Right, I get the point that he needed to collide with the particle to CREATE the wormhole. That makes at least science fiction sense. But it doesn't help me to understand why he can travel to where he wants to go without the sphere that Wells needed. I'm assuming that his connection to the speed force allowed him to use the wormhole accurately, but the speed force without the wormhole wasn't enough (and neither was the time-sphere without the wormhole)
Right.
Put more succinctly: The particle acceleration created the wormhole that allowed both Flash and Reverse-Flash to travel in time. Barry used the Speed Force to navigate to where he wanted to go, R-F used the time sphere.
Likely due to Wells/Thawne requiring the constant charge provided by his wheelchair. Without it he was weakened, and even at his full strength after killing Barry's mother he could no longer break the time barrier (hence his plan to allow STAR Labs' particle accelerator to blow up to release the metahuman "energy" across the city to create Flash). So, he planned it all specifically to go home... and it almost worked. I just don't think Wells accounted for or knew about the future Flash warning present Flash off from saving his mom, and Barry watching her die in his arms... that's liable to piss off anyone. Up until Flash came back through the wormhole and destroyed Wells' time machine, Wells plan was working.
Who knows? Perhaps the results of allowing Wells/Thawne to return to the future had apocalyptic-level repercussions, and future Flash somehow knows about that (perhaps through Rip Hunter at some point in the future), thus requiring that future Flash to travel back to the night of his mother's murder to actually allow it to happen and get young Barry out of the house.
I don't know, time travel is confusing but I still love stories involving it.
Well, it's more than that, but yes, I know.
This has all been blown out of proportion, but my initial question was basically getting at this: If the time sphere is basically a ship that navigates the sea of the wormhole, then does Rip Hunter need to create a wormhole every time he uses his time sphere? Does that happen by a speedster colliding with a particle? Or does Rip Hunter's time sphere just go back in time on it's own? And if it does, why did Reverse-Flash need to use the wormhole AND the time sphere?
I imagine that since Rip Hunter is from the future (by a few hundred years, I think), and the scientific possibility being confirmed by present day events in Flash (from an in-universe standpoint), it's not outside the realm of possibility that Hunter and the other time travelers from the future--at least those who aren't fast and can't tap into the Speed Force--have long since conquered time travel and are able to create localized wormholes using intense gravity spheres/electro-magnetics. It's also entirely possible they've explored the time stream enough to navigate it specifically (all implied by the time travel cops Rip belongs to).
So, they may require the use of colliding particles to open wormholes in the future, we don't know. It's also logical that Rip's time sphere, being a product of the future, is far more advanced than the one Cisco built in the present day.
I was basically trying to determine the relationship between the wormhole and the time sphere.
We don't know, honestly. All we can do is draw from what we've seen. I'm assuming it's impossible or dangerous to time travel without some protective shield or force (the Time Sphere or Speed Force)--especially since it requires breaking the laws of time, physics, and relativity. Maybe the Speed Force protects those with it and allows them to time travel without that protective bubble/time machine?
So, like Ice has said, it's sort of a ship. The wormhole is required to time travel, period. The Time Sphere is the ship that allows normal, non-Speed Force-possessing metahumans to travel time? I don't know, just guessing, honestly.
I'm going with the idea that the wormhole was the ocean and the speed force & time sphere are the vehicles (although it's more complicated than that because the speed force also helped create the wormhole). But that still doesn't answer how Rip Hunter can travel through time in his time sphere (unless he has advanced technology from the future that can create wormholes).
You likely nailed it in that last part. It'd be extremely odd if his technology wasn't vastly beyond our present day's, especially given the exponential discovery rate computers and scientific advances allow for on a daily basis. After a few hundred years (we don't know specifically what time period Rip is from originally, least not yet) it only makes sense the ability and tech discovered in the present day by Flash and the STAR Labs team is something that'll be studied extensively over the coming decades/centuries.
It very possibly may be that experimentation and development next season that allows for the crux of many alternate timeline plots or time travel plots in general.
And let's be honest... do you really expect Cisco NOT to explore that avenue of research?
Especially given Wells' revelation that Cisco is also a metahuman, just not with obvious abilities (foreshadowing his eventual transition into Vibe).
...pretty much what Ice said (I really need to start reading all the new posts before replying, it'll save me from repeating what's already been explained).
