On Time Travel

The idea of time travel could be said to have been inspired by the late nineteenth century book The Time Machine. In The Time Machine, a device was proposed that could travel to and fro in time much like one makes visits from house to house on a city block. Perhaps the notion of being able to perform such a feat existed before The Time Machine was put out, in the form of a less mechanical medium. What fueled belief in such a concept? Why would one want to relate to time in such a way? It is obvious that to have such an ability would be to possess great power - one could achieve what could not normally be achieved - one could relate to reality outside of time. In doing so, the individual could manipulate causal variables in ways unimaginable. Is this view, however, a realistic view? Does evidence exist that concludes that time travel is possible? We will address that very issue now.

What could one accomplish if he could travel to and fro in time much like one makes visits from house to house on a city block? He could change history - and in doing so rewrite the future. Of course this would introduce a great paradox - a frequent occurrence in time travel situations. Perhaps these paradoxes are logic's way of showing us time travel's true nature? When you go back in time and and rewrite history, you return to a future different from the one you left behind - one in which you may not even exist! It is right here and now that we must confront the reasoning behind such situations. Is it possible to travel to and from in time much like one would make visits from house to house on a city block? This requires serious thought. Consider the following notion: in what way do the past and the future "exist"? Of what substance are the past and the future when all that really exists is the passing present moment? The past is no more; the future has yet to be. If we are really going to approach the issue of time travel seriously, the question of accessing the past and the future is not a question of when, but of where.

If moments in time are to be accessible in the way time travel requires, each moment would have to possess its own unique physical location. The ghost-like past and future we experience cannot be visited because it has no actual substance. How, then, would we go about picturing the physical arrangement of events in time as mentioned here? The first step is to visualize, as best you can, extension perpendicular to our universe. Difficult, but not impossible. This extension, take note, occurs in no direction expressable from within the universe to which it is perpendicular. Here's how the system works: all instants in time from the beginning of the universe to the end of the universe exist simultaneously. How, you may ask, is that possible? Each instant in time exists in the form of a physical layer. Each layer, in turn, is a copy of the universe that corresponds to that instant in time. In a very real sense, the layers are 'stacked' one upon the other. The passing present moment we experience as time, in turn, is the result of motion through the layers making up each instant in time. The passage through the layers is a sequential, linear process that occurs layer by layer.

How does the arrangement being discussed relate to time travel? Because instants in time exist in the form of stacked layers, travelling through time means advancing through the layers independently of the passing present moment one has associated himself with. Given this, what would we consider to be a time machine, and how would it work? A time machine would be capable of moving perpendicular to our universe and of accessing the copies of the universe representing the desired instant in time. The real challenge, however, is determining the direction in which the time machine is to go forth: how does one advance in a direction perpendicular to the universe? To determine this direction would be to achieve a deep knowledge not only of time travel but of the universe as a whole.