Post by Lady Serenity on Feb 17, 2009 13:31:17 GMT -5
Many people have asked this question to the point of having many different definitions for it. But no one really knows which definition is the right one. Many arguments and debates have been developed on the matter and no one can come up with a compromise. I hope by the time this document is complete, you may have an understanding to what Alternate Reality is.
I have done much research and spoken to many people on this topic and it all leads to the same conclusion on what Alternate Reality is all about.
What is Alternate Reality?
In basic terms Alternate Reality (AR) is a timeline where is slightly altered from the original setting. It is a self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own.
Are there any other names for Alternate Reality?
Yes. Alternate Reality is depicted as actually being called Parallel Universe but the two terms mean the same thing. Often, a parallel universe is talked about in terms of a ‘Parallel Earth’ or ‘multiverse’.
What is a Parallel Universe?
Parallel Universes has been stapled as science fiction and fantasy in quantum physics theories. How this universe works is by when an alternate choice was made, results in the creation of another universe. A parallel universe is occasionally referred as an alternate reality though the term typically refers to a reality related to our own but different in small ways or a universe that has similar history but a recent point of difference.
Parallel universes may also describe realities vastly different from our own so as to be completely unrecognizable which, naturally, makes "alternate reality" an unreliable description. These alternative dimensions, as they are sometimes called, might have different laws of physics. Those dimensions are known as Alternate Universe.
A parallel Earth is sometimes said to take up the same space as ours, but exists in another dimension. A consequence for individuals from a parallel universe crossing over into our own was created in Stargate SG-1. After crossing over into our universe, parallel characters with living counterparts experienced entropic cascade failure, as a result of two copies of the same object attempting to occupy the same space.
What is a Multiverse?
In Science Fiction, it has been theorized that there are an infinite number of parallel universes and they all exist in the same time but different dimensions. Operating from this theory, there is the discussion of the "multiverse", being the existence of the sum of all parallel universes that there are. When something affects the multiverse, it affects all dimensions at a particular place in space.
What causes a Parallel Universe (aka Alternate Reality)?
Sometimes the divergence is a key historical event. Perhaps in one parallel universe, what if the World Trade Center wasn’t destroyed, the author can explore what our world might have been like if this had happened. In the TV series Sliders (1995) the characters would "slide" to different time lines of Earth where history had gone differently or culture had evolved differently.
Sometimes parallel universes are revealed as being created through a time travel paradox. For example, if you went back to a time before your parents were born and murdered your grandmother, you would create a parallel universe where you never existed. Since you need to have existed to have killed her, so that would mean your world might continue to exist, but now there will be a new world created where you were never born and said to run parallel to yours true existence.
It works the same as those who create a new storyline to the original storyline of a book/ TV show/ Movie/ Cartoon/ Anime. If one took a moment in time where a character dies and he/she was your favorite character and you made it so that person would live, that’s branching from the original idea, thus giving it an Altered Time Line where events now change.
All info came from...
scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/Alternate_reality and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_universe_(fiction)
I have done much research and spoken to many people on this topic and it all leads to the same conclusion on what Alternate Reality is all about.
What is Alternate Reality?
In basic terms Alternate Reality (AR) is a timeline where is slightly altered from the original setting. It is a self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own.
Are there any other names for Alternate Reality?
Yes. Alternate Reality is depicted as actually being called Parallel Universe but the two terms mean the same thing. Often, a parallel universe is talked about in terms of a ‘Parallel Earth’ or ‘multiverse’.
What is a Parallel Universe?
Parallel Universes has been stapled as science fiction and fantasy in quantum physics theories. How this universe works is by when an alternate choice was made, results in the creation of another universe. A parallel universe is occasionally referred as an alternate reality though the term typically refers to a reality related to our own but different in small ways or a universe that has similar history but a recent point of difference.
Parallel universes may also describe realities vastly different from our own so as to be completely unrecognizable which, naturally, makes "alternate reality" an unreliable description. These alternative dimensions, as they are sometimes called, might have different laws of physics. Those dimensions are known as Alternate Universe.
A parallel Earth is sometimes said to take up the same space as ours, but exists in another dimension. A consequence for individuals from a parallel universe crossing over into our own was created in Stargate SG-1. After crossing over into our universe, parallel characters with living counterparts experienced entropic cascade failure, as a result of two copies of the same object attempting to occupy the same space.
What is a Multiverse?
In Science Fiction, it has been theorized that there are an infinite number of parallel universes and they all exist in the same time but different dimensions. Operating from this theory, there is the discussion of the "multiverse", being the existence of the sum of all parallel universes that there are. When something affects the multiverse, it affects all dimensions at a particular place in space.
What causes a Parallel Universe (aka Alternate Reality)?
Sometimes the divergence is a key historical event. Perhaps in one parallel universe, what if the World Trade Center wasn’t destroyed, the author can explore what our world might have been like if this had happened. In the TV series Sliders (1995) the characters would "slide" to different time lines of Earth where history had gone differently or culture had evolved differently.
Sometimes parallel universes are revealed as being created through a time travel paradox. For example, if you went back to a time before your parents were born and murdered your grandmother, you would create a parallel universe where you never existed. Since you need to have existed to have killed her, so that would mean your world might continue to exist, but now there will be a new world created where you were never born and said to run parallel to yours true existence.
It works the same as those who create a new storyline to the original storyline of a book/ TV show/ Movie/ Cartoon/ Anime. If one took a moment in time where a character dies and he/she was your favorite character and you made it so that person would live, that’s branching from the original idea, thus giving it an Altered Time Line where events now change.
All info came from...
scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/Alternate_reality and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_universe_(fiction)
