Hello hello children, adults, and those lost somewhere in the middle. I've been having a lovely time in Germany since I last wrote on here, with lots of good times seeing friends and doing interesting things with my life. Last weekend I met some uni friends in Frankfurt, and we had a great catch up, as people who haven't seen each other for six months often do.
Anyway, I've got a ponderance. It's something I've been thinking about for a while and have decided to put into words now.
As many of you will be aware, the "Back to the Future" films go forward to this year. The story takes Marty and Doc Brown forward in time to 21st October 2015, to see how Marty's children have grown up. This, coupled with the popular Internet expression "If nobody from the future comes back to stop you, how bad can your idea be?" (or whatever it is) have led me to thinking about time travel.
You see, I've been alive for 20 years now, and it's reasonable to suggest that that's a fair window of time for someone going back in time to choose. Therefore, it doesn't make sense that nobody has met a time traveller. There are people who have been alive far longer than me who have also yet to meet anyone from he future who's come back for whatever reason.
This leaves us with two suggestions: either time travel is impossible and will never be invented, or there is something stopping time travellers from coming back so "far".
If we are optimistic and assume that time travel is entirely possible once the technology has been properly developed, we have to then ask why nobody has ever met a time traveller. Of course, I'm assuming that there must be a level of secrecy which goes without saying; if you tell the wrong person that time travel is possible, you'd cause a riot. Especially when so much information is shared in the way it is online nowadays. However, what if there's another reason? What if the reason nobody can come back in time to see us is because we haven't invented time travel yet?
Think about it. If we don't have the technology to send a person through time, what on earth makes people think we could receive someone who's travel through time? Think of it like accidentally calling a fax machine from a phone. The two technologies are incompatible and one is significantly more high tech than the other, which is why the person making the call will hear a lot of static and what sounds like a dialup broadband tone. The fax machine just doesn't have the capability to receive a voice.
This would mean that, at least to begin with, time travellers would only be able to go forward in time. If there is no chance of a receiving platform going back in time, then the only other option is to go somewhere where the technology is as good, if not better.
In my opinion, this doesn't mean that time travel is a worthless goal. Imagine how useful/terrifying it would be to be able to find out about the future, especially if you could only travel forward to a certain point... To me, it would suggest we should keep working towards this goal (if we even still think it's possible) to allow people from the future more range of times to travel back to.
However, the Internet quote about being stopped by someone from the future is still erroneous. Everyone knows that making mistakes is one of the best ways to learn and improve. For example, I'm now never going to forget that Käse, Tee, and Name are all masculine nouns (despite ending in "e" - Mr Whelan lied) because I've made that mistake so many times, it's now impossible to forget. Equally, I will now always remember Mecklenburg Vorpommern, because it was the only Bundesland I couldn't name last time I tried. Mistakes are a great thing. Look how much history repeats itself anyway. Without certain events, we would never learn not to do things (like communism - although I still think that could work if everyone embraced it properly and the leader was willing to step down).
I guess what I'm trying to say, in my waffly and roundabout way, is that time travel is a brilliant idea, but it's like phoning a fax machine at the moment. We need to explore the possibilities further in order to allow it. Although I'm not a scientist, so I guess it may well just be horse apples.
Cool.
Also, if anyone wants to use this idea (probably in fiction, rather than research ;) ) please quote me as the original source. I'd love to have done something useful with my brain drivel.
See you around. Much love xx
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