Time Travel.... a “deterministic reconstruction”
Atoms as the state of the universe- At any moment, the entire universe can be described as the exact position, momentum, and quantum state of every single atom (or more precisely, every particle). That full description is called the state vector in physics.
Reconstructing the past- If you had the perfect map of this state at one moment, and you also knew all the fundamental physical laws, you could in theory “rewind” or “recompute” the universe back to a prior state. In other words, you could rearrange the atoms into the exact same configuration they were in at some earlier time — essentially rebuilding a past moment.That’s kind of like treating reality as a giant simulation: if you load an earlier save file, you’re back in the past.
Freezing a moment- If you could hold every atom in place (prevent all motion, energy transfer, and quantum fluctuations), you’d essentially pause time for that system. Nothing would change, because “change” is just the rearrangement of matter/energy over time.
Forward or altered timelines- By rearranging the atoms into a slightly different past state — say, everything exactly the same except you tilt someone’s hand a millimeter differently — the universe would “run forward” into an alternate version of history. That’s the theoretical mechanism for time manipulation in this framework.
--: if you can rearrange the universe’s atoms into a past (or altered) configuration, you’ve effectively gone back in time.
^. ^
