Time Travel

Time travel has been a long time love affair for a lot of people. The notion of being able to jump forwards or backwards in time and visit places you could only read in history or science fiction books has always been appealing to many, myself included. Each and every one of us have a certain period in time they would love to go to, be it ancient Egypt, watch dinosaurs in their own natural habitat or see what becomes our own species in the years to come. The question has to be, just how possible is it?

Let us start by thinking about travelling forwards in time. There has been extensive work carried out in the area of cryogenics. Cryogenics in reality is the study of anything cold, the science of deep freezing people to be re-animated at a later date is actually called Cryonics. Cryonics is a theorised process whereby you “Freeze” a person, leaving them in a state of suspended animation and then “defrosting” them years into the future. Sometimes it is not a full person that is frozen, there are companies out there who will freeze just a head in the hope that in the future the illness of death has been cured, and the person’s head can be brought back to life. A few decades ago, a Russian scientist by the name of Sergei Brukhonenko surgically removed the head of a dog and attached it to a machine that mimicked what would be the dogs’ vital organs. After testing, Brukhonenko found the dogs head reacted to the environment around it, including sound and being ticked with a feather (a rather creepy video of it can be found HERE). So the idea that in the future we would not have the technology to create a whole body is simply not true. We only have to look at stem cell research to know that we may be able to “grow” whole new bodies in a laboratory in the not too distant future, but could the brain survive the deep froze is the main point here.

One of the major problems that has yet to be resolved in cryonics is how to freeze someone without damaging the cells. The human body is about 60-70% water and when water freezes it expands (we all remember the high school science experiments), thus causing the cells to rupture. This is a major obstacle when it comes to neurones, the cells that make the brain function. If they are damaged the person cannot be brought back to life properly. Of course, in the future they may be able to repair neurones but as we cannot be sure, we have to presume it is impossible.

Cryonics is not technically “Time Travel”. The idea of time travel is that we can jump aboard a vessel, like a spaceship or something resembling the TARDIS from Dr Who and instantaneously jump from one point in time to another. Theoretically this is possible, but has some SEVERE drawbacks. Under the laws of physics, if you set off from earth in a craft that could reach, say 95% the speed of light, and flew in a giant arc and came back to Earth then the people in the craft may only have been away for an hour or so, but Earth could have aged by years, even decades or centuries (known as Time Dilation). This would be a form of time travel, but sadly at present we could never do this. Two main reasons for this is that the fuel required to do this would weigh so much, we would need extra fuel to power the extra fuel, and the cycle continues. Also, the theory of relativity suggests that the closer to the speed of light an object gets the larger in mass it becomes. So as you can see, “future” time travel at present is not so much implausible, just HIGHELY impossible with today’s technology.

Now, travelling to the past. Let us presume for a second we can actually do this. Let us imagine that some scientist somewhere has built a machine similar to that described in H.G. Wells book “The Time Machine”. One of the major issues that arises is the notion of “paradoxes”. “Everett’s many-worlds interpretations” theorises that so-called “parallel universes” are formed at every stage a decision is made. Branching out like a tree, the idea is that whenever there is more than one possible outcome of any situation, an alternative parallel universe is created to see how the other situation would pan out. A concern of theoretical physicists is that if we went back in town, our actions could have a “Butterfly Effect” on world history, thus changing the future. Say for example if we went back in time and accidentally killed someone with a horse and cart. The death of that one individual could radically change the future, making it unrecognisable to the time travel upon his return to the modern day. Personally, I think if Everett’s theory is correct then going back in time would merely create another parallel universe, and the history that was remains the same. Another thing worth mentioning is the perceptive angle. In quantum physics there are kinds of ions that only become apparent when they are measured. Theoretically, they only come into existence when they are physically measured. Say each parallel universe is not so much about each decision, but about what each individual experiences. To fully grasp abstract time travel theories, we have to change the way we look at not only science, but the world we live in.

People look at a time in the form of a line (hence, time line). Like a car travelling down a road, time is a series of chronologically recorded events going in sequence from the oldest to the most recent. But time is very much a perceptive thing. If you are doing something you enjoy time feels like it is flying past, but if you are doing something mundane and boring, time goes by really slow. So maybe time travel is mental than physical? Probably not, but it is worth thinking about.

To explain my next point I am going to have to bring up an idea I expressed in an earlier post, regarding the Matrix, Doom and source coding. If you missed it, please read it HERE. We always think of travelling as moving in 3-dimenstional space. If we want to get from Birmingham to Cornwall, we have to travel south on the M5 to make our wish of visiting Cornwall a reality. But the rules of travel in our minds are dictated by the source code. In this advance computer-style program there will be a line of code saying how much a specific distance is, wouldn’t it be possible at some point in the future to change this code, making Cornwall no further from Birmingham as Tamworth is? This is not about changing the landscape, this is thinking about possible solutions for future innovations in travel. The source code idea also dictates direction. We have been conditioned since birth to believe this code is real, and that we can only travel backwards and forwards, side to side and up and down in their many combinations. But what about moving THROUGH the code? Of course, we would have to understand what “The Code” is before this would be possible, but with quantum physics, string theory and other theoretical sciences getting weirder by the minute, maybe we should not rule this out just yet. After all, if distance is dictated by the code, then so will time and eventually if we understand the way the code works, we can manipulate it to travel to different eras in time (and space). It may appear far-fetched now, but who knows, in a couple of hundred years it may be common knowledge. Just to add this in, if the code is real, it can also be manipulated to make real-life teleport machines. Just a thought...

Moving back to normality, has there been any natural occurrence of time travel that may offer a solution? For this, we need to move into the pseudo-science of the paranormal. A well-respected author and researcher by the name of Jenny Randles wrote a book entitled “Time Storms” that looked as this very issue. She looked at cases whereby people claim to have briefly travelled in time and space against their will. A lot of the people who experienced this initially believed it was an alien abduction, but the MO of these events are very unique. I will highlight as generic version of these reports as to give you an understanding of what it involves. This is not a real story, more of a blend of a few real accounts given to Randles by eye-witnesses:

A man was driving home late at night when he became aware of a thick mist of a very strange colour engulfing his car. As the mist got closer all the electrics in the vehicle starting behaving wildly and eventually cut out altogether. The man got a really strange sense sensation, and his entire body started tingling in a way he finds hard to explain. Next thing he remembers (although he does not remember or feels he lost consciousness at any point) is sitting in the dark in his car, but he has lost a significant amount of time and has been transported miles from his last location. Upon realising where he is he feels soaking wet, like he has been swimming, but within seconds he has dried out, like he was never wet in the first place. Upon closer inspection, he realises his car is in a muddy field but there are no tyre tracks leading into the field, as though he car was dropped out of the sky.

This kind of story is not as uncommon as one might expect. If Randles theories about so-called “Time Storms” are correct, then this would be a natural occurring form of time travel. I highly recommend reading “”Time Storms” as it is a fascinating read. You can buy it off Amazon for less than £7 HERE.

Just because something seems outlandish does not mean it is not real. Never believe or disbelieve, but always believe in the possibility.