Blinovitch Limitation Effect

The Blinovitch Limitation Effect is a fictional principle of time travel physics in the universe of the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.

It is usually understood as having two aspects: firstly, that a time traveller cannot "redo" an act that he has previously committed, and secondly, that a dangerous energy discharge will result if two temporal versions of the same person come into contact. The first aspect is similar to a real-world physics conjecture, the Novikov self-consistency principle.

How the Blinovitch Limitation Effect works has never been made clear by any of the television programme's production teams. It remains a convenient plot device rather than an attempt to rationalise time travel in the Doctor Who universe.

Read more about Blinovitch Limitation Effect:  The Original Series, Theories, The New Series, Popular Culture

Famous quotes containing the words limitation and/or effect:

    ...to many a mother’s heart has come the disappointment of a loss of power, a limitation of influence when early manhood takes the boy from the home, or when even before that time, in school, or where he touches the great world and begins to be bewildered with its controversies, trade and economics and politics make their imprint even while his lips are dewy with his mother’s kiss.
    J. Ellen Foster (1840–1910)

    Let’s take the instant by the forward top;
    For we are old, and on our quick’st decrees
    Th’ inaudible and noiseless foot of time
    Steals ere we can effect them.
    William Shakespeare (1564–1616)