NAME: kareem
E-MAIL: exodiaxe@aol.com
DATE: Tuesday January 27, 2004
LOCATION: nyc
Mr. Buckley,
Allow me to introduce my self. my name is kareem and I am 13 years old. I just want to ask you how the multi-universe theory works for the notion of time travel. I would also like to know how a time machine would work if it were to go back in time in another universe.
Could you please reply on thursday 01/28/04 ( if it isn't too much trouble)? I need the info for a school project.
Thanks.
sincerely,
Kareem
Hi Kareem!
I'm glad to hear that your school project concerns the subject of TIMETRAVEL. When we have young people like you with questions like yours, hope for a breakthrough in our future is good. No one asks better questions than our young people.
TIMETRAVEL theory is VERY COMPLICATED!
We use the term "multi-universe" theory, but "multiverse" theory would be closer to accurate as the word "uni" means one or single and the word "multi" means more than one or many. Since one universe would be completely isolated from the other and since they can't affect each other, it really doesn't matter which term you use.
Anyway, the term comes from the study of actions in the quantum (sub-microscopic) world. Basically our scientists have theorized that for all events that happen there exists an infinite possibility of outcomes; the event being the cause and the outcome being the effect.
These events in the microscopic world effect our world- the macroscopic world. The world (reality) is pictured or assumed to be an ever changing branching and merging of these timelines (worldlines for an individual).
Picture your particular worldline as a tree. Your present is the trunk. Your past is an infinite number of roots below you. Your future is an infinite number of branches above you.
Each worldline (reality) exists independently (and unaware) of the others. At the moment of any action the world that is created (by that action) develops independently from that action. As I had explained to other people here before, YOU- Kareem are really creating your own universe as you go along in life!
This theory was proposed to the public way back in 1957 by a now very famous physicist named Hugh Everett III. He called it his Many-Worlds Interpretation (in this case, the word "Worlds" is the same as "Universes"). The really neat thing about this theory is that there are no paradoxes. If you're not really sure about how a paradox in TIMETRAVEL supposedly works, go to Yahoo or Google and type in TIMETRAVEL PARADOX. You can't really mess anything up if you're a TIMETRAVELER!
Let's try to answer your TIME MACHINE questions with an example using you:
IT IS THE YEAR 2024. You are a 33 year old physicist, having been fascinated with this study since your school project way back in 2004 when you worked on a school project having to do with TIMETRAVEL.
You have finally developed a way to travel into the past. You've spent several years experimenting and perfecting your method/machine; sending inanimate objects back through time safely- and you're finally convinced that you can do it safely yourself- that is to say, travel back in time yourself.
You remember the turning point in your life was back on January 28, 2004 when you were 13 and was working on that TIMETRAVEL project in school. You decide to travel back in time to visit yourself and tell yourself about your work, discoveries, achievements and invention.
You must note that you won't be returning to your "original" timeline. The 13 year old Kareem never experienced a visit from his future self. The 33 year old Kareem knows that from the memory of his experiences.
YOU TRAVEL BACK IN TIME.
The younger version of you is surprised to hear of all of this, not to mention surprised by your visit. Before your visit, the youger version was just wanting to get through the TIMETRAVEL project and get on with his life. He didn't really think all of this stuff was really possible anyway; it was pretty much all just fantasy. He just wanted to get a good grade. After your visit, he realizes that it is his destiny to invent TIMETRAVEL and become famous. So he reads everything that he can on the subject, enters college, takes the required courses, asks the right questions and works very hard to "become" that future version of himself.
When you "return" to the "future" (your present), you will be "returning" to a slightly altered timeline/worldline that is a result of your trip to the past. The world that now exists for you will be a world where you had a visit from a future version of yourself back in 2004. You (THE SUBJECTIVE YOU) will not have this memory, but you will be THE ONLY ONE THAT KNOWS THE DIFFERENCE.
There are an infinite number of things that you could have done; that could have happened:
There may have been an accident during your experiments that scared you, causing you to scrap the whole project, never to travel in time OR causing you to go back in time and talk yourself out of ever pursuing work on TIMETRAVEL OR you may have simply decided to save yourself a lot of work and went back in time and gave your young version a sealed, completely working model of the TIMETRAVEL device with instructions not to open it until you are 33 years old (that'll work...YEAH, RIGHT!). The latter would create what is known as a "free lunch paradox", which isn't really a paradox at all, but is a slight version of a temporal causality loop that is self sustaining.
I realize that I've been very lengthy with this, but when a young person like yourself asks a question, it is very important to me to answer to my very best ability and to keep it as simple as I can with a very complicated subject. I also realize that your time is extremely limited. I wish that you would have asked sooner because I could have taken more time to give you a better response and example (your date is off by one day- it is Wednesday 01/28, btw), but I wanted to get this posted up as quickly as possible for you.
I have four boys and one of them is 14 years old, so I know how you young guys put things off! HA!HA!
I would also suggest that you look at a few different sites. I have included links here for your convenience:
A DISCUSSION ON TIMETRAVEL
This is Mr. Edward's site. He's from the U.K. and is a very good friend of mine. I've talked with him several times and I consider him an intelligent man who answers some of your questions with scenarios.
SUBLINKS TO M.J. YOUNG
This is a links section off my site to Mr. Young's pages on TIMETRAVEL. I consider him a very good friend of mine as well and have talked to him in much detail many times on the subject. I consider him an authority on the subject and he talks in layman's terms for all of us.
Dr. David Deutsch
The doctor "argues" for parallel universes on this site.
I consider him to be the number one leading man today on this subject. He represents intelligence personified. Definitely read this!
NEW SCIENTIST ON PARALLEL UNIVERSES
This site is MASSIVE! While it can get overload you with "technobabble" from time to time, most of the answers are here!
and finally, when all else fails...
MY TIMETRAVEL LINKS PAGE
It's the largest on the planet!
After your project is completed, I'd be interested to hear exactly what it was and how it turned our for you. Also, a note for your teacher for future reference:
MY TIMETRAVEL SITE IS FEATURED AT THE ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT SITE
(column A / grid 30) There's a lot more here for a teacher to utilize!
GOOD LUCK!
Chuck
