• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Is the quantum signature of the Kelvin Universe the same as that of the Prime Universe?

Is the quantum signature of the Kelvin Universe the same as that of the Prime Universe?

  • Same quantum signature

    Votes: 3 14.3%
  • Different quantum signature

    Votes: 18 85.7%
  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    21
In a franchise that has had hundreds of writers, many of whose intents are mutually contradictory. In such a case, the ability to be flexible in our interpretations is the only way to make any semblance of sense out of the whole.

Even in a work from a single writer, readers are allowed to use their own critical thinking and interpretation. Fiction is meant to promote creative thought in the audience, not forbid it.
In other words, yes I can choose to take the writers word and intent if I wish.
 
That Data said "For every event, there are an infinite number of possible outcomes" says that it's true in Star Trek's fictitious universe.
yeah if the space-time continuum is infinitesimal we can have an infinite number of possible outcomes that of how high I jump. I could jump 1 foot, 1.01 feet, 1.322323 feet etc... any real number therefore infinite possible outcomes on that alone
 
yeah if the space-time continuum is infinitesimal we can have an infinite number of possible outcomes that of how high I jump. I could jump 1 foot, 1.01 feet, 1.322323 feet etc... any real number therefore infinite possible outcomes on that alone

Not really, because there's a minimum measurable length, the Planck length -- basically a fundamental "graininess" to the universe. Any length smaller than that is physically impossible to measure and thus meaningless to talk about. There's also the fact that your body is made up of atoms that have a nonzero size and a degree of uncertainty in the positions of the electrons in their shells, so that puts a minimum limit on how precisely you can define the position of your body. Infinity happens in pure math and philosophy, not physics.
 
Given not one of us has any real idea what a "quantum signature" is or how it works other than being a phrase that gets used periodically to provide a means to identify something from another universe, I'm going with "don't have a clue"
 
Not really, because there's a minimum measurable length, the Planck length -- basically a fundamental "graininess" to the universe. Any length smaller than that is physically impossible to measure and thus meaningless to talk about. There's also the fact that your body is made up of atoms that have a nonzero size and a degree of uncertainty in the positions of the electrons in their shells, so that puts a minimum limit on how precisely you can define the position of your body. Infinity happens in pure math and philosophy, not physics.

Don't know about that here https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length


Much like the rest of the Planck units, there is currently no proven physical significance of the Planck length. Gravity theorists[citation needed] consider the Planck length to be the quantization of space that makes up the fabric of the universe[citation needed], also referred to as quantum foam.

The Planck length is believed to be the shortest meaningful length, the limiting distance below which the very notions of space and length cease to exist. Any attempt to investigate the possible existence of shorter distances, by performing higher-energy collisions, would inevitably result in black hole production. Higher-energy collisions, rather than splitting matter into finer pieces, would simply produce bigger black holes.[3]
 
I've always thought the Planck length is evidence the universe is running on a shitty graphics card with a bad resolution. The guys running this simulation really need to upgrade to nVidia.
 
Last edited:
I haven't voted yet, but I see most people are thinking the Kelvin and Prime timelines have different quantum signatures though. I was kind of expecting the reverse actually since they share the same timeline of the same universe.
 
I haven't voted yet, but I see most people are thinking the Kelvin and Prime timelines have different quantum signatures though. I was kind of expecting the reverse actually since they share the same timeline of the same universe.

Umm, how can you refer to them as timelines, plural, in one sentence and say they share the same timeline in the next? That's contradictory.

As I said, all so-called parallel "universes" that have an Earth, humanity, Federation, etc. must be alternate timelines of the same literal universe, regardless of imprecise sci-fi nomenclature. It doesn't matter whether they branched spontaneously or were split off by time travel; as far as physics is concerned, they're both the same kind of divergence in the quantum state of the universe, both different possible paths for the collective ensemble of particles in the universe to follow. (In quantum physics, they're technically called measurement histories or macrorealms. They're not really separate universes, just simultaneous quantum states of the universe, like the multiple simultaneous states that a single quantum particle can exist in. The different states are causally isolated from each other and have no effect on each other, so it's as if they were separate universes, even though they're facets of a single physical reality.)

An actual separate universe wouldn't have any of its history in common with ours, and thus wouldn't have a Milky Way galaxy or a Sol or an Earth or a human species, any more than you'd expect a different planet to have its own Mississippi River and Mt. Everest and Yucatan Peninsula. It would just be a completely different place with its own different planets, stars, and species, if it even had physical laws that allowed for planets, stars, and life.
 
Umm, how can you refer to them as timelines, plural, in one sentence and say they share the same timeline in the next? That's contradictory.
Simple, it's quite intuitive actually I'm surprised you're asking that. Same timeline in the past (shared history), 2 timelines after Nero traveled back in time. (see Star Trek 2009 movie)

As I said, all so-called parallel "universes" that have an Earth, humanity, Federation, etc. must be alternate timelines of the same literal universe, regardless of imprecise sci-fi nomenclature. It doesn't matter whether they branched spontaneously or were split off by time travel; as far as physics is concerned, they're both the same kind of divergence in the quantum state of the universe, both different possible paths for the collective ensemble of particles in the universe to follow. (In quantum physics, they're technically called measurement histories or macrorealms. They're not really separate universes, just simultaneous quantum states of the universe, like the multiple simultaneous states that a single quantum particle can exist in. The different states are causally isolated from each other and have no effect on each other, so it's as if they were separate universes, even though they're facets of a single physical reality.)
:shrug:trying to pass psuedo-science as fact much? :rofl:
To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

An actual separate universe wouldn't have any of its history in common with ours, and thus wouldn't have a Milky Way galaxy or a Sol or an Earth or a human species, any more than you'd expect a different planet to have its own Mississippi River and Mt. Everest and Yucatan Peninsula. It would just be a completely different place with its own different planets, stars, and species, if it even had physical laws that allowed for planets, stars, and life.

There's different definitions of universe. The definition of universe as its used in TNG episode "Parallels" is the one I'm using. :hugegrin:
 
DS9 "Trials and Tribble-ations"
LUCSLY: Regulation one fifty seven, section three, paragraph eighteen. Starfleet officers shall take all necessary precautions to minimise any participation in historical events.
SISKO: All right. It was a mistake. But there were no lasting repercussions.
DULMUR: How do you know that? For all we know, we could be living in an alternate timeline right now.
SISKO: If my people had caused any changes in the timeline, we would have been the first to notice when we got back.
LUCSLY: Why do they all have to say that?

Notice no mention of checking their quantum signatures in that scene. I would surmise that changing the timeline of a universe does not normally change the quantum signature of the altered timeline. But the new timeline created in Star Trek 2009 created a co-existing timeline to the prime universe which is different than how they normally present time theory in Star Trek.
 
In one moment I'm standing still. This is Reality 1. The next moment I either turn left or I turn right. Where I turn left is Reality 1A. Where I turn right is Reality 1B. Then in 1A, I turn again: left or right. When I turn left it's 1A1. When I turn right it's 1A2. Same with 1B when I turn again.

So: 1 branched into 1A and 1B, which then branched into 1A1, 1A2, 1B1, and 1B2. I'm creating basic quantum signatures here by assigning a name to each new reality. The further they branch out, the more realities you have.

So I think The Prime Universe and The Kelvin Universe would have different signatures. They'd come from the same family of signatures but they'd be different individual signatures.

They're both universes that branched out from the same original reality. Each new reality that branches out is a new branch. They're tree branches and they all trace back to the original trunk. That trunk, the original reality that all these realities branched out of, is The Big Bang.

The Mirror Universe might be a third branch that would've split off much sooner from the Prime Universe than the Kelvin Universe did in 2233. Maybe thousands or millions of years sooner. Or it branched out of an entirely different Big Bang. It branched out of Reality 2 while the Prime Universe and the Kelvin Universe are branched out of Reality 1.

.
.
.

Congratulations to anyone who actually managed to keep up with that...

It's not a canon thing to me, I just like parallel universes. That's why one of my favorite shows is Sliders and a major part of why Back to the Future, Part II is my favorite of the BTTF movies.
 
Last edited:
In one moment I'm standing still. This is Reality 1. The next moment either turn left or I turn right. Where I turn left is Reality 1A. Where I turn right is Reality 1B. Then in 1A, I turn again: left or right. When I turn left it's 1A1. When I turn right it's 1A2. Same with 1B when I turn again.

So: 1 branched into 1A and 1B, which then branched into 1A1, 1A2, 1B1, and 1B2. I'm creating basic quantum signatures here by assigning a name to each new reality. The further they branch out, the more realities you have.

So I think The Prime Universe and The Kelvin Universe would have different signatures. They'd come from the same family of signatures but they'd be different individual signatures.

They're both universes that branched out from the same original reality. Each new reality that branches out is a new branch. They're tree branches and they all trace back to the original trunk. That trunk, the original reality that all these realities branched out of, is The Big Bang.

The Mirror Universe might be a third branch that would've split off much sooner from the Prime Universe than the Kelvin Universe did in 2233. Maybe thousands or millions of years sooner. Or it branched out of an entirely different Big Bang. It branched out of Reality 2 while the Prime Universe and the Kelvin Universe are branched out of in Reality 1.

Kudos to anyone who actually managed to keep up with that...

It's not a canon thing to me, I just like parallel universes. That's why one of my favorite shows is Sliders and a major part of why Back to the Future, Part II is my favorite of the BTTF movies.

Having multiple choices at any given moment and representing the result of each of those choices as a quantum universe is one thing. But time travel is something else.

I pictured the quantum signature thing like this

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

All possible avenues are taken but each exist on their own without a parent they branched off of.

In TNG "Yesterday's Enterprise" and DS9 "Time's Orphan" they treated the timeline as a single entity that could only be shared with a single quantum reality. We visually see this with the flickering and then Tasha Yar is alive and when Molly vanishes after sending her past self back into the time portal. Presumably the Kelvin and Prime universe work different though like they both branched off and co-exist afterwards.
 
:shrug:trying to pass psuedo-science as fact much? :rofl:

No, I'm discussing actual quantum physics. What gets presented in science fiction is generally a loose or inaccurate extrapolation from ideas that originated in real science. Multiverse theory -- the concept of alternate observed histories for the universe -- is an outgrowth of the mathematics of quantum theory. It's what you get when you take the fact that a quantum particle can exist in a superposition of multiple different states at the same time and apply it to all the particles of an observed system at once. All the science fiction about alternate realities and histories is based on this real-physics idea, though often quite fanciful in its interpretation of it. So grounding the discussion in real science is a way of getting across how it should work, so we can better evaluate fictional presentations of the idea.

Besides, it's just common sense. Like I said, you wouldn't expect an unrelated universe to have an Earth and a humanity any more than you'd expect another planet to have Earth's geography. The existence of humanity is not some cosmic destiny, it's the accidental result of a bunch of different events that happened in the universe's past. So an alternate reality that has Earth and humans and so forth in it must have branched off from that same history. It was the same timeline until something in it happened differently and it diverged, just as you said above.


There's different definitions of universe. The definition of universe as its used in TNG episode "Parallels" is the one I'm using. :hugegrin:

The point is, that's a vernacular usage that's misleading if you actually want to understand what's being talked about. Sci-fi tends to use terms like "universe" and "timeline" interchangeably, but that's a sloppy practice that confuses the issue.


Having multiple choices at any given moment and representing the result of each of those choices as a quantum universe is one thing. But time travel is something else.

No, it really isn't. As far as actual theoretical physics is concerned, time travel is subject to the same quantum laws as any other phenomenon in the universe. Quantum physics has been applied to the theoretical question of time travel, and what it suggests is that, normally, a time traveler would be unable to create any future other than their own, because their travel into the past would correlate it with the future they came from and, from their perspective, guarantee that that future happened. So that would produce a fixed-timeline model like the movie version of 12 Monkeys or the animated series Gargoyles, where nothing you do can alter destiny. However, if multiverse theory is true, if alternate timelines can exist, then a time traveler would follow all possible paths at once. There would be one timeline in which the time traveler failed to change history and one in which they succeeded in changing it -- or multiple ones in which it was changed in different ways.

So in real-science terms, the physics that allow for the possibility of time travel altering the timeline are the exact same physics that allow spontaneous parallel timelines to exist in the first place. It may seem to a human being that there's a difference between something that "just happens" and something that a person's actions and choices cause to happen, but the laws of physics don't care about personal will and choice. As far as the universe is concerned, a person is just a bunch of interacting particles and forces. So there is no physical difference between a naturally occurring alternate history and one created by time travel.
 
No, I'm discussing actual quantum physics. What gets presented in science fiction is generally a loose or inaccurate extrapolation from ideas that originated in real science. Multiverse theory -- the concept of alternate observed histories for the universe -- is an outgrowth of the mathematics of quantum theory. It's what you get when you take the fact that a quantum particle can exist in a superposition of multiple different states at the same time and apply it to all the particles of an observed system at once. All the science fiction about alternate realities and histories is based on this real-physics idea, though often quite fanciful in its interpretation of it. So grounding the discussion in real science is a way of getting across how it should work, so we can better evaluate fictional presentations of the idea.

Besides, it's just common sense. Like I said, you wouldn't expect an unrelated universe to have an Earth and a humanity any more than you'd expect another planet to have Earth's geography. The existence of humanity is not some cosmic destiny, it's the accidental result of a bunch of different events that happened in the universe's past. So an alternate reality that has Earth and humans and so forth in it must have branched off from that same history. It was the same timeline until something in it happened differently and it diverged, just as you said above.

It's a good act but I can see through it. Let's take your term "macrorealms" and put it into google:

https://www.google.com/search?safe=...0....0...1..64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.x4NrVlLek6o

There's some I'll give you that but not seeing much about quantum theory there.

And google macrorealms "measurement histories" together since you said they're the same thing produce only 1 result:

https://www.google.com/search?safe=...j2.64.psy-ab..0.2.201...35i39k1.0.PlkcavULaPQ

no where on the entire internet are those 2 terms used together except by you on this site on another post.

The idea is that you say something that's not well established anywhere, except by you personally since you made it up. Then no one will question it since no one knows about it. I can do that too and say something like "clearly you're not up to date on the latest published works of the wiggle swoozle theory of quantum mechanics with regards to parallel universes" :guffaw:

The point is, that's a vernacular usage that's misleading if you actually want to understand what's being talked about. Sci-fi tends to use terms like "universe" and "timeline" interchangeably, but that's a sloppy practice that confuses the issue.

Unfortunately there probably is no such thing as a quantum signature if you want to bring reality into it.

No, it really isn't. As far as actual theoretical physics is concerned, time travel is subject to the same quantum laws as any other phenomenon in the universe. Quantum physics has been applied to the theoretical question of time travel, and what it suggests is that, normally, a time traveler would be unable to create any future other than their own, because their travel into the past would correlate it with the future they came from and, from their perspective, guarantee that that future happened. So that would produce a fixed-timeline model like the movie version of 12 Monkeys or the animated series Gargoyles, where nothing you do can alter destiny. However, if multiverse theory is true, if alternate timelines can exist, then a time traveler would follow all possible paths at once. There would be one timeline in which the time traveler failed to change history and one in which they succeeded in changing it -- or multiple ones in which it was changed in different ways.

So in real-science terms, the physics that allow for the possibility of time travel altering the timeline are the exact same physics that allow spontaneous parallel timelines to exist in the first place. It may seem to a human being that there's a difference between something that "just happens" and something that a person's actions and choices cause to happen, but the laws of physics don't care about personal will and choice. As far as the universe is concerned, a person is just a bunch of interacting particles and forces. So there is no physical difference between a naturally occurring alternate history and one created by time travel.

There probably isn't any such thing as time travel either. There's time dilation caused from either excessive speeds or excessive gravity to slow down time or motion of things. With a funky interpretation of spatial relativity some people try to say that you travel back in time by going faster than the speed of light but that doesn't hold water either. There is no real-science about these things since there's no observable science. Just unverifiable hypothesis. :thumbdown:
 
Keeping to the Trek-internal angle:

DS9 "Trials and Tribble-ations": Notice no mention of checking their quantum signatures in that scene.

This hinges on whether time travel takes place in isolation or not. But we are already accepting that the quantum signature change of a choice, any choice, can propagate all the way to Captain Georgiou's badge. The signature of the entire universe thus is affected by me stamping on that damn butterfly right there. So it's very tempting to assume that a time traveler gets imprinted with the quantum signature change of the history he travels through, regardless of the fact that he travels through it via a shortcut.

Thus, if Sisko goes back in time and saves the inventor of the nosepick from Pakled time tampering, he then returns to a universe that bears the signature of a nosepick-equipped reality - while bearing that same signature himself, having acquired it while traveling downstream from the past to this nosepick-filled future. On his way upstream to the past, he likewise stripped himself of the accumulated quantum signature change and was in synch with the inventor at that crucial juncture.

But the new timeline created in Star Trek 2009 created a co-existing timeline to the prime universe which is different than how they normally present time theory in Star Trek.

It's a practical matter of downstream travel, really. If you travel down the correct stream after your history-saving antics, you don't have to worry about those other streams, and your practical description of the adventure does not mention parallel realities. But you could have done without the histrionics and invented a Sliding machine in which you simply directly jumped to the reality where somebody (you, Abraham Lincoln, who cares) already did the history-saving, because there's always one of those universes out there, too. In the latter case, you would skip mentioning time travel and would talk a lot about quantum signatures, even though it's all just different angles to the same phenomenon.

That's the house of cards I see standing. Others are certainly allowed in face of the pseudo-evidence; I just want to highlight that no matter what the writers write, they can't really shake this particular house much. Contradictions would take a lot of doing, and it's not there on screen yet.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Honestly, looking through my research notes for my Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations novels, I'm not entirely sure where I got the term "macrorealm" from. But other variations of the term include "macrostate" and "macrosystem," and those crop up in this very nice overview of Many-Worlds quantum theory:

https://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm

In my website annotations page for DTI: Watching the Clock, I provide links to the various scientific papers and sites that informed my model of temporal physics in the book. It looks like a couple of those links are dead now, though, so maybe I got the word from one of them.
 
If they ever revealed the answer on a future star trek movie or series they would probably write it as the Prime and Kelvin universe having different quantum signatures since they are different universes without giving it much thought.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top