Time Travel. Has it already happened?

In my last post, I wrote about Robert E. Lee and Edgar Allan Poe.   

     Afterward, while weak and weary,

     I pondered thoughts quite strange and eerie

     Of many a wild eccentric theory

     Worthy to explore.

     Soon I found myself pursuing

     Temporal shifts and advance viewing,

     Things I once called misconstruing.

     I don’t anymore.

Yes, I found myself pursuing unexpected trains of thought.  First, here's how it came about.  Next I'll tell you what it wrought.

Poe was a writer at home in worlds both real and imaginary.  His greatest literary accomplishments and his personal life, though, are remembered as unusual, mysterious, perhaps supernatural.  As I considered his writings and life, I came to a strange frame of mind in which I began to think about the enigmatic.  I began to ponder the inexplicable case of Arthur Gordon Pym.  For those of you unacquainted with this incredible coincidence, if that is what it was, Poe wrote a quite detailed story which actually came true decades after his own death.  Was it coincidence?  Or did Poe somehow know of events that would occur in his future?  If anyone could manage the mystical art of time travel, it would have been Edgar Allan Poe.

Robert E. Lee was much more a man of concrete reality.  He would’ve had no use for such an outlandish concept as time travel.  He was too busy with matters of engineering, maintaining the family estate at Arlington, and managing a war effort.  He did, however, appear as a character in a popular book by Harry Turtledove entitled Guns of the South, in which time travel is injected into a story about the Civil War.  I recalled an image from the cover of that book, an image showing General Lee holding an AK-47.  Once more, my thoughts turned to time travel.

Traveling through time has always been a fascinating topic for me.  I imagine where (or when) I could go, who I might meet, how I might affect the way things developed.  But really, could time travel ever actually happen?  I’m sure the vast majority of you are thinking… No.  It’s fun to imagine, but travel through time is impossible. 

Or is it?

There are theories in the world of physics which allow for the possibility of time travel.  They are esoteric, and far beyond the ability of any human being to master.  And yet, the fact that some scientific disciplines hold open the possibility of two-way time travel should be a reminder that we don’t know it all yet. 

There is precedent for the leap of faith necessary to accept the possibility of time travel.  There was a time when most people believed the Earth to be flat.  Those who said it was round were ridiculed, or worse.  Four centuries ago when Galileo claimed that the Earth moves around the sun, he was put on trial for heresy.  We know now that Galileo was right.  Einstein’s explanation of the workings of the universe was counter-intuitive to Newtonian scientists, who called him a crackpot… until his theories were demonstrated to be accurate.

Did anyone think my use of the word “precedent” in the last paragraph was ironic?

The question becomes:  Can a reasonable person accept time travel as a real possibility?  Can someone who believes in reason and order in the universe possibly believe that some persons or perhaps ideas have actually traveled from future to past in our own real world? 

                                                                                                  

I do not claim to have proof.  I am merely a reasonably intelligent, well-educated person who is keeping an open mind and sharing some thoughts.  I offer, for your consideration, some bits and pieces of information which might tend to to lend credence to the possibility of time travelers in our history.

There is nothing here which will change the mind of one who is convinced that time travel is impossible.  There is nothing here which cannot be explained away as coincidence (remarkable coincidences in some instances), or misunderstanding, or deception.  I, for one, would rather keep an open mind as I look at some amazing facts.

Some prophecies from earlier periods of history seem to have been validated.

Ancient Aztec prophecies were apparently accurate in their prediction of the events of the Spanish conquest.  Centuries before the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, Aztec prophecies predicted the return of the god Quetzalcoatl.  They predicted his physical appearance, which matched the appearance of the conquistador Cortes.  They predicted the means and direction from which he would arrive.  They predicted the specific year of his return, and the eruption of the volcano near their capital city in the year preceding.  All of these predictions were validated in historical fact.

Many biblical prophecies have reportedly come to reality.  I won’t focus on them here because I fear injecting religion into this discussion of an already-controversial topic.

The prophecies of Nostradamus, although intentionally ambiguous, seem to have predicted hundreds of events ranging from the 1500s to some that are still in the future.  Some of the predictions actually provide names, lightly scrambled.  Nostradamus appears to have prophesied Hitler (whom he called “Hister”) and Napoleon (whom he called “Napaulon”).  He also named a third great evil leader, “Mabus,” who apparently has not yet arrived.  Beware when you see a player on the international stage with a similar name.

Leonardo da Vinci was a genius by any estimation.  Still, is it reasonable to conclude that he, on his own about 500 years ago, envisioned both the helicopter and submarine?  He drew fairly detailed diagrams of both.

There are narratives of apparent future events in certain works of literature. 

One of the most striking is from the only full length novel by Edgar Allan Poe.  The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was quite influential, inspiring Herman Melville (who wrote Moby Dick) and  Jules Verne (who wrote a sequel to Pym).  It also set forth a story which would come true decades after it was published.  The novel, published in 1838, told the story of a shipwreck and events that followed.  The events described in the novel seem to have actually occurred in the year 1884.  One of the characters in the novel even shared the name (Richard Parker) of the corresponding real-world person from 1884.

In his book, The Wreck of the Titan, author Morgan Robertson wrote about the sinking of an “unsinkable” ocean liner.  The similarities between Robertson's work and the Titanic disaster are astounding, the similarity of names (‘Titan’ versus ‘Titanic’) being only the most obvious.  In fact, many modern readers assume Robertson’s book is a fictionalized version of the Titanic tragedy of 1912.   But Robertson’s book was published in 1898, 14 years before RMS Titanic was built or launched.

There have been a few predictions in more recent times which may or may not indicate foreknowledge of future events. 

In the 1988 movie “Back to the Future II” it was predicted that a Florida baseball team would win the World Series by the end of the 20^th century.  At the time the movie was made there was no major league baseball team in Florida.  But the 1997 Florida Marlins did in fact win the World Series.  The movie also predicts the Chicago Cubs will defeat a Florida baseball team in the World Series of 2015.  Place your bets.

Similarly, a 1970s board game called “Offshore Oil Strike” seems to foretell the catastrophic ‘Deepwater Horizon’ oil spill of 2010.  The oil spill occurred on a British Petroleum (“BP”) platform off the U.S. coast in the Gulf of Mexico.  The game has a “BP” logo on the box.  Even so, it uses U.S. dollars, not British pounds, as currency.

Now I am going to stretch a bit.  There are many strangely prescient numerical or linguistic similarities that could be coincidences… that probably are coincidences.  But if time travel is ever actually demonstrated to be possible then we’ll have to start looking for connections somewhere in the past - time travelers who moved from future to past, carrying some of their ideas and vocabulary with them.  I present just two examples.

Have you ever wondered about the origins of the idiomatic expression, “made off with…”?  It makes no sense.  Without learning the idiom, the phrase “make off” is unintelligible.  Idiomatically, of course, it means “to steal.”  Or more appropriately, it means to steal and succeed in the theft, at least for a time.  Could this possibly have foreshadowed the largest Ponzi scheme in history, a fraud of between 10 and 20 billion dollars, masterminded by Wall Street investment advisor and now convicted felon Bernie Madoff.  His last name is pronounced exactly like the words, “made off.”  Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

What about the greatest attack on an American city since the 19^th century, the attacks of September 11^th, 2001?  In the American system of numerical date notation, the date of the attacks (which ultimately instigated two wars) was 9-11-01.  In common language, those events are referred to as “nine-eleven.”  Isn’t it ironic that the number chosen as the nationwide emergency phone number – chosen in the year 1967 – was nine-one-one?  If there had been a time traveler from 35 or more years in the future involved in the 1967 meetings to determine the emergency number, what number might he (or she) have been likely to suggest?  Once again, no proof… just intriguing coincidence.

You may have heard about the Mayan calendar.  The ancient Native American civilization of the Maya reached its peak a bit more than a thousand years ago.  The Maya specialized in time measurement, and their calendar was remarkably accurate.  The interesting point for this discussion is that the Maya calendar, which has spanned more than the entire duration of human history to date, ends.  It ends on December 21, 2012.  

Some have claimed that the end of the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world.  Personally, I am very skeptical of end-of-the-world predictions.  So far, none of them have ever come true.  Maybe the “end of time” implied by the end of the Mayan calendar is just that – not the end of the world, but the end of measured time.  Maybe December 21, 2012 is the day when measuring time becomes irrelevant and unnecessary – because that is the day when time travel will be invented.  It’s just a thought…

Okay, here is one more bit of evidence of time travelers operating in our world.  It may turn out to be a fraud, or it may be the most compelling evidence yet, because it is actual video of a time traveler in the past.  In October 2010 an amazing discovery was made public.  A present-day director (George Clarke) was working with the Charlie Chaplin silent movie “Circus.”  His discovery was not found in the movie itself, but in the film which was rolling outside the theater at the grand opening in Hollywood in 1928.  What he found was video of a pedestrian walking across the field of vision who appears to be talking on a cell phone.  Could it be real documentary evidence of time travelers from the future in the past?  Or maybe it's someone using an early hearing aid.  Decide for yourself.  View the video by following this link: Chaplin Time Traveler Video.

 

Whether or not you believe the character in the video is a time traveler, you should be amused by the frantic outcry from the naysayers.  Their two most vociferous arguments in support of their claim that the video is a hoax:  (1) "This cannot be a time traveler because time travel is impossible."  This is as fine an example of circular reasoning as you could hope for.  They might as well say, “My mind is made up, so don’t confuse me with facts.”  (2) "Cell phones wouldn’t work in 1928 because there were no cell towers then."  But wait... might it be possible that a society capable of time travel might not need 2010-style cell phone towers?  There is a lesson in these illogical objections.  They demonstrate that some who invoke logic to argue against time travel are not logical themselves... which indicates that their objection to time travel likely represents an emotional reaction rather than devotion to reason.

The time has come for you to begin thinking about your opinion.  What do you think?  That time travel might actually be in evidence here?  That Gryphem has flipped his cork?  That Gryphem is a con man involved in a conspiracy to defraud?  That Gryphem himself might be a time traveler?

I know that anecdotal evidence is not proof.  But it is – obviously - evidence.  I do not claim that this collection of stories and comments in any way proves that time travel is real.  I do hope that I have caused a few people to think honestly about things at the edge of our understanding. 

I want to keep us open to possibilities… humble enough to realize that there may be aspects of reality that remain beyond our comprehension… filled with the wonder of creation… willing to discover new things like we did when we were children.

Time travel from future to past seems to contradict the laws of causality.  But perhaps it only seems that way because we do not understand the bigger multi-dimensional context of our universe.  Logical contradictions and paradox are inherent in the concept of time travel.  If the facts convince us that communication from future to past (whether physical or purely intellectual) has occurred, I am confident that we will then make the logical adjustments necessary.

As Sherlock Holmes once said, “Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth.”  Of course, that logic might cut both ways.  Now that I think of it, Sherlock Holmes himself was once reputed to have dabbled in time travel.  Of course, he was a fictional character.  For all we know.

Or it may be, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet pronounced, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

Now that I think about it, I believe Isaac Asimov wrote a story (“The Immortal Bard”) in which William Shakespeare himself was also a time traveler.

So, it all may be coincidence.  Or it may be that the time travelers are everywhere.  What do you think?

I conclude where we began.  With Edgar Allan Poe.  He wrote:

I have reached these lands but newly

From an ultimate dim Thule —
From a wild weird clime, that lieth, sublime,

Out of Space — Out of Time.

Now I challenge you.  Make what you will of that.

Gryphem