Friday 2 November 2012

Is Time Travel Possible?

This is my very first contemplation on something weird and in all honesty, feel a little self conscious in doing so.  But let's get to the heart of the matter...Does time travel exist? Is it even possible?  Are you nuts?  The answers to those questions are as follows: maybe, I'm not sure, and yes but I do have moments of clarity. 

But in all reality, while this may come across initially as a kooky and impossible idea, there is some compelling evidence out there to suggest that it may be possible.  I do have to say that a skeptic will, of course debunk most of what is given as evidence and scoff at the idea, but all I ask is to just keep an open mind.  It doesn't hurt to question but it does hurt to automatically cut your mind off from thinking outside of the box.

So how is time travel even possible?  Well, there is some long winded explanation about Einstein's theory of relativity that is supposed to explain it all.   I am far from a physicist and never claimed to be, but in short it has to do with wormholes.  These wormholes cause huge changes in gravity that can manipulate time.  Some have equated time to a string.  What the wormhole does through immense forces of gravity is bring the two ends of the string together.  If we can figure out how to manipulated gravity and control it, then we should also be able to manipulate, or travel through time.

But what about the Grandfather paradox?  That is the idea that if you can travel back in time, what is to stop you from going back and killing your grandfather before he has the chance to meet your grandma and father your father, thereby making it impossible for you to be here.  The idea now becomes more complicated but is solved by the fact that you are not actually travelling back in time to your universe...there are parallel universes and that is what you are going back to.  Simply put, you may not exist in that particular universe but you do in others!

It's the idea in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure when they need Ted's dad's set of keys and say that they we're going to travel back in time, take the keys, and put them where they needed them right now.  And what do you know, there are the keys!  (For a complicated but very insightful rendition of this anomaly you can see this website http://www.mjyoung.net/time/bill.html.  Make sure you put on your thinkin' cap!)

You never go back to the universe you are in, you are going back to a different universe and the "you" in another universe is going back to the universe that you are from.  Let's put it this way...A goes to B and B goes to A.  Now add in the idea that there are unlimited parallel universes so A may go to Z, B to F, N to W, W to A.   Everybody is creating the desired outcome in another universe. 
 
Okay crazy lady, so what's the proof?  Surprisingly enough there is some actual stuff out there that at the very least does make you scratch your head and wonder what if?  A compelling tidbit is the video of a person talking on the cell phone and then disappearing.  It's a snippet from an old Charlie Chaplin movie.  Lots of people have seen this one and there are lots of debunkers out there.  You can go to YouTube and see all that yourself if you so desire, but for your ease of use, here's what I'm talking about.
 

To me the disappearing, while intriguing, is not the important part of this video.  It's the behaviours of the person.  It looks like anybody you would see today walking down the street talking on a cell phone, oblivious to what's going on around them, but enjoying a conversation with someone on the phone.  How would someone from almost 100 years ago, know that's what we would look like today with our "portable communication devices".  Why would it not look more like a walkie talkie where you don't hold it up to your ear to listen and just speak into it while it's in front of you?  Phones from this generation were two pieces, if you had one at all.  There was a piece you held to your ear and the separate piece that was held to you mouth.  Back then it was a two handed job, a very far cry from the compact versions we have today.

Another compelling piece of information comes from a guy who claimed to have travelled back in time from the future, 2036 to be exact.  He was sent back to collect a spare computer part from an IBM 5100 for a machine in the future.  His name was John Titor and made lots of postings on various forums about what he was doing and a little bit about the future.  There is also a book about him.  Instead of rehashing what's already been said, I would recommend that you check out the John Titor website for a plethora of information about his story and links that will explain the whole thing in detail.  I suggest that you start with the Posts by Date and start reading from there.

I'm on the fence at best about this evidence.  Many of his claims about the future (i.e. Y2K, no Olympic games after 2004, mad cow disease, etc.) did not come to pass.  This could be because all the problems were solved in our universe before they could happen.  I think that's a convenient excuse for being wrong, but you can choose to believe what you like.  (There is another whole topic on parallel universes that I would like to discuss at some later date.  In short, it's that the opposite of every decision that you've ever made has to exist somewhere and that if you can imagine something, it has to be somewhere.  But I digress...)

Other evidence includes gravitational "slips" or anomalies that may naturally occur around the world.  One of the results could explain toads and frogs being found in solid stone.  The frogs and toads have been transported, alive, from one universe and somehow been encased in the stone in our universe.  It could be that in our universe where it is stone, it is mud in their universe.  I think that's a little weak too. 

One of the most famous personal accounts of a spontaneous time slip happened in Paris, France way back in August of 1901.  Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain claim to have been walking though the gardens at Versailles when all the people around them suddenly appeared to be wearing very dated clothing, like that back from the French Revolution.  Anne saw a lady that was sketching in the garden, though Elanor did not.  Later, when Anne was viewing some paintings, she recognized the sketching lady as Marie Antoinette no less!  Both ladies were considered to be credible witnesses and upstanding citizens so their story was given a great deal of merit. 

While there may be other anecdotal accounts in regards to time slips and people vanishing into thin air, like many things in the paranormal, it's hard to do a scientific study on something that can't be generated at will in a lab.  If you can't replicate an experiment, let alone conduct it when you want to, then it cannot be proven as true.  At best it can only be a theory and a weak one at that, scientifically speaking.  On the other side of the argument, you can never prove a negative so there is always room for speculation!

So did I offer any proof on the existence of time travel? Maybe.  But I must have given you some food for thought.

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