Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Time Travel--evolved thoughts
Actually the problem with time travel (I know, what does this have to do with Language, Poetry OR Gardens?) never seems to be discussed at all--though I'm sure it HAS to have been broached somewhere. It's this: Matter cannot be two places at the same time. A body is nothing but a sack of molecules. And every molecule in your body already exists at any time you would want to come from or go to. You see the problem? A body cannot come back in time because IT'S ALREADY THERE--not in the person who exists (perhaps) under the same name, i.e. not in a younger self. That's the least of the issues, since his body won't necessarily have very many of the same molecules (a little out of my league with that claim), but because the molecules that make up the body in 2056 exist in loaves of bread and the bark of trees and the guts of whales in 1972. If I go back from the one time to the other, where am I going to get the molecules? These are not copies of those molecules. They are the same molecules. I don't see a solution for this problem.
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Replicators and transporter systems, obviously. It's either probably like a holographic projection-- you are yourself, just in a different form, using a different form of energy-- or a very close cousin of yourself, with growing pockets of cancer for the more times that you time travel. I consider these very relevant solutions to this very pertinent dilemma. But as always, if I weren't actually going backward or forward to anywhere, at least my mind did by thinking about it. And would think that would be a phenomena in and of itself.
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