Saturday, August 14, 2010

Time is only relevant within our frame of reference:


Every since I dove head first into theoretical science; I have had this fascination with the possibilities of time travel, and changing the outcomes of past and present events – for example, what would happen if we traveled back in time to the Middle East, let’s say to about 3500-BC; and built a city that was based on our current technology, and with all of the present knowledge and understanding of science that we have today- one could only imagine just how much further advanced in science we’d be today.


I have always wondered just how things might be different today, if at the time in our past when both Arabs and Jews were making major advancements in both math and the understanding of the world through science – just how different things might be today, if Judaism and Islam had never even been in the equation. What would the world look like today if the Egyptians had advanced science, while leaving behind superstition and religion? And without all of this other deluded nonsense, would Christianity have even evolved?


Over the past 25 years or so, I have pondered many of these questions and a lot more of them as well. I have written many stories about what our world might look like today if we had left our superstitious-religious ignorance behind us (some just for fun). In some of these stories, I have contemplated what might have happen if the Jews never had a competing religion – would the rest of the world have simply followed a more cohesive version of religion based solely on the Jewish mythology? Or would most of the Jews have simply found enlightenment much sooner and began working together with everyone else in making the world a better place for all?

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I have always been interested in stories about time travel. I don't believe it is possible but is fun to think about what changes could be made in our history and future. The thing I wonder about is, has time travel been invented in the future and this is the best situation that they could come up with? If someone traveled back in time, killed Hitler, would that have stopped WWII? I don't think it would have but it would have changed how it went. We could all be under control of Germany right now if it had been someone other then Hitler.
2 replies · active 765 weeks ago
I have met scientists who believe that the UFO phenomena is being caused by time travelers from the future – I even met one who claimed that he was part of a government cover up concerning crashed UFO’s. I tend to be a skeptic in these matters, until I see the evidence; however, I find it kind of fun thinking about that kind of stuff too.

There is nothing in our current understanding of physics which precludes time travel – in fact it’s been proven that time slows down when someone goes into space relative to ones motion – time even runs slower at the speed and altitude where the GPS satellites orbit. One of the theories that I just find mindboggling is of the multiverse (an infinite number of hypothetical universes) where reality is only relevant within the particular universe itself. Within the theory, somewhere in some other universe, WWII is still going on. And in another, Hitler is a nice guy.

I have always enjoyed working the math end of these theories, and not so much thinking about the ramifications!
Actually a scifi type show I enjoyed and sometimes watch on HULU is Sliders. They use a wormhole type thing to travel between universes. I figure if time travel was to ever happen, I figure whomever traveled back in time wouldn't be able to interact with the time line but observe only.
Time travel stories are fun (I'm a fan of Dr Who). However, in a lot of film time travel story lines break down under their own weight by the paradoxes.
1 reply · active 764 weeks ago
I'ts the paradoxes that make time travel stories so interesting.

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