So, I was chatting with a friend about television shows when I mentioned the classic Irwin Allen '60's Sci-Fi show, The Time Tunnel.
My friend became fairly animated and started going on about how much he loved that show and has even watched episodes via the Internet recently.
Then, in all seriousness, he said; "I can't wait until some scientist makes a real time tunnel and we can go back and correct all the big mistakes that humans have made."
Needless to say, I stared at him a bit dumbfounded for at least a full minute. I carefully weighed what my response should be to that statement, then decided against saying anything at all, just shrugged my shoulders and said "Uh, yeah."
Later, as I do on occasion, I started thinking about what I should have said to him.
Maybe something along the lines of "Well, if time travel were to somehow be made practical sometime in the future, doesn't it make sense that somebody would have already gone back and done just that? Wouldn't the world's history books now have nothing but page after page of disease, war and disaster-free recounting of the development of civilization?"
Except I don't think that would be clear enough for this particular friend. Not that he's stupid or slow, it's just that...lets just say he reads a lot of Science Fiction and doesn't fully grasp that it's just that, fiction.
Hmmm...if he reads this blog someday, I hope he doesn't get offended. Probably will. Just a chance I'll have to take.
Admittedly, the prospect of time travel is an intriguing one. But even the most fanciful of Physicists doubt that moving through time is plausible, probable, or possible.
Of course, thousands of incredibly intelligent people have hypothesized theories that claim time travel may be possible, most notably the general and special relativity theories of Dr. Einstein.
But what Dr. Einstein suggested is what is commonly known as Time Dilation, not time travel.
Short, quick explanation - Time Dilation is the difference that an observer will note or experience time elapsing at depending on proximity to a gravitational mass and relative to the observers traveling velocity.
If you've seen or read any Sci-Fi about space travel, you've no doubt heard references made to how space travelers return from a deep space voyage having aged only 10 years or so, while thousands of years have passed on earth -that's Time Dilation at work.
Of course, Time Dilation in those scenarios requires traveling at speeds close to or even faster than the speed of light, which isn't going to happen. Prove me wrong Mr. man from the future reading this blog!
Astronauts who have stayed on the International Space Station have reportedly come back to earth younger than the staff at Mission Control as a result of Gravitational Time Dilation.
Seven thousandths of a second younger. How they measure that is beyond the keen of my intellect.
That's not what the Time Tunnel was about though. The Time Tunnel was about two scientists in a secret underground lab (all scientists work in secret underground labs, so if you're claustrophobic, better not opt for science as a career field) who jump around in time, almost always landing in the middle of some historical tragedy or disaster about to go down.
For anyone born after 1980, think of the show Quantum Leap - except these guys didn't jump into people in dire situations, just into the dire situations.
But I have digressed quite a bit from what I wish I had stated to my friend, which is, not only do I believe traveling through time backwards is flat out implausible, I believe it is flat out improbable, and yeah, flat out impossible as well.
Yep. Implausible, improbable, and impossible.
Primarily because I do not believe time exists as a place. And by that what I mean is, I don't believe there is a place where the last minute or so I spent typing this sentence is being stored, and I can go back and visit it, watch me type away.
Of course just because I don't believe it, doesn't mean it isn't so. Feel free to believe whatever you like...I swear I won't laugh at you.
Me, I believe time is a measurement of intervals between when things happen or how long things last. It is not a physical place that can be visited.
As I mentioned near the beginning of this little diatribe, if traveling backward in time was to be discovered sometime in the future, logic dictates that someone would have gone back in time and made a few changes, such as eliminating Hitler before he became Chancellor of Germany.
Since we know Hitler did in fact become Chancellor of Germany, obviously time travel was never invented in the future.
There are those who say (my friend most likely would be among them) that the answer to that one is simple - the scientists who make time travel possible in the future are also intelligent enough to know not to interfere with anything in the past, as the consequences on the future are unpredictable.
Ah, but what about Schrodinger's cat in a box, hmmm? The whole bit about observation itself having an affect on the results?
A lot of really big brains have come up with some serious theories to explain time travel paradoxes such as the classic Can I be my own grandfather? or What if I prevented my own birth?, but I have to believe those big brains are just having some fun with the rest of us average IQ types.
It's not like we all haven't seen those episodes of the Twilight Zone and we've all read H.G. Wells and a hundred other fantasist spin fantastic tales of time travel. They are all great fun and sometimes even thought provoking.
Hell, time travel has been used in Fantasy and Science Fiction for so long now it has become something of a relic in the way of plot devices, almost a MacGuffin.
But being as how scientists from the future haven't come back and corrected any of mankind's mistakes, well...wait a minute...unless...unless not preventing the tragedies we are aware of, keeping Hitler alive and all the other wars, disease, tragedy, etc...prevented something that was far, far worse!
Scary thought, that. Good idea for a movie though.
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