The Problem with Time Travelling
August 23rd 2010 14:15
The problem with time travelling is to know what is now, yesterday and tomorrow. Now could be defined as the present time, but the past at some stage was also now and the future will one day be now also.
But let’s think of the practical problem posed to movie figurants when they travel into a past time, specifically, a historical time when something happened. Suppose that you, Mr Time Traveller, enter into a time machine, press a button or pull a lever and, zap! you travel to some time in the past. Now, you are a cowboy movie watcher so you chose to go to the far west and land on the scene of an historical photograph: two famous bandits take a shot to the posterity and you, recognising the potential of the situation, move just behind then and, flash, you get pictured in the photograph.
What is really happening here? If the original picture showed two well known bandits of the far west, now thanks to your intervention, it shows three people: the two original bandits and you. What sort of consequence will this have for the world, not just you or them?
If that scene was in the nineteen century and you looked into it when you were in the twentieth century, when you go back to the twentieth century what are you going to see: the picture with the two bandits or the picture with them and you?
You see, the original time starting with the two bandits in the photo evolved into what was your twentieth century and what you got to know of them. But now you travelled into that past and you – adultered, changed – it. You could ask the question whether from that changed past an evolution could be traced back to your twentieth century situation? That is, will time and events evolve from the point of the three people photo into the original situation when you looked at the two bandits in your twentieth century?
The answer must be no! From the adultered past only a new sequence of events could unfold so, by going into the past and changing it, you created two presents: the original one from which you came from and the new present that unfolds from the new changed past. If you follow the former, you will be dumbfounded by not finding yourself in the picture; if you follow the latter you will land in a present time which is unknown to you and, like with all in life, is an unpredictable one.
So, by changing the past you changed also the present or, who knows, created several present times. How are you now going to find your way back home?
Fernando Monteiro
Sunday, 17 January 2010
But let’s think of the practical problem posed to movie figurants when they travel into a past time, specifically, a historical time when something happened. Suppose that you, Mr Time Traveller, enter into a time machine, press a button or pull a lever and, zap! you travel to some time in the past. Now, you are a cowboy movie watcher so you chose to go to the far west and land on the scene of an historical photograph: two famous bandits take a shot to the posterity and you, recognising the potential of the situation, move just behind then and, flash, you get pictured in the photograph.
What is really happening here? If the original picture showed two well known bandits of the far west, now thanks to your intervention, it shows three people: the two original bandits and you. What sort of consequence will this have for the world, not just you or them?
If that scene was in the nineteen century and you looked into it when you were in the twentieth century, when you go back to the twentieth century what are you going to see: the picture with the two bandits or the picture with them and you?
You see, the original time starting with the two bandits in the photo evolved into what was your twentieth century and what you got to know of them. But now you travelled into that past and you – adultered, changed – it. You could ask the question whether from that changed past an evolution could be traced back to your twentieth century situation? That is, will time and events evolve from the point of the three people photo into the original situation when you looked at the two bandits in your twentieth century?
The answer must be no! From the adultered past only a new sequence of events could unfold so, by going into the past and changing it, you created two presents: the original one from which you came from and the new present that unfolds from the new changed past. If you follow the former, you will be dumbfounded by not finding yourself in the picture; if you follow the latter you will land in a present time which is unknown to you and, like with all in life, is an unpredictable one.
So, by changing the past you changed also the present or, who knows, created several present times. How are you now going to find your way back home?
Fernando Monteiro
Sunday, 17 January 2010
| 75 |
| Vote |
subscribe to this blog
