Whenever television movies and scientists speak about time travel we get the impression that they are speaking about physically traveling in or through time. Not traveling back in mind remembering what they or someone else did yesterday or this morning.
But is physical time travel really possible? Physical things exist, water, cars, dirt etc but does time physically exists? We designate periods of time and give names to them, Monday follow Sunday and so on. Scientists define time as the period (duration) between the beginning and end of something. Does this therefore means that if something begins and never ends it has no time? Does time stand still for that particular thing or is it that nothing remains forever?
How would someone physically time travel to the past or to the future if time does not physically exist? Are the past, the present and the future in continual existence? If physical time travel is to be possible the future, the present and the past must exist continually. It appears that only the present continually exists.
If there is a residual cosmic vibration from every thing or anything that has occurred then time travel to the past may be possible. Some residual energy that remains and remain for a long period of time. If there is and it can be detected this residual energy can be used for a time travel mechanism. But then how would we travel into or through this residual vibration, or do we travel through it only virtually, meaning we detect and view it on a visual screen. So we would still not be able to physically travel into the past, only see it.
Well, that may take care of virtual time travel to the past, what about physical time travel to the future? Physical travel to the future may even be more impossible (if there is such a term) than travel to the past, because the future does not exist. The future does not exist until it is present and then it is not the future but the present. Can a time machine travel into a future that does not yet exist? Again, it appears that only physical time travel to the present is possible.
The word time is a symbol like the letter “a”. The period or duration between the beginning and end of something is what is called time. It seems to me time travel, physical time travel the way it is depicted in movies and by some scientists, is impossible. Virtual time travel however is definitively possible and occurs all the time, virtual time travel by my definition is, remembering, thinking about the future, watching a recorded television program, playing music from a compact disc and so on.
I will address Einstein’s relativity theory in relation to time travel in my coming article “There is no such thing as space-time”.
