I've been thinking more about time trave than usual - I always think about it at least a little - because I've been enjoying Heroes on NBC, and the main reason is one of the most appealing characters, Hiro, can bend space and time. In other words, he can teleport and time travel.
Now teleportation, though extraordinary, is really just an extension of what we already do, all the time - move across distances, or space. As in walking across the street or taking a plane. Time travel, on the other hand, is something we never do. That is, we live forward in time, but never go backward, and never go forward any faster, certainly not instantly.
Which is what makes time travel such an immensely enjoyable vehicle for fiction. You can travel a day or a year into the future and see what you're doing then, and what's happening in the world. You can travel to the past and have a drink or a cup of tea with your great-great grandmother. (You can go back in the past and try to save Socrates...)
Except ... you'd need to make sure that if you did meet your great-great-grandmother, it wasn't before she met your great-great-grandfather. Because what if your meeting somehow distracted the two from ever meeting... Where you would be then?
Paradoxes like this are what make time-travel stories so much fun - and I think they're also what makes time travel impossible. Sure, you could come up with scientific possibilities, such as the creation of an alternative universe every time you travel into the past, which would allow you to change past A (your great-great-grandparents met and had children) into past B (they did not, because of your trip to the past), which would allow you (a product of A) to travel to the past and avoid the paradox of doing away with circumstances that allowed you to travel to the past (because the A that created you would still exist - all that would happen is a new B would be created) ... but, whew, creation of such alternative universes every time you travel seems even more farfetched than time travel!
And travel to the future has its own devastating problems. If I travelled even just a day into the future, and saw what you were wearing, would that mean you had no choice about what clothes you put on tomorrow? I don't know about you, but I'm rather sure that I have free will - at least, about what kind of shirt I wear. (Whether I exercise that will well or not is, of course, another story.)
So, in the end, I'm afraid that we'll never be able to travel in time, except in our minds and our fiction...
On the other hand, I just could be an agent from the future, doing my best to disguise my tracks...
Useful links:
Deja Well Worth Vu blog post review of 2006 Deja Vu movie
see elsewhere on Infinite Regress for reviews of Heroes and Lost episodes...
Time Travel in Fact and Fiction free 20-minute podcast
The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
Now teleportation, though extraordinary, is really just an extension of what we already do, all the time - move across distances, or space. As in walking across the street or taking a plane. Time travel, on the other hand, is something we never do. That is, we live forward in time, but never go backward, and never go forward any faster, certainly not instantly.
Which is what makes time travel such an immensely enjoyable vehicle for fiction. You can travel a day or a year into the future and see what you're doing then, and what's happening in the world. You can travel to the past and have a drink or a cup of tea with your great-great grandmother. (You can go back in the past and try to save Socrates...)
Except ... you'd need to make sure that if you did meet your great-great-grandmother, it wasn't before she met your great-great-grandfather. Because what if your meeting somehow distracted the two from ever meeting... Where you would be then?
Paradoxes like this are what make time-travel stories so much fun - and I think they're also what makes time travel impossible. Sure, you could come up with scientific possibilities, such as the creation of an alternative universe every time you travel into the past, which would allow you to change past A (your great-great-grandparents met and had children) into past B (they did not, because of your trip to the past), which would allow you (a product of A) to travel to the past and avoid the paradox of doing away with circumstances that allowed you to travel to the past (because the A that created you would still exist - all that would happen is a new B would be created) ... but, whew, creation of such alternative universes every time you travel seems even more farfetched than time travel!
And travel to the future has its own devastating problems. If I travelled even just a day into the future, and saw what you were wearing, would that mean you had no choice about what clothes you put on tomorrow? I don't know about you, but I'm rather sure that I have free will - at least, about what kind of shirt I wear. (Whether I exercise that will well or not is, of course, another story.)
So, in the end, I'm afraid that we'll never be able to travel in time, except in our minds and our fiction...
On the other hand, I just could be an agent from the future, doing my best to disguise my tracks...
Useful links:
Deja Well Worth Vu blog post review of 2006 Deja Vu movie
see elsewhere on Infinite Regress for reviews of Heroes and Lost episodes...
Time Travel in Fact and Fiction free 20-minute podcast
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
8 comments:
Hello Paul,
I think that your work is fantastic and I appreciate what you've said on your various interviews. Fantastic.
You recently commented on my blog, so I thought I'd look at yours a little closer. I had seen your work,but did not realize how extensive it was. I'm a fan now.
You mentioned free will and time travel among other things, and I have another blog (besides quantumweird) that goes into that as well, but a whole new ball game. Drop by some time.
http://extraordinaryvisions.wordpress.com. To save some time, look at the index above my banner. Book material?
Good luck in all you do... as if luck has anything to do with it!
Oldtimer
Thanks, Oldtimer - I just noticed your comment - and will drop by your page some time in the next days ...
Paul
Thinking about teleportation, here's a post I put on my LJ a while ago...
In Sci-fi one of the most used methods of transport is the Teleport, a machine that magically transfers a person from one place to another in the blink of an eye.
Star Trek crew members happily hop in and out of them, Blake's Seven had special wristbands, even Jeff Goldblum was doing well until a fly got involved. No one seems to worry about something that would give me the Absolute Fear if told to use one. I'll explain what that is in a moment.
First let's describe how a teleport tends to be portrayed as working. At the departure point a super powerful computer scans every single atom of the traveller, stores that pattern in a 'buffer' then disintegrates the original. The digital information is then used to control a focused beam of energy which rebuilds the person out of atoms available at the destination. For the sake of argument we'll assume that doing this doesn't wipe the brain of the person being sent. Theoretically the traveller appears instantly at the destination suffering no ill effects, memories intact.
I think there's a problem here though, I think the teleportation would kill the original person, generating an exact copy at the other end that isn't the same person. You'd step into the teleport and your life would end, your consciousness gone. In your place would be a copy, identical in every way, with your memories....a copy convinced that it IS you. If asked if he was ok, this copy would say 'Yeah! I'm fine! It's still me! This machine totally works!!' - he'd have no idea that he only came into existence a few moments earlier. When he then used the teleport to return home he'd die, being replaced by another exact copy.
The scary thing is that NO-ONE would ever realise, because as far as 'they' were concerned they, and others, were travelling safely. Perhaps it's the kind of thing that philosophers would discuss and dismiss...but it wouldn't stop the invisible killing.
OK, now you've got my curiosity piqued.
I found you from researching a SEO client in orange county ca, followed links to see where they went. At first I thought you were a 'commie' (I'm liberal GOP/Libertarian), saw the moveon.org vid (which wasn't bad btw)
now I see time travel (I"m a new age fan of "Sphere", "Paycheck", "Deja Vue", "Phenomenon" ...)
now I dunno what to make of you except I had to put you on my must read list (which is ALREADY too big)
damn you
what if I find out your just like me?
Crap
as if I dont already have enough on my plate
Music to my ears! Welcome aboard, David.
Who knows, we may have already met sometime in future...
Thank you, Paul:) I like the word TELEPORT:) and I believe someday we could have time travel, probably it will not be very far if we understand ourselve well and use our will well:)
"Paradoxes like this are what make time-travel stories so much fun - and I think they're also what makes time travel impossible."
Almost, but not quite correct.
Imagine going back in time exactly one second. You try to create a paradox by signalling yourself using a flashlight (light is the fastest means of communication without breaking known physical laws). To just barely avoid paradox, the light must take exactly one light-second to reach the older you. The way nature does this is to translate (move) the new you 186,000 miles (one light-second) from where you were when you were the old you.
So, time travel IS possible, but it also moves you a very large distance away from where you'd like to be.
(By the way, this is the same sort of reasoning that explains why it is almost impossible for us to find another intelligent species in the known universe: the universe is so large that they are almost certainly located so far from us that their intelligent signals will take millions if not billions of years to reach us. By that time, we will no longer be here with our present interest in meeting another intelligent species to care.)
Homework assignment:
1. If you travel one second into the past, in what direction are you moved?
2. If you travel one second into the future, must you also move 186,000 miles away, and if so, in what direction are you moved? (Hint: this is a trick question.)
Teleportation, IMO, is possible without breaking laws of physics. The problem is, if it is instantaneous, then it must kill the person, since you probably can't get the air the person will occupy teleported away at exactly the same time. If it is not instantaneous, the teleportation of some part of the body before another will cause severe physical damage on the cellular level or below, all over the body, even if the person is held rigid by a muscle paralyzing drug.
Of course, anything is possible through magic, imagination, superstition, or religion. But that isn't reality.
David Spector
Massachusetts
Good thoughts, David.
I would say that what you are pointing out is a Kantian possibility of time travel. Kant said that we can never perceive the deepest parts of reality - the thing in itself - only the less internal parts that are amenable to our perception. Technologies may extend what we can see - allow us to perceive deeper into reality - but the sense of Kant is that there will always be a part of reality too deep for our perceptions.
From atoms to subatomic particles to whatever makes them tick ... and then when underlies that...
Back to time travel: you're saying if we travel back to the past so briefly in time that there's no time for anyone to perceive us, or for us to make any impact at all, then that would remove the paradox.
Good point - I like that!
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