First, the timeline might have a last moment such that its events do not continue after that moment. Logically, any moment might not be followed by any subsequent moments. Thus, the universe might cease to exist at any moment. Such a cessation would not alter the fact that the universe had existed until that moment. The conservation of energy is an empirical physical law, not a logical necessity.
Secondly, even a timeline that is beginningless and endless, with no first or last moment, might recede into the past of a second temporal dimension. From the point of view of an observer in that second temporal dimension, the entire timeline would have ceased to exist although there would have been no cessation of existence at any moment within the timeline itself.
The first case is comparable to a manuscript that has not been completed but that ends arbitrarily in the middle of a sentence whereas the second case is comparable to the destruction of an entire manuscript although this does not alter the fact that the manuscript had existed in its entirety until its destruction.
I mention this because Poul Anderson's Time Patrolmen are unclear about the difference between the two ways in which a timeline might cease to exist.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, the original view I've seen in Anderson's Time Patrol stories was that "deleted" timeline simply no continued to exist after the Patrol's intervention, as was believed happened to the Carthaginian timeline of "Delenda Est." But you have argued that it was more plausible to think such timelines became inaccessible to the Patrol after getting split off into or onto second temporal dimensions. Meaning "deleted" timelines could have continued to exist.
Ad astra! Sean
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