i read on another blog a question about time travel. i decided that this would make a great post, since i haven’t written much lately. my take on time travel is like this:

let’s say we have a 3-d coordinate system, much like the one we exist in every day. time is considered the 4th dimension after length, width and height. but what happens is that time is not one more set of axes based at the “center” of this 3d coordinate system, it’s yet another set of axes which moves along the set created by the 3-d universe.

now, being that time is always flowing forward according to our perception, to me that means that our consciousness filters out the extraneous time caused by existing in a 3d system within a 3-d universe. the way we travel through the time dimension is very similar to the way a function is plotted on a graph. we make smooth transitions from one time frame to the next, but our traversal of time doesn’t necessarily follow a linear path, we just think it does because of our built-in filters.

this means that time travel *is* technically possible, if we can only figure out how to go back to a previous set of (x,y,z) coordinates in our life “function”. this is where it gets a little tricky, because we can’t guarantee that we will set down in the EXACT time coordinate that our perception originally recorded. to give an example that i just pulled out of my ass, we can travel back to (3,4,5) but if we perceived ourselves to have existed at (1,2,3) in time, and we suddenly find ourselves not back at (1,2,3) but (1,2,3.1) then we may find ourselves in a *similar* time frame, but not quite right. or we may find ourselves totally out of place from where we thought we would be, even though we came back to “the same time” that we left.

so yes, i think that time travellers from the future have been coming through for quite some time, but we may not even perceive their presence because our relative coordinates may not have lined up, even if we existed in the same (x,y,z) space as each other. because even if the majority of our time coordinates were the same, they would still be different enough that we may not even see each other. coincidentally, this also gives some basis for the concept of alternate realities, because each moment in time that we exist also exists as an infinite number of other moments, none of which are exactly alike. by making the choices that we make in our lives, it changes the direction we follow through the time dimension and also creates new branches in the future that we may or may not ever catch up to again.

typing this post has made me want to go to grad school just to study enough math to prove this. but unless someone out there is willing to fund my “research”, i don’t think this is going to happen…. :(