TimeTravel

Time Travel

The ultimate science fiction concept. ……Imagine…. You could fix all those stupid things you’ve done or said. Well, no, you couldn’t, and here’s why!

 Paradoxes

Have you heard about something called a paradox? It is a thought experiment that explains what happens if one tiny thing changes. For example if your bike was stolen because you forgot to lock it and you had a time machine, then you could just go back in time and tell yourself to lock it up or lock it up yourself? Well, yes…. But then your bike wouldn’t be stolen and you wouldn’t go back and remind yourself to lock up your bike. The only way around that is when you go back in time you have to tell your past self to go back in time and remind you to lock up your bike and remind yourself to lock up your blog. Following? Here is another example. For some reason you go back in time and you accidentally land on your (now younger) grandmother who dies. This means your mum is never born and therefore you are never born. Which means you can’t go back in time to kill your grandmother, which means you are alive to go back in time, which means you’re dead, which means you’re alive, which means your dea…………..ARRRGGGGHHH…. see, this is why paradoxes are VERY VERY bad. Even the tiniest changes can have a big effect and not just to you, they can also have big effects on others. Take the bike example. Ignoring your personal paradox what happens if because your bike is now locked the criminal steals another bike, but the person he is stealing it from happens to be a head of states' son. By the criminal stealing his boy’s bike the head of state gets really annoyed and passes a law condemning all petty criminals to the death sentence (ok an extreme example). All of a sudden you are responsible for the deaths of thousands of fairly innocent people. This is also called the butterfly effect, that small changes can have huge consequences.

How to Overcome the Paradoxes

Well if when we time travel nobody sees us and we change absolutely nothing including breathing in oxygen (i.e. we were “observers”, like looking at penguins behind a glass wall) then we could in theory time travel. Awesome I know!

So, Time Machine?

I don’t think so…. I think it is highly unlikely that we are ever going to develop technology advanced enough to transport particles through the fabric of time and space. However some physicists’ theorise that in the middle of every black hole are a few worm holes. These “wormholes” stretch between time and space and if you able to hold one open for long enough and get in then you would be able to time travel. However we are completely ignoring the fact that you can’t get to the centre of a black hole without being spagetiafied (yes that is the technical term). One big problem with this is, how would you get back?

Parallel Universe?

Another theory is that there are an infinite number of universes out there for every possible outcome and we are only living in one of them. And by travelling through time you would not technically be travelling through time you would be creating a parallel universe where perhaps most of the paradoxes were ironed out, who knows!

In summary all I can say is the concept of time travel is awesome and a great topic for science fiction. However for the moment I think it is best left in the world science fiction as there are far too many dangers with time travel. If you have any thoughts on time travel or agree/ disagree with anything I have said leave them in the comments and I’ll get back to you!
DFTBA!