I’ve been thinking a lot about life, death, time, and the universe lately. Light stuff.
If time travel is ever possible, I find myself leaning toward block time theory… the idea that the past, present, and future all coexist simultaneously rather than unfolding moment by moment.
Here’s my thought experiment:
If time travel exists at any point in the future, then information from that future should, in theory, be able to reach the past. Which means I should be able to set up a kind of long-term “signal.”
Starting tomorrow, I tell my son:
“If time travel becomes possible in your lifetime, come back and tell me. If it doesn’t, make sure your child knows to do the same if it becomes possible in their lifetime.”
Then I repeat this often enough that it becomes a core family story… something he passes on to his kids, who pass it on to theirs, and so on. Eventually, assuming time travel is invented at all, one of my future descendants gets the message: your great-great-great-whatever grandparent is waiting in 2025.
Here’s the weird part…
If block time is true, and all points in time already exist, then the moment I start this process, the outcome should already be “locked in.” There’s no paradox or risk of changing the timeline, because this was always the timeline. If a future visitor was going to show up, they were always going to.
So in theory, I could set this in motion tomorrow morning… and almost instantly know whether time travel ever becomes possible. The second I send the signal the future will receive it.
Of course, the practical flaw is obvious: my son is six. I’ll probably have to remind him a few times.
Wish me luck. 😄
The practical flaw is the thing. If it doesn't work, that doesn't prove time travel is never invented; it just means your descendants never come back and visit you. That could be because:
the technology is never invented
the technology is invented but your descendants are not able/permitted to use it as instructed
the message fails along the way – a bearer dies too soon, loses the details of the instructions or simply doesn't pass the message on.
Ok, we are making progress here… So I need a more fail proof method of passing the message from generation to generation. I think with enough thought I could solve your 3rd point. The first 2 points are sticky though. Hmmm
Or… if a block universe exists that means your issue is perception - meaning there would be no need for a time travel machine because you could view time in a different way, in a separate dimension or “see” the blocks themselves (the way we can experience life on land but a fish can only guess what its like to be on land).
However being able to see/access different points in time doesn’t mean you can change anything.
Thats why it’s a “block” universe.
Hence time travel wouldnt be invented because it would be pointless
It might happen that block universe exists simultaneously with Quantum Mechanics.
Therefore, within each block multiple possible timeliness would exist.
Thus, the future is not yet precisely determined.
I believe this is the way time works.
Hence, if time travel to the future is ever invented, we could change the future at will.
I don't have any idea about the past though. It might be visible but couldn't be altered.
The good news is that time travel into the future has already been invented.
Of course, Einstein demolished the Newtonian block universe, so...
In any event, you might want to read Gregory Benford's "Timescape".
Simply put $$$ into a Swiss bank account and pass on to your descendants that whichever one comes back to you from the future gets the account info.
Nothin’ like an incentive…
Maybe this has been done already, we'll probably never know :)
OTOH, if this was to happen the one who returns with the message would already know that having happened. And, to further speculate, it just might be better for the person being travelling in time not to come back for the acc info. For financial reasons, or some other reasons not known to you (yet), it might be more beneficial to just go back a few generations from their starting point and tell someone else than themselves (their actual granddad, maybe?) how to time travel and then tell the other person to go back to you for the acco number, return to his own time and do XXX with it. Or get the acco info from you, but not to go back in their own time but some other time and pass the info on. So, if someone appears to your doorstep and hands over a Swiss acco number (or asks for one) just shut up and listen.
Edit: This is a really intriguing thought. What might be a better incentive than wealth and power? Only something like it being illegal and punishable by death to seventeen generations back could prevent it from happening - maybe. Because if you do that and get caught, you'd never even know having been born including those 17 gens and that might not actually be too bad. But if you make it your family would be incredibly wealthy and powerful, immediately, all over time. Maybe wealthy and powerful enough to discover how to time travel, and also make the trick your family pulled be punishable by death to prevent others from doing it. Too messy for me.
But hey, if you did this I could accept a hefty lottery win of a couple of M€ tonight for hinting about the death penaly over generations. You'll get my info, and if you are that powerful it's easy peasy and if I happen to win tonight, I'll shut up real good. I won't risk my family line. Are you hiring by any chance..?
Dear lord, don't do this to your family, that's child abuse. And other people will abuse your kid because their father's nuts.
Time travel could be invented, but be prohibitively expensive. Or it could cause a branch, where your timeline will never have time travel because the instant someone invents it they're in a new timeline. Or it causes you to die, which is either a grandfather paradox that causes time travel never to be invented, or the situation above. Or it has a limitation that forms a barrier that prevents anyone from traveling back in time further than the instant time travel was invented.
If traveling to the past is at sometime in the future possible, then for some reason we don't understand yet we aren't able to interact with the past. Because, if we could, we would already know about time travel for it would be in our inherent behavior to want to study, explore, experience all parts of human history. For, through all of the future generations, an incalcuble amount of "tourists" would be at such an amount that it would be impossible to keep it even a secret. There would be no need to pass forward anything because thru thousands of years of time traveling would inundate every epoch of time of an ever building amount of travelers that if it ever were to become possible we would most certainly know it
the blockhead universe fails to account for motion, the present, and how the block was created. it also ignores the notion of irreducible calculation.(there is not enough data nor energy to calculate the result of reality in motion before it happens).
so unless some divinity wrote the entire universe, there is no natural means that a 4-D block could exist.
This is rough way to discover that, although he will eventually discover time travel, your son is sick of your shit (he felt obligated to pursue this line of study by his overbearing time travel obsessed father) so he never bothers to come visit you.
The problem is is that your son is going to become a teenager and think you're a lame weirdo who believes in time travel and refuse to pass such things onto his children someday. Children have an uncanny nack of intentionally becoming the opposite of what you are. Signed the mother of two teenagers who think I'm a weirdo and that everything I believe in is whack. I would say that there's almost zero chance that this gets passed down even one generation let alone multiple. Also in my belief time travel has already been invented and probably has been in use for millennia but only an elite few are allowed to either be exposed to the technology or spiritual techniques that allow for it. There's very little chance anyone in your family will ever be able to practice time travel even though it exists.