u/Hazel_Watson1979

so, based on my understanding of the atp, the sequence would be somewhat like this had the project worked:

• the nomai fire up the sun station, causing the sun to go supernova
• this powers up the ash twin project and sends a signal 22 minutes back in time to the OTC to fire the probe in a random direction
• 22 minutes after the probe is fired, the sun goes supernova and the atp gets enough power to send a signal 22 minutes back in time to the OTC to fire a probe in another randomized direction
• all of this is repeated until the probe finds the eye of the universe (the loop would then be shut down by the nomai and they would never need to press the button to make the sun go supernova (how were they planning on doing that, anyways?? maybe i havent explored the sun station properly, but i didnt really see a button or anything that would fire at the sun)

my confusion with this:

• lets say the nomai make the sun go supernova at time x. so, at time x, the ash twin project is powered up and sends a signal back 22 minutes to the OPC to fire a probe in a randomized direction
• therefore, at time x-22 minutes, a probe is shot out of the OPC. the data that this probe collects is stored in that memory statue
• 22 minutes after the probe is shot, the sun goes supernova, and we're back to time x, where the atp got powered up the first time and sent off a probe in the random direction. the only difference now is that we have the data from the probe that we already shot out.
• we know that they fired roughly 9.3 million probes
• so, for any given probe when the sun explodes at time x, the probe is fired at time x-22. this would mean that all of the probes have already been fired and their data has already been received 22 minutes before the ash twin project was even activated?
• also, since all of the probes were essentially fired at the same time (x-22 minutes), would there be 9.3 million probes outside giant's deep at x-22 minutes?? this doesnt make sense at all because that would break the fabric of spacetime because how can 9.3 million probes exist at the space time, but they ahve to, because theyre being fired at a specific time
• also, about the sun station. the nomai would get the data from the probes as soon as the memory statues were powered up (im assuming they relied on the atp for that power also), so they connect their brain to a memory statue, switch on the sun station, have the sun go supernova which powers the atc -> sends signal 22 minutes back in time for OPC to launch another probe, send their memories 22 minutes back in time
• also, how is it that the hatchling just happened to pair with the statue one the iteration of the loop that the eye was found??

i know my questions are super stupid but im very very sleepy and i just need to know how to go about my way thinking of the loop. i would appreciate it if nobody gave any spoilers about the dlc, main game spoilers are fine because ive completed it. thanks for reading!