Terrific: Let’s bend time a little into the past

Hello friends, let’s bend time a little with the aid of two age-old stories and see if we can undo some things or at least make some of our outcomes better. The concept of time has baffled scientists, philosophers, and clerics for millennia.

Everyone who ever gazed into the night sky always wondered one thing — when did those stars get up there. One of the most puzzling eras in history was when scientists explained that anyone who is looking into the sky is looking into the past.

Einstein made this explanation about a hundred years ago. He revealed that we see through light.

As a result of the distance of the heavenly bodies from us, and the length of time it takes light from those far places to get to us, we only see those stars as they were a while ago — sometimes millions of years ago.

Since this has been verified to be undeniably true, the next question is, what if we place a large enough mirror on one of those stars that are far beyond?

Think about it, does it then mean that if we look at that mirror we could see a reflection of the earth as it was in the past? Essentially, we would be watching activities on this planet as they played out years ago.

Theoretically, that’s a funny expectation too. It could work but not for the age of humans who went to place the mirror there. This is what I mean if we want to see the earth as it was 1,000 years ago, we would have to travel at the speed of light for 1,000 years into the sky to place a mirror at that distance. Since 1,000 years have passed since we sent the team to place the mirror, only humans living 1,000 years in the future can use that mirror.

Also, the mirror is physically bound to show things that happened only after the mirror was placed there. It can’t show anything that happened before it was placed. Think of it as a CCTV camera, the camera can only record things that happened after it was placed not before.

But let’s assume that we can see into the past by placing a mirror in the distant sky so easily, this then creates a new problem: seeing the past does not alter it. It only alters the future. How then can we alter the past and get a different present?

Talking about the present, the present is very elusive. We are never able to experience the present or even see things in the present. For us to see an object, the light from that object has to travel through time to our eyes. So we only see things in the past because of the time it takes light to travel to us. Everything we see is in the past.

When we touch things, electrical signals travel through time from our skin to our brain before we can feel it. That means in a big way, that we are living in the past. We are beings incapable of experiencing the present.

It seems as though what we call the present is actually the immediate past, fractions of seconds ago. If that is so, we can then conclude that when we influence things to happen in our lives, we are altering the past.

The question now is, how far can we go with altering this past? Can we go back an hour, a day, a year, a decade? Can you go back into your childhood and convince your parents not to put you in that school that had a wicked maths teacher that permanently altered your love for numbers and negatively influenced your career choice? What of the day your loved one died, could you have gone back to talk them out of making that journey? Could we go back in time and convince Mr. Colonialist not to merge?

These are seriously troubling scientific and philosophical questions. The first story that attempts to explain this problem is called the grandfather’s paradox.

Could you go back in time to when your grandfather was born and successfully kill him at birth? If your mission goes successfully, he won’t grow up to meet your grand mum who then gives birth to your mum who then gave birth to you, the one that went back in time to stop the process.

That’s impossible, right? It shouldn’t be possible to travel back in time and stop a thread of developments that gave birth to that time travel. There must be a constraint somewhere.

But what if there is no constraint? Scientists have discarded this constraint theory because there is no scientific back up to that. If you can go back in time, there is no scientific reason why you shouldn’t be able to stop yourself from being born.

So let’s remove the constraints. If you kill your grandfather at birth, would you still be able to return to the future-present from whence you came to commit the chronologically abominable crime?

To answer this question, let us paint a beautiful but realistic scenario. Let’s say you and 5 of your friends invent a time the travel machine. In the presence of 5 of your friends, you arm yourself with a 45 caliber pistol and a picture of your grandmother on the day she gave birth to your grandfather 83 years ago. You enter the time machine and they spin you into that past. Your grandmother is giving birth at the only mission hospital in the village. It’s an unpainted 2 room mud house. The only doctor there is a white missionary. Without greeting any of the other pregnant women waiting in line, you walk into the first room, then the second.

She is screaming and the baby just dropped out, your gun is out now. “sorry ma’am” you unload 8 bullets on the baby. One of the nurses tries to attack you, you let another 2 go.

Now you’ve destroyed the process that produced you, what happens next?! Since you no longer exist, will you vanish, be stuck in that past or will you be able to still return to the time travel machine that your friends sent you from? Whether you vanish immediately or not you have created a duplicate of our reality. One in which your grandad died and another in which he didn’t die but grew to give birth to the parents that gave birth to you.

Now, what if multiple people can travel to the past and alter things, then multiple realities can be created and made to run concurrently.

This is the theory that scientists accept because quantum mechanics support it. An electron can pass through two different holes at the same time.

However, most scientists believe that since time travel has not been invented yet, we are still running on the first version of reality in the universe.

So let’s say time travel gets invented next year, wherein history would you go back to?

Would you like to show up at the famous garden and convince Eve not to take that bite? If she doesn’t, she won’t be driven out of the garden with her husband and they wouldn’t come through with children who will eventually give birth to you.

Or would you go back and convince the author of that story with your 45 not to write it because of what impact it will have in the world for thousands of years to come?