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Toward a Formal Foundation for Time Travel in Stories and Games

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Theory and Practice of Formal Methods

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9660))

Abstract

Time-travel is a popular topic not only in science fiction, but in physics as well, especially when it concerns the notion of “changing the past”. It turns out that if time-travel exists, it will follow certain logical rules. In this paper we apply the tools of discrete mathematics to two such sets of rules from theoretical physics: the Novikov Self Consistency Principle and the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics. Using temporal logic, we can encode the dynamics of a time-travel story or game, and model-check them for adherence to the rules. We also present the first ever game-engine following these rules, allowing the development of technically accurate time-travel games.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The authors are fairly confident in drawing these parallels, but it has to be noted that neither has a background in theoretical physics.

  2. 2.

    injective: each state has at most one predecessor, i.e., timelines do not merge.

  3. 3.

    (partial) function: each state has at most one successor, i.e., timelines do not branch.

  4. 4.

    http://www.github.com/mhelvens/time-traveler.

  5. 5.

    http://mhelvens.github.io/time-traveler.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universiteit Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Michiel Helvensteijn & Farhad Arbab

  2. University College London, London, UK

    Michiel Helvensteijn

  3. Centrum voor Wiskunde En Informatica, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Farhad Arbab

Authors
  1. Michiel Helvensteijn
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  2. Farhad Arbab
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michiel Helvensteijn .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Informatik 2, RWTH Aachen University Informatik 2, Aachen, Germany

    Erika Ábrahám

  2. Leiden University , Leiden, The Netherlands

    Marcello Bonsangue

  3. University of Oslo , Oslo, Norway

    Einar Broch Johnsen

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Helvensteijn, M., Arbab, F. (2016). Toward a Formal Foundation for Time Travel in Stories and Games. In: Ábrahám, E., Bonsangue, M., Johnsen, E. (eds) Theory and Practice of Formal Methods. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9660. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30734-3_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30734-3_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-30733-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-30734-3

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