Time...what is it?
If you’re reading this then you fall into one of three categories. First you’re bored out of your skull, second, you have an interest in the theory of time travel, third...you’re obsessed with it like I am.
Yes, I admit, I am obsessed with the concept of time travel and yes I know there is a ton of information and scientific studies and what not on if it even exists. If you’re into the physics of time travel, best go back and look up Stephen Hawking on the subject. What I am going to theorize on is from a writer’s perspective and that my friend, gives me lots of literary license. As you read on, please keep an open mind, sit back and try to envision what I am describing.
Friends and family have heard me talk about this and I commend them for surviving all these long years listening to me babble and yes, I do understand that most of it if not all, has gone through one ear and out the other. But they’re family so they listen.
So, let’s begin shall we....
First off time is “somewhat” linear...I will get back to that in a bit.
Envision a rope, a thick rope. As we all know a rope is made up of hundreds and thousands of individual strands woven together to make a larger strand.
Time is the same…Everything and I mean everything has its own rope. For instance, the day you are conceived becomes the starting point of the rope this is your rope, every day, every millisecond of time that moves forward, the rope grows. So picture now you are thirty years old, the rope that is bound together is your past, the point where the rope is forming is your present, the infinitesimal number of strands that make up the rope are your future. Depending on choices you make, those choices are simply choosing a particular strand to add to your rope.
Now as I mentioned before, everything has its own rope, everything, and an infinitesimal number of ropes are branching out, this forms the very fabric (ha good one!) of the universe. How you may ask? Picture this, you today, at this very moment go outside to your mailbox - a decision, you also happen to meet the mail delivery person, you chat for a moment – choices made by both of you. So as time goes, your two strands, or choices/decisions that you made now make up both your ropes which have now intertwined or–connected. Now picture going to a grocery store, a lecture, a movie theater…anything that involves others or something else. All these strands connect and create a “Tapestry” which is what the universe is made of.
Lost you yet?
Don’t worry we’re going to go even deeper…
First question I get asked is “If this tapestry is what makes up the universe then you can’t go into the future or past, right?” Wrong…
You can go into the past, however, time-or the tapestry of the universe has already been formed and cannot be changed by you, remember, changes take place at this moment, if you go into the past, yes you can interact but you cannot change it. In other words, you cannot go back and stop JFK from being assassinated or the Titanic from sinking. Paradoxes, like the fabled “grandfather paradox” which states “If I go into the past and kill my grandfather, I would not have been born, which means I could not have gone back to kill him.” Paradoxes like these cannot occur.
The same is true regarding the future, remember I stated that the future is an infinitesimal number of possibilities, which means yes you can go into the future, learn next week’s lottery numbers, come back and play them, but the odds are the same that you will more than likely lose. The choice to go into that particular future has not been one hundred percent decided on. In other words you come back, play the numbers, but get into a car accident on the way home from purchasing the ticket, which is not the same future.
Now remember when I mentioned that time was “Linear”? It is, but doesn’t expand at the same rate as everywhere else in the universe-hence the different rates of expansion of our universe.
Time also is quite physical, we do feel it but it seems intangible to us. Everything has a beginning, middle and end, right down to every atom. Time is what “binds” everything together and I mean everything. It exists in the air that we breathe; it exists in dark matter too. Absolutely nothing would exist without time to bind it all together.
Just like the frozen orange concentrate in your freezer it has depth and thickness as well. Now I know your eyes are spinning and your head feels like it is about to explode, but hang on a little longer. I know you’re asking yourself “Boy is this guy nuts or what?” well – perhaps, but let’s extrapolate on this a bit further shall we.
I said time has depth and thickness, take for example a black hole, where everything, even light is consumed, the closer you get to the vent horizon – or the center, theory has it that time slows down- or I may add – it becomes thicker. One step further…we (at least most of us) like odd things, like ghosts, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, werewolves, the Jersery Devil, you name it. There are many books about “Transients in Time and Space” of things being out of time. Slight of eye perhaps or maybe someone wants their fifteen minutes of glory? No…just eddies in the fabric of time and space, concentrations or rivers of thicker and deeper time, swirling, twisting. They’re out there all the time but we don’t experience them daily, that is because those “eddies” as I like to call them, twist and turn and sometimes, when they get close to us or the planet, they create ripples in time and space allowing us to see and experience doorways or images of times past or of possible futures.
I know…I’ve caused your brain to fuse.
This is just my theory on what time is, nothing more…but if you can follow me, you might enjoy my theory on how to actually travel through time…but that is for another day, another blog post.