These long posts are interesting from an esoteric-quantum-theory-causality paradox standpoint (seriously, I usually love this kind of stuff).
However, we are digging too deeply into the details of the on-screen scince fiction when it comes to this film. Yeah -- I know, the science fiction we see on screen should have some basis in fact -- and I agree with that -- SOME basis. I think what Orci has said so far does have SOME basis in known scientific theories.
But digging too deeply into the details of alternate realities to try and reconcile every detail of this plot point this with actual scientific theories will fail, just like trying to reconcile every detail of Star Trek's version of transporters and warp drive with science fact will also fail.
Agreed...
Look, Orci isn't a "temporal scientist," and the Trekkian time-travel concepts are utterly and completely speculative in nature.
I, personally, don't believe in this form of theory at all, because I tend to think of time as just another dimension, not really all that different from the three positional ones we normally think of. The whole fabric of reality already exists, but our consciousnesses are sliding down an incline on the "time" axis.
From that standpoint... well, essentially everything that ever has happened, everything that is happening now, and everything that ever will happen... have, in a very real sense "already happened." It's not "predestination, per-se, because our perception of time (and our free-will decision-making) is all part of that fabric.
If "time travel" is possible (and I tend to believe it's not... at least not in the form we've become accustomed to seeing it in cheesy sci-fi shows), then it would be more like a short-cut (kind of like a "wormhole" in Trekkian terms acts in space). In fact, that's exactly what it would be... a wormhole. A "trekkian" wormhole is an instantaneous "shortcut" from one set of three-dimensional coordinates to another, after all. But there's absolutely no reason to assume that this form of shortcut would land you at the same point in the fourth dimension - time - where you departed from, is there?
So, if my perspective is true, time travel would either be entirely impossible or would always... without exception... lead to the same timeline you know. You'd never be able to change your own past because it's all "settled" already... anything you do literally already happened in your own past.
Some of you will say "well, that's nonsense, because {fill in the blank}."
And you know what? You might be right. Because there's NO REAL SCIENCE WHATSOEVER behind "time travel." None. Everything else, without exception, falls into the realm of fantasy.
Doesn't mean that someday we might not learn something about it. But as of today, it's just fantasy, nothing more and nothing less.
That's what bugs me about this article (and several others printed which follow similar patterns).
It says "real science says this" while what the articles really should be saying is that "In this episode of
Star Trek - The Next Generation, the fictional character of Data spouted some pseudo-scientific technobabble that convinced a lot of non-scientists that this was somehow 'real.' "