Thanks for your response.
I really don't know whether this hypothesis is true or not, but I think exploration may be useful. By myself, I haven't been able to visualize it adequately.
As of a few weeks ago, I realized that I too was just assuming that traveling back in time would necessarily take me back in space to where I was standing, when I started time traveling. However, upon reflection, I could not substantiate that assumption.
Obviously, if time is just reversed, "I" will be physically where "I" was at that earlier time. However, that earlier "I" will be different from the "I" in the time machine. That is, if the time returned (not reversed) to is within my lifespan, then there would be two "Is”. My concern is not with the spatial placement of the earlier "I", but with that of the time traveling "I".
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Originally posted by shando
Hmmm ... a photon seems compelled to continuously move through space, with time stopped...
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When I visualize time stopped, I visualize space necessarily stopped, so the photon could not move until time started again.
Any movement in space appears necessarily to require movement in time. Time is change, or at the least, change is the evidence of time. That seems to be another built-in. A simple example may be the difference between a photograph and a video. Whether change in time necessarily requires movement in space is questionable to me. However, change in time most likely will involve movement in space, as long as there is anything in space to move and energy to move it.
In any case, the time traveling "I" would appear to have necessarily separated somehow from the time/space continuum (if that is the right word), perhaps through movement in another orthogonal (if that is the right word) "dimension". That separation MAY mean that re-entry after rollback of time is a "do-it-yourself" thing spatially. You twiddled with it, now you fix it. That is the hypothesis I posted.
An analogy that MAY sort of apply is the task of sending out a ship that can travel at what-MAY-be-instantaneous gravity speed to a 12 billion light-year distant galaxy that is visible through a telescope. If I sent a ship to the point from which the light came, the galaxy won't be there, because I aimed at a 12 billion year old light image. In that time, that galaxy moved (perhaps even directly towards me), but allegedly at sub-light speed. (My recent understanding is that there are galaxies that are moving as fast as .6 * c (light-speed) and may be accelerating.)
Imagine our peril, if such objects, e.g., with a 12 billion light year old image, are naturally able to exceed the speed of light. They could strike us even before their current image arrived. Strangely, light reflected or emitted from that object as it got close would seem to have to arrive well before its 12 billion year old light arrived. There would possibly be a continuous stream of old and new light arriving simultaneously from that object. However, all of the light would still arrive after the object.
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...We seem doomed to move continuously through time, with space stopped.
Interesting ...
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With space stopped, unless there were other dimensions and they were not stopped, it may be a moot point. In that condition, there would appear to be no evidence that we were still moving through time. We couldn't even think, because that appears to require space movement as well, so we would have no way of knowing that time was still moving.
Thanks again. Analyzing your viewpoint has expanded my visualization, right or wrong. I am especially appreciative of the realization that naturally occurring faster than light speed objects, if they exist, could hit the earth without our being able to see them coming. Whether a distant observer could see them approaching us and warn us through faster than light speed communication are other questions to be pondered.
Allen W. McCready
