A Temporal Paradox is an event generated by Chronospheres.
After you build your first Chronosphere, on your next season change, you will automatically generate a period of negative days (initially 10 days long), which is known as a temporal paradox. Each negative day generated by the temporal paradox has a chance to generate -1, 0, 1, or 2 void (for an average of .5 void per day), but nearly all other resource production will be paused. Engineers will still work, astronomical events will occur as usual, Chrono Furnaces will continue to consume heat, Marker corruption will continue to increase, Leviathans will still count down days to departure, AI cores will still produce gflops and Entanglement Stations will still consume them. The real year will progress normally, so time spent in temporal paradoxes does count toward the Insane Cathammer 40k achievement.
The length of the temporal paradox can be extended through Chronocontrol, and the maximum amount of void gained per day by Void Hoover, both of which are located on the Time tab.
After a temporal paradox has passed you will have to wait for some time before the next one happens. The game will start rolling a 100-sided die, and each time it rolls a number above your current amount of Chronospheres, it will add +1 to a temporal paradox cooldown timer, and then roll again. Rolling will occur until the game rolls a number equal to or lower than your number of Chronospheres. This cooldown timer is the number of season changes you will have to wait until you get your next temporal paradox, which you can find out by entering
game.calendar.futureSeasonTemporalParadox the console in your web browser. The average number of seasons the player will wait decreases logarithmically, so it is good to save up to buy many Chronospheres initially, as a bad luck after your 1st temporal paradox can greatly delay your 2nd temporal paradox.
With n Chronospheres, the average number of seasons between temporal paradoxes is 100/n. Initially, an average of 5 void is generated per temporal paradox, so the average amount of void generated per season is 5/(100/n) or 5n/100. The average void generated increases linearly as the number of chronospheres increases.
Below is a chart of the number of seasons one would wait between temporal paradoxes at different probability levels. Note the variance between the 5th (worst-case) and 95th (best-case) percentiles rapidly narrow toward the 50th ("median").
With n Chronospheres, the pth percentile number of seasons you need to wait is log(p/100) / log(1 - n/100). For example, with 1 Chronosphere, the 5th percentile number of seasons you need to wait is log(5/100) / log(1 - 1/100) = 298.07. The number of seasons you will wait has median approximately 69/n and mean 100/n.
Note: Shattering time crystals will not count as changing seasons.
Note 2: You have to wait until the end of the current season before the next paradox can occur, even if the timer is 0.
| Chronospheres | ... | Seasons Before Next Paradox | ... | Average |
| ... | 5th Percentile | 50th Percentile | 95th Percentile | Void/Season |
| 1 | 298 | 69 | 5 | .05 |
| 2 | 148 | 34 | 3 | .10 |
| 3 | 98 | 23 | 2 | .15 |
| 4 | 73 | 17 | 1 | .20 |
| 5 | 58 | 14 | 1 | .25 |
| 6 | 48 | 11 | 1 | .30 |
| 7 | 41 | 10 | 1 | .35 |
| 8 | 36 | 8 | 1 | .40 |
| 9 | 32 | 7 | 1 | .45 |
| 10 | 28 | 7 | 0 | .50 |
| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
| 25 | 10 | 2 | 0 | 1.25 |
| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
| 38 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 1.90 |
| ... | ... | ... | ... | ... |
| 76 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3.80 |
For ease of planning, here are total costs for target numbers of chronospheres (rounded up to 1 or 2 digits):
| Chronospheres | Unobtainium | Science | Time Crystal | Blueprint |
| 5 | 18K | 2M | 7 | 700 |
| 10 | 55K | 6M | 22 | 2,200 |
| 25 | 670K | 67M | 270 | 27,000 |
| 38 | 5,000K | 500M | 2000 | 200,000 |
The cost in time crystals per Chronocontrol increases very quickly due to needing flux, whose storage can only be increased with Temporal Batteries, which themselves increase exponentially in cost. The total number of time crystals needed to get to a certain number of Chronocontrols (including the TC cost of the Chronocontrols themselves) is given by the table below.
| Chronocontrols | Flux Required | Batteries Needed | Total TC cost |
| 1 | 3000 | 0 | 30 |
| 2 | 3750 | 1 | 72.5 |
| 3 | 4687.5 | 3 | 133.44 |
| 4 | 5859.38 | 4 | 201.80 |
| 5 | 7324.22 | 6 | 302.50 |
| 6 | 9155.27 | 9 | 466.78 |
| 7 | 11,444.09 | 12 | 723.24 |
| 8 | 14,305.11 | 16 | 1285.80 |
| 9 | 17,881.39 | 20 | 2488.79 |
| 10 | 22,351.74 | 26 | 7595.03 |
| 11 | 27,939.68 | 34 | 40.70K |
| 12 | 34,924.60 | 43 | 295.48K |
| 13 | 43,655.75 | 55 | 4.28M |
| 14 | 54,569.68 | 69 | 97.24M |
| 15 | 68,212.10 | 87 | 5.40G |
| 16 | 85,265.13 | 110 | 914.39G |
| 17 | 106,581.41 | 139 | 590.91T |
| 18 | 133,226.76 | 174 | 1.46E |
| 19 | 166,533.45 | 219 | 33.44Z |
| 20 | 208,166.82 | 274 | 7151.11U |