Ways to time travel without a machine.

Have you ever seen yourself, staring back at you from the past?

Despite the slim chances that an albeit theoretically possible time machine might see the light of day and allow us to take yet another leap towards being godlike, the lure of time travel has not died down. Ever since it was popularized by the Steven Spielberg franchise ‘Back to the Future’ and other such hit movies or removed from the supernatural realm and brought to a scientific possibility by Albert Einstein.

            But this is no scientific paper, nor I am an expert at the subject. I wish to share some shortcuts or hacks to time travel that I have found highly effective at least in the feeling if not objectively. The success of this method is based on the size of the bubble we live our life in, how big is it? How much does it span forward in the future and back into the past? The bigger the size the easier it would be to time travel, either forward or backward. Remember, time-travel should not be distressing because it is something that we are doing intentionally and intention should bring joy not sorrow, which can be aptly left to chance. It will also help if we see this form of time travel as a form of soft world building like in the movies of Hayo Miyazaki and not hard world building like in the Wes Anderson movies.

One can do a little excursion in time travel by going uphill, to higher altitudes from wherever they are located, in the summer season. The colder temperature which is reminiscent of the winters might just bring back some memories or evoke a sensation that was felt a few months ago, augmented by the sights of people wearing sweaters and jackets, perhaps the sight of a little snow might help too.

Memories are a great way to go back in time whether good or bad, they pull us in the times gone by. The level of detail usually depends on the importance and intensity of that memory. An ecstatic moment on a summer evening with friends or a romantic walk on the beach with a loved one might take you back to it years later, sometimes effortlessly or with little effort. We are constantly devising our own time machines as we go along; we go on sowing the seeds of our future time travel or timestamps even while we are living them. We know that we would want to go back to it and try to capture it with all the ways at our disposal.

Dreams are like travelling in time, without a compass or a watch. We do not usually know the temporality or spatial coordinates of this odyssey. At times when we are lucky, when dreams are an enhanced version of our memory, a recreation of an occurrence of the past only more polished and extravagant. It is when the distinction between memory and dreams are blurred. The fact that we do not have the steering wheel for this journey makes for a bag full of twists and turns and allows for a richer expression of our subconscious. Lucid dreams place us right in the cockpit of this immensely powerful time travel machine and once in it we can take it and us with it anywhere in this endless cosmos or at any point in time. Our imagination in its truest sense becomes the only limiting factor.

Conversations, have their forte in making time appear slower or faster depending on their quality and the person with which we are having them rather than time travel. Imagine you have met a friend after a long time, at an airport and you have only an hour before you both take your flights to your respective destinations. You start talking, and even before you have had the chance to realise, the clock has raced to a finish and you must part your ways with an exchange of the cliché ‘time flies…’ We all have experienced this at some point in our lives, it can be labelled a spurious application of the Einstein theory of Special Relativity, more specifically of time contraction, when you figuratively moved too fast, time contracts. An opposite experience is one that of time dilation which unfortunately outnumbers the former, boredom.

Generally speaking, the perception of time depends on the number of things we fill it with and not the number of ticks the clock had made in a specified duration. A minute of intensity feels forever whereas a minute of boredom almost never existed.

            Finally, it goes without saying that some drugs when consumed could cause the same effect of slowing down time, speeding it up, erasing it or even travelling back.

            Why do we need to travel in time? Some might say that it is an escape mechanism to evade the reality, which at times might be harsh and too much to bear. In my opinion, even if that is the case and it soothes us, rejuvenates us, or prepares us to take on those harsh realities, it could be of use. Moreover, for me time-travel is a way to gain perspective, newer insights, and a newer peek on life itself.

18. Is time travel logically possible?

Time Travel

Time travel have amused philosophers and scientists for many years. It continues to fuel the debate about whether or not is it possible?

Philosophers have been battling with this question and fighting the many logical inconsistencies associated with time travel. It is an important debate, since anything that is inconsistent logically cannot be a physical reality.

With Einstein theory of special relativity, better understanding of space time and overall progress in the field of physics, the physical possibility of time travel seems plausible. For instance as per the Einstein theory of Special relativity, an object moving at higher speeds relative to another object experiences time dilation in proportion to its relative speed. Hence, forward time travel seems easy enough, one needs to hop on to a spaceship moving at very high speeds, preferably near the speed of light and do some circles around the earth. When the astronauts will land back on earth say after a month as per their experience of time dilation, there would have been years passed by on earth. They would have landed in the future, their wives would be older than them and kids may be of the same age as them.

If they wanted to go back in timeframe at which they began, maybe they would want to travel slower than earth this time. How is it possible to move slower? What would be the inertial frame of reference? and on a lighter note why would they want to grow older faster? Let us say they do want it, what if they forgot how far back they needed to go? Would they land in the past? and here begins the realm of logical inconsistencies.

Time travel can serve two functions for the traveller – First, it may allow him to relive the past as it happened or witness the future before it has happened. This function only allows for the traveller to be a passive, powerless observer and nothing more, he is not allowed to change the events of the past or the future. Second, it may allow the traveller to wilfully change the past or future events as per his liking, interests and possibly benefit. It is clear from the discussion of the two utilities of the time travel that time travel is possible in two directions – forward or backward, in other words future or past travel.

It is important to make this distinction because future time travel as desirous and magical as it may sound does not harbour logical inconsistencies. For example if one goes and kills someone in the future and comes back to present. It would be a wonderful way to evade the law and any form of incarceration because the assailant is not only not in space of the murder but he is also absent from the time frame. I don’t want to sound indelicate but more important than that is the fact that, there is no logical inconsistencies that are generated, yet. Well, you might argue that there will be some differences in the lives of people associated with the victim or in the physical world. For example, if he was an architect and he was about to design the highest skyscraper in the world that would adorn the skyline of Manhattan then that wouldn’t happen and maybe some architect in Tokyo would take the due credit for the highest skyscraper of the world. In simpler words, the universe will adapt to the new circumstances and realities and no one will notice. The victim’s family and the society and large will accept it as fate.

One might argue, however, that not all future time travel is free from inconsistencies. For example – one might travel to the future and see himself as a very successful person, come back to the present and stop doing any hard work since he knows he is going to be rich and famous in the future. How will then he get all the fame and riches that he saw in the future. One explanation can be that he will get all of that out of sheer luck, which is both possible and also something that we all have observed or heard of. The other explanation can be that he does not get the fame and riches and he simply gets what he deserved in proportion to his hard work or the lack thereof, this can again be easily explained by the adaptation of the universe as discussed before.

The many logical inconsistencies (some of which were discussed before) are Grandfather paradox, Predestination paradox, Bootstrap paradox. They continue to be a topic of debate amongst philosophers and scientists and it only seems prudent to say that unless we do travel back in time we cannot really comment on whether or not the agent or the time traveller have free will or be a mere powerless observer or more mysteriously his actions will be such that they will continue to support his present realities and his time travel will merely illuminate the path.

As of now, given that the time traveller will have free will and the ability to do both replacement and counterfactual change, the only plausible explanation is the theory of alternate or branching universe which escapes the whole philosophical question altogether. But, would it really be time travel then?

17. David Lewis’s view of causal loops

Time Travel

            To really understand the causal loops, we need to delineate ‘what is’ and ‘what is not’ time travel.

            According to David Lewis, time travel is the discrepancy between one’s personal time as reflected by the watch hands in his watch, his digestion, the greying of his hair, his memory and the external time. Then there are some conditions that need to be satisfied.

First, time travel involves physical movement of the time traveller from one space time to another space time, hence ruling out mental time travel which can be manifested as going down the memory lane or indulging in wishful thinking. Second, time travel involves going back or forward in the same universe, for example a backward time travel will involve going back and observing history as it happened. Travelling back in time but to an alternate universe is still under hot debate over whether it counts as time travel or not? Third, the time traveller should be capable of causing a change in the events, it could either be a replacement change or a counterfactual change (discussed later). This capability of causing change assuming that the traveller has free will leads to a number of paradoxes or logical inconsistencies (discussed later) one of which is the causal loop.

It has been proven that it is a physical reality for time to behave differently or pass differently at different speeds for different frames of reference by Einstein’s Special theory of relativity. Hence, only if time travel posed no logical inconsistencies, then it might be a real possibility. But, certain paradoxes stand in its way, the most debated and hence prominent of which is the causal loop and the consequent bootstrap paradox.

Imagine you are attending a lecture on the Einstein’s theory of special relativity and the relative nature of time in the year 2020. You understood it so well that you build yourself a time machine and use to go back in time to 1905 to meet Einstein himself. As the two of you sit in a café, you tell Einstein about the theory and give him the idea before he himself had it. He uses the clues or information that you provided to come up with a theory and publish it which the future you (as per the immediate time frame) will read and use it to come back to Einstein. This is a causal loop and is not very incomprehensible by nature but a question remains unsolved – ‘Where did the information about the theory enter the loop?’ – this is called the Bootstrap paradox. A causal loop by definition as it must be clear by now is a chain of events such that an event is one of its own causes: an event wholly or partly causes itself.

Another version of the causal loop is the grandfather paradox. Again, imagine that you were given an opportunity to go back in time and you choose to meet your inspiration, your grandfather in his younger more formative years. But, because of an accident say unknowingly you set in motion a chain of events that led to his death. Assuming no branches in the history or parallel universe, the logical conclusion will be that your father won’t be born and hence you won’t be born. What will be your existence be then? Would you and your father die the moment your grandfather dies? Along with all your creations and influences in the real world? Would your memories be wiped clean from the minds of all of those you met in your lifetime? Would you become invisible the instant your grandfather dies and be caught in an eternal time loop as a time travel waste? Having no power or will, an eternal passive agent, an observer of time? Will the universe find a way to go on exactly the same as it had even without your grandfather surviving – say a young man who died in the moment your grandfather was killed if your grandfather was not killed, survived and assumed the role of your grandfather. But then your family would have different genotype and consequently different phenotype. Would your appearance change instantly according to the new genotype your lineage from that moment on just assumed? Would your changed appearance save you from the death penalty of having killed your grandfather and allow for a safe return to the point in time from where you actually began?

Logically speaking any one of these possibilities are possible, we will only find out once we do a backward time travel. Now, that we have had a warm up with a mind jarring scenario, let us try to flex our brain muscles and talk about the pre-destination paradox.

This time we mess with our father, and no we do not want to invoke Freud or change the domain of our argument. This has nothing to do with the Oedipus complex. Now, our time traveller goes back in time and meets his mother when she was young before she had met his father. He falls in love, marry and has children. What could be the possibilities? Since time travel is not a supernatural skill, it is science, thus far. Genetics will too, have a role and thus the child will not be you. But, what will become of you in the moment whence you started time travel? Will you vaporise? Will you die? Will you find out that you were an orphan all along and that you have a step brother, who in this case happens to be your own son??

This sudden change of reality for you of the time before you began time travel can occur in the form of a revelation and all your realities change in that instance. Even those that the women you went back in time to marry is your mother – she is not anymore.

This is the reason why the physical and the metaphysical realities can sometimes be the same even in manifest form. This is the reason why philosophy and science are so related because their end goal perhaps – the physical and the metaphysical is the same.