Imagine you have an object in the present. You also have the same object 2 seconds in the past, and the same object 2 seconds in the future.
If you plot them on a simple line, it looks as if only the present generates time the temporal distance between past and future seems to exist because of the present.
Of course, this is both logical and correct. But this simple thought reveals something deeper: there is no “time” in the past or the future. Time is produced only in the present.
I believe this is a fundamental principle someone should understand before trying to build a time machine )
You're looking at it wrong. The present doesn't create time, it is time. The past and the future don't exist. Time is how we measure the distance between present moments. One second per second. You say you could plot a line from an object in the past to the same object in the present to the same object in the future. Except that's not possible because there aren't three objects in three states. It's one object with an ever progressing present. If you take a bite out of an apple you can't rewind the entire universe taking that chunk out of your body and putting it back into the apple. The more I have discussions here, the more I believe time travel to the past is not possible because there is no past.
I call it the Eternal now, similar to presentism. Only now exists. The future and the past are just different configurations of the now. Time travel backwards may be possible if time has a wake that we could reverse the flow of.
I like that "eternal now" 🤔
How do you propose reversing the entire universe? I mean how do you rewind everything and everyone to a previous state without also still progressing through the "eternal now"?
So in my book that I'm working on, time is a physical medium. A superfluid that fills the galaxy. As we move through time we cause a wake in time. In my book they reverse the flow of time around the earth which causes a local reversal not a galactic one. https://darktime.co
I wasn't talking about in hypothetical fictional universes. I'm talking about the one we're in.
The earth moves about 854 million miles around the sun every year while our solar system moves about 4 billion miles through the Milky Way at the same time. Knowing that, how does someone rearrange all the molecules in the universe (every planet and person) to where they were one year ago? Without being a literal god?
In the real world I agree time travel isn't really possible. But I do personally believe in the Eternal now. It's the only experimentally verifiable position. The block universe doesn't make sense to me.
Yeah, you’ve just made that click for me too
Inertia is the past.
Particles are the relative present.
The wave function is the relative future.
According to my quantum fiction theory, anyway.
Yes. This is exactly the point people miss.
If time is only produced in the present, then the past and future do not exist as places you can travel to. They only exist as descriptions generated now. Plotting objects on a timeline already assumes the present is doing the measuring. Remove the present, and the line disappears.
So time travel fails at a more basic level than most discussions admit. There is no destination. The past is information encoded in the present. The future is unresolved possibility emerging from the present. Neither is running anywhere independently.
This is not a coordinate problem. It is not a relativistic problem. It is not an engineering problem. It is a category error.
Trying to build a time machine without understanding this is like trying to drive to yesterday. The map exists. The road does not.
sorta all ipsofacto, i would think that this would also precisely be the principle that would disallow a time machine at all
lol
Nice try, but it's no more provable than the idea that that there is time in the past and in the future. You can't falsify it, so it's of no real use beyond navel gazing.
Everything exists in the “now.” Time is a construct adapted to wrap our minds around the idea of eternity and organize experience. The only “time” that truly exists is the present moment. At any instant, the universe occupies a single present state.
What if we find that we can time travel, but it just works like rewind of fast forward? Like you can go back only as far as your own birth, but you would be a baby...
I give you one better you have a series of way points set running for a random number of days in the past & the future linked by quantum entanglement . This stable hard timeline can be extended infinitely into the past but constructed by only the original forward time line . What would you do?
quantum entaglement is a share of information and information can e as compicated according to future but this complication under its weight cant recunstruct the past....its not that simple