Esoteric Ramblings on Time and 2012
So, the end of the world is coming in 2012. A number of different prophecies suggest that. But, it has been suggested that the end of time may mean that 2012 might not be the year the world ends, but the year we discover time travel. At that point, the concept of linear time would be forever changed if not brought to an abrupt end. It would be the end of time as we know it.
And, as we march closer and closer to 2012, it seems new theories on time emerge more frequently. The latest being that time may be in two dimensions instead of one.
Let me grab some handy dandy charts so you can follow along as I brainstorm outloud.
Figure A is pretty much time as we know it. Things begin on the left and end on the right. Yes, arrows would illustrate this better, but that’s why you read the text and not just look at the pretty pictures. Anyway, back to the point, which is that things begin on the left and end on the right with varying lengths in between. So, if you’re a fruit fly, your line is very short. If you’re a Redwood, it’s very long. So, that’s time as we know it. We can only go from left to right, so if you missed something, oops. Try again next time.
Figure B shows two parallel timelines. You remember Back to the Future, right? If you go back in time and mess something up, you create a parallel timeline. So, as you continue along the timeline, even if you skip ahead in a time machine, you’re still stuck in that parallel timeline. Now, parallel universes may be created all the time. Every time there is a choice to be made, boom!, the universe splits. In one universe, you turned right. In another, you turned left. Then, there are other possibilities, such as going straight, turning back, not going at all, turning right but leaving your left blinker on, etc. So, the universe is splitting all the time, and it’s all your fault you indecisive… But I digress…
But, what if time has two dimensions, as indicated in the article linked above? Well, that may bring us to Figure C. The red line is the timeline where you weren’t born. The green line is the timeline where you were born. Those two divergent timelines create a plane in which varying timelines of things happen all because you were or were not born. These all radiate outword from the moment of your birth (or non-birth). Figure D shows the radiance, kind of.
However, you might have been born (or not) at 8:00 a.m. Maybe you dragged things out and waited until 8:15 a.m. Maybe you were a real pain and waited until 6:00 p.m. to show your face to the world. (Alternatively, I could have began with varying times of conception, but as I try to be relatively family-friendly here, it’s best not to go that route.) Point is, your existence could have began (or not) at varying times, which leads to staggering planes, right?
Granted, the universe does not revolve around you. (Sorry!) You’re just a point in the universe’s timeplane. So, your varying planes are just varying points on the universe’s timeplane.
But, then we go back to where you’re making a turn. In traditional, linear time, you can only go straight. You can’t back up, you can’t turn left, and you can’t turn right. Straight is your only option. We can theorize that we could go backwards, but we can’t figure out how yet. But. left and right don’t even enter our minds. It’s forward or backward, but really only forward.
The universe isn’t that simple, right?
Thus, we have two dimensional time, as mentioned in the aforementioned article linked way, way above. So, now you can go left or right. Or straight. Still can’t go backwards, but maybe you just need to have your car looked at.
Still, a bit simplistic right? Because, not only can you go left or right or straight or backwards if you get a better car, you can also go now or later, or sometime in between.
Thus, Figure E. Three-dimensional time.
You see, you could have turned left. You could have turned right. Or you could have gone straight. You can map that on a two-dimensional grid. But, you could go now or later, or not gone at all. How can you graph all of those possibilities on a plane?
If space has three dimensions (that we experience), doesn’t it make sense that time would also have three dimensions? I mean, what if you were in a plane? Left, right, up, down, now, later…
Anyway, so now I pass the deep thoughts on to you…
Granted, the universe does not revolve around you.
Speak for yourself.
When I was a kid, I developed the theory that our consciousness actually extended out over the multiverse. If we get snuffed out in one timeline, our consciousness continues in the other timelines. Since there are an infinite number of timelines, there should always be at least a fraction of those infinite timelines in which I continue to live. Even if (as I age, sky dive, rob money from the mafia, etc.) the probability of survival becomes vanishingly small, the infinitude of timelines saves my ass every time. Thus, I am immortal.
I never put it to the test. Not any test I am conscious of, that is.
That resembles a theme in one of my WIPs.
And I don’t recommend testing the theory.
[...] Dan has a cool post on time [...]
… tracked across from Dougs’ place…..
Fun post.
sad old geek alert:
Could 2012 be the day the Time Wars start?
Yeah, I’m fond of the new Dr Who; but haven’t been able to figure out how the Gallifreyan race (with 2 exceptions) ceases to exist across all of time as a result of the Time Wars….
end of sad old geek alert.
I presume you’re assuming above that if we invent time travel in 2012 then time travel prior to that time will either be impossible, courtesy of the physics of the thing, prohibitively expensive, or there are (or will be) some pretty damned efficient Time Police!
How many of us have said: ” if I manage to get my hands on a time machine one day, then Future Me will be knocking on the front door in a few seconds…”??? then “Damn!”.
Three exceptions, assuming you’re counting the Doctor and the Master as the two exceptions. But, there’s possibly a third, as briefly shown in the last few seconds of the “The Last of the Time Lords” episode.
Anyway, thanks for popping over!
And, to your point… you’re thinking in linear time. Remember, time can exist in parallel, or as a plane or three-dimensionally, depending on what way you want to look at it. The point is that the Time Wars really screwed things up. Remember, in the first season of the new series, it was mentioned that the Time War had a devastating effect on higher species. See, for us, we see linear time. If the timeline changes, we have no idea. JFK was assassinated, but in an original timeline, he and Jackie could have been killed, only Sam Beckett changed that, so as far as we would know, only JFK was killed. Yes, I’m changing series, but you get the idea?
Presumably, higher species would be aware of changes in the timeline, so, if we were them, we might remember JFK being killed as well as both JFK and Jackie being killed. We might also remember that nothing happened to either one of them. So, Johnson was president and also he wasn’t, and things diverged from there, and we remember all those things happening, because we are aware of fluctuations in the timeline, so imagine how screwed up we would be! We might remember relatives who died in wars that never happened, or did happen but then didn’t. Or people that were born or not born, depending on whether a parent returned from war or not.
I’m straying a bit, but the point is that all these different time lines, or time planes, exist. So, we might still be in the same universe, but a different time line/plane. Back to Doctor Who, it has usually been depicted that the TARDIS maintains a linear connection to Gallifrey. So, if the Doctor travels for ten years in the TARDIS, then returns to Gallifrey, ten years have gone by. The TARDIS can also jump across different timelines, as illustrated by three different depictions of the destruction of Atlantis. So, if Doctor #7 visits Earth in 1989, the Time Lords are still around, but if Doctor #10 visits Earth in the 1800’s, the Time Lords are gone–all because the TARDIS maintains a steady connection to Gallifrey, or the lack thereof.
But, then we fail to reason that our future selves may have little interest in our past selves. If you come across a time machine in ten years, would you want to risk changing your future by visiting yourself in the past, possibly changing things to the point that you never discover the time machine? What if the time machine was secretly given to you by aliens as a test, and the first thing you do is go back in time and visit yourself to give your past self the winning lottery numbers? The aliens see you’re not fit for handling your own time machine, so they take it away from you and undo you visiting your past self.
On the other hand, how do you know that strange fellow watching you from the shadows wasn’t Future You?
I saw the graphics and I didn’t have to go any further. Self-explanatory, really. Love the gradient on the sphere.
I follow this 2012 thing on-and-off, and the general consensus according to my circle of concerns is that there will be a giant spiritual awakening. No, not a new channel on cable for televangelists, but a sort of merging of the scientific source and the mythological god. Science and religion are closely related, with the gray area being mythology. Presumably, this gray area will become another color, which will yield to another “new” area, which will probably be gray, but maybe not because this is all theoretical after all.
If you are an anime fan then you would need to watch Noein. Is an anime about quantum, parallel universe and time travel. If time travel is invented by 2012, so many things can be proven!
I’ve been reading and hearing about the 2012 end to everything. I’m not worried about it. Do you remember back in 1999? The new millennium bringing the destruction of everything? Computers failing? Mass chaos? Aliens taking only those that are worthy of living? People springing from great heights, hoping to land on the top of an alien spacecraft?
Never happened. (Except for those people jumping. That did happen.)
However, applying one of the theories you expressed, what if it did? Perhaps, we are only seeing the ramifications of this time line. A parallel dimension could have diverged from our own. Therefore, the end of our world (as we know it) could have stopped in the other dimension. Perhaps, that chaos is actually progressing, feeding, expanding within the other rip in time.
I’m not a scientist. I can only base my speculations on a limited amount of knowledge and imagination. Musing on such possibilities is entertaining.
There was also a prophecy that “the world to an end shall come, in the year nineteen hundred and ninety-one.” Missed that one too. I think that was Mother Shipton’s prophecy.
In 999, there were people that were convinced the then-current Pope was the anti-Christ and that the world was coming to an end.
If you really want to turn your brain into scrambled eggs, check out New Scientist’s quantum section. Mind-boggling stuff there.
If it is the end of the world as we know it, I feel fine.
Besides, the world is going to be sucked into a giant black hole as soon as the Large Hadron Collider fires up. I think we have until May 2008. Enjoy!
Maybe I should have become a physicist.
I choose not to live in that reality.
Can I flog an old post on time travel? It’s funny. I promise!
When I was younger, I woke up in the wee hours of the morning one night to the sound of a time machine dematerializing. I always figured it was my future self paying me a visit, or perhaps taking something of mine that would later be damaged and replacing it with an exact duplicate, so that my future self still has the original item, and the duplicate was what was damaged, destroyed or lost.
Years later, I came to the disappointing realization that the noise was probably the sound of the sump pump, which was in the basement right below my bedroom.
Another time, I awoke to the sound of what was clearly a bat flapping around wildly in the upper corner of my room. Still don’t have an explanation for that one.