Probably something like the Jeremy Bearimy.
Just like the first time over and over.
Space and time or inseparable, and we are inseparable from space and time.
Which is saying, if time is a knot we are part of that or knot, just like everything else and would have no idea that we are in it.
You don’t think if time bent on itself you might be able to see events from before or after happening out of sequence around you?
Physics seems to be very protective of causality. We don’t know the underlying mechanism, but it pops up in multiple areas of physics. The speed of light being the most blatant example.
We can see events happening, apparently put of sequence. What we can’t do is interfere with them.
I doubt the term “time tangled in knots” is sufficiently well-defined for any reasonable answer. At least in terms of real-world physics.
If you’re talking about scifi technobabble time tied in knots, my answer is “Looper.”
a knot is still a thread. It can still proceed as normal.
Also, tangled knots happen in space. What kind of space can time get tangled within?
Also, tangled knots happen in space. What kind of space can time get tangled within?
Now that’s another fun question! It also makes me wonder, how would space behave in tangly time?
Would the space in which time gets tangled be primarily around extreme phenomena like black holes, or the very beginnings of the universe (or a universe, if one wants to get into multiverse angles)?
You can think of space-time as a 4D object. If it’s a flat plane (more correctly, a hyperplane), it could be infinitely big. If it’s s sphere or a torus, it would be finite. It could also be an infinitely long pipe.
Either way, the shape doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth. A plane can have wrinkles, where two points touch. Likewise, a pipe can have knots and bends. All of this would happen in 4D space, so our 3D brains can’t really visualize any of it.
Imagine that humans traveling through time are like ants walking along a thread. If there’s a tangled mess of knots and chaos, the ants could walk all over the place. If the thread is not in contact at any place, the ants would be left with no choice but to keep on going in one direction.
Knots would serve as time traveling points where you can freely jump from one part of the timeline to another. Depending on how tangled the thread is, there could be multiple time jump opportunities.
I don’t think it makes sense to be walking on top of a thread of time, as if we are separate from time. Our being is inseparable from the thread of time. The fibers in the fabric are our experience, we are the fibers, and we still travel through a one-directional thread, no matter how tangled.
This allegory fails when you start thinking about it a bit more. The point is, that knots and tangles should provide moments when time travel could be possible, but only to a specific point in time. If there are no knots, there is no time travel.
Well at least, that’s the way I like to think of it if I end up writing a sci-fi book about time travel. Who knows how that would work in real life.
