Geeky Science: Why Time travel Isn't Possible (with apologies to fans of Mr Peabody and

Sherman)

Time travel is a popular theme in television, movies and science fiction literature. There are
hundreds of popular stories that employ time travel, including the grandfather of all time travel
adventures "The Time Machine" by Jules Verne. While I enjoy these types of stories as much as
the next science fiction nerd I also, unfortunately, understand that in fact time travel is an
impossibility.

The perception we have of time as a dimension (temporal dimension) is but an abstraction, a

trick our minds employ to organize our activities and to explain the continual change that occurs
to our surroundings regardless of our participation. In truth this changing which we are aware of
is actually an interaction of energy with matter that provokes various chain reaction spatial
displacements. Principally that change, what we assume to be the "passage of time," is the
expenditure of Earth's energy which propels it through space and which, in fact, does nothing to
inform us about what actually constitutes "time."

There is no reason to believe that time as we imagine it, a dimensional continuum that stretches
out behind and ahead of us, is real. What "was" is expired and what "will be" is yet to manifest.
That is to say, time is not ticking by from one moment to the next but, in actuality, what we
perceive as time is instead mass expending energy which propels it over distance and so we
confuse our travel through space and the combination of it with the resulting chain reactions it
provokes with travel through time.

There is no "past" for us to return to. The energy which propelled us along the path that is now
behind us is spent and all that remains of what was, where that past once occurred, is exhaust
from Earth. And our perceived "future" is but an intellectual acknowledgement of where we are
bound to arrive if the course of Earth remains true to expectations.

The reason that what we think of as "time" can be measured in a consistent manner is because
the Earth spins on its axis (hours, days) and revolves around the Sun (weeks, months, years) at a
nearly constant rate so that when a clock spends a consistent and particular amount of energy it
registers a mark indicating that Earth will have rotated a consistent corresponding amount of a
degree or degrees. When twenty four hours has elapsed 365 times the Earth will have
completed a full revolution around the Sun and that dynamic has proven to be reliably constant
enough to be charted, which chart is referred to as a calendar. Clocks are machines that test the
reliability of the consistency with which the Earth rotates using a standardized formula for an
amount of energy deployed that is sufficient to meet the amount of resistance employed in its
design in a manner that causes it to have exactly meted out sixty "seconds" times sixty
"minutes" times twenty four "hours" for each time the World completes a 360 degree rotation
or full circle. Stated this way it is easy to understand that clocks are simply devices that gauge
for us where a particular location upon Earth lies relative to the Sun by measuring the speed of
Earth as it spins on its axis relative to a fixed amount of distance relative to Earth which we
designate as a "degree." They are tools that measure the distance an imaginary plane (which
slices through Earth at a place relative to one's place of habitation and which is aligned with
Earth's poles) has traversed along a circular path relative to an alignment of that plane with the
Sun such that the initial position of the imaginary plane is perpendicular to it. If clocks operate
by measuring distance traversed against an initial point of departure, which they do, how can we
gleen anything other than a measure of distance traversed against an initial point of departure?
We cannot.

Consider: sometimes time seems to drag and sometimes time seems to "fly by". Clocks can
make consistent measurements that tell us our position on Earth relative to the Sun but they
cannot measure the expenditure of energy on a local or immediate level and so we often face
the conundrum of not knowing "where the time went." What we think of as time is actually a
thing that is relative to both the motion of the Earth and local situational events but one is
consistent and universally applicable for the purpose of organizing events while the other is
unpredictable and so only one element of the actual occurence defines our understanding.
Examples of this phenomenon include the accelerated rate at which US presidents age and the
experience nearly all of us have endured during which the "time" seemed nearly to stall such as
when we may have waited in a classroom for the bell to ring or visited a disliked relative out of a
sense of obligation; or the opposite effect in which we were enthralled by something and
suddenly realized that hours had gone by with us unaware during the event that very much time
had elapsed.

So the way that we think about time is mistaken. The past exists only in the present with us and
our surroundings; which is to say that recordings, momentos, what remains in the present that
also existed during what previously occurred and even our memories are now travelling with us
at this precise moment. The situations that existed relative to our memories no longer exist in
the same state they did then and the corresponding pathway through space which Earth
traversed when those memories were made likely now are empty places or places filled by
something entirely unrelated to our memories. If one were to travel to a point in space
corresponding to a memory more than a few moments old Earth would no longer be available
for our use there as it travels at nearly 70,000 mph through space. And if one thinks that he or
she could simply go back to the same spot where Earth was last year at this time that is a
mistaken notion too as the sun also travels, at about 43,000 mph, through space.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWxcgJUCDxg

Realizing that what we imagine to be time is not actually a distinct dimension but rather a
measure of motion (speed over distance) then we can begin reconsidering all matters of
relativity. There is no point on a continuum to which to return even if we did wish to "time
travel." And so then, unless our imaginations run wild and we postulate that there
simultaneously exists infinite alternative universes recreating Earth's path (presumably after
having dropped acid), we must accept that we cannot visit the "past." To visit the "future," on
the other hand would require travelling to where it will manifest, which is what Earth is on
course to do in its ordinary motion, but always upon arrival at what was perceived prior to be
the future it is the present. If a point is plotted that falls upon a place in space where the Earth
will arrive and one wishes to get there in a speedier way than what the normal motion of the
Earth allows us to do the Earth will not have arrived.

Understanding that time, i.e. that what we presently perceive time to be, is actually the
interaction of matter with energy producing motion we can understand that in fact it is a
relative measure of where Earth is when the tick of a clock occurs against where it was at the tick
preceeding it but that clock has gauged distance, not a non-spatial dimension. Recognizing such
to be the case allows us to recognize that "real" time, i.e. the fixed place where everything
relative to us would lie if all those things relative to us were to suspend simultaneously at some
point in space, never manifests since no such suspension can occur so long as all things relative
to us exist. Time is the imperceptible place described as "what is" which bridges "what was"
with "what will be" but as everything relative to us is in constatnt motion the "what is" appears
and vanishes simultaneously so that it is both real and a relative impossibility. That thing which
must necessarily be real but which is a relative impossibility is what we call "nothing." "Nothing"
is the absent but necessary thing required to make "something" real (as mathematics illustrates).

Thus we can define time as that which must necessarily exist as the intersection of one spatial
point leading to the next along which matter travels which cannot be perceived during the
motion of matter but which must necessarily exist to facilitate the motion of matter.

Ergo, as "time" and "nothing" are one and the same thing, we cannot visit another time because
another time is another nothing.