Time Travel
It has come to my attention that none of the clocks in the house are correct. Every clock, for some reason, appears to be running fast. Some are only a few minutes fast, but at least three are a whole ten minutes ahead of the rest of the world.
I'm used to it and because I've been living this way for quite some time, it occurs to me that I’m now a time traveler from the future. Granted, it's only ten minutes into the future, but it's the future just the same.
Many people, when they think about the future, envision a world with flying cars, jet packs, and AT&T service that doesn't drop calls. Sadly, I can report that so far, in the future I inhabit, none of these things are yet possible.
Although when flying cars do become available, I will of course be the first to know about it. Remember, I'm ahead (by as much as ten minutes!) of everyone else.
Although I might be the first successful time traveler, I’m certainly not the first to have thought about it. Over the years, smarter people than me, (regrettably a somewhat large subset of the population), have considered the idea of time travel.
Albert Einstein is on that list, and according to his special theory of relativity, it is theoretically possible to travel forward but not backward in time. The process apparently involves traveling at speeds close to the speed of light.
But, as clever as Einstein was, I think he failed to consider some of the potential problems while traveling in time. Can you imagine being told, upon landing in the year 2172, that your luggage had been mistakenly routed to 2047? And more importantly, while traveling at 186,000 miles per second, will there even be time to serve drinks?
The great theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has also weighed in on the possibility of time travel. He theorizes that the lack of tourists from the future is an argument against the existence of time travel. That’s certainly possible but I believe it could also be a sign that in the future, people would simply rather go to Florida. On the other hand, having been to Florida myself, maybe Hawking is right.
Scientists are not the only ones who have thought about traveling through time.Fiction writers and filmmakers have long been fascinated with the concept.
HG Wells wrote about it back in 1895, Doctor Who has been bouncing around time for over fifty years, and recently, Hollywood explored the idea in "Hot Tub Time Machine". Personally, I think it might be interesting to travel back in time and be in the meeting where someone says, "yeah, there's a hot tub, and it's a time machine." On a side note, they must have done something right, as “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” opens later this year.
In many of theses stories, time travel is fraught with supposed perils. One such risk is the so-called butterfly-effect, where changing the slightest little thing in the past (like killing a butterfly) can theoretically impact the whole universe in the future.
As my ability to travel in time progresses, I hope to disprove this theory by traveling back in time and erasing all mention of anything Kardashian.I predict that not only will the universe survive; it will no doubt be better off.
Another potential problem with traveling in time involves encountering a past or future version of yourself, which can supposedly lead to all sorts of bad things including the destruction of the space-time continuum (whatever that is). I'm not sure about all that but I do wonder, if I do meet myself and perhaps have lunch, which one of us picks up the check?
So far, time travel has been fairly uneventful for me but it does have its advantages. For one thing, I’m rarely late. And of course when I say something is “so five minutes ago,” I’m speaking from direct experience.
I am starting to worry about that destruction of the space-time continuum thing though. That sounds like kind of a big deal and makes me think it might be better to reset all of my clocks. I plan to discuss it with my past or future self as soon as I can find one of them.
