One view of time travel

[O'Dib]

I think I've seen it portrayed like this elsewhere.. The altered time line proceeds to catch up with the present in real time. The present keeps progressing in real time as well, with the changes never really catching up with it. Is this one possible way of explaining how it can be the same universe without erasing everything we know? Hmm, now that I think of it, the concept is pretty much the same as a divergent timeline. Wouldn't Picard be surprised to travel to the past and find it entirely different than he remembers? Thoughts.

 

[JoeZhang]

I think I've seen it portrayed like this elsewhere.. The altered time line proceeds to catch up with the present in real time. The present keeps progressing in real time as well, with the changes never really catching up with it. Is this one possible way of explaining how it can be the same universe without erasing everything we know? Hmm, now that I think of it, the concept is pretty much the same as a divergent timeline. Wouldn't Picard be surprised to travel to the past and find it entirely different than he remembers? Thoughts.

He wouldn't travel back to that timeline - as soon as nero changes the future it's inaccessible to him, it branches off. That would also be why Spock couldn't get back to his own future - because forward travel would simply take him to the future of the branch he's on.

 

[TrekGuide.com]

I think I've seen it portrayed like this elsewhere.. The altered time line proceeds to catch up with the present in real time.

That's not how it was depicted in this movie.

In the time between when Nero went into the past timeline, and when Spock followed him back, Nero was in the past timeline for 25 years, while only a few seconds passed in the original timeline.

If that time differential is stable, then if another ship (say, the Enterprise-E) from the original timeline were to enter the black hole a few minutes after Ambassador Spock, then centuries could have passed in the new timeline. In fact, if the Enterprise-E entered the black hole more than an hour after Spock, it might actually emerge in the FUTURE of the new timeline (e.g., the 28th Century), where Vulcan had been destroyed for 500 years.

The fact that time passes differently between the two timelines creates room for all kinds or paradoxes. ...