Time is part of the background
to existence. We are constantly moving in time, but everything is moving in
time and apparently at the same rate. One of the descriptions of our space-time
is of time being a ball rolling through a pipe that is space. It would be a
little more accurate to say that time was a board about half a second wide
sliding through space. Or it could be that space is that plank and it is
sliding through time. Another description is that events are projection on a
screen of the substrate of quantum matter. We can move around in space quite
readily, but time seems to move at a single rate, until one moves at extremely
high speeds. People have thought up several ways for moving through time at
other than the traditional rate.
There are several types of time
machine. Each variety depends on an application of a particular item from
theory. The simplest in theory, but most difficult to get to work is going
faster than the speed of light. That can even allow you to go directly into the
future, or it allows you to bend around the probability cones so that you will
be in the past. This is simple and direct, but it is impossible for one simple
reason; it requires an infinite amount of energy to accelerate to the speed of
light. That means that, if it could be done, all of the energy in everything
else would be drained away. Stars would go out, molecular bonds would break down,
animals would die, and so on.
Then there is the matter of
going through a black hole and out the other side. This almost certainly would
work, but no one knows what of when you would come out; it might be at the time
of the Big Bang, or it might be at any other time. And you might come out
anywhere in the universe. The energy consumed would mostly be from the black
hole. The major problem would be building a spaceship that would be able to go
there. This method violates no laws of physics.
Next on the list is the
interdimensional craft. This beast depends on something that may, or may not,
exist; that is, it assumes that there is something outside our time-space
continuum, and that it is not a continuum. In this matter it is not out of
agreement with present theory, and it assumes that there was something before
the Big Bang, and that there is something outside the time-space. Al this
requires is that one get outside the time space and moves about then reenters.
That is fine, if time-space is a special set of characteristics upon which
matter, etc. “piggyback. There are some in the physics community who think that
matter is a collection of holograms that are projected upon the substrate that
is hyperspace. If that is true, then we simply have to shut off the projection
in a limited space, and we would have time machine, maybe. It would still
require that we move from one spot in time-space to another and return to the
projected time-space.
There are a few other methods,
that people have proposed, but they have fatal problems. Wormholes look great
until one considers the energy requirements and finds that they would require
as much as is in the universe. The spinning cylinder of infinite length may
allow one to get by with a smaller cylinder and lower speed, but it would still
be well beyond the possibilities of today's technology.
An interesting concept is what
Robert Forward suggested in his novel “Timemaster”, in which negative matter in
significant quantities was discovered, and this allowed the rotating cylinder
method to work. Forward did introduce a bit of magic, but producing enough
negative matter and holding it are problems.
The problem with time travel is
not the mechanics of the process but with the nature of the universe. If the
universe, so-called, is in fact a unitary time-space continuum, then there may
be no way to move in time at other than something around the customary rate. If
mystics are right, then what we perceive as the universe is only a small part
of a larger reality, and the matter and events that we see are projections onto
a substrate of a more basic nature, rather like what some parts of Quantum
Mechanics suggest. There are also concepts that are multiplexes of either of
those ideas, and there is the idea that there are a great many amazingly large
sheets or plates on one of which our universe is located.
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