Editing Temporal Mechanics (section)

==Concepts==

'''Temporal Prime Directive:''' Starfleet General Order T.01. Forbids Starfleet officers from purposefully making contact with the past or future. Officers are also to prevent or minimize damage to the timeline if such contact does occur. 
 
'''Grandfather Paradox:''' One of the most well-known temporal paradoxes, it occurs when one travels into the past and kills their own ancestor. Effectively, the individual committing the murder eliminated himself before he even existed. Once his grandfather died, the murderer was not born, and therefore could not commit the murder in the first place.
 
'''The Predestination Paradox :''' Simply stated, this is the theory of "Effect before Cause." It is the inverse of the Grandfather Paradox. It suggests that an individual could travel into the past and cause an event which would eventually cause that person to travel back in time.  This theory can get confusing when one considers that if one does not perform the cause, they create an entirely different timeline.
 
'''The Oscillation Theory:''' In this extension of the grandfather paradox, time somehow "loops" between two inherently different realities. Reality "reverts" from a possibly unstable timeline, for instance: the fact that the grandfather was killed by a person who does not exist. This instability causes an "oscillation" between the two (or more) timelines.
 
'''Protection Theory:''' Numerous incidents have suggested that a person who travels through time is somehow protected from the effects of any changes in the timeline. Federation scientists have yet to provide conclusive proof that some protection exists, but many officers who have traveled through time claim that they would notice any differences as soon as they returned to their own time.
 
'''Causality Loop:''' A state in which an individual continually repeats the same series of actions into infinity. Most causality loops are caused by the Predestination Paradox, where the Event 2 causes Event 1 in the past, which in turn causes Event 2
 
'''The Doubling Theory:''' Based on Dr. Richard Feynman's "sum over histories" theory, it states that for each event, every possible effect that can occur, does occur. Therefore, any "change" in the timeline is merely a shift between alternate realities.
 
'''The Butterfly Effect:''' The idea that a small change at one point can have a great effect on a distant point. This concept is especially important for a person who is in the past, where he could, in theory, alter the timeline through his very presence in that time. A hypothetical example:''' an officer in the past briefly stops a man to ask for directions. This brief stop prevents that man from bumping into the woman he would eventually marry. Therefore, their child, who would have grown up to become James Kirk, one of the most important figures of Starfleet history, was never born.
 
'''Light speed Breakaway Factor:''' Also known as the "slingshot effect." A vessel can travel backwards or forwards through time by using the intense gravity of a stellar mass to accelerate into a time-warp.