It's About Time

The concept of time travel has intrigued me since I was 10 years old. I first saw “The Time Machine” movie on a Black and White TV, since Dad refused to get a color set until the color drift and registration problems were solved.  And when he finally did cave, we soon realized he should have waited longer. But the concept of a time machine colored my thinking, regardless of the visuals.

And now it has become time to think the concept through.

------------------------------Especially for Ed and Evan and Luke and Roland.-------------------------------------------

We’ve got phones smarter than we are, cars that almost drive themselves, and satellites that tell us exactly where we missed the last turn.

But where are the time machines?

The concept has been around since at least 1895 when H. G. Wells published “The Time Machine.”  Previously, the notion of time travel existed, but it was the province of mythology and magic.

Is this Greek Laptop Statue proof of time travel?

Mr. Wells’ story popularized the idea that travelling through time could be achieved by a technological approach significantly more impactful than changing the clocks to accommodate Daylight Savings Time.  Thus time travel would even be available to those living in Phoenix.

Without going into all the brilliance of your design, let’s assume you’ve figured out a way to unlock the inexorable march of time.  You’ve flipped the switch and can move through time without all the relative messiness of moving heavy stuff at nearly light speed, or reading clocks measuring time from afar.  Congratulations!

But wait a second.  Let’s consider a few potential issues.

At the very least, your time machine has to have someplace to go. Is there really more than the present?  Is the nature of time a single shining moment that moves at a steady pace with nothing before and nothing after?  It seems easier to grasp that there could be a past that still exists, having played a part in creating the present and your machine, but is it really only a memory?  Is the previous moment still in existence as the present passes beyond it?

The eminent temporal scientist, Steven King, proposed that the past does not exist after we leave it.  First the food loses its taste, and then monsters appear and eat everything. Then the past no longer exists.  This is fully documented in the peer-reviewed and groundbreaking made-for-TV documentary, “The Langoliers.” Please disregard thoughts regarding when the monsters have time to defecate, and where that defecation goes.

Hungry Langoliers.

And what about the future?  If your machine is set to go forward, does it really have anywhere to go?  Does the present create the future on the fly, or does it already exist? (And if the future already exists, what does that mean for free will?  Perhaps we’ll ponder that later, should we decide to do so.) If you leave the present and the future has not yet been formed, you go forward into nothingness, if you go at all.  And even if you go into nothing, will you have a reference from which to return? Will you become nothing? Perhaps only teenagers can go forward, since every one of them has had to assure their parents that they will not become nothing.

But let’s ignore that issue of the existence of the past and future.  Let’s assume there is more than the present. Your machine has somewhere to go.  A landing zone. A foundational past and a glorious future.

But wait a minute.  Even if the past exists, for you to go there, it must be mutable and malleable.  Changing it must be possible, and does not break it somehow. If changing the past is not possible, then backward-moving time machines are just nonsense.  If you head back, it will be like crashing into an invisible mountain. If you can’t change that which has already happened, you’re out of luck for backward travel, even if you are just observing.  Ask Schrodinger, et al.

Not a principle for cat lovers.

What about forward?  Same deal. Ibid. It must be possible to change it.  But since all but the most fatalistic among us believe this is true, forward travel seems less daunting.

One of the more fatalistic among us,
Friedrich Nietzche must have formed his views
when his mustache encountered wind.
(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Friedrich-Nietzsche)

But let’s also ignore all these potential minor hiccups.  The past and future exist, and they are changeable.

When going forward, set the chronometer, press the button, and you’ll go missing in the present.  Poof! Then you’ll appear sometime later. Even if your machine only has forward gears, this would be really useful in a magic show, and helpful for some other purposes as well.  One might send forward a breeding population of flora or fauna that is in danger of extinction with the hopes that some preservationist or a less destructive environment would receive them, but you can’t tell because you don’t know that future without making the trip back.

Military use might be desirable.  When your force is about to be wiped out, going missing in the present is a really nice option.  Or sending a bomb forward to the space you vacate in the present, and also enticing your foes to occupy that space at the proper moment.  Create a whole new meaning for the term “time bomb.”

That disease that is killing you might be curable in the future, so spend your health care dollars on a time machine.  Not sure your provider will cover the expense. And whoever sells you the machine will want the money up front.

Those of us stuck in the present could know about this forward movement.  When you disappear, providing we are watching, we’d know about it. “He did it!” Of course we couldn’t be sure that it was really time travel until we see you pop back in, even if we happen to be in the right place at the right time.  You could have just become invisible, which is a much less impressive feat. We observers would feel cheated.  

Provided you made the proper arrangements, we could check recorded history to see that you disappeared at some time in the past, and now you’re back.  That is, of course, if you can convince us of who you really are, and that you’re not one of our many kooks. Come to think of it, we seem to have more and more kooks, so maybe time travel is the reason.  And don’t say you’ll take your DNA record. Clones are everywhere in the future.

What about only backward?  Clearly useful. Maybe Warren Buffett is a time traveller.  Take a copy of the Wall Street Journal back in time and take all the risk out of your investments.  Might also be good to take an identity you can assume.

I needed it yesterday. (https://www.wsj.com/)

Or maybe you just want to suggest that Mr. Lincoln might want to stay home and read rather than going to the theater, or warn Julius Caesar that he might want to avoid the forum on the Ides of March.  How’s your Latin?

If you can't manage travelling in time,
The Dover Thrift Edition is surprisingly affordable.

So let’s say you go back.  Not too far. You don’t want to be foolish enough to be born yesterday.  Just go back 1 day with the winning lottery number. Write the number on your hand, just in case you are easily confused.  Head to the corner store, buy the winning ticket and wait. A new present is marching forward. With two of you. One is still readying the machine, and the other is waiting at the local bar until he can collect the money.  

Can that work? As soon as you arrive one day earlier, the past-present, the one that now contains with 2 of you, has been altered.  The present you left has also been changed because the previous present, now altered, creates the present you left. So the present also has to be malleable.  

The two yous only exist for one day.  You can even go help yourself put the finishing touches on the machine, begetting a new definition for self-help.  Maybe you even provide the secret sauce that makes the machine work.

But there is a logical conundrum.  Future You may know the secret, but Present You can’t just get it from Future You because he has not invented it yet, and Future You wouldn’t know the secret unless Present You invented it.  So Future You can’t exist without the discovery of the secret by Present You. So just be satisfied with your lottery winnings. Or grab something valuable and come back. Yes, that’s the Holy Grail on the mantle.

Not the movie prop, this image is from Time Machine Restoration on Facebook.
And you thought I had too much time on my hands.

All sounds great, but there are a few other issues.  

What about the matter that occupies the destination?  Something has to be done with that. If you don’t want to become gas-impregnated, you’ll need to move the air out of the way, providing you’ve picked a landing zone occupied only by air.  So maybe you will need to start materializing at a single point and get reconstructed from there, pushing the resident atoms out of the way. But that takes time, so your machine needs to make a record of you and itself and reconstruct all gradually.  Sounds complicated.  

Or perhaps it makes more sense to appear in the near-vacuum of space and then settle back to earth (which is an issue you’ll have to deal with in any case, so read on).  If our astronomers and physicists are not pushing fake news, we’re constantly moving. The earth rotates, and also revolves around the sun. Even when you take a time trip of only one day, you’re going to have to match position and velocity with your destination unless you want to materialize where the earth was yesterday. 

So your time machine needs to move.  It’s a Star Trek transporter with a time component.  But move relative to where? The center of the earth?  Center of the sun? Center of the galaxy? Maybe the machine needs to move relative to the center of the universe, wherever that is.  If that’s the case, many people we all know would have no problem. Perhaps only a select group can be time travellers.

Always be sure to check your destination on Trip Advisor
before you travel.

And do you travel through time, or do you just leave it altogether and pop back in at the prescribed moment?  Travelling through, you’d be like a statue during the travel time. Still there, like a stopped train in a tunnel of time.  So if you went back that single day, you’d see a statue-like you-in-your-machine for that day. But at least you’d have proof that your machine worked.

Better to pop out and then back in.  Leave time completely. For forward travel, it would be like taking a flight from Chicago, circling, and then landing and disembarking at the same gate back in Chicago.  Without the intervening time, of course. Kind of like sleeping on the plane.

Also better to leave time completely so that aging is not an issue.  You don’t want to go forward 100 years and find yourself dead since you aged during the transition.  But then again, if the reverse was true, and you lost years by travelling backward, you could live a long, long time.  Particularly with multiple trips. But only in the same epoch. It might get boring, knowing what was going to happen, even with eternal youth.  But maybe you could shape that epoch, in a "Groundhog Day" sort of way.

Sigh.

There are a few issues to iron out before we can enjoy our time machines.  But it’s only a matter of time until some future character comes back and lets me know how they were solved.

Would be great to see them again.

“What famous date do I send us to today, Mr. Peabody?”

“Sherman, set the WABAC Machine for November 20, 2019.  And bring three books.”

With a timely apology to H.G. Wells, a brief one to Steven Hawking, and dimly flickering apologies to Hollywood.