Time Travel: Some Science of Fiction

By John Michael Williams

[email protected]

2017-10-28
(originally published: 2010-07-09)

The fiction of time-travel usually makes it paradoxical and therefore impossible beyond
physics. A few physical postulates, however, can make time-travel merely impossible
physically.

Note: Also published as http://www.scribd.com/doc/35613144/

J. M. Williams Time Travel 2

Introduction
A few months ago, my home suffered an electrical power outage which lasted two days.
The result was no heat, no electricity, and no hot water -- back to the nineteenth century!
Rather than go to work unshaven and possibly smelly, I decided to stay home. I spent
the time lying around, dozing, listening to a battery-powered radio, and reading by
candle light.
After a while, I began to think about time-travel -- how impossible it would be,
physically, because of violations of energy and momentum conservation, and because of
violation of the Second Law of thermodynamics.
Regardless, I did work out what I think are minimally impossible principles of time-
travel; and, this is what I am presenting here.

Time-Travel is Memory Inspired

First, how does the idea of "travel" in time arise? From a physical perspective, it does
imply a certain interchangeability of coordinates in time with those in space. This is
reminiscent of Einstein's resolution [1] of the mysterious but physically verified universal
constancy of c, the speed of light.
But, more intuitively, time-travel is suggested simply by the existence of human
memories and of books recording a history of past events.
We all can recall events in our lives which can be visualized, or heard again, from
memory. This possibility of reliving past events leads easily to the idea of redoing those
events -- returning to the past to reexperience happy moments or to correct what we now
might consider past mistakes.
Likewise, when we read a book depicting a chronology in the past, we can page
forward and backward in time, in effect recollecting and reexperiencing events which
occurred before we were born.
It's not a big step from this to being able to move, not just from page to page, but from
event to event in our memories -- and thence to imagine being able to move from event to
event in time.

Time-Travel can be Science Fiction

From idle imaginings of travel in time, it is not difficult to write a book about such
travels. The best of such books are not just fantasy, but are science fiction.
What does this mean? What is science fiction? The usual definition is that it is
fiction which is based on science, which presents definite scientific ideas or technological
developments, and then develops a story consistent with that science. For example, a
story about exploration of the Moon or Mars might be based on rocket science and related
technology. It would not permit the sudden appearance of Moon Fairies which were
J. M. Williams Time Travel 3

inconsistent with the story's scientific assumptions. However, if some scientific

justification of Moon Fairies was presented (e. g., biological entities arising from alien
spores, inert if undisturbed), then science-fiction, as opposed to a hodge-podge of fantasy,
could be justified.
The first prominent work of science fiction depicting time-travel was H. G. Wells' The
Time Machine, which related an adventure including travel to the future. As it happens,
Wells was an historian. A Warner Brothers movie was made from this book in 2002; the
movie depicted travel to the past and the future -- and a villain of the future of this movie
pointed out the paradox described herein.
Science fiction on time-travel has become popular in modern motion pictures. To
name a few others, these movies include The Terminator, Time Cop, Returner,
Retroactive, Frequency, Deja Vu, and Twelve Monkeys. All these stories provide only for
travel to the past, sometimes with an option to return to the "present" epoch in which the
travel was initiated. Frequency is a bit unique in that it involves only two-way radio
communication between the present and the past, not travel per se. The science in
Frequency is based on string theory. The science in Retroactive is based on a high-energy
physics facility (the abandoned Texas SCC) but otherwise is unspecified. The other films
use scientific props and story rules to limit the fantasy and keep it consistent, even if
physically impossible.
The long-running Dr. Who television series featured a closet time-traveller who could
visit the future as well as the past.
The time paradox. The stories just named gloss over the paradoxical side of their
assumptions. Generally, they assume that a change in the past mediated by the
traveller would have the effect of "updating" conditions in the epoch in which the travel
was initiated.
In The Terminator, for example, an assassin is sent back in time to kill the mother-to-
be of a military leader, thus preventing the leader ever from existing. The paradox here
is just that, if the leader never existed, then neither would there be any reason to send
back an assassin; therefore, with no assassin, the leader would exist, etc. The leader
requires the assassin, who requires the leader to exist, and the assassin causes the leader
not to exist. This quandary can be seen to exemplify the self-reflexiveness of the part-in-
the-whole required for a true paradox by the Whitehead and Russell formal definition [2].
Now, a paradox may be overlooked in a work of fiction, allowing the story to proceed in
an amusing and even spell-binding way; but, we can not accept the science if we permit
the paradox.
Therefore, I am proposing here a physical resolution of the paradox of time-travel
which, regardless, still implies the inherently unphysical violation of conservation laws
mentioned above. I develop this resolution postulate-by-postulate as follows:
J. M. Williams Time Travel 4

I. Time-Travel is Confined to a Specific Volume

The time machine to be defined here will transport a certain, fixed volume of space,
and anything in it, to some chosen time in the past.
For example, our time machine might cause displacement in time of everything within
a specifically localized sphere of radius one meter. Everything in this volume is
transported in time, and nothing else.
Much of relativity theory is based on an inertial reference frame associated with
displacements in space around any object which can be accelerated. By analogy, our
time machine will associate a reference volume of space enclosing every object to be
displaced in time.

II. Time-Travel is Confined to Travel into the Past

We don't need fictitious, unphysical machinery to travel to the future (with no return).
We already have the machinery for this, at least in principle: Special relativity permits
us to accelerate an object to a speed close to that of light; this causes time (proper time tp)
to pass more slowly for the accelerated object than for the rest of the universe. The rate
of proper time is given by the familiar ratio, tp = t/, in which t is the calculated time
elapsed with relativity ignored (or, by an unmoving observer) and is the total energy E
of the accelerated object divided by its rest energy mc2. When the object is decelerated
and returned near its original spatial location, it will return to a time farther in the
future than was passed for it during its journey.
So, our time machine need only be built to transport objects to the past and, optionally,
to return those objects to the epoch during which the transportation was initiated.

III. Time-Travel to Locations in the Past is Feasible

Postulate I above implies the existence of a problem ignored in all the works of fiction
named above: This problem is that unavoidable motions at the point of departure create
ambiguity of spatial location at the destination and thereby prevent meaningful
functioning of the time machine.
To understand this ambiguity, it is only necessary to realize that the Earth is not an
immobile place at the center of the universe. To see a simple quantification of this
ambiguity, assume that when the time machine is activated, our reference volume is
displaced just one second into the past:
The Earth rotates about its axis at about 1200 km/hr at a typical, intermediate
latitude, and this implies a lateral speed of movement of the Earth's surface of about 300
m/s, roughly the speed of sound in air.
Therefore, if we take the center of the Earth as a positional reference for our time
travel, after one second our reference volume will arrive in the past at a point about 300
J. M. Williams Time Travel 5

meters to the west of where it started, assuming that we are at a middle Northern
latitude.
But, why should the center of the Earth matter? The Earth is revolving around the
Sun at about 30 km/s. Using the Sun as a reference point for the one-second excursion,
our reference volume might end up 30 km to the west, in the Earth's lower crust at a
temperature of 2,000 C, or in low Earth orbit, in an equally deadly vacuum -- or
anywhere else, as much as 30 km away. The exact location in the past would depend on
the longitude and on the departure time of day. Also, what would be the momentum of
an object in the reference volume? Should the momentum be changed because of the
spatial displacement?
It's not hard to see where this ambiguity leads us: We have the Sun's motion among
the nearby stars, the solar system's revolution around the center of our galaxy, and the
flight of galaxies from one another in the expanding universe. Time-travel to a specific
location would appear to be an example of totally unpredictable chaos!
So,we must assume that travel in time at a specific location on the Earth's surface,
unless to a differentially short time in the past, is made possible because the time
machine somehow can calculate and impose a spatial displacement cancelling all the
enormous and ambiguous astronomical movements separating the visited past from the
departed present.
We shall assume here that this can be done by our machine: Our machine will reach
its final displacement in time by integrating an infinite set of differentially small time
displacements and somehow automatically cancelling, respectively, all associated spatial
displacements relative to nearby objects. The travel process depicted in the 2002 time
machine DVD to some extent might be interpreted to depend on this cancellation.

Wormhole Elaboration
The location problem applies equally to "wormhole" or other extra-dimension
formulations (e. g., S. Hawking [3]). In this approach, we can tease apart the present
(departure) epoch from the past (destination) epoch by means of a "wormhole" theory. To
do this, we start by assigning different time coordinates, present and past, to the same
spatial location, thus describing the familiar lapse of time. We shall not discuss here the
idea of a wormhole as a way to travel in space.
Wormhole time-travel is based on the idea that the 4-dimensional space-time of
relativity could be "bent" in some higher-order space and thus folded back on itself so
that, in the higher-order space, the interval between otherwise remote points might
become negligible. Thus, by folding space, one might bring into close proximity points
which have about the same space coordinates but very different time coordinates. If one
then could travel a short distance in the higher-dimensional space, one effectively could
travel back (and forth) in time. Travel through the wormhole.
Unfortunately, the lack of an absolute coordinate grid for physical space-time makes
this idea impractical: Yes, in the rest frame of the time machine in the present epoch,
J. M. Williams Time Travel 6

both the present instant and the chosen past instant would have well-defined locations
and intervals. The wormhole geometry could be well-defined -- for an instant.
But, relativity theory, many times confirmed as correct, demands that locations and
intervals in space-time, and thus in any higher-order space, not permit of the possibility
of an absolute space-time grid with a physical extent in space-time.
Thus, the noninertial rotation of the Earth, its orbiting about the Sun, and the various
other astronomical motions mentioned previously, all cause an undefined spatial drift,
actually a tangle, in time of the two ends of the wormhole in the hypothesized higher-
order space. This means that no obvious physical connection, based on the geometry or
on the unaided forces of nature, can be maintained. Wormhole fiction writings usually
do not account for relativity theory, with which they are inconsistent -- somewhat the
way that space-travel fiction often has travellers walking around on the floor although in
gravitationless deep space.
A humanly-designed, adaptive mechanism must be postulated as part of the time
machine to maintain the space-time interval between wormhole endpoints. As before,
we here overcome this problem by postulating that the time machine can integrate
differentially small spatial displacements and cancel them in time to maintain a
meaningful transition from the present location to a well-defined location in the past.

IV. A Return is Required and Instantaneous

Assuming Postulate III, we still have a different problem -- actually two of them: Yes,
we know that we are violating conservation laws by going back in time; but, what
happens in the surrounding, unviolated environment?
Let us assume that the reference volume takes the shape of a sphere, and that the
reference-volume displacement proceeds as follows: On departure, the volume shrinks
quickly to a point; on arrival in the past, it grows quickly from a point. The animations
in The Terminator and its sequels imply such a process.
Under these assumptions, in the departure epoch, if the sphere very suddenly should
disappear into the past, the air around it would rush in suddenly, causing a destructive
implosion. Likewise, to whenever the sphere was displaced in time, it should cause an
even more forceful explosion.
As an alternative to explosion, we might suppose that the sphere, newly appearing in
the past, superposed itself on the preexisting air or other matter: Such a process would
weaken or disrupt any object contained in the reference volume, at least by filling it with
foreign material such as air (between the molecules?). This alternative (touched upon in
a movie, Timeline) will be ignored in the rest of this discussion, because it implies too
much destruction and disorder of objects or persons within the reference volume -- not to
mention the destruction and disorder at the destination location. We shall assume the
implosion/explosion process modified as follows:
J. M. Williams Time Travel 7

The past problem. The arrival-explosion problem in the past seems unavoidable,
but we can moderate it by making the arrival in the past somewhat gradual in local time;
we can assume that a departure from the past also will be somewhat gradual, reducing
the implosion there (then).
The present problem. In the departure ("present") epoch, we can avoid most of this
problem by requiring that the time machine always return the reference volume to the
departure epoch, at the departure location, after a differentially short time as measured
in the departure epoch. Thus, we superpose, in a moderately brief time, the departing
and returning volumes, which are the same reference volume. Any implosion or
explosion thus will be moderated greatly, depending on the specific masses of objects
which may have been transported back or forth through time.
Solution of a related problem. There is another problem, caused by the required
return. We have avoided the past and present problems just described by requiring that
every travel in time be performed somewhat gradually and within a differentially short
interval of time. The machine MUST depart to the past and return to the present almost
at the same instant, its departure and arrival being separated by an instant, but each
being slightly prolonged to prevent damaging implosion or explosion of nearby,
nontravelling objects.
We have ignored the problem of a hypothetical machine which brings the traveller to
the past and then is damaged or destroyed, preventing its return to the present. This
creates no special problem to present (departure) events, but it seemingly causes the
visited past to persist in nowhere-land for an indefinite period of time.
One simple solution to this problem is to abort any trip to the past which does not
include the differentially immediate return to the present of the travelling machine. The
departing machine simply is not modified if there is no quick return; a machine which
does not return, does not travel.

V. Time-Travel Without Paradox

Now that we have put to rest, at least provisionally, the simpler problems of sending
someone or something back in time, we should try to prevent paradox from compromising
our approach. We can do this by applying the same rationale as is used in special
relativity.
The twin paradox. In special relativity, there once was a problem called the "twin
paradox"; it went like this: Suppose we have two identical-twin brothers or sisters. We
accelerate one of them and then return them together after some time. According to
special relativity, the accelerated twin now will be younger than the other one. But, the
supposed paradox goes, the relative motion of the two twins can be interpreted in the rest
frame of the accelerated twin; thus, the unaccelerated twin has been accelerated away
and back and therefore should be the younger. They can not both be younger; whence,
the "paradox". Notice the self-reflexiveness: Each twin is entirely defined by describing
it in the reference frame of the other.
J. M. Williams Time Travel 8

This apparent paradox simply is a failure to understand relativity. The unaccelerated

twin could be the younger only if the first twin never had been accelerated, and if the
unaccelerated twin had been accelerated along with the entire rest of the universe! The
paradox arises only because the reader confuses the whole universe with a single twin.
The unaccelerated twin was not accelerated relative to the rest of the universe, so time
lapsed for that twin at the same rate as it did for the rest of the universe. Acceleration
in any rest frame causes time dilation only for the object accelerated. Another way to
see this is to recall that the value of for time-dilation depends on energy E, and only the
accelerated twin gained any energy.
The time paradox. The resolution of the (false) twin paradox can be applied to the
time-travel paradox described at the beginning of this discussion. Applying the above
argument to time-travel, we simply recognize that events befalling the time traveller are
real but do not affect events in the period preceding the departure of the time-traveller
into the past. The rest of the universe did not do any time-travelling, so time-travel had
no effect on it.
There is no need for postulating "multiverses" (e. g., in The One) of alternative
universes, created by changes in the past because of time-travel. When a reference
volume is transported to the past, the experiences of persons so transported are in
reference to the travel: They can experience the past, modify it by their activities, and
return. After their return, they find that the past outside the reference volume has not
changed at all, only their own experiences have changed. Upon return, the effect of
these experiences, limited by the reference volume, is transported back with them, to the
epoch in which they departed -- but only the effect, not the experiences themselves.
All other effects of the travel, upon return to the present, are lost, except those within
the reference volume: The "modified" past is no more real than the past of the real
universe in the absence of time travel. So, multiple travels to, and returns from, the
same past time always return to the same past conditions. Someone, or something, left
in the past by the traveller is for all practical purposes annihilated upon return of the
reference volume and existed only for the differentially short instant that the reference
volume was "gone" from the present epoch.
One might try to view the past visited and modified by travel as analogous to the
matter in a black hole -- inaccessible, but still existing. However, this analogy would be
very inaccurate, because a black hole interacts gravitationally with the rest of the
universe; the past visited and modified by our time machine never can be revisited and
interacts with nothing, because it never existed.
This implies, in particular, that a returning time-traveller suddenly could become
older after a prolonged trip into the past. But, there is no way a returning traveller
could return younger.

The resolution of the idea of time travel which is presented here is completely self-
consistent logically, entails no self-reflexiveness, and therefore implies no possible
paradox.
J. M. Williams Time Travel 9

We now explore a few examples of the application of this resolution to clarify how it
might work -- always keeping in mind its physical impossibility because of conservation
law violations:

Example 1. Suicide by Annihilation

Suppose a fellow becomes depressed and wishes to commit suicide, but without getting
hurt. He steps into his time machine and goes back 50 years to kill his grandfather
before his father was conceived. He expects that he then will cease to exist, thus ending
his miserable life painlessly.
Let's look at this process graphically, but in view of our previous postulates. In the
diagram in Figure 1, the passage of time in the rest of the world (nontravelling universe)
is shown on the vertical axis, and the lapse of time for the time-traveller during the
excursion into the past is shown on the horizontal axis. Relativistically undilated time
that lapses for both is drawn increasing to the right at 45 o:

Fig.1. Resolution of a time-travel paradox. Durations not to scale. After the traveller has
killed his grandfather, he may return immediately or remain in the past for some time. The
alternative, labelled "Doesn't return", is allowed only until the reference volume returns
without the traveller, which action annihilates the traveller permanently.

To prevent a paradox, the death of the grandfather physically must be real to the
traveller, but it must not have any other effect on the world to which the traveller
returns. Like a memory or the writings in a history book, the death of the grandfather
has no physical effect on the world (unless, of course, the corpse is brought back with the
traveller).
J. M. Williams Time Travel 10

Bizarrely but not paradoxically, the traveller may choose not to return immediately; in
that case, in this example, he has killed someone unnecessary to his continued existence,
and he might, of course, be arrested and prosecuted for it -- in a past unconnected with
the epoch from which he travelled. When the time machine returns the reference
volume to the departure epoch -- which it must, as explained in postulate IV above -- the
departing traveller may not be in it and, if not, has been annihilated by that return.
So, we have just one argument against time-travel: Violation of conservation laws.

Example 2. Burglary Without Criminality

In this example, we apply the preceding analysis to another task which does not entail
a paradox:
Our traveller, a burglar by occupation, arms herself with advanced tools and goes back
in time to 1975, where she breaks into a bank vault and steals the Hope diamond; she
then returns with it.

Fig. 2. Time-travel for the perfect crime. A burglar duplicates the Hope diamond by stealing
it only in the past.

The result is that there now would be two almost-identical Hope diamonds, because
the theft could have had no effect on the Hope diamond, but the return from the past
carried the Hope diamond with it, in the reference volume. The only difference would be
that the stolen Hope diamond was some years "newer" than the original one. We see an
obvious violation of conservation laws, but there is no paradox.
J. M. Williams Time Travel 11

In either of the examples above, our traveller would have returned a little older (and
hopefully wiser) than when he or she left, depending on how much time was spent in the
past.

Example 3. Perpetual Motion (or, the Salt Mill in the Sea)

In this next, trivial, example, conservation laws and the laws of thermodynamics are
violated on purpose.
Our time-traveller owns a petroleum refinery and lowers the time machine into a
small storage tank. The reference volume encloses a stainless-steel sphere slightly less
than one meter in radius; the sphere in turn can be connected to a hose, a vent pipe to
admit air, and a pump.
The time machine is programmed to return repeatedly to a time in the past just after
the sphere has been filled with an initial load of high-octane gasoline. Upon completion
of each excursion, the reference-volume sphere's contents are pumped out, into the
storage tank, and the time machine repeats the same excursion.
With an investment of a few barrels of high-quality fuel, the refinery thus produces an
inexhaustible supply of gasoline.
The same process could be repeated with highly enriched uranium for a nuclear power
plant. The waste fuel could be dumped in the past somewhere, to annihilate it cleanly.

Example 4. Pulling Your Own Leg to Fix It

Let's suppose that it now is the year 2016, and you are just putting the finishing
touches on your new time machine, which works as above.
Back in 2005, you were hit by a car running a red light. As a result, you were
seriously injured, and now you walk with a limp caused by a damaged left knee. The
driver who hit you lives a few miles away from you. You want to go back to the year
2005 and prevent the accident.

A. Just fixing things. So, you travel back to 2005; and, a little while before the
accident, you knock on the driver's door and engage him in conversation for a few
minutes. This gives the past you time to cross the street safely.
You return to the present, a few hours older, but otherwise unchanged. You still walk
with a limp, and the driver who hit you never had any such conversation. He was tried,
found guilty, and had to pay you compensation for your injuries.

B. Trying to force the issue. OK; that didn't work. So, you get out your hand
gun and travel back to 2005 again. The driver leaves his home to get into his car; you
stick the gun in his face, put him in the time machine, and take him back to 2016 with
you.
J. M. Williams Time Travel 12

Oops! You still have your limp, unchanged. And, the driver runs home -- to get into
an argument, and then a fight, with his eleven-year-older self. The police are called.
They arrest you for kidnapping and confiscate your time machine. You spend the rest of
your life paying compensation to the younger driver. Serves you right, for violating
conservation of mass and energy!
On the good side, the police have a field day with your machine: They travel back to
every unsolved case in the records, photograph the crime in progress, and arrest all the
guilty parties.

V. Summary
I have tried to present a set of informal postulates describing a variety of "time travel"
which requires minimal violation of physics and rationality. I did this in part by using
an analogy to the conceptual framework of special relativity. The approach here
perhaps someday might be improved to make it more physical, but that is an
accomplishment which must be left to the past.
And, if you're waiting for someone to invent time travel, don't bother: It won't be
happening in your lifetime or in anyone elses!

References
[1] A. Einstein. On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. Annalen der Physik, 1905.
Translated into English in The Principle of Relativity, New York: Dover, 1952.
[2] A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell. Principia Mathematica (2nd ed.), Vol. I, Section
II.VIII ("The Contradictions"). London: Cambridge University Press, 1963.
[3] S. Hawking. How to build a time machine. Daily Mail, 2010; online at:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article1269288/STEPHENHAWKINGHow-
buildtimemachine.html.