necessary and sufficient for event B.” But then, this statement is equivalent to “Event B is necessary and sufficient for event A.” Whether A comes before or after B becomes irrelevant. Given that according to quantum theory even the temporal order of events is indeterminate in some strange regions such as very near the Big Bang and inside black holes, this more abstract conception of cause and effect is untroubled by such anomalies. The movie prompts you to ask yourself, could the future influence me, what I do or think now?

Tipler’s theory recently suffered a refutation on some points, but let’s hope there is still a morsel of truth in this hypothesis for at least it holds a place for progress. In contrast, many theories of the future universe are a little bleak, predicting what is called the “heat-death” of the universe, in which even atomic vibrations, the very “stuff” of heat, will come to a stop, the world becoming a bland, undifferentiated, absolutely cold place without even a twinkle for the rest of eternity.

I have a penchant for brighter conclusions. If a Tipler-style theory is true, even if we aren’t there personally—though his full theory claims we will be—our evolutionary descendants will be there to witness levels of progress endorsing Arthur C. Clarke’s conjecture, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The Chronology Protection Case takes us to that frightening but fascinating boundary shrouded in the mists of unpredictability between fact and fantasy.

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About the Creator

Ray Percival

Dr Ray Scott Percival is a philosopher and the author of the acclaimed The Myth of the Closed Mind, the documentary Liberty Loves Reason, and author of many articles for New Scientist, Nature and the Times Literary Supplement.

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