If Data's explanation of multiple timelines in 'Parallels' is correct, and there are an infinite number of parallel timelines, does one of them HAVE to be exactly like STOs timeline? I have this argument with my friends all the time. I say that you can count infinitely upwards and you'll only ever get farther away from the number one, you'll never 'loop back' and come up with a number closer to one than two was, so it stands to reason that you can have infinite timelines without any of them being exactly as someone might suppose- so the common argument from my friends is that the movie 'Aliens' has played out, in reality, in one of the infinite timelines where aliens like that exactly evolved and interacted with humans in precisely the form shown in the movie (down to someone called 'Ripley' who looks exactly like Sigourney Weaver!)- they not only say this MUST have happened, but that it must have happened an infinite number of times, and that I don't 'grasp infinity' if I disagree. I say that the only things that can happen are things that can happen WITHIN the range of probability that they might ever occur. Rick & Morty call this the 'central finite curve'. There may be an infinite number of dimensions in both directions beyond the curve, but Rick is only interested in the ones near to him on the curve of probability, where there are other Ricks. The events of the movie 'Aliens' have not happened in a alternate timeline because they were never *likely* to happen within the history of the universe, on any probability.
Who is right? Am I failing to grasp infinity, or are they?
The “infinite variations allowing any random thing to happen” idea is a popular handwave for justifying nonsensical alternate realities, but it doesn’t make any scientific sense. Infinity is too abstract a concept to really work with. Statistically speaking, if there’s an infinite number of possibilities to choose from, then the probability of any single one of them is effectively zero, so it’s not really a mathematically meaningful argument. Mathematics can talk about the limit of a quantity as a related quantity tends toward infinity, but treating infinity itself as a quantity is meaningless.
Many-worlds quantum theory doesn’t say anything about infinity, or about every imaginable combination of events being required to happen. It just says that the universe’s quantum state is a superposition of multiple alternative probability states. And those states would all branch from a common origin, so the only available outcomes would be those that are actually possible results given the starting conditions. (For instance, if you drive north and reach a T-shaped intersection, there might be a timeline where you turn east and one where you turn west, but there are none where you continue driving north beyond the intersection.) So that would limit the number of possible universes that could feasibly result; it doesn’t mean that any random, nonsensical scenario you can think up “must” happen in some reality. (Not to mention that it actually applies to quantum-level variations in the states of subatomic particles, which rarely make any observable difference on a human or cosmic scale anyway.)
The problem with infinity applies even more when we’re talking about timelines that actually interact, which we usually are when it comes to fiction. Again, the probability of reaching any given timeline in an infinite number of timelines is zero. In other words, it would take an infinite amount of time to find it out of all the possible options. So even if the proposed alternative reality did technically exist, it would be unreachable, and thus for all practical purposes, it would not exist. If two or more timelines are able to interact, then they must be part of some finite, associated set, and with a finite set, you don’t get to use the “infinity makes random possibilities mandatory” excuse.
Also, as an aside, the Klingon joke in Trials and Tribble-ations was meant as a wink to the audience, but Enterprise ran with it seriously. Both Marvel and DC used parallel timelines as a way to explain how different continuities interacted with each other, is it that unreasonable that Trek, which is already replete with alternate timelines, might do the same to resolve it's alternate continuities (and, indeed, has explicitly done with the reboot movies, and implicitly done on 'Enterprise').
We're not talking hypotheticals here. The specific question that was asked was whether STO
actually did claim that the novelverse was an alternate timeline. The specfic, correct answer to that question is, no, it did not, because the claim was made by a tie-in novelist rather than by STO itself, and because it was in the context of a chapter that was basically an extended in-joke.
There's not really any explanation for the magic universe from "Magicks of Megas-Tu" or the Imaginationland universe from "Where No Man Has Gone Before" or the reverse universe from "The Counter-clock Incident" either. Or even DS9's Celestial Temple, if that is its own universe of weirdness.
Okay... The problem here is that fiction insists on confusing the issue by using "timeline" and "universe" interchangeably. But they're two completely different things. A different universe is merely a different
place, a separate spacetime continuum that was created separately and developed according to its own distinct physical laws. It would have it own completely separate stars and planets and species, if it even had stars and planets and species at all, since its physical laws might not allow for them. But a parallel timeline is a distinct quantum state of
our physical universe. It's an alternative history that branched off from ours at some point in the past. It's normally impossible to access or interact with, so it functionally might as well be a separate universe, but it's actually another aspect of
this universe, made of the exact same particles and occupying the exact same place, but in a parallel quantum state that we can't perceive. So it has the same laws of physics, the same stars, the same planets, the same species, even the same individuals.
The continuums you mention there are all separate
universes, not parallel timelines. In the case of TNG's "Where No One Has Gone Before" (which I assume is what you meant), it was a part of our own universe, but one that was so unreachably distant that its laws of physics differed from those in our observable universe, so that it was physically equivalent to a separate universe. (This may well be the case in reality. Our observable universe's physics are uniform because our spacetime inflated so quickly that any variations in physical law were "flattened out," with regions having different physical constants being whisked beyond the limits of what we're able to observe at the speed of light over the age of the universe.) The "Megas-tu" universe was supposed to be the separate continuum from which matter emerged into our universe, under the discredited continuous-creation theory of cosmology. The Celestial Temple is a pocket universe that exists outside of time. "The Counter-Clock Incident" was just a stupid, stupid episode that made no damn sense.
