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Is Time Travel Really Possible?

 Copyright © October 7, 2020 by Robert Wayne Atkins, P.E.
All Rights Reserved.

Introduction

People respond to new information in a variety of different ways, such as:
  1. Some people are very, very trusting and they believe almost everything they hear and read.

  2. Some people are extremely cautious and they only believe things that they have actually seen, touched, and personally experienced.

  3. Some people believe anything that is in alignment with what they personally wish to believe without any regard to whether or not it is actually true. And these people will reject anything they do not wish to believe simply because they do not wish to believe it and it doesn't matter whether it is true or false.

  4. Some people are relatively objective, unbiased, and open minded and they carefully examine the things they hear and read, and they carefully weigh all the facts, both pro and con, before they make a decision on the reliability of the information they are evaluating.
This article is being written primarily for the fourth group of people above.

The purpose of this short article is not to prove or disprove the feasibility of time travel.

Instead the purpose of this short article is to briefly examine some of the basic fundamental precepts of time travel.

Discussion

Space Phone Science fiction literature and science fiction movies that are based on time travel will generally depict a person, or a group of people, being transported through time to a specific (or approximate) location and the people are able to retain their memories, age, and health in whatever time and location they are transported to.

Let's briefly consider some of these fundamental time travel concepts.
  1. Age and Health: When a person reaches their destination in time, the person is at the same age as when they began their journey across time. The problem is that this assumes that a person's age and health is not influenced in any way by a trip through time.

  2. Memory: When a person reaches their destination in time, the person has all the memories they had when they began their journey across time. Since the future has not yet happened then the person will be remembering things that have not yet happened. As long as the past is not changed in any way then this may not be a problem. But if the past is changed significantly then the things the person remembers will never happen and if the events never happen then is it possible for those memories to continue to exist in the mind of the time traveler?

  3. Changing the Past: If the past is changed then time travel may not be invented when the time traveler's original future arrives and if that happens then the person would not be able to travel into the past and this would cause problems with the past and with the future because the time traveler would not able to change the past in the way that the past was changed. If the past is changed and if this results in time travel being invented sooner than before then someone else may travel back in time and alter the past in such a way that the first time traveler may never be born and if that happens then the time traveler could not have traveled into the past. The number of paradoxes increases exponentially the further back in time that a person is theoretically transported.

  4. Location: In order for a time traveler to transport through time then it will be necessary to specify an exact destination and an exact time. Science fiction attempts to simplify this issue by having the time traveler only move through time but remain in the same exact starting location. The problem with this is that the starting location is not stationary but it is constantly moving through space. The earth is making one complete revolution on its axis every 24 hours. A single spot on the earth's equator is therefore moving a little more than 1,000 miles per hour (or more than 1,600 km per hour). The earth is also in orbit around the sun and the earth is moving at about 67,000 miles per hour (107,000 km per hour) around the sun. And the sun is moving at approximately 448,000 miles per hour (720,000 km per hour) through space. Therefore a single spot anywhere on the earth moves more than 124 miles through space away from its previous spot every second and this movement is not in a straight line. This is not obvious to us because of the earth's gravity and atmosphere. (Note: Solar flares and other natural phenomena cause very minor random fluctuations in these variables continuously. And earthquakes and continental drift (plate techonics) can also result in a specific spot on the earth being relocated in reference to another spot on the earth.) Even with a computer it would not be possible to precisely specify a destination location in reference to any departure location for a time traveler. And if the destination location were miscalculated by just a tiny amount then the time traveler could end up at a random point in empty space, or deep inside the earth, or under the ocean, or a mile above the earth, or inside a wall, and the time traveler would die.

  5. Time: Time is not a thing. Time is a unit of measure. One second will always be one second. It is possible to do an activity faster or slower but one second is still one second. And except for God, nobody can make time go faster or slower, and nobody can stop time or reverse time because time is simply a unit of measure and time is not a thing.

Conclusion

Science fiction can be very entertaining.

It should be mentioned that some things that were considered to be science fiction 100 years ago are now a reality. For example, 60 years ago a "land line" telephone was a reality but a mobile phone was science fiction, such as Dick Tracy's two-way video wristwatch that he used to instantly communicate with the police station. However, today mobile phones and "FaceTime" are a reality. (Note: A phone is a thing and a phone is not a unit of measure.)

On the other hand, some things that were science fiction 100 years ago are still science fiction today and they will continue to be science fiction forever.

The best way to enjoy science fiction is to be able to correctly identify the things that may be possible if mankind's knowledge is increased, and to identify the things that will always be science fiction regardless of how smart mankind becomes.

Respectfully,
Grandpappy.

Grandpappy's e-mail address is: RobertWayneAtkins@hotmail.com

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