Introducing the Time Travel APOCALYPSE | Unveiled - video Dailymotion

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00:00 What happens when the end of time is time itself?

00:03 Is the ticking nature of this reality also its fatal flaw?

00:07 And, how many mind-bending knots can one theory tie itself in, before the end of the world

00:14 might even be a kindness?

00:16 This is Unveiled, and today we're taking a closer look at the time travel apocalypse.

00:22 Do you need the big questions answered?

00:24 Are you constantly curious?

00:26 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?

00:29 And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!

00:32 The ability to move through time runs through the core of so many great science fiction

00:37 storylines.

00:38 It's a superpower, even if those that wield it often aren't your stereotypical cape-wearing,

00:43 world-saving hero kinds of people.

00:45 The time traveller often has to go under the radar, quiet and unnoticed in whichever time

00:50 they're infiltrating, so as so not to trigger some sort of existential collapse should anyone

00:55 realise who they are.

00:56 It's a delicate business with potentially dire consequences, all of which serves to

01:01 ramp up the tension in all of the best sci-fi examples.

01:05 Time travellers in the real world, however, are seemingly not so careful.

01:08 Or, at least, there are many who have clearly chosen to break rank.

01:12 Multiple times in just the last few years, time travel claimants have made headlines

01:17 the world over by predicting Armageddon.

01:19 In 2022, word spread online of a traveller known as Edward, who claimed to have taken

01:25 part in an experiment in 2004.

01:28 At the time, he was working in LA, but via the experiment he was transported to the year

01:32 5000, where he snapped a photo of the future LA, which Edward claims is entirely underwater.

01:38 Meanwhile, and again in 2022, a series of time travel warnings were posted on TikTok,

01:45 including reported dates in that year when massive, world-changing events should have

01:49 happened, such as the sudden disappearance of two million people, and the sudden emergence

01:54 of another group of nightmare creatures.

01:57 Ultimately, the TikTok prophecies proved incorrect.

02:00 But more broadly, a genuine time travel apocalypse is about more than just the testimony of individual

02:06 people.

02:07 All too often, those can be easily discredited.

02:10 But the mechanics and plausibility of time travel is something that even mainstream science

02:15 is directly interested in.

02:17 To a point, we need to understand the subtle workings of time in order to maintain some

02:22 quite mundane things of the modern world, like GPS systems, satellite networks, and

02:27 all types of space travel.

02:29 We know that time is relative, and that it runs differently on Earth (in our frame of

02:33 reference) compared to how it would under essentially any other conditions in the universe.

02:38 In this way, you might say that time is actually unknowable… and it's in its many grey

02:43 areas that doomsday theories can take shape.

02:47 Firstly, let's imagine that there's only one timeline.

02:51 This one.

02:52 Nowadays, this idea has been severely challenged, thanks to the development of various "many

02:56 worlds" and "multiverse" models of reality.

02:59 And we'll move to those shortly.

03:01 But for now, we can still imagine the universe as just one, unending, unbroken and complete

03:06 thing.

03:07 How does the time travel apocalypse unfold?

03:09 All we need to do is to consider one of the most popular paradoxes… but if it were to

03:14 really get out of hand.

03:16 A bootstrap paradox, otherwise known as an information paradox, is where information

03:22 is moved between the present, past, and future… so that actually it can never exist outside

03:27 of that loop.

03:28 But it can also never be taken away, either.

03:31 For example, imagine that you are given a book as a child by an adult.

03:36 Then you live your whole life with that book until you, as an adult, travel back in time

03:41 and give that book back to the child that will grow up to become the adult who gives

03:46 the book to you.

03:47 There's no breaking that cycle.

03:49 The book exists in perpetuity.

03:51 And yet it only exists because it's being constantly passed around between the two people

03:56 in the loop.

03:57 Now imagine, though, that written inside that book, there's something very, very bad.

04:02 As we learned in a previous video, Professor Nick Bostrom of the Future of Humanity Institute

04:07 has formulated the Vulnerable World Hypothesis to demonstrate just how… well, vulnerable

04:13 we really are.

04:14 Bostrom talks of so-called "black ball" technologies, which are things that, if they

04:19 are invented, will trigger the end of the world.

04:22 The example he spends most time on is easy-to-make nuclear bombs… but really, a black ball

04:27 technology could be anything.

04:29 It could be a genetically-engineered, 100% death-rate virus that's easily and instantly

04:34 spread… or a machine designed solely to attract asteroids from space, which turns

04:39 Earth into a cosmic punching bag… or a self-replicating AI that will always, always grow to hate humanity

04:47 so much that it just has to kill us all off.

04:50 You get the picture.

04:52 If that kind of technology, if that kind of information, were to exist… then you'd

04:57 seriously hope that it would somehow remain hidden and unknown.

05:00 Throw it into the bootstrap paradox, however, and not only would the cat be out of the bag…

05:05 but it would be inescapably released into probably exactly the same way, time and time

05:10 and time again.

05:12 This is the end of the world, but on repeat.

05:14 It's a record that skips and skips and skips, but it's impossible to turn off.

05:19 In some ways, it taps into the "block universe" way of thinking, otherwise known as "eternalism".

05:24 This is a philosophy of time in which all moments are presented as existing as one.

05:29 The past, present and future are all equally real, all equally happening… within the

05:34 wider 4D block that is reality itself.

05:37 On the tamer end of the scale, this means that the moment when you pressed play on this

05:41 video exists, still, alongside the moment right now… and the moment when this video

05:47 will end.

05:48 Nothing moves through time as we might typically understand it.

05:51 It's more like everything just pulsates through space-time, reconfiguring and reconfiguring

05:57 in ways that it was always supposed to do.

06:00 The bootstrap paradox is a little different, though, because it specifies this feeling

06:04 of inescapability.

06:06 And in this case, the mechanism for the end of the world is what's inescapable.

06:11 If true, and if the right conditions formed, we could say, then, that the apocalypse was,

06:16 is and always will be nigh… because it's essentially baked into the fabric of time

06:22 itself.

06:23 Unsurprisingly, the picture changes quite a lot when we add the potential for multiple

06:27 universes into the equation.

06:29 Really, it's little wonder that the multiverse has become such a popular theme in contemporary

06:33 science fiction writing… because it seemingly solves so many of the problems that time travel

06:38 throws up.

06:39 Hugh Everett's hugely influential "many worlds" interpretation may have been formulated

06:43 as far back as the 1950s, but its repercussions are still being explored.

06:48 It views reality through its smallest parts, and suggests that for every single quantum

06:53 event, all possible quantum outcomes do take place.

06:57 The theory allows for this by proposing that reality splits whenever a decision is made

07:02 or a chance occurrence unfolds.

07:04 Time is then viewed as something like an infinitely branching tree, sprouting more and more branches

07:10 with every passing second.

07:12 On a larger scale, this might be shown as the differences that could happen if you apply

07:16 for two jobs before choosing one over the other.

07:19 At the point that you make that decision, your reality splits - two separate versions

07:23 of you exist along two separate timelines, and their lives play out differently, perhaps

07:28 very differently, as a result.

07:30 But the many worlds can also be shown on smaller scales, such as the different timelines created

07:36 when you choose to turn left or right at a junction, or the ones created when you choose

07:40 to wear red or blue, sit or stand, blink twice or blink once.

07:46 In theory, there's really no limit to how particular you could go, with every single

07:50 alternate path simply branching out from the one you're on now.

07:54 So how does the apocalypse come into play?

07:57 The many worlds interpretation seemingly solves the bootstrap paradox, because it allows for

08:01 an infinite number of "try-agains".

08:04 The never-ending loops of self-fulfilling information now can be escaped from, because

08:08 they'll only ever exist on some, not all, of any one person's timelines.

08:14 And that should make us feel quite a lot safer.

08:17 No longer could we one day become doomed by the wrong information being passed back and

08:21 forth, causing all of us to die over and over and over again.

08:25 However, while you could view the multiverse as a kind of existential safety in numbers,

08:30 it also implies that no one timeline is particularly special.

08:34 No matter how important you think you are right now, there are actually an infinite

08:38 number of yous, spiralling off all around this present moment.

08:43 An infinite number of your friends and loved ones, too.

08:46 Of the towns and cities that you know.

08:48 Of the planet that you live on.

08:50 And so, if a blackball technology is ever introduced, if it ever does become possible

08:55 to drop just a little bit of poison into one slither of reality, then why not into this

09:01 one?

09:02 In the multiverse, it's not like that one action would even be noticed, in amongst all

09:06 the other endless variations.

09:08 And that's pretty scary.

09:10 On the one hand, with the Bootstrap Paradox and the possibilities that it could bring,

09:15 you have what you might even now term the traditional time travel apocalypse.

09:20 On the other, with the eternal mass of the multiverse to get lost in, it really is the

09:24 case that nothing's sacred anymore.

09:27 Not even your own time, as you think you're experiencing it.

09:32 What do you think?

09:33 Is there anything we missed?

09:34 Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you

09:38 subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.

Introducing the Time Travel APOCALYPSE | Unveiled

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