The Death of Delenn

[grumbler]

Joe, this is what Delenn says about Valen's war, in ItSoZ :

A thousand years ago, the Shadows returned to their places of power, rebuilt them, and began to stretch forth their hand. Before they could strike, they were defeated by an alliance of worlds, including the Minbari... and the few remaining First Ones who had not yet passed beyond the Veil. When they had finished, the First Ones went away... all but one."

Now, I would agree that this doesn't clearly say that the First Ones who "went away" went beyond the rim, but that isn't my point. I was simply arguing that the word "impossible" isn't appropriate, as there was clearly a POSSIBLE mechanism for Sinclair to go BtR after Valen's war.

I agree that yours is the likelier explanation but disagree with your assessment that mine is impossible.

[Joseph DeMartino]

No, I think Delenn's reference to going "beyond the veil" clearly means going beyond the Rim.

Just to clarify a couple of points:

The lines you quote make it clear, as I said, that the majority of the First Ones left 10,000 years ago, that they played a much reduced role in the last Shadow War, and that they were unlikley to give Valen a lift. I never said that they had all left 10,000 years ago, that they had nothing to do with Valen's War or that their taking Valen with them was "impossible", only that it was extremely unlikely.

Regards,

Joe

[NotKosh]

Originally posted by Joseph DeMartino


My point with the cryonics was mostly that you don't need to rift in sector 14 or the Great Machine, or to violate JMS's rule that there is only one major incidence of time travel in the B5 story to get Valen and Sakai into the 24th century.

Regards,

Joe

Plenty of cryonics examples in B5.

Jack the Ripper and that silly couple who ended up on a ship with that "Shadow Soldier".

[Bonehead]

Originally posted by NotKosh
Plenty of cryonics examples in B5.

Jack the Ripper and that silly couple who ended up on a ship with that "Shadow Soldier".

Not to mention the teeps in medlab.

[NotKosh]

Whoops, I edited that, I meant plenty of examples of cryonic time travel in B5.

[Ben-Thayer Dunnthaedt]

Not really a comment about Delenn, but time travel!

from Joe DeM.-

Time travel into the past is not only considered a practical impossibility in our own time, there are good reasons for doubting that it could make sense even in theory. Not so "time travel" into the future.

Take a look at this link: http://www.biols.susx.ac.uk/home/Joh...n/timetrav.htm

A very good discussion on the possibilities of time travel. I saw the documentary with Kip Thorne, the late Carl Sagan and Steven Hawking about wormholes and time travel, and this site updates some of the latest discoveries.

Four quotes from the site:

1st, on the possibility of real time travel:
"Relativists have been trying to come to terms with time travel for the past seven years, since Kip Thorne and his colleagues at Caltech discovered -- much to their surprise -- that there is nothing in the laws of physics (specifically, the general theory of relativity) to forbid it."

2nd, on travelling backwards:
Even then, there's one snag. It seems you can't use a time machine to go back in time to before the time machine was built. You can go anywhere in the future, and come back to where you started, but no further. Which rather neatly explains why no time travellers from our future have yet visited us -- because the time machine still hasn't been invented!

3rd, on parallel realities:
So where does that leave the paradoxes, and common sense? There is a way out of all the difficulties, but you may not like it. It involves the other great theory of physics in the twentieth century, quantum mechanics, and another favourite idea from science fiction, parallel worlds. These are the "alternative histories", in which, for example, the South won the American Civil War (as in Ward Moore's classic novel Bring the Jubilee), which are envisaged as in some sense lying "alongside" our version of reality.

and last, about FTL travel:
To be sure, the physical requirements seem rather contrived and implausible. But that isn't the point. What matters is that it seems that there is nothing in the laws of physics that forbids travel through wormholes. The science fiction writers were right -- hyperspace connections do, at least in theory, provide a means to travel to far distant regions of the Universe without spending thousands of years pottering along through ordinary space at less than the speed of light.

[Dr Maturin]

<<Even then, there's one snag. It seems you can't use a time machine to go back in time to before the time machine was built.>>

Why? If you have a machine with you, it shouldn't matter.

The problem with time travel is that if somehow we did have a miraculous time machine, and we went back in time...unless we were SUPPOSED to go back in time, then it would just "spin off" a parallel reality, so it wouldn't literally be time travel.

As for FTL...the problem there is the g-forces. We'd have to have some kind of "inertial damper." But if I am correct, in B5 and Asimov hyperspace, aren't you just going as fast as you'd go in normal space, but it's just "faster" (from the normal space viewer's POV) in the hyperspace dimension? Then the g-force problem wouldn't matter.

[Ben-Thayer Dunnthaedt]

Why? If you have a machine with you, it shouldn't matter.

I dunno! I saw the documentary a couple of years ago, so I don't remember a lot of the details. But it was great to see guys like Thorne and Hawking talking realistically about time travel, wormholes, and hyperspace.

I saw a 60 second blurb on wormholes on the Science channel a few days ago where a scientist discussed the possibility of entering a wormhole. He said they have determined that it is possible, but the the size of the entrance must be quite large. He then cited DS9, saying the mouth of the wormhole would have to be a LOT bigger for them to use it as they do.

But I've never considered the ship's velocity as being greater in hyperspace. Personally I've always envisioned hyperspace as such: fold a piece of paper so that the two ends (points A & B) almost touch. A traveller can then "step" across from point A to point B without travelling all the way across the page. When folded, the area between point A and point B is connected via hyperspace, which the traveller passes through when "stepping" across.

In truth, this isn't my theory. When I was in the 6th grade I got a book called Revolt on Alpha C, and they discussed warping space pretty much like I described it above. Sounded good at the time, so I've sort of stuck with it.