Time Travel Part 2 (Physics)

('wormhole' painting by Andrew Leipzig)

Science will always be sceptical of science fiction. Let’s face it. IF time travel is a possibility, it is probably a very complex process. Lots of things have to be considered:

1.      How does one manifest in each moment in time? Can there be ‘more’ of you at the same time and place?

2.      How does the past affect the future exactly? If you go back in time and get killed, would you exist ANYWHERE?

3.      How can you affect something that is linear? Time is a progression that cannot be easily defined or predicted. Let alone manipulated like that.

4.      Are there specific ‘places’ that you can travel to and from in time?

5.      Are there any particular points in space or time that hold more weight than others? (I have based one of my novels on this question.)

6.      If you go back, do you know for sure that you’d be able to CHANGE anything? Or would you only be a spectator to the unraveling events?

7.      If you go forward and die, what does that mean to your life? Have you never been born? Have you suddenly disappeared from the face of the Earth?

Time Travel, Part 1 (History)

When you think about the future, what do you imagine? I know I do that often enough to be called a science fiction nerd. If you think about it, science fiction is not just about space and aliens. Sure, I’m as excited as the next person to find life, more so intelligent one, outside of our planet. Like it is said in Carl Sagan’s classic Contact (1985), ‘It would be a terrible waste of space otherwise.’ But science fiction is about so much more than space travel and alien life! It’s about things that could be, and maybe even will be one day.

Are we going to live high in the sky and fly around like in The Jetsons? Is the future going to be a fatalistic kind of Dystopia? Or are we going to discover that reality is actually an illusion like the Matrix? And for the big one:

Are we EVER going to be able to travel in time? Seriously. I want to know!

To answer these questions, let’s take a look at what’s been done so far.