Face it time is an illusion. Time is a dimension. What we know as time is motion.
We know that our physical world consists of four dimensions.
We know the three dimensions, X, Y and Z axis; left right, forward – backward and up – down. The fourth dimension is time, or T. We expeerience time in only one direction – forward, but we don’t know time as backward.
Time does have corrdinates, though, just like the other dimensions – let’s call them beginning – end, for lack of a better idea. Time begins at the big bang and ends in the great whimper, or so they tell me.
We experience the illusion of time flowing forward because we are moving along the axis of time from the beginning point towards the end point.
So why does this tell me that we will never make a time machine? Because, our experience of time flowing is movement in the forward direction as the universe expands from beginning to end. In order to make a time machine, we’d have to be able to hit a moving target with such accuracy that Robin Hood’s famous act of splitting an arrow in the bulls eye of a target during a shooting contest would seem like the clumsy act of a clumsy child. With their eyes closed. While sneezing.
Take a moment and count off one second – one-thousand-one. Did you feel it? The movement? You moved forward in time one second, but how far did you move in the other three dimensions?
But, wait, you say – I’m just standing here.
Are you?
You sit on the surface of the planet Earth, which spins on it’s axis while it rotates around the Sun, which in turn, speeds through the Galactic arm of the Milky Way, which in turn, speeds through the Universe as it expands.
Just how fast are you really going, relative to the rest of the Universe, while standing still?
The Earth spins at 1,000 MPH (at the equator, slightly slower the further away from the equator you are).
The Earth rotates around the Sun at 67,062 MPH.
The Sun is traveling at 43,000 MPH.
We’re rotating around the Galaxy at 483,000 MPH.
And, the Galaxy is speeding through space as the Universe expands at 1,300,000 MPH.
So – all told, while you’re standing still, you’re traveling a twisted, winding course through space at a whopping 1,894,062 Miles per Hour, or 526 Miles per Second.
Though that seems like a fantastic speed to be traveling, remember that light travels 186,282 Miles per Second – so, in reality, we’re poking along at a mere 0.28% the speed of light.
Since Time is a location in space, and the flow of time is an illusion created by our traveling through space, it’s easy to see why there really is no such thing as time travel, since, to travel back in time, you’d have to either be able to travel backwards along the axis of T, on a very twisted and convoluted path at the rate 526 miles for every second you want to travel. You’d have to also figure out a way to instantly accelerate to 1,894,062 MPH, move that 526 (for a second’s travel), then just as instantly decelerate to match the speed of the Earth you just passed again.
Whew!
But wait – there’s more – you will have to hit your target with perfect accuracy. Not just extreme accuracy, but such perfect accuracy that being off by even a gazillionth of a second could leave you, say, feet trapped in the sidewalk, or, maybe your head smashed in the ceiling, or, even worse – sitting in high orbit watching the planet wizz away on it’s twisted course, or maybe slapped by Jupiter as it flys by (oops!).
But wait, you say – what about creating a worm hole? Can’t we just punch a hole in space and travel through a worm hole from one location (present) to another location (past/future).
In theory, yeah. But, think about what it takes to make a worm hole. If you know the answer to that one, let me know and I’ll steal the Nobel Prize from you. Think about the energy you’d need to harness to power the worm hole – like, what, on the order of a black hole? Or several?
And, then again, you need to think about not only placing, with perfect accuracy, the two ends of the worm hole where you want to travel – to and from, but you’ll need to constantly adjust your placement, with perfect accuracy, in a space that is extremely dynamic in four dimensions – and then holding those two ends in relative position as all of the coordinates dynamically shift in four directions, not always in the same directions and not always at the same rates, but at very fantastic rates of change. With perfect accuracy.
Nope – methinks not – no time machines in my near future.
That is unless those infinantly evolved beings mentioned in Carl Sagan’s book “Contact” suddenly show up and school us.