As a geek I quite welcome the idea of time travel. Some of my favorite sci-fi movies involve, in part, the idea of stepping into a rectangular box where time and relative dimensions in space make little to no sense at all and the overly-calculating hero battles household appliances and gets to be called a Doctor without the necessary qualifications. The concept of a time machine has had me fascinated since I first happened across HG Wells in those early infant years. I remember watching Back to the Future repeatedly so much so that my Dad would jokingly mention that he had returned from the future only to find me watching Back to the Future there as well. I remember developing entire science debates in high school around movies such as Twelve Monkeys, Planet of the Apes and The Terminator. My fascination with time travel became my crazy obsession and I would always wear two watches, set exactly two days apart but never really showing the actual time.

But the realm of time travel remained restricted to science fiction. All of the movies and TV shows, despite being entertaining, could never exist outside of the sphere of  fiction and me, being the self-quantized  physicist that I was, was extremely content with leaving time travel just there.
Then along came shows like Flash Forward and for the first time (excuse the pun), time travel (or in this case ‘viewing through time’), was about to get thrown into a whole new light. For those unfamiliar with the show, I suggested you read here but the basic premise involves the entire population of earth passing out for 137 seconds during which they experience prophetic visions of what their respective lives will be like 6 months into the future (or, as in the case of those unlucky souls currently airborne when the even takes place, they simply just die). Now, I’m a big fan of  the novel of the same name by Robert J Sawyer. I love the whole idea involving the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), supernovas, neutrinos and quarks, tachyons and their effect on the universe at large. The TV show focuses more on the drama aspect of knowing your future and the ambiguity that arises when trying to prevent it or allowing it to happen. It’s an excellent TV series and Flash Forward even has some top tongues in physics wagging like nuclear physicist Peter Jacobs of the Berkeley Lab.

The study of time, space and quantum theory is a fascinating subject and encompasses almost all of the respective branches of physics and dozens of subjects including chemistry, biology, mathematics and even sociology.  Time, as Einstein would have it, is relevant, it exists within our frames of observance and would do well to simply stay put and let us carry on with our…well, whatever it is we carry on with. Yet, when we dig a little deeper, when we truly observe, that when the universe becomes a fascinatingly amazing place.

Take for instance the concept of temporal binding: When I touch your nose and your little toe simultaneously, the respective nerve receptors at the skin of your nose and toe send both stimuli to the brain which interprets both feelings at the same time. Now unless you suffer from a temporal lobe disorder, you will undoubtedly feel the sensations at the same time. Yet, our noses are much closer to our brain than our little toe.
So then the obvious question: How does the human brain manifest the concept of distance and time within our nervous systems to ascertain that the stimulus from your toe needs to travel faster than the closer nose-stimulus. Or is there some unique form of temporal delay? Does the brain say “Let’s wait for a zillionth of a nano-second and then gather all stimuli and then form sensations” ? The answer, it seems, is yes, there really is some form of delay or temporal binding as it is known.

Then there’s the whole irony behind the adage ‘live in the now’. The ‘now’ is constantly changing, an irreversible process of the past becoming the future. It’s an known fact that we can remember the past but not the future. And no, this has nothing to do with the fact that the future hasn’t happened yet. The future is happening around us all the time and the now becomes the then in a fairly organised manner and the present is constantly changing, making living in the now more dangerous than juggling your cat on a tightrope inbetween two high-rise buildings. So, it’s my recommendation to live in the next simply because it’s a lot more exciting.  The next is the domain of visionaries, great thinkers and the elite guilds in World of Warcraft. The next allows you to travel to the future. Like just yesterday I went to the future and today, here I am!

Despite being able to remember the past, we asymptotically absolutely and definitely cannot travel back to the past. Even if we hypothetically were able to, all the paradoxes would arise around our future being in the universe’s past and there wouldn’t be a consistent arrow of time. You cannot reverse-engineer time in the same way that an omelet can’t be made into an egg again.

On the subject of eggs,  social networks are bound to land up with some of it on their face (books) sooner or later. This process, known as social entropy, is a measure of the natural decay within a social system. Whether it’s a physical social society or a virtual one it must adhere to the second law of thermodynamics which states that entropy (disorder) increases with time. So, as these networks become more complex, it is more susceptible to changes that may occur and thus the amount of energy required to mitigate the disorder increases until it peaks and then recedes. Does this mean that social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and the rest are all doomed? Inevitably, yes. But like I mentioned, living in next means you pretty much don’t give a damn.

Some bits and pieces:

• What is Time? - Wired.com’s interview with physicist Sean Carrol
• Temporal anomalies in time travel movies
• The real science behind Flash Forward