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Article 10

Believers and Unbelievers - Any Difference?

If this is your first visit to this site please read the Glossary

Introduction
To say that this is a short article is an understatement but the arguement, and explanation, is simple and, in my opinion - definitive.

You Are Here! - I Am Here! - Reality Check!
For this explanation I will take the process of travelling in to the future, though the logic is exactly the same for the idea of travelling back in time. I am going to make this explanation simple for the very sensible reason that a more detailed explanation (of existence) would not help the argument whatsoever (there is a separate article dealing with the nature of existence).

I am made from atoms (or energy to be exact). When I die and my body decomposes those atoms will become incorporated into other materials. Those materials will exist in the future. If it were possible for me to travel into the future it would mean that at that point in time there would be TWO instances of these atoms existing simultaneously and independently. That cannot happen.

Conclusion
Time travel is NOT possible - except in fiction, and in articles and books written by those pseudo-scientific entities who crave popularity - and wealth, more than they seek truth.

Also, the reason why there is the Grandfather paradox, and other paradoxes regarding time travel, is specifically because of the fact that time travel is impossible. Thus travelling in time would create paradoxes. If travelling in time did NOT create paradoxes . . . now that would be an even greater paradox!!

Parallel Universes
The talk or consideration of parallel universes is childish. For example people talk about going back in time and preventing Abraham Lincoln being assissinated etc. But the 'logic' of parallel universes would ultimately mean that for every instance of existence there could be trillions and trillions of alternate possibilities and therefore trillions and trillions of parallel universes.

There would also be the problem that the universe that the time traveller went back to, to prevent Lincoln from being assissinated, would have had to have been one of those parallel universes in the first place (whether or not Lincoln was going to be saved at all!) for the very fact that in the real past there wasn't someone from the future to attempt to prevent it. Parallel universes are just not rational.

Speed Of Light
Travelling at, or near, the speed of light may slow down the processes within the object which is travelling at that speed but that is NOT time travel. Likewise, neither is it time travel if I put a clock in the freezer (ice box) and, because of the contraction of the metal in the springs, the clock happens to slow down. Likewise if I put a slice of bread in the freezer and it stays 'fresh' for 2 months it wouldn't mean that the slice has travelled in time 2 months! Even if the passing of time does slow down (though I see it as the CHANGES slowing down) because of travelling at the speed of light it wouldn't be a case of the object travelling OUTSIDE it's own time-energy frame (or timeline) - it's 'now' would be a simple continuation with no 'leap' forwards or backwards. It could never go 'past' it's own demise time.

Duplicate Atoms Argument - added 15th February 2008
Someone pointed out that theoretically there can be mirrors of atoms - that an atom can be in two places at the same time - or so it may seem. I think that my simple point above is mis-understood. The whole point of the argument is about the SAME bundle of atomic energy existing at the same time period.

Maybe at present there are 'twin' atoms which in the future will also be twin atoms but I am pointing out that the energy in an atom in me NOW cannot go to the future and exist INDEPENDENTLY at the same time as whatever the energy would have become in the future. I can only presume the argument for the existence of 'twin' atoms is that they behave in the same manner - what effects one will change the behaviour of the twin atom - they couldn't be independent. So my argument still stands - there can not be such a process as time travel.

Updated: 3rd October 2009