Saturday, August 09, 2008

Time Travel

Time travel had been an interesting topic and possibility. Sci-fi had been the number one interpreter on its potential. H.G. Well’s “The Time Machine”, Dean Koontz’s “Lightning”, countless novels, been used in TV shows, and several movies like “Déjà vu” and the classic “Back to the Future” trilogy. All imaginative conceptions. Some have scientific reality in them and intelligent facts. But nonetheless, the stories are fiction. So far, time travel is not yet possible (unless the number one conspiracy country in the world, USA, have a secret project on it).

Einstein said that it was possible to travel to the future, but not to the past. I am no Physics genius, and I don’t know the full details. Nonetheless, the greatest genius of the 20th century only has theories, not concrete technology. Unless the Einstein we’re talking about is that one in Red Alert and Yuri’s Revenge – again fiction.

Time travel fascinates me. But the technology and scientific principles that are needed are not yet available. Time travel still don’t exist.

Another thing that seems to make time travel impossible is the paradoxes in time travel. Paradoxes of time travel had been amazingly, impressively, and creatively used in fiction. In reality, will it work the same in fiction? I find it hard to see.

Can traveling to the past or to the future change the reality a time traveler knows? Will it change his present? Best example of a time travel paradox at work: You travel into the past and killed your parents before they meet or before you were conceived and born. Will you cease to exist then? Then again, how were you able to travel into the past in the first place when you were never even born in the first place?

Time travel paradox is a headache. An argument that seems to make time travel impossible. Paradoxes only work well in fiction.

Do human beings have the power to change reality? Another point. Is human free will really that powerful that it can overrule fate? It is just too incomprehensible… impossible almost.

If you change the past by time traveling thus changing the reality of the present, what would happen to the original present you know of? Will it just disappear? Or will it remain existing in a parallel universe? If the latter is true, then changing the reality of the present by time travel can also create parallel universes at the same time?

Fascinating are time travel, alternate universes, and the topics from them.

Do human beings have those powers – time travel, changing reality, creating universes? I don’t know. All I know is no one can change God’s will. (If it is God’s will that humans can have those powers, then so be it)

But it seems to me that changing reality by time travel is struggling with fate. It is much better to submit to God’s will. And life is already filled with paradoxes; do we need more that will be produced by time travel?

The popular line in the movie “Kung Fu Panda” goes roughly (not verbatim), “The past is history. The future is mystery. But today is a gift. That’s why it is called present.” Live life as a day-to-day basis. Don’t be anxious about the past and future. Be still. Live life one day at a time. Submit to God’s will, because His manuscript and blueprint of life is beautiful, good, fun, and exciting. With or without time travel.

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