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TEMPUS
FUGIT - We are all time travellers as we are swept along in the current of time, from past to future, at a rate of
one second per second, one hour per hour, etc., - for most
people - with some slight geographical variation that is
imperceptible.
We know through the physics of Einstein's special theory of relativity that you can trade motion in space for motion in time. If you're standing perfectly still, you're moving through the dimension of time at a particular speed (the speed of light, for those of you who are curious). As soon as you start moving through space, however, you slow down your rate of moving through time. In other words, the faster you move in space, the slower you move in time. Traveling
through time is possible. But not in the way they portray in
science fiction. Author, Jameson Hunter, describes a way that
a person living on earth today, can be DNA and digitally
coded, so that the subject can be reconstructed in identical
fashion in 100, 1,000, or 10,000 years. Like some bacteria can be
triggered to activate in the right circumstances. Provided that support
facilities are provided for the length of time envisaged,
for the digital and biological reincarnation
to be successful.
A
practical experiment could be performed over say, ten years.
This
is, in-effect, how Cleopatra
VII Philopator
is brought back to life in this fictional John Storm adventure.
The brilliant computer engineer William
Bates, provides the necessary computing power. The
Italian, Franco
Francisco, and Swiss, Klaus
von Kolreuter, biologists provide the cloning
and replication
know-how.
Where
Cleopatra died 30 years and some months before the birth of Jesus
Christ. Her mummy would be well over 2,000 two thousands
years old by the time her
sarcophagus is found. A lot has happened in those two
thousand years. Cleopatra must come to terms with:
Aircraft
and airports
Artificial
Intelligence
Cars
and HGV trucks;
Computers
Container
Ships
Electricity
Guided
Missiles
Internet
Mobile
Phones
Ports
with mechanised unloading
Robots
Skyscrapers
Space
travel
Tanks
Time
travel - being the first living subject in history
Trains
Trawlers
A
completely different world.
All
of these would be source of wonder, and then to meet John
Storm super enhanced via DNA splicing, and the Elizabeth
Swann, a solar and hydrogen powered vessel with AI
and autonomous navigation. Not too mention that it would
appear to herself, that she has traveled into the future.
She is alive having poisoned herself and died, and is now
much stronger and smarter than she was before. She is thus
living proof of reincarnation,
the afterlife
- howsoever that may have been achieved - for which she must
give praise to Anubis,
for protecting her in death, and her embalmers for their advanced
mummification.
IT
COULD HAPPEN
The
technology exists in theory to make this happen. But, would
be vastly expensive and to what end. Since the process is
not backwards compatible, what one discovers in the future,
cannot be brought back as a peek at the future for all to
see - as in Back
To The Future. One can only travel forward in time. With
only the subject
prospering from the experience. Unable to send information
back in time.
This
may change as technology improves. But, why would anyone
want to go back in time? Truly, we enjoy our modern
conveniences.
It
is possible to get a backwards look in time at a well
produced historic drama or film. Not to experience it in
person, but to see what is must have been like, with some
degree of realism.
Potential
issues arise in that one thousand years into the future,
those that began that experiment will be so long gone, and
the world so changed, that the research will be forgotten -
in the mists (or sands) of time - so to speak.
OTHER
(PROPOSED) TIME TRAVEL METHODS
TIME
TRAVEL VIA HIGH SPEED
This is held to be the easiest and most practical way to time travel into the far future,
just go really fast.
According to Einstein’s theory of special relativity, when you travel at speeds approaching the speed of light, time slows down for you relative to the outside world.
This is not a just a conjecture or thought experiment – it’s been measured. Using twin atomic clocks (one flown in a jet aircraft, the other stationary on Earth) physicists have shown that a flying clock ticks slower, because of its speed.
In the case of the aircraft, the effect is insignificant. But If you were in a spaceship travelling at 90% of the speed of light, you’d experience time passing about 2.6 times slower than it
would be on Earth.
The closer you get to the speed of light, the more extreme the time-travel.
The highest speeds achieved through any human technology are probably the protons whizzing around the Large Hadron Collider at 99.9999991% of the speed of light. Using special relativity we can calculate one second for the proton is equivalent to 27,777,778 seconds, or about 11 months, for us.
Interestingly, particle physicists have to take this time dilation into account when they are dealing with particles that decay. In the lab, muon particles typically decay in 2.2 microseconds. But fast moving muons, such as those created when cosmic rays strike the upper atmosphere, take 10 times longer to disintegrate.
TIME TRAVEL RELATIVE TO GRAVITY
The next method of time travel was also inspired by Einstein. According to his theory of general relativity, the stronger the gravity you feel, the slower time moves.
As you get closer to the centre of the Earth, for example, the strength of gravity increases. Time runs slower for your feet than your head.
Again, this effect has been measured. In 2010, physicists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) placed two atomic clocks on shelves, one 33 centimetres above the other, and measured the difference in their rate of ticking. The lower one ticked slower because it feels a slightly stronger gravity.
To travel to the far future, all we need is a region of extremely strong gravity, such as a black hole. The closer you get to the event horizon, the slower time moves – but it’s risky business, cross the boundary and you can never escape.
The effect is not that strong so it’s probably not worth the trip.
Assuming you had the technology to travel the vast distances to reach a black hole (the nearest is about 3,000 light years away), the time dilation through
traveling would be far greater than any time dilation through orbiting the black hole itself.
(The situation described in the movie Interstellar, where one hour on a planet near a black hole is the equivalent of seven years back on Earth, is so extreme as to be impossible in our Universe, according to Kip Thorne, the movie’s scientific advisor.)
TIME TRAVEL USING SUSPENDED ANIMATION
Another way to time travel to the future may be to slow your perception of time by slowing down, or stopping, your bodily processes and then restarting them later.
In sci-fi films this is sometimes called cryo-stasis, or
freezing.
Bacterial spores can live for millions of years in a state of suspended animation, until the right conditions of temperature, moisture, food kick start their metabolisms again. Some mammals, such as bears and squirrels, can slow down their metabolism during hibernation, dramatically reducing their cells’ requirement for food and oxygen.
It is arguable that humans could achieve the same state,
perhaps chemically and with temperature control of vital
functions.
Though completely stopping your metabolism is probably beyond our current technology, some scientists are working towards achieving inducing a short-term hibernation state lasting at least a few hours. This might be
enough time to get a person through a medical emergency, such as a cardiac arrest, before they can reach the hospital.
A practical application.
In 2005, American scientists demonstrated a way to slow the metabolism of mice (which do not hibernate) by exposing them to minute doses of hydrogen sulphide, which binds to the same cell receptors as oxygen. The core body temperature of the mice dropped to 13 °C and metabolism decreased 10-fold. After six hours the mice could be
re-animated without ill effects.
Similar experiments on sheep and pigs were not successful, suggesting the method might not
be workable for humans.
Another method, which induces a hypothermic hibernation by replacing the blood with a cold saline solution, has worked on pigs and is currently undergoing human clinical trials in
the US.
TIME
TRAVEL VIA WORMHOLES
General relativity also allows for the possibility for shortcuts through
space-time, known as wormholes, which might be able to bridge distances of a billion light years or more, or different points in time.
Many physicists, including Stephen Hawking, believe wormholes are constantly popping in and out of existence at the quantum scale, far smaller than atoms. The
theory requires to identify and capture one, then inflate it to human scales – a
challenge that would require a huge amount of energy, but which might just be possible,
theoretically.
Attempts to prove this either way have failed, ultimately because of the incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics.
TIME TRAVEL USING LIGHT
Another time travel idea, put forward by the American physicist Ron Mallet, is to use a rotating cylinder of light to twist spacetime. Anything dropped inside the swirling cylinder could theoretically be dragged around in space and in time, in a similar way to how a bubble runs around on top your coffee after you swirl it with a spoon.
According to Mallet, the right geometry could lead to time travel into either the past and the future.
Since publishing his theory in 2000, Mallet has been trying to raise the funds to pay for a proof of concept experiment, which involves dropping neutrons through a circular arrangement of spinning lasers.
Unfortunately, Mallet's ideas have not been embraced by the physics community.
With others arguing that one of the assumptions of his basic model is plagued by a singularity, which is physics-speak for:
“it is impossible”.
EVIDENCE
THAT TIME TRAVEL IS NOT POSSIBLE (OR PRACTICAL)
Although many people are fascinated by the idea of changing the past or seeing the future before it's due, no person has ever demonstrated the kind of back-and-forth time travel seen in science fiction, or proposed a method of sending a person through significant periods of time that wouldn't destroy them on the way. And, as physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out in his book "Black Holes and Baby Universes"
(Bantam, 1994), "The best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future."
Science does support some amount of time-bending, though. For example, physicist Albert Einstein's theory of special relativity proposes that time is an illusion that moves relative to an observer. An observer traveling near the speed of light will experience time, with all its aftereffects (boredom, aging, etc.) much more slowly than an observer at rest. That's why astronaut Scott Kelly aged ever so slightly less over the course of a year in orbit than his twin brother who stayed here on
Earth.
While we don't accelerate humans to near-light-speed, we do send them swinging around the planet at 17,500 mph (28,160 km/h) aboard the International Space Station. Astronaut Scott Kelly was born after his twin brother, and fellow astronaut, Mark Kelly. Scott Kelly spent 520 days in orbit, while Mark logged 54 days in space. The difference in the speed at which they experienced time over the course of their lifetimes has actually widened the age gap between the two men.
"So, where[as] I used to be just 6 minutes older, now I am 6 minutes and 5 milliseconds older," Mark Kelly said in a panel discussion on July 12, 2020, Space.com previously reported. "Now I've got that over his head."
GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM - GPS
Another interesting fact is that GPS systems have to account for time dilation effects (due to both the speed of the satellites and gravity they feel) in order to work. Without these corrections, your
mobile phone's GPS capability wouldn’t be able to pinpoint your location on Earth to within even a few kilometres.
The Global Positioning System, or GPS, helps us know exactly where we are by communicating with a network of a few dozen satellites positioned in a high Earth orbit. The satellites circle the planet from 12,500 miles (20,100 kilometers) away, moving at 8,700 mph (14,000 km/h).
According to special relativity, the faster an object moves relative to another object, the slower that first object experiences time. For GPS satellites with atomic clocks, this effect cuts 7 microseconds, or 7 millionths of a second, off each day, according to American Physical Society publication Physics Central (opens in new tab).
Because the GPS satellites are much farther from the center of Earth compared to clocks on the surface, Physics Central added, that adds another 45 microseconds onto the GPS satellite clocks each day. Combined with the negative 7 microseconds from the special relativity calculation, the net result is an added 38 microseconds.
This means that in order to maintain the accuracy needed to pinpoint your car or phone — or, since the system is run by the U.S. Department of Defense, a military drone — engineers must account for an extra 38 microseconds in each satellite's day. The atomic clocks onboard don’t tick over to the next day until they have run 38 microseconds longer
as compared to clocks on Earth.
BOOKS ABOUT TIME TRAVEL
Rip Van Winkle (Cornelius S. Van Winkle, 1819) by Washington Irving
A Christmas Carol (Chapman & Hall, 1843) by Charles Dickens
The Time Machine (William Heinemann, 1895) by H. G. Wells
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Charles L. Webster and Co., 1889) by Mark Twain
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Pan Books, 1980) by Douglas Adams
A Tale of Time City (Methuen, 1987) by Diana Wynn Jones
The Outlander series (Delacorte Press, 1991-present) by Diana Gabaldon
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Bloomsbury/Scholastic, 1999) by J. K. Rowling
Thief of Time (Doubleday, 2001) by Terry Pratchett
The Time Traveler's Wife (MacAdam/Cage, 2003) by Audrey Niffenegger
All You Need is Kill (Shueisha, 2004) by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
MOVIES ABOUT TIME TRAVEL
Planet of the Apes (1968)
Superman (1978)
Time Bandits (1981)
The Terminator (1984)
Back to the Future series (1985, 1989, 1990)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Galaxy Quest (1999)
The Butterfly Effect (2004)
13 Going on 30 (2004)
The Lake House (2006)
Meet the Robinsons (2007)
Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Looper (2012)
X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
Interstellar (2014)
Doctor Strange (2016)
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
The Last Sharknado: It's About Time (2018)
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Tenet (2020)
Palm Springs (2020)
Zach Snyder's Justice League (2021)
The Tomorrow War (2021)
REFERENCES
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