“TIME” Part 3

In TIME Part 1 we looked at what was time. In TIME Part 2 we looked at how time is perceived. In TIME Part 3 we are going to look at TIME TRAVEL.

Time Travel & Associated issues of cause and effect.

Time Travel – Can it be done?

Well we can see that time moves forward regardless of how we see it.  However, could we go forward or backwards in time.

In one way we are all moving forwards in time. It is happening right now. But, can we jump forwards in time?

When I go to bed, or have a general anaesthetic or if I went into a comma , on awaking, time has passed and I have time travelled in a way.  If I was frozen for 1,000 Years and was revived. For me it would be felt as seconds, but I would have time travelled into the future.

But this is not what we mean by TIME TRAVEL. Will we be able to go forward and backwards through time and be able to return to our time now?

Point of Origin & Real Time

If one person was to travel in time, he(she) would leave this moment and move either forward or backwards in time. They would appear to us, to vanish. However, for the rest of us we carry on as in that moment, and time would continue to tick forward at the same rate.

Even though the individual left our time, for the observers nothing would change. We still cannot see the future or see the past.

Lets call the moment the person left as the “Point of Origin”.

Now as time passes for the observers,  time moves forward and away from the “Point of Origin” which we will call  “Real Time”.

What makes this interesting is that if the person who left comes back after an hour of time travel back to the “Point of Origin”. They have potentially returned to the observers past. This is because “Real Time” would have travelled forward an hour as well.  Time does not freeze.

Selftravel Paradox

Now lets say in the future I was to become a time traveller.  If I want to come back and meet myself. Well, as I have yet to meet myself, does that mean my future self will not time travel. Or is this because as we live in “Real Time” my future self is yet to exist. Therefore when “Real Time” catches up with the future, then I will time travel back to meet myself. Would my now future self gain an instant new memory of that moment.

Time Travellers Paradox

The Time Travellers or grandfather paradox is a paradox of time travel in which inconsistencies emerge through changing the past. The name comes from the paradox’s common description: a person travels to the past and kills their own grandfather before the conception of their father or mother, which prevents the time traveller’s existence. Despite its title, the grandfather paradox does not exclusively regard the contradiction of killing one’s own grandfather to prevent one’s birth. Rather, the paradox regards any action that alters the past, since there is a contradiction whenever the past becomes different from the way it was.

The movie “Butterfly Effect” covers this paradox extremely well.

Observers Paradox

If we look at “Real Time” and say the time traveller goes back 1000 years in time for 24 hours. Real Time moves forward 24 hours as well. The traveller then comes back. Assuming they have not altered history then things will be as normal.

If the Time traveller goes forward 1000 Years. Does this affect “Real Time”. Does the actual act of moving into the future move the “Real Time” marker 1000 years into the future, so on returning to what he considers the “NOW” is actually returning to the past.  If this is the case the traveller may then actually potentially messing with the future, changing future events and their outcomes.

This is an interesting one for the lottery. If you went forward to see the lotto results and then came back. You then put the exact numbers on your ticket. If the lotto was indeed random, would it be possible that the results would be different, or would they be the same.  Or would the actual act of going forward and then back alter the timeline and change the actual future, which may now be the “Real Time”. Food for thought – if everything exists in the “Real Time” travelling forward could actually be blank and consist of nothing, as it has yet to be something?

Changing Real Time Events.

The Novikov self-consistency principle expresses one view on how backwards time travel would be possible without the generation of paradoxes. According to this hypothesis, physics in or near closed time like curves (time machines) can only be consistent with the universal laws of physics, and thus only self-consistent events can occur. Anything a time traveller does in the past must have been part of history all along, and the time traveller can never do anything to prevent the trip back in time from happening, since this would represent an inconsistency. Novikov et al. used the example given by physicist Joseph Polchinski for the grandfather paradox, of a billiard ball heading towards a time machine: the ball’s older self emerges from the time machine and strikes its younger self so its younger self never enters the time machine. Novikov et al. showed how this system can be solved in a self-consistent way which avoids the grandfather paradox, though it creates a causal loop. (Wikipedia)

Seth Lloyd and other researchers at MIT have proposed an expanded version of the Novikov principle, according to which probability bends to prevent paradoxes from occurring. Outcomes would become stranger as one approaches a forbidden act, as the universe must favour improbable events to prevent impossible ones.

The Movie “Twelve Monkeys” covers the “Causal Loop” very well. That the series of events caused by the time traveller created the environment of the future. So regardless of what the traveller did it would ultimately re-cause the future. This is also covered well by Dr Who. Who states that there are small events that be safely changed, but there are big events that should not be altered.

But none of this speaks about if we can travel in time.

Well…. if I could actually answer that, would I be here?

 

But seriously, if time travel was possible, would we know about it?

If you search the internet you can see photos and videos of people that are out of place. Are they real, did they travel, only time will tell.