The Problems of Time Travel

As I See the Problems of Time Travel

  First of all, is it even possible? Well, we seem to be traveling forward in time as we speak. So going from the present to the future is happening all the, well, …time. The operative words in that sentence are “seem to be”, and a whole philosophical discussion can proceed from there. But for our purposes, let’s just say that we are moving in a singular direction from present to future as we go about our daily lives. I will try to avoid, at least for the most part and for the sake of this discussion, the whole consciousness/persistent illusion aspect of reality that Einstein alluded to. So far, none of us knows how to turn this about and go back from whence we came, otherwise, you wouldn't find too many old people (or me) around.

  So, according to what we know today and what is possible according to Einstein’s theories, time travel might be possible but in one direction only. And that would be only from the here and now to the future. It would be a one way trip. To do so would require a lot of energy and travelling very fast. Caution: this sort of time travel should only be taken advantage of to avoid impending doom or unsavory present day circumstances; because everything and everyone you know and love will be dead and gone by the “time” you get to the end of your journey.

  Now let’s look at a somewhat misleading word in the whole time travel scenario. The word “travel” implies that you have to go somewhere…move from point A to point B. But we all know that I can just sit here going nowhere and stare at this screen, and, low and behold, the hands on the clock have moved whereas I haven’t. So to “travel” through time does not necessarily imply that motion is required. So the old adage, “Time waits for no man,” seems to apply. That would then imply that time is somehow this outside separate force of nature that moves on relentlessly whether we like it or not. But is it really? Is it something palpable like water flowing through a pipe, or electricity flowing through a wire? Is time flowing through the matter and plasma of the universe like some unstoppable river? In other words, when we say things like “space-time” what are we really saying?

  In the quantum physics realm these days the boundaries of the physical world are becoming more and more blurred. Matter itself is no longer seen as some solid particles that bounce around like billiard balls. Instead a sort of shadowy realm of infinite possibilities exists and only manifest into what we call reality when an observer is present. So if matter is only potential reality, what then is space? We usually think of space as all that emptiness in between the hard stuff (matter). But then what is this emptiness? The ancients used to call it the ether but that notion has pretty much fallen to the wayside. Now scientists are talking about dark matter and dark energy even though the only sign of it is that one of their pet theories doesn't seem to work without it. Space. Emptiness. Nothing. How can this nothing only sparsely populated by more ephemeral nothingness be wrapped up in another flowing invisible force we call time?

  My point here is that if all this outward stuff that we call the universe really only exist within our own perceptions, then perhaps time, too, is just a persistent illusion. So then, how do you travel through an illusion? It would seem, therefore, the only real way to travel through time would be somehow to remove your conscious perceptions from the here and now to somewhere else in the continuum. Not likely that this is possible. This sort of time travel however is free from the paradoxes created in sci-fi imagined time travel at least. It would be more like taking a light source and lighting up a particular piece of a long movie film strip. You might be able to be a witness to that part of the film and experience the illusion of time passing as you moved your consciousness from frame to frame. But you would not be able to alter the outcome of the film in any way. (Therein lays another whole discussion about predestination.)

  So will we ever be able to invent a time machine and, like H. G. Wells’ character, get in it and just go else-when?  I’m going with Stephen Hawking on this one. If we could, then we probably would have already been visited by many such time travelers (maybe even our own future selves) from the future just like Bill and Ted in their excellent adventure. But in spite of all this, I still love a good sci-fi time travel story.