Galahad
Regular
I think it's different. Sinclair's loop had a clear beginning in the sense that historically, he was born as an individual.
The current understanding of time travel theory states that you cannot effect change in your own timeline, if you use the old cliche of killing your grandfather before your father is born, then such an act would simply prove you were in a parallel universe, you physically couldn't do it in your own timeline because you would eliminate the cause.
You could travel to the past of our own timeline... but you would not alter history, any contribution you made would merely create the present we live in today.
If BSG did the time loop thing it would be fundamentally flawed. Where would humanity start? If the colonials are descended from the future citizens of Earth who travel back in time... and the 13th tribe (and Galactica survivors) are descended from the colonials... then there is a problem because there would be no origin for the human race.
That is the difference. Although Sinclair's eventual fate in the distant past contributes to his personal past... it does not create it. Sinclair is born independently of the events that he directly affects. If you want to stick with the hard science route, you can also explain the visions and the transmissions in Sector 14 as being picked up from a timeline in a parallel dimension.... so although the characters from our perspective perceived a threat (due to witnessing events in a parallel timeline that they equated with a possible future for themselves), there never actually was one because Sinclair (as he said in his own words) always went back.
I read a couple of novels set in 1st century Israel (no, they didn't do the obvious thing and centre the plot around the nativity or crucifixion) that explained it really well (after the headache subsided).
The current understanding of time travel theory states that you cannot effect change in your own timeline, if you use the old cliche of killing your grandfather before your father is born, then such an act would simply prove you were in a parallel universe, you physically couldn't do it in your own timeline because you would eliminate the cause.
You could travel to the past of our own timeline... but you would not alter history, any contribution you made would merely create the present we live in today.
If BSG did the time loop thing it would be fundamentally flawed. Where would humanity start? If the colonials are descended from the future citizens of Earth who travel back in time... and the 13th tribe (and Galactica survivors) are descended from the colonials... then there is a problem because there would be no origin for the human race.
That is the difference. Although Sinclair's eventual fate in the distant past contributes to his personal past... it does not create it. Sinclair is born independently of the events that he directly affects. If you want to stick with the hard science route, you can also explain the visions and the transmissions in Sector 14 as being picked up from a timeline in a parallel dimension.... so although the characters from our perspective perceived a threat (due to witnessing events in a parallel timeline that they equated with a possible future for themselves), there never actually was one because Sinclair (as he said in his own words) always went back.
I read a couple of novels set in 1st century Israel (no, they didn't do the obvious thing and centre the plot around the nativity or crucifixion) that explained it really well (after the headache subsided).
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