Time Travel possibility

It states the date in the movie December 21st, 2093 as when they arrive at LV223 and add a day for descent onto the moon. The plot of the story happens over several days and I think Shaw and David depart on New Year's Day 2094 if I'm correct on what Shaw states on her log/narration. They estimate the time the Engineers' were trying to leave based on the carbon dating of the decapitated head to be about 2,000 years give or take a few hundred years prior to 2093/94. The acceleration and deceleration would take longer than the actual quantum jump the spacecraft would have to take to cover that distance. So most of the trip would be spent speeding up to beyond light speed or slowing down from it. Check out this guy's explanation of this process in the movie Avatar. He doesn't think warp or beyond light speed is possible but he tries to scientifically explain what it would take if the ship were using conventional means to make an interstellar trip... http://youtu.be/D6H1TxRGLUc

JSPaihts, Greetings and welcome to the forum. The USCSS arrived on LV223 on Dec 25, 2093 after a trip of 2 years, 4 months, 18 days, 36 hours and 15 min, as any good Prometheus fan will tell you:) That would require a ship to travel at over 36 x light speed. Because Prometheus is not a hard science movie, it is suggested that they simply flew there straight from here to there in that time frame at that high speed. Entertaining as this notion is, a more rigorous scientific method would be to use some kind of at present uninvented gravity engine that could warp space-time to create a loop so that two points A and B could touch and the ship pass through a porthole. That would allow travel across huge expanses within a short period of time. But in the Alien-Prometheus universe, they supposedly have faster than light ships powered by fusion engines. The crews of these ships like the Nostromo and Prometheus as you have seen are put into cryostatis for that period. This technology is supposed to be a product of Weyland Industries along with the faster than light engines that power their ships. The engineer got decapitated, according to the movie approx 2000 years from 2093 which would be approximately at the time of the Roman Empire and Jesus Christ ( if you believe in him) again approximately speaking.

[size=100]PS I was just reading a post where someone pointed out that the time stated: 2 years 4 month 18 days 36 hours and 15 minutes is ship time. One would have to take into account relativity and time dilation at the speeds necessary to reach LV223 with is in the zeta II reticuli system 34 light yeas from here. I would have to read up on my Einstein to check the relativistic equations to make sure it all works out. Just an afterthought.[/size]

It seems very hard to believe that you could write a space adventure these days such as big as Prometheus and ignore time and distance factors all together. For this reason I have placed the topic here in Prometheus 2. Believing in Mr. Scott as I do, I would hope that these factors will come to light in a sequel but be made easy to understand. I just cannot accept that this is being completely ignored.

Well, being that David says 18 days and 36 hours, not 19 days I would have to assume their "days" in question are longer than 36 hours (at least). If we estimate 40 hours for a "day" that puts the actual travel time up from roughly 868 "days" to 1475 (24 hour) days! This is just over 4 years. Whether or not that changes the need for FTL TRAVEL to cover the distance, I don't know. But it is interesting.

Does anyone know why a "day" would ever be longer than 24 hours? Is this meant to reflect some kind of time distortion caused by FTL? It could be a small, deliberate line to indicate to the savvy viewer that the Prometheus is travelling above light speed. I'm kind of a newb when it comes to the hypothetical mechanics of such things- sorry.

@Fleshvessel and everyone; That 36 hours thing was a mistake. It was not in the script, most likely Fassbender flubbed his lines in the shot. LOL! --->[url=http://whatculture.com/film/prometheus-damon-lindelof-jon-spaihts-confirm-36-hours-was-not-scripted.php]Prometheus: Damon Lindelof & Jon Spaihts Confirm “36 Hours” Was NOT Scripted[/url]

I kind of enjoyed things unexplained in Prometheus...it adds to the mystery. It would be great to have a Weyland video clip where he(Peter) and his team of scientists have discovered how to warp space-time to travel vast interstellar distances rather easily in a spacecraft. I think in Paradise there could be some kind of explanation for how the Engineers' ships could also quantum "jump" from one star or galaxy to the next without much effort. Yes, keep it simple but with solid science behind it so you don't disgust too many astrophysicists.

Theseus, I have considered quantum teleportation too but the problem there is you would wind up with 2 copies of the prometheus ship that were identical. I am willing to simply go along with the soft science approach that the Alien-Prometheus uses. Sometimes its better to just go along for the ride.

nostromo001, I realize you are much more savvy in astrophysics and science than myself but when we start talking quantum stuff aren't all possibilities possible? Maybe it's impossible to say a 2nd Prometheus ship would simply exist in a parallel universe exactly like this one, therebye, overcoming this conundrum . In fact, aren't there an immeasurable number of universes paralell to this one?

Hi JSpaihts, hope this gives you an answer of sorts. If an attempt is being made to look at mechanics of relativity, The first thing to consider is the date given Dec 21st 2093. Is that the date the crew thinks it is back on earth. Is that the date it really is back on earth or is that the date the crew knows it is back on earth. If the crew have measured time relative to their instrumentation on board, and no account has been taken for travelling at light speed then there would be a huge time offset. To avoid this confusion, or this may be a clever move on the part of Scott, I don’t recall any departure date given, but are only given an idea of when Weyland considers himself to be dead.

Theseus, yes a multiverse is postulated but all of this including m-theory is at this stage purely theoretical. Quantum teleportation research is advancing at a phenominal rate. An article in Nature : Nature 489,269–273(13 September 2012) entitled Quantum teleportation over 143 kilometres using active feed-forward demonstrated the quantum teleportation of photons 143 Km between the canary islands. I will not pretend to understand the finer points of theoretical physics as that is not my specialty. I am an organic chemist but I did take a brief look at their experiments and similar ones done in 2012 and it is truly amazing what they can do now. We are talking macromoleular collections not just subatomic particles or photons only!

@ Fleshvessel › [i]Does anyone know why a "day" would ever be longer than 24 hours?[/i] It takes the earth 24 hrs to rotate once on its axis. David's planet would take more than 36 hours to rotate on its axis. One year is how long it takes a planet to orbit its sun. So we probably can't calculate the 2 years 4 month 18 days 36 hours and 15 minutes in earth time unless we have the data. Lindelof just said it wasn't in his script. Scripts can be and are often are changed after the script is delivered or on set - see "tears in rain" for example. Difficult to make a script mistake without anyone noticing given the number of takes and people on set. We get a lot of info (often seemingly contradictory) on time - unlike Alien and Br - so time is important in Prometheus. In the Weyland hologram you can see at least three stars in the day sky (they don't appear to move much) and possibly up to six overall. This would indicate that Weyland is not broadcasting from earth. Vicker's half a billion miles from earth is the most interesting statement. There's a lot going on in this film but the trend seems to be dismiss everything that doesn't fit in with the two kids finding a cave painting story line.

Whatever!

Remember peeps that despite everyones best attempts to apply hard theoretical science to this science fiction franchise that you are all forgetting one important thing... [center][b]Time Dilation does not exist in the Alien/Prometheus universe[/b][/center] ...as evidenced by Aliens: 2179 - Ellen Ripley, upon learning that her daughter Amanda Ripley-McLaren had died 2 years previous cries saying "I promised her I would be home in time for birthday...her 11th birthday." This is rumor control, here are the facts... Amanda Ripley-McLaren died 2177 aged 66, in 2122 (when Alien is set) she would have been 11. The crew of the Nostromo were awoken as they passed through/near the Zeta II Reticuli star system (39 light years from earth), they stated that they were half way home to Earth - meaning their previous destination, Thedus Mining Colony (where Ash replaced their science officer), would be approximately 78-80 light years from Earth. Therefore the crew of the Nostromo would have travelled a return journey of 156-160 light years (if notawoken in the ZIIR system) at, an unknown, FTL speed, which when taking into account the effects of time dilation, would make it impossible for Ripley to return home before her daughters 11th birthday (whichever way you look at it).

In a unique cosmical alignment resulting in a universal raising of the level of consciousness, I will chime in to say- [b]Snorkelbottom[/b] is absolutely right in this instance- there is no time dilation in Aliens. People wizz from star to star, a-la Star Trek/Star Wars/, without the long travels behaving in any essentially different way to your average commute. That is the magic. Take it as it is. "FTL: you want it, they want it, everybody does it; it's ok"

Alien makes no big deal about time, we just accept that they have a way of circumnavigating time dilation etc. It's not important to the story. Aliens gives time a mention but mainly just to get the deceased daughter into the story given the main theme is maternal instincts. Prometheus however gives time (and the related place) several mentions and since every element in a (quality) movie should have a function, it may be that Ridley is trying to tell us something - leave clues. Or just the general idea that time is very important in this film. It is also my theory that the many mistakes in the movie are meant to be in the movie - that Ridley put them there for a reason. And if you have the right theory, those mistakes will be explained. If all the mistakes were just mistakes then it is a poor movie. But I have faith in Ridley.

Nostromo001...thank you for the info lead. I will look into it and I have always wanted to teleport instead of having to drive or fly and spend long hours or days in transport. Can't wait for this technology to actually be available to the public. Snorkelbottom...agreed unless the Nostromo time travelled back in time to stay in keeping with Earth time. That wasn't explained but implied if Ripley could indeed be back on Earth and in keeping with that time. Hawking also discusses how time moves differently in different sectors of space and of course 1 hour moving at light speed equals about a year on Earth. It's purely soft science in these movies but oh well.

i know these are sci-fi movies but i do tend to enjoy better the ones that deal with future possibilities that i can easily beleive in rather than mind bending physics of time-travel time dilation etc it distracts too much from the story to have features that would need explained in the dialogue it wouldnt have as natural a flow leave it for star trek i say.....

of course i'm biased in that i just dont beleive in the possibility of timetravel.......

It's interesting to speculate that there could be a moment in one of the future sequels where some sort of viewing of LV-223 was conducted and they saw the world as it was thousands, even millions of years earlier as the distance the light from that system had to travel before it got here to us. You could imagine there is a scene where-by some sort of recording was made that revealed the planetoid was perhaps thriving and you could see the commerce of inter-galactic space traffic going to-and-from the world, juggernaughts lifting off from the planet and arriving upon it bringing with them new supplies each time. The Engineers woukd be alive perhaps and we could see the events that led up to them all (nearly all) being killed/destroyed and what-not.

Speaking of time travel I would like to see some sort of meeting of the Prometheus remining crew and the crew from Alien. That to me would be a great connection if we are considering any form of time travel. Ripley and Shaw on the same screen at the same time. I could almost imagine a scene from Earth has a David 8 next to prototypes of Ash and other robotic charactors.

Dr Who-metheus? lol ..... please dont!

Dr. Who does not exist in the Indiana world..or at least mine. However i have noticed a few Dr. Who references on threads I recall a TV series called 'Meeting of The minds) whwre people from any era or part of Earths history have a siit down. For that round table I woant David, Dr. Who, RS and a site member to have a great discussion.

I don't know if time travel would fit in Alien universe but, I think that may be better as part of Engineer technology.

Not so much time travel in the litteral sense but certainly as we are currently looking at LV-223 we could see it as it was perhaps many millions of years ago and that is the only theme/link equating to time travel in the observing through the lens of a telescope/telescopic recorder of what things were like as you are observing them now in the current Prometheus time. I guess Time Dilation is the term that can be used.