Is rebuilding scenes based on evidence a form of time travel

[Demyan The Devil]

I ask because one is building a picture of what happened in the past based on their findings. So they'd know where people have been, what they were doing etc.

[Ask Jappleack]

it could feel similar to it, but ultimately no.

[PUSS KING]

Yes, of course.

[Vannak]

It's really more a form of simulation. It's not exactly time travel unless you literally can find all the particles in area around us (the whole planet would be "sufficient" wink . Then you can do a time reversal on a particle simulator and figure out what happened (and everywhere else on earth, incidentally). If you could some how scan all the particles on earth and use a good particle simulator, you could get a good history of the earth (though there would be quite a few errors as you go back further and would require a godly like quantum computer that would, at least, need to be the mass of the earth as well.)

On small scales this is plausible. For instance, if you had a body of water that was filled with devices that measure the waves as they pass by, you could use that to reverse the time direction of those waves and literally make the waves that were caused by, say, a body falling into the water, evidence being dumped, etc, you could figure out the exact size and mass of anything dropped in, and where and when it happened. So that's cool.

Incidentally this is more or less exactly the principle particle colliers use.

[Cogent Dream]

That's like saying looking at a picture of the Eiffel Tower is the same as visiting Paris.