Is time something the engineers were able to manipulate?

Don Digimon Farrakhan Magic Juan

Im familiar with the theory and probability of the 2 warring factions of engineers, but the timeline in my opinion leaves a huge unexplained gap. The opening of Prometheus shows the Engii's apparently seeding life on Earth as far as I know, we next see them wiped out on LV422 or whichever moon it is.

We learn that whatever happened occurred about 2000 years ago which gives some validity to the Space Jesus theory. I personally dismiss that one as Engii's seeking revenge for SJ/JC who preached love and "died for humanity" doesn't make sense. That being said, the time between the seeding of life on earth and the catastrophe on LV422 2000 years ago would be massive. at least 100,000 years or more if its just human life were talking about.

Would time travel give the so called good Engii's the ability to both seed earth and more importantly the knowledge of when the bad Engii's were about to attack earth allowing them to strike just before that happens and cause whatever event that led to their demise and failure?

What do you guys think? What else explains the massive gaps in time? or the unexpected attack on the facility? 

Blackwinter-witch

They may be VERY long lived, or there could have been a Long Term Project handed down from generation to generation.
Also, there's absolutely no Canon info stating it was Earth that was being seeded at the opening of PROMETHEUS.

However, Relativistic travel would allow a 'sorta' time travel aspect for the same engineers to have been around x-many-millions-of-years ago and also be around to get killed only 2000 years ago.

Babylonxeno

Doesnt time get quicker the further away you travel? If they can travel faster than light then perhaps when they seed a planet, the time gap for them is days or weeks and the seeded planet has gone through millenia.

Blackwinter-witch

Babylonxeno

Relativistics is the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower time passes for you, but remains normal for anyone not with you. So, yeah, as you say, for them it's days or weeks, but in Real Time, it's been say, 6 million years. When you're really close to the speed of light, Time Dilation as it's called can reach levels where every minute for you equals a million years for everyone else.

Ranting Xeno

This will perhaps be an unpopular opinion but I'll give it anyway.

I think time travel will cheapen the movie, and the franchise. I'd like to see it avoided.

I have nothing against flashbacks to show what happened in the past, in fact they work well! The David going bat **** crazy and wiping out an entire civilization flashback, for example, is just dripping awesome!

With the exception of Primer (which was brilliant, with a budget akin to a weekly grocery shop lol), Back to The Future (classic) and perhaps that mental Spanish movie Timecrimes; all other time travel movies have sucked.

Even BTTF 2 was contrived and just shoehorned in excessive and nonsensical time travel. Star Trek, meh. And don't get me started on **** like Source Code and Groundhog Day; not technically "time travel" per se, but time is altered so they go in the same bucket.

I feel time travel, as a plot device, is a gimmick that such an incredible creature, universe, and story arc does not need. Furthermore, I think it would be a mistake.

So yeah; in summation...flashbacks, cool. Altering movie narrative, prequal/sequel switch, great. Ham fistedly cramming in time travel? That'd be a damn sin.

Just my opinion, though.

Take care folks,

RX

Blackwinter-witch

Ranting Xeno

Time travel in the ALIENverse, you'll find me and a lot of others who feel the same as you do, and do NOT wish to see it in the ALIENverse. So, don't worry. :)

If the Engineers say didn't have hyperdrive and plans their projects around using Time Dilation effects due to Relativistic Physics of near-lightspeed travel, that's fine, as it doesn't violate the universe, and in a way seems to 'fit' them, I think.

SpiteHouse

I liked 12 Monkeys' take on time travel (and the predestination paradox) as well. And Donnie Darko's idiosyncratic approach.

But I agree time travel is usually handled poorly in films.

I thought Interstellar handled time dilation interestingly.

Blackwinter-witch

SpiteHouse

Time Travel is fine in say, Star Trek, Interstellar did a pretty decent job of sorta time-travel and Relativistics, but ALIENverse...not the place for Time Travel, it'd kill the 'feel'.

and frankly Time Travel makes my head hurt. :)

Necronom IV

If they can manipulate gravity in order to break the light speed barrier (which they should be able to given they are all over the galaxy and/or the universe seeding worlds so on and so forth), then they also would have the ability to somewhat manipulate time also, as time and space is interconnected. Let's say they want to travel to a far distant place, say LV-223 to earth. By utilising their gravity propulsion, they could bend the spacetime and bring the desired destination to the ship. Once they turn off the gravity drive, the bend in spacetime instantaneously skips back to it it's original position (imagine a rubber band) taking the ship with it. With having the capability to manipulate gravity it can also be used to distort time as gravity clearly affects time and space. This occur naturally in the vicinity of massive objects.

Blackwinter-witch

In Canon, nothing has ever been said about how the FtL systems on Human and presumably Engineer and other starships operates, so we can rule out a gravity-drive, for that reason as well as the energy-mass required to generate a grav field powerful enough to usefully alter time...which is on the scale of a Black Hole/Collapsar. So, the Higher Powers being able to affect a planet with Grav-tech, sure...Temporal Alteration, extremely unlikely.

What you described is a 'wormhole' based drive system, essentially, akin to the Jump drives seen in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. The universe won't allow you to 'bend' space to that degree, as in the middle point you end up with a Collapsar, so again, you need an insane energy-mass, but a wormhole offers the same effect and is more economical of energy, especially as it only needs to be open for less than a nanosecond.

Recent studies in the nature of time have shown that while it's Theoretically possible to time travel, it's not actually possible to do so. 1; You need an energy mass greater than that of the entire universe. 2; such an energy mass will guarantee a failure in 'side-stepping' as a wormhole or collapsar. 3; with the 'side-step' you might well end up in an Alternate Universe predicted to exist mathematically.

BUT, the ALL COVERING RULE is: It's up to Fox and R. Scott, physics be damned. :D

Ranting Xeno

Lol! Good point, well put.

I have faith that Ridley will remain true to his vision (or my interpretation of his vision), and keep these movies gimmick free and outstanding :)

Calpamos

I think faster than light travel like interstellar is a possibility to happen.  I think it might happen that there would be someone from the prometheus timeline intercept Ripley's timeline.  Engineer tech, etc.

Lone

Interesting replies peeps!

I made a thread a while back about the Derelict, Juggernaut and Seed Ship from the prologue. In it I asked if they were built or grown.

In the replies we got onto how they are powered and how they travel. The Seed ship or Noobernaut [as Major Noob/Aorta christened it] was one peculiar ship. It changed shape and orientation each glimpse we had of it.

Major Noob/Aorta suggested that it's method of travel was to dematerialise. I loved that concept. Think of it then instantly rematerialising at it's end destination, via some funky space-bending, mind-meld shena****ns!

Don Digimon Farrakhan Magic Juan

Im not at all hoping time travel gets thrown into the movie, and would be shocked if it was. However even within the thread of ideas and explanations so far, I don't think anything explains the massive gaps of time, or at least in a way that fits into the galaxy we've been shown thus far. It took Prometheus 2 years years to get from earth to LV 234567 and they were using FTL travel weren't they? The only problem I have with time dilation in this regard is the motive. I mean, in order to cover the amount of time that elapsed between the seeding and the mission, the ones seeding must have come from the other side of the universe, which seems oddly impractical considering the amount of planets  we know to exist within the habitable zone right in our own system today. It just seems like everything is happening relatively close to earth. Too close for time dilation to explain the gap. Maybe its just going to be explained in one of the other movies.  

Don Digimon Farrakhan Magic Juan

Im not at all hoping time travel gets thrown into the movie, and would be shocked if it was. However even within the thread of ideas and explanations so far, I don't think anything explains the massive gaps of time, or at least in a way that fits into the galaxy we've been shown thus far. It took Prometheus 2 years years to get from earth to LV 234567 and they were using FTL travel weren't they? The only problem I have with time dilation in this regard is the motive. I mean, in order to cover the amount of time that elapsed between the seeding and the mission, the ones seeding must have come from the other side of the universe, which seems oddly impractical considering the amount of planets  we know to exist within the habitable zone right in our own system today. It just seems like everything is happening relatively close to earth. Too close for time dilation to explain the gap. Maybe its just going to be explained in one of the other movies.  

Blackwinter-witch

Ranting Xeno

Likewise, I trust R. Scott, and even though PROMETHEUS wasn't what we were all hoping for, it did manage to keep as well as possible to the 'feel' of the ALIENverse.

Blackwinter-witch

Don Digimon Farrakhan Magic Juan

Faster than light can still mean long travel times.

EG: at 365 time the speed of light, it'd still take you approximately 4 days and a bit to reach the nearest star system, Proxima Centauri. Thus, it all depends on how fast the FtL is. Nostromo needed 10 months to get to Earth from LV-426 in the Zeta II Reticuli system, as another example.

The Engineers, as we know from PROMETHEUS had many, many destinations in the navigational system when David was studying it. Now, assuming they have hyperdrive, they still might choose to use Relarivistic ships as some of them might wish to say seed a world and still be around x-many-millions-years-later to observe the results first-hand. Perhaps some of them are dictated to do so? We know very little of Engineer customs, culture and society.

As always, we will have to wait as R. Scott slowly reveals the mysteries, horrors and wonders to us. :)

Don Digimon Farrakhan Magic Juan

Fair enough =]

I just hope he doesn't do it with one line of glossed over expository dialogue 2 films down the road out of the mouth of the latest Weyland Yutani upgrade of the David /Walter series. "Ash the beta version"

Blackwinter-witch

Don Digimon Farrakhan Magic Juan

No...I don't think there's any worry about that. I've been following interviews with him, and the cast and examining what's known of the plans for a string of movies after this one, and there's an enormous amount of work being done.

SO, I would say we can Trust in The Ridley. :)

That, and I KNOW the cast (and they've been intimately involved in this film's details) are creeped out, spooked and some are having nightmares.
Also, pre-preduction on the following movie has been in progress for at least a few weeks now. ;)

Necronom IV

Here some curiosa from the world of ufology :) I do think when making Prometheus they did some investigation in ufo lore. For example in the beginning when the gargantuan disc shaped craft departs, it tilts on it's side getting ready to depart. Do not know if you are familiair with Bob Lazar who claimed to have been working for the govt out in Area 51/S4 where they housed nine discs. Anyway acc to him all nine discs had the basically the same method of propulsion (like cars have basically combustion engines) in that they could manipulate gravity by the use of 3 gravity amplifiers located on the bottom side of the disc. I am not going to go all in on details, but when travelling large distances the disc travels with its belly first as the amplifiers must point in the direction they're heading - thus the disc tilts on its side.

Blackwinter-witch

Necronom IV

Well, speaking only for myself, I do stay up on Ancient Astronaut theory, Ancient Aliens, etc., etc., as it all serves to be wonderful raw material for my mental story-mill.

As for posigrav/antigrav sciences...I know hubby stays up on the latest in theoretical research and such, and has friends in assorted interesting labs. :) I can ask him, especially regarding the Higgs-Boson field theories and applications of such.