A Loophole That Will Let You Travel Back One Day In Time

Preamble

I wrote a post about 3 months ago called What is Time? In this post I explained that from a physics perspective the past does not really exist nor does the future.

There is no such thing as time travel and all we have is the ever-evolving now. However there may be a loophole and that is what this post is about.

The reason for saying these things is that there are no experiments which can directly observe what is happening even a brief moment into the future.

Imagine you have equipment looking at a radioactive nucleus. There is no test in our current technology that can 'see' that nucleus decaying even one nanosecond into the future. When it happens, it happens and it is basically an unpredictable event (note: measuring half-lives is only a statistical aggregate and that is not what I am talking about here).

We also can't 'detect' what happened even one nanosecond in the past. Photographs and recordings don't count because they only exist in the present. What I am attempting to communicate is that there is actually no way to directly see the past.

Observing distant stars light years away is also not what I am driving at here because that is only a communication delay effect and is not actual peering into the past. Actually peering into the past would be seeing what it was like a few years ago in a nearby location just a few centimetres away from you.

Edge Of Tomorrow / All You Need Is Kill

There is a book called "All You Need Is Kill" which was adapted into the sci-fi movie called "Edge of Tomorrow". The book is a good read and I also enjoyed the movie immensely.

The premise of the book is that the Earth is invaded by alien terraforming equipment which is trying to convert the Earth into an environment more suited for aliens who will be arriving sometime in the unspecified future. This alien tech might not even be aware that humans exist. It is just doing its job.

This alien tech cannot travel back in time but it has the ability to send signals back one day in time. This means that if it experiences a setback in terraforming (i.e. losing a battle against the humans) then it sends a signal back one day in time describing what the setback was so that they can try a new tactic.

This is a type of time communication that is an interesting sci-fi concept. No object travels back in time, only some kind of signal (the movie did not quite get it right but that's okay as I have lower standards for movies anyway).

In actuality, I don't think that there is any way of sending signals back in time but even so there still may be a kind of loop hole for going 'back' in time which I will be getting to.

Dreaming

On to dreaming. Every night we go to sleep and enter an entirely convincing world that our minds are able to generate. It is a testament to the sheer processing power of the mind to be able to produce these imaginary and often wacky worlds each night.

Many dreams are okay and somewhat convincing but every so often a dream occurs that is so hyper-realistic that even when you wake up it still seems real.

The Daydreams Of A Hyper-Intelligent Being

Now imagine that you are a hyper-intelligent being. Your IQ is right off the charts and you are nearly omniscient (all-knowing and all-seeing). Every rock, tree, blade of grass, sparrow, gas molecule in your local vicinity is known to you. Nothing is hidden.

You know the position and velocity of everything around you to a very high degree of accuracy. Since you are off-the-charts intelligent and since you know what and where everything is this means that your mind would be able to accurately forecast events out to some time in the future.

Just like for weather forecasting, future forecasting will get less accurate the farther forward you go into projected time so there will be a natural limit to this ability.

Let's say then you are a hyper-intelligent being about to a battle with an enemy (or seduce an attractive mate, whatever scenario you prefer). Before starting the battle you go into a trance and future forecast the battle's outcome.

To this being the future forecasting will feel a lot like being in a vivid dream. There will be no distinguishing between that trance state and reality.

Let's say in the future forecasting dream things go badly for it in this battle. Whoops. It wakes up from the forecasting trance and starts all over again doing things differently. Even though actual time travel is impossible the waking up process will feel just like traveling back in time.

There's your loophole. No you can't travel in time but if you are hyper-intelligent you can make it seem that way in your imagination.

Closing Words

There is no actual past and there is no actual future as far as science can currently tell. This means that time travel also cannot be a thing however as I described above there is a kind of loop hole.

The post was inspired by the movie Next and the book All You Need Is Kill.

In 'Next' the protagonist played by Nicolas Cage has the ability of precognition which was never fully explained but I believe precognition is generally seen as the ability to literally see the future (which is impossible).

The book 'All You Need Is Kill' had aliens who could send a signal back in time. As I mentioned above the current state of science as far as I understand it there is no such thing as the past so this too cannot actually be a thing. In the movie based on the book ('Edge of Tomorrow') the main character played by Tom Cruise actually traveled back in time one day, again and again which is also not a real possibility.

However after saying all that there may be a kind of loophole for hyper-intelligent beings with near-omniscience to be able to go into a future forecasting trance and play out scenarios over and over again until this being finds a scenario to its liking.

These trances would feel either like precognition or it would feel like looping back in time over and over again but in this case it would not actually be breaking the laws of physics which is very important to weird pedants like me.

Pedant - A pedant is a person who is excessively concerned with formalism, accuracy, and precision (link).

Thank you for reading this post.

Post Sources

The post was inspired by the movie Next and the book All You Need Is Kill and not so much by the movie Edge of Tomorrow.