The Traveler Part 2

Now we have another question. If time travel is possible and anyone ever DID travel back in time, how is it we don't have any record of anyone who was "from the future?" We might not have met any because it never happened, because it can't. Or they may just be really good at disguising themselves. It is also possible that this creates an alternate universe in which the event did occur, but we have to live through the first timeline first. This however implies that the traveler went to another universe or dimension and did not really travel through time.

There is also one more question which has placed fear into the hearts of would-be travelers.
"What of the immortal soul? Is that transported as well?"
What if we could send matter through, but our very souls tied to this time by some divine decree were left behind?

If these problems were not enough, there are more created by the very act of time travel. The simplest is the grandfather paradox and related possibilities. If you travel back in time and somehow kill or cause the death of your grandfather before your parents were born, you would not be born. Therefore you would not exist. Therefore you could not travel back in time. Therefore you could not kill your grandfather. Therefore you were born and traveled back in time and killed your grandfather. This is a perfect example of a temporal "split" the result of which forces the existence of two futures instead of one. This again supports the alternate dimension theory in place of time travel.

There is another interesting paradox. If we could go back in time, why not bring advanced knowledge and technology with us? Why not teach the people of the past what we know, thus instantly increasing the level of knowledge. Thus assuming normal rates of advancement we would be far more advanced after the trip then just before it. Then, however, the time at which we left we would know far more then we did the first time, thus knowing we were going back in time to bring technology and able to bring far more. This process would repeat creating a near infinite, sudden increase in knowledge and technology slowed only by humans abilities to grasp it, which would make it no more difficult then educating children to that level of knowledge and technology in our current time.

Then, what if this technology allows the creation of a weapon which our experience and greater history have taught us never to use, and this is then used by the less-experienced people who retro-actively inherited the knowledge. They then use the weapon and destroy the earth resulting in a large-scale grandfather paradox (or an impossibility as they cannot blow up the earth because they didn't blow up the earth, therefore they wont blow up the earth.)

The Traveler Part 1

I am a traveler from a long line of great explorers. I've begun this writing as an effort to chronicle the journey that now stands before me. This is about exploration, not just of space, but of time.

We're awaiting the results of the final experiment today. It will determine once and for all whether this is truly possible, and just how to do it. The physicists running the project are confident it is possible as earlier research has proven the total amount of energy required is far less than originally anticipated. Space is actually quite malleable and takes little total energy to create and maintain wormholes, relative to the amount we are able to produce.

There is one standing problem however. It is a question which has not been asked until these experiments began in earnest. Does the temporal dimension behave like the spacial dimensions or not?
If it does, as many believe, time travel would in a sense, be impossible. You could not visit the past or the future. The logic follows like this. In space matter can exist only in one place at a time, it cannot co-locate into multiple places. If time acts the same then likewise matter could not exist in more then one time, thus traveling backward in time would reveal an entirely unknown and unpredictable landscape. There might be no matter, and thus no destination but space. It is possible that space itself cannot exist in multiple times, thus rendering the traveler non-existent. There might be matter other than that which exists in "our reality", whose properties could not be conceived or anticipated.

If time acts differently, than matter could be co-located. You could visit the past in exactly the manner imagined in all the fictional tales of the past. This has another problem however. As mentioned matter cannot co-locate in space. Traveling back in time would force the matter sent back, say your body, to be in two locations, your body and wherever it was back in time. The consequences of this, too are unknown. It is possible that the body sent back would cease to exist. There is however no reason to believe the body sent back is the one to disappear. The matter already there could vanish, essentially teleporting from wherever it is (potentially many places) into the location in which your body has arrived. If co-location is again possible, this could still create some temporal paradox. For example if you travel back in time, you create mass in that time (the extra mass that traveled back in time). The world now has more mass then existed along the first time line. If one did not use a similar procedure to return to their own time, thus removing the mass, you get an infinite mass problem. For example, you start with a mass of lets say 10. A 1 unit mass is sent back in time where it remains increasing the mass at that time to 11. When the future time when the time travel occurred is reached, there is still a mass of 11. Again a 1 unit mass goes back, increasing the mass from what it was...11 to 12 and so on, increasing the net mass of the universe to an infinite amount. This however is an unlikely prospect. Physicists believe the moment before the time travel event would remain "10" and thus adding 1 could only make it 11. This would return to 10 when the extra 1 was sent back. This creates a further complication which is not a true paradox: the "first" time back the amount of mass would be reduced to 9, whereas later it would be 10 (inconsistent values), however since the matter would have essentially arrived (in the past) before it left (in the future) the 9 value would never occur. Thus its confusing, but not really a problem.

Therefore the question becomes is the temporal dimension different or do we merely perceive it as so?

The eternal glory of another neat tool

Enlightenment is...
a 99.66666% improvement in productivity.
Thats the result of my ANT script to turn a 10 minute task (deploying pre-release patches to our application) into a point click execution that completes in under 2 seconds. w00t.