Geez, going from "Warm Up" to "More Challenging", in one question.
My answer -- time travel to the "future" is possible, while time travel
to the "past" is not.
To rephrase the question a bit, I define "time travel" with respect
to a given individual; i.e., can a given individual travel into what
he sees as the past or future?
Travel to the Future
The Theory of Special Relativity, discovered by Einstein, and
as most eloquently described by the so called "Twin Paradox",
gives us time travel to the future. This result isn't
controversial. Basically, a clock in motion will run slower than
a clock at rest (this has been
verified by atomic clocks
on aircraft), w.r.t. the frame of reference of the resting clock.
So, if I fly to Miami and back, I arrive back with my twin brother
(as well as everything else) a little older, and thus have moved
into my future. The effect is
not noticeable on a commercial aircraft, but would be if I flew at
speeds closer to the speed of light (traveling at about 86% of the
speed of light, I would age about half as fast as my twin, so if the
trip took 5 of my years (10 Earth years), I'd move 5 years into my
future, and all things associated with time travel to the future, such
as 10 years of interest accruing on my bank accounts, would be true
after the trip).
A couple of notes. This is not "instantaneous" time travel. It
becomes "more" instantaneous the closer to the speed of light you
travel, but the question doesn't ask us to consider instantaneous
time travel (FWIW, I find no evidence for the possibility of
instantaneous time travel; I'm not sure if the Prof addresses this
or not. And as in previous answers, I am not appealing to metaphysics).
Secondly, this explanation posits the possibility of building a
machine that can travel near light speeds. In
Question 3,
I argued true virtual reality was not possible because complexity
theory indicates that it impossible for the necessary machine to
exist. It is possible that that a similar objection could be raised
here. I don't know if there are theoretical objections to the
possibility of such a machine traveling at meaningful percentages of
the speed of light. But, as time travel has been demonstrated on
aircraft, it is not really necessary. We are not asked to discuss
degrees here. The last question, however, by its nature,
required complete virtual reality, various degrees of it were
not acceptable.
Travel to the Past
As for the past, I find time travel to the past impossible because
the past does not exist, nor will it ever exist. There is nowhere
to travel to.
Imagine being on a speeding train that passes under a highway.
After it passes, you desire to go back to when the train passed
under the highway. It simply never happens. You can't go back
there (OTOH, you could take a very fast plane ahead to where
the train passes under a highway in its future).
In physics, this is called the Arrow of Time. Conventional
physics postulates that time flows from "the beginning" towards
"the future", unidirectionally. It cannot be reversed. The
irreversibility of time is based in part on The Second Law of
Thermodynamics which basically says a closed system (such as
the universe, as postulated in Question 1),
always degenerates
forward. In other words, you can't unscramble eggs (as Bertrand
Russell put it). There is no evidence to suggest that the Second
Law and the Arrow of Time are wrong. We will not be appealing to
metaphysics.
We could speculate on undiscovered laws and physical principles.
Perhaps time is actually a circle, and it will cycle back on itself,
meaning a leap really far to the future will actually be a leap
to the past (I believed this when I was a kid). We could postulate
some sort of "quantum of time"; the smallest indivisible atomic
increment, that time clicks along at, and that at each click, the
state of the universe really exists "outside of time" and independent
of our perceived movement of it. If so, it would seem theoretically
possible to go to the past, as it would actually exist. We could
speculate on any number of things like this, including a god that
can teleport us to any point in time (and, as in the case of the past,
make it exist). In this sense, any sort of time travel is possible,
but there is no evidence to support any of these speculations, thus
there is no reason to believe they exist.
Logic, not Physics
I have argued this from the point of view of my understanding of
physics. The Prof implies he will be considering the logical
arguments in this space. I'm not sure I'm up to that. I'm not
sure of what they are, and part of the ground rules are to not
look it up or do direct research. (And one other note on the
physics -- the Theory of Special Relativity is tricky, and I
have simplified things by assuming a stationary frame of reference
on the Earth. Of course, the Earth is also moving, and perhaps
we need to think about time travel relative to other points
in the universe. I really don't think it matters, but my grasp
of the physics isn't strong enough to be sure).
One of the arguments you hear against travel to the past is
that if it were possible, why haven't people from the future come
to visit us? This is a pretty stupid argument. First of all,
how do we know they have not? How do we know we won't see
evidence of these travelers next month? Why are we so sure
society will evolve to this level of technology, even if the
technology is theoretically possible? We could destroy ourselves
next month, the day before the critical breakthru is made.
What about "time travel paradoxes"? You know, the one about
going back in time and killing my grandfather, thus meaning
I would never be born to do the deed. Well, the easiest way
to dispense with this is my already argued belief that the past
does not exist, thus such deed is impossible, resolving all
such paradoxes. In fact, the existence of such thought paradoxes
reinforces the idea that the past does not actually exist.
I don't have a good answer to time paradoxes like this. I'm
more comfortable with the idea of positive paradoxes, such as
a member of a race going back in time to found that race,
as opposed to negative ones, such as the grandfather paradox.
It is easy for me to answer these questions, tho, as I believe
free will is an illusion. In a system without free will, the
will to act out this impossible grandfathericde would never
exist, as it is against the laws of possibility. This is a
pretty lame answer, but it is the best I can come up with.
Well, the questions are clearly getting harder. Time to see
what the Prof thinks. I love this topic, yet it is one I am
very poorly read in. As for the last question on brain in the
vat, I liked it, but I don't think I wrote it up all that well.
B+ for the philosophy, C for the writing on Question 3. I would
have liked if the Prof spoke to the issue of reality for the vat
masters and the vat, and the complexity theory surrounding the VR
computer.
Worth Reading
by Roger Highfield (Suggestions that
the past does not exist)
by Brian Greene (The best book on
modern physics that I'm aware of)
(One of my favorite time travel movies,
but the sequel sucked)
(One of the most fun time travel stories)
