Elaboration:
Imagine Spacetime as a movie film reel. All of time (past, present, future) exist at the same time just like all the frames of that movie exist on that reel. If you want to time travel you go to the frame location on that reel. That location we call a WHEN but it is also a WHERE on the reel. Also, when physicists state that time and space are interwoven a film reel analogy encapsulates that theory well. So, time travel could be simply going to a specific coordinate in Space.
Theoretical Physicist Sean Caroll uses the film strip analogy in this video:
Sean Carroll Explains Presentism and Eternalism
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)
The illusion of time : past, present and future all exist together
Is Time A Single Block? Eternalism And The Andromeda Paradox
Time: Do the past, present, and future exist all at once? | Big Think
Disclaimer: Obviously, I have been watching too many Youtube videos and none of the concepts are my own. But I did think of the WHERE VS. WHEN regarding time travel analogy as I haven’t seen anyone state it that way yet.
Hmmm, wondering if Eternalism is even a necessary component here.
If we take spacetime as a 4 dimensional continuum, then I would just reword this as: “when” is just a specific version of “where” that refers to the time dimension.
Relatively literally means that the difference between when and where depends on your reference frame.
Inside black holes time becomes space, the reason it’s impossible to avoid falling to the singularity once inside is the same reason it’s impossible to avoid tomorrow.
Really, any interpretation of time as a dimension already kind of has this baked in. Where and when aren’t drastically different if time and space are both physical dimensions.
theres a book… i think its called Timescape (1980) that demonstrates this concept.
in the book they send a tachyon stream to the point is space where the earth was in an attempt to let them know of impending doom.
Just read the Wiki on that book…I figured my showerthought would be a parallel thought with others since some of the Youtube videos allude to coordinates in Spacetime but I haven’t heard anyone phrase it exactly that way. Thanks for that link!
i read that book as a kid, and so every single time travel movie has me infuriated that they end up in the same contextual geospatial coordinates on the planet instead of far out in space somewhere
Would that mean we have no free will, and our lives and destiny is already predetermined?
Basically, yeah. I can’t think of a reason free will would actually exist given what we currently know about the universe. It’s all just math, and we run on the same math as the rest of the universe. All we are are complex chemical reactions. There’s just no reason to think there’s anything that makes us special.
That said, our understanding of the universe is decidedly incomplete.
Doesn’t matter either way.
If you have free will, you can think you don’t and do as if your destiny is already settled.
If you don’t have free will, then it doesn’t matter if you feel like you have free will and continue to think that you can influence your destiny.
Either thinking doesn’t really matter because we can’t know for sure if we do have free will or not so you can’t make an informed decision.
So choose whatever interpretation you like and be your best self.
I don’t even understand how even in theory past, present and future can exist simultaneously. As far as I am concerned, time is nothing but our interpretation of entropy and the ever changing nature of things from order to chaos.
I’m having a hard time reconciling this with entropy.
That’s because you need to factor in the power of love.
There’s a french bande dessinée where time (and space) travel as a concept is explored through the idea of concentric circles and an ouroboros ring as the artifact used. Following one ring clockwise makes you go in the future, counter clockwise in the past, going in a horizontal like moves you through space but at the same time, and the rest you can imagine
It’s from Thorgal 15th issue, by Van Hamme and Rosinski
I distinctively remember it being drawn on the ground but can’t find it in that album, maybe it’s in another, one of the QA cycles, or later I don’t remember
Anyway to cut a long story short dad. That is why it doesn’t matter that I took a 3 hour shower.
Not in the same way, but UTC date and and time is a place and local time of day is a direction. Effectively, noon is when you face the sun as directly as you can that day, midnight is the opposite, 6am is looking straight into the future path of the Earth in orbit, 6pm is looking at the tail (tangentially since it’s a curve). That’s why meteor showers are best viewed around 3am: it’s a balance of looking into the Earth’s path but not losing visibility from sunlight. Day of the year is based on where midnight points, where the sun directly opposes (or, with a fair amount of astronomical data, what star the sun is aligned with; both are valid). What year it is can be determined by Sol’s position in our galaxy’s rotation. Change the scale (such as atomic clocks) and you lose that relation, but it can of course can be converted to earth time. Just a consideration if we ever actually become space-fairing. That introduces time dilation on a potentially noticeable scale though.
Time isn’t really determined by position, but rather our scale of time is based on astronomical position and vector.
The concepts of when and where are relativistic terms, and I think, trying to split hairs between them is kind of pointless. What’s important is that your interlocutors know what you’re referring to when you’re speaking.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Sean Carroll Explains Presentism and Eternalism
The illusion of time : past, present and future all exist together
Is Time A Single Block? Eternalism And The Andromeda Paradox
Time: Do the past, present, and future exist all at once? | Big Think
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The theory of time travel has always been about both.
