Quantum Physics of
Time Travel
Relativity, Space Time,
Black Holes, Worm Holes, Paradoxes
R. Joseph Gabriel
Cosmology Science Publishers
Copyright 2014
R. Joseph Gabriel, Ph.D.
Published by: Cosmology Science Publishers, Cambridge
All rights reserved. This book is protected by copyright. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including photocopying, or utilized in any information storage and retrieval system without permission of the copyright owner.
ISBN/10: 1938024222
ISBN/13: 9781938024221
Contents
1: The Time Machine of Past, Present and Future
H.G. Wells: The Time Traveler
It was at ten oclock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past three!
I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came to-morrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. To-morrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and faster still....Then, in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling stars....
And so my mind came round to the business of stoppingThe peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied... jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way (H.G. Wells, The Time Machine).
The Nature Of Time and the Conundrums Of Time Travel
If a time traveler, sitting in his time machine on the surface of Earth, were to journey just one day into the past or the future, and unless equipped with a space suit, space capsule, and life support, he would die in just a few minutes, irradiated and gasping for breath, alone and abandoned in the wilds of outer space.
Earth, and our solar system are in motion, with Earth having a solar orbital speed of 108,000 km/h (~70,000 mph) and our solar system a speed of 720,000 km/h (450,000 mph) as it circles the Milky Way galaxy. If a time traveler stepped into a time machine in Los Angeles, London, or Beijing, and then set out for the future, he would find himself alone in space millions of miles in front of this planet as it orbits through the cosmos. If absent protective life-support or a space capsule, the time traveler would quickly be reduced to a lifeless corpse.
Even if one were to survive safely ensconced inside a time-space ship, there is the prospect of premature aging; the need to overcome life-threatening g-forces; the Rip Van Winkle Effect; miniaturization and the transformation to a state of negative energy and negative mass upon traveling at superluminal speeds into the past; and the alteration of every moment of space time as one journeys through it such that one may travel to a past or a future but not the past or the future.
For example, as dictated by quantum mechanics and the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations of quantum physics (Bohr, 1934, 1963; Dewitt 1971; Everett 1956, 1957; Heisenberg 1958), if a time traveler journeys 100 years to the future he/she will come in contact with and affect and alter the quantum composition of every moment of space-time leading to that future such that the future becomes a different future by his passage to it. If that future is not altered by his journey to it, then that future must have already existed and his journey to it must have occurred in that future before he journeyed to it. The basic tenants of quantum mechanics and the Copenhagen and Many Worlds interpretations, indicate there may be multiple futures, those which may be altered and those which are not; an assemble of infinite futures which may or may not be altered by events leading to those futures.
Conversely, if a time traveler living in the year 2050 journeys 100 years into the past to 1950, each past (local) moment of that entire 100 years of space-time will become altered by the passage through it. The past becomes a past shaped by the passage of the time traveler who comes in contact with every moment leading to that past. If that past and every moment leading backwards in time are not altered, then this is because he always journeyed to that past, which is part of the past record. Therefore he must have journeyed to the past before he journeyed to it.
If a time traveler journeys 100 years into the long ago and then decides to stay there, then the past becomes the present. As that present from the moment of his arrival in 1950 progresses forwards 100 years, day by day year by year, to the future date and time when the time traveler was born, and then continuing to the date he left on his journey in 2050, he will leave again for the past which will, for him and all those living at that time, will be the present. And as 100 years from his day of arrival in 1950 go by, day by day, year by year, leading to the day of his birth and that same future time traveling date in 2050, he will leave again for the past, and then again and again and again such that an infinite number of time travelers might arrive simultaneously in a or the past or separately in multiple altered pasts which are infinite in number.
Time is relative to the observer (Einstein 1905a,b,c, 1906, 1961). Since there are innumerable observers, there is no universal past, present, future which are infinite in number and all of which are in motion.
There is more than one present and this is because time is not the same everywhere for everyone, and differs depending on gravity, acceleration, frames of reference, relative to the observer (Einstein 1907, 1910, 1961). Time is relative and there is no universal past. No universal future. And no universal now. The past in another galaxy overlaps with the present on Earth. The present in another galaxy will not be experienced on Earth until the future.
Time is like the weather. The weather is different in Beijing versus Berlin, and so is time. The greater the distance between two locations, the greater the differences in time, and this is because time is linked to locations in space and time-space is in motion (Einstein 1961).
According to Einsteins theorems of relativity (Einstein 1905a,b,c, 1907, 1910, 1961), the past, present and future overlap and exist simultaneously but in different distant locations in the dimension known as space-time, and as such The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion (Einstein 1955). Quantum physics, the Uncertainty Principle, the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics, and what Einstein (1930) called spooky action at a distance all call into question the causal distinctions between past, present and future.
