The Time Machine (possible or not?)

For years people have written, told stories and even made films about time travel. It is man’s greatest fantasy to go back in time to change all his mistakes. Or peek into the future to know what’s about to happen to us. Wouldn’t it be great to know the next president or the no. which will win us a lucky draw? But here I propose to prove that such a machine will be a completely useless invention! This is because a time machine will not only break most of the fundamental laws of physics but will be of no use to man. Let us see how!

According to the law of conservation of mass and energy, the total amount of mass + energy in the universe remains constant in a given time period. So, to move from one time instant to another, we’ll have to ‘destroy’ mass + energy in one instant and ‘create’ a similar amount in another. This is not acceptable by the above law. Also it will be very tough to create an exact replica of what was destroyed in the first time instant.

But there’s a way to overcome this problem. If instead of ‘destroying & creating’, if we can ‘transform and substitute’ mass and energy, we will not be violating this law. Now let us assume a scientist wanting to create a time machine (in the present), he’ll require help in the future. For this he’ll have to co-ordinate between two time periods and send information from one period to another. He cannot wait for some years to activate it himself. Because in this case, his present (eventually becoming his past), will have no log of him making use of that machine. Similarly one will face the same problem trying to get into the past. He won’t be able to get into the past as in the past he’ll have no idea about the machine! Alternately he’ll need a machine which can send signals from future to past and vice versa. As signals are nothing but energy, he’ll need a time machine to make a time machine. This is absurd as we’ll be tangled in a loop.

Now, let’s suppose (for argument’s sake) a scientist overcomes the above problem and builds a time machine. He’ll soon find it of no value or advantage. This is because as soon as he transports himself into another time period, he’ll change the whole time frame. Let us see how this happens.

At present man knows most of the past. The present is what we live in and we know nothing of the future. As soon as the scientist transports, he’ll cease to exist in the present and will go to the past. He’ll be thus twice in the past and not in the present. His future will thus collapse. Similarly, he’ll not be able to transport to the future as there can be no future without the present.

Another point is that as soon as he sets his foot in the past, he’ll manipulate the past. Every person that sees him, hears him, talks to him, touches him will be altered. Even the very air he breathes will alter the past around him. There is no way one can be in the past and not change it. You cannot have the cake and eat it too. If this guy tries to change some part of his past, he’ll end up altering the complete universe itself.

The future is like a 3D cone with the present as its vertex. There are innumerable possibilities there. The past cannot be changed and is more or less like a graphical line. I’ll write about it in some future blog.

The last point I state is that if somebody has made a time machine in the future, why didn’t he come to the past or our present to tell us about it? Or between the big bang and the big crunch, nobody was smart enough to invent one? Or is it invented in some other timeframe? We’ll never know, will we?

I’ll like to include a limerick I found on the net:

There was a young lady of Wight,

Who traveled much faster than light,

She departed one day

In a relative way,

And arrived on the previous night!

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