Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every week as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.
Today’s topic: If You Could Time Travel, Where Would You Go, and Why?
First, I have to write a disclaimer. The topic of this post, while interesting and entertaining, is something I currently believe resides in the realm of science fiction. I also currently believe it is likely to stay there. I am not a physicist, nor do I have a terribly firm grasp on Einstein’s various theories of relativity, which are supposed to govern things like the possibility of time travel. But I don’t think there is much convincing evidence in the world of physics that human beings will ever be able to time travel. Perhaps particles will be sent forward in time by a few seconds. But the physics powers that be have not yet convinced me that people would be able to follow the particles.
That said, if it were possible to time travel, it seems likely the only direction a person could move in time would be forward. You may wonder why I say this. Well, I watch this super-cool show on The History Channel called The Universe. They did an episode on time travel, and one of the scientists on there made an excellent point: It would only be possible to travel forward in time, because if you tried to go backwards, there would be no time machine in the past for you to “arrive in.” The farthest backwards you could ever go would be to the moment the time machine was created and functional.
This makes sense to me, so I am very sorry if I just burst anyone’s bubble. If you have an argument against this line of thought, I am all ears.
So now we have arrived at the part of the blog where I’m supposed to say where I would travel to, and why. My own skepticism on the topic aside, I had a lot of trouble deciding what I would use my nifty time travel device for. I’m perfectly happy with my life in the present, so other time periods hold little interest to me. Besides, there was no indoor plumbing until very recently in history – no bathrooms? No thank you! After much thought, though, I have come up with two places/times I would travel to in the future.
The first place/time I would go to is my own house in 2041. I would be 60 years old. I want to know what my life will be like at age 60. Do I have children, or grandchildren? Am I crotchety, or am I an entertaining person? Am I still a scientist? I figure being able to get some answers to these questions might eliminate my ever having to say the phrase, “If I knew then what I know now…”
The second place/time I would want to go to is the year 2509. It can be pretty much anywhere on the planet, although I would probably prefer the East Coast of the United States for comparison purposes. 2509 is 500 years from now. I think it might be interesting to check out what humanity has become 500 years in the future. Did global warming become the huge issue people say it will? Did a massive asteroid the size of Manhattan hit the planet and wipe out life as we know it? Will ET finally have made contact? Did we wipe ourselves out in a nuclear holocaust? Or is everything peaceful and happy, a utopian society? Without my time machine, I will not be around to answer these questions, which bums me out sometimes.
And just for fun, if the time machine could go back in time, not just forwards, I think I would set it to go back the moment life arose (or arrived) on this planet, and put that whole question and debate to rest. Then I’d stop off in the Cambrian period on the way back to the present so I can check out all the kooky animals swimming around at that time. Those would be some kick-ass vacation pictures.
To read Whitney’s take on time travel, go here.
Recent Comments