Time Travel

Time travel is impossible.  Sorry.

     We love the concept of time travel and all the fun that it could provide us but really there is just no pulling it off.  What has happened has happened and what will happen cannot happen until we go through the motions of the present.  We can change how time affects us relative to other objects in space by speeding up and slowing down however, which is kind of like time travel in a way.

     Man has proven that when objects move faster, time 'slows' when compared to an object that is stationary or moving slower.  We've proved this by putting sensitive clocks on airplanes and then comparing them to identical clocks that stayed on the ground.  The clocks on the airplanes had less time elapse.  In essence, the airplane landed on the ground in the future.

     In science fiction this problem is often ignored when you have starships traveling at insane speeds all the time but there is no time issues.  In Star Trek, they travel at warp speed constantly but when they return home, they have experienced the same amount of time passage as the people that stayed behind.  What?  For the people on the starship, a week may have gone by but back on a planet months should have passed.  The original Enterprise was supposed to be on a five year mission.  Is that  five year mission to them or people still on Earth?  Either case is bad.  They would go out for five years and come back to find Earth progressed a thousand years and the machines have enslaved humanity.  In the other scenario, they'd get a few weeks to run around before having to return home to check in.  That would be a pointless mission.

     So obviously there has to be something going on to allow everyone to age the same despite all the time relativity problems.

Just a theory...

    To solve this we have to look at the favored way that starships in the Star Trek universe get around at faster than light speeds.  The warp drive.  Now, I rambled about warp drives a bit in a previous blog so I'll summarize briefly on how they work.

     Warp Drives work by putting the ship into a sub-space bubble that allows them to exist slightly out of the physical universe and escape the problem that traveling the speed of light causes infinite mass and probably death.  It's an easy way to make anything you want to happen the way you want it too.  It's magic for science fiction.

    In the real world that we actually live in however, we won't be getting into sub-space anytime soon.  However, there are ideas out there on how to travel at great speeds while avoiding some of the complications.  We can disrupt the fabric of the universe a little to create a gap that we can travel through to avoid dealing with all those traditional physics laws holding us back.  It's a cheat.  So what about time?

    Well, time and space are connected.  Time changes with us moving and expending energy.  So is time simply an illusion caused by matter and energy displacing each other?  If we expend little energy and don't move, time speeds up for us.  This is why the clock seems to crawl when we're stuck at a desk doing boring things.  We're looking out into a world with time actually going slower.  When we expend large amounts of energy and move around a lot, time slows down for us.  In this case, we exist in a world where time is going faster than us.  'Watch pot never boils' and 'Time flies when you're having fun' type of situations.

     So.  If time is connected to how our personal mass and energy interact with the mass and energy of the universe; then what happens when we separate ourselves from the universe?  In the case of a warp drive or 'rip apart the universe' drive, we are no longer interacting with real space on a normal level and no longer dealing with time normally.  In fact, since you're not interacting with energy or matter since it's being shunted aside by the 'warp' field, you would be treated as standing still when figuring the relativity of time.

     Looking at it this way, it is completely probable that you could take a spin around the galaxy in the USS Defiant with Commander Worf (Michael Dorn is awesome), and not come back to find Dax in a new host because Ezri died of old age.

Light Side vs. Dark Side

     Talking about balancing things in my last post got me thinking about Star Wars.  To be fair though, almost anything can make me think about Star Wars.

     Mainly I got to thinking about the Force.  So the force, as explained by Yoda, is an energy field that is created by all things and bind the galaxy together.  Gravity?  Sounds like gravity to me.  If it's not gravity then it's a separate force that is unique to their galaxy.  Fair.

     So they have this force and people that can tap into this great energy field to do amazing things.  Somehow there are light and dark sides of this energy.  Unless this is a living energy force then it can't really have a good and bad side.  It could exist with both positive and negative charges however.  The two charges attracting to each other like some cosmic glue that 'binds everything together' or whatever Yoda said. 

     So we have this one field that has both positive and negative charges that can accessed by mortal beings that are sensitive enough to feel and manipulate it.  The problem is that this energy is converted to real energy on the physical plane of existence by these 'force users'.  Each side, light and dark, is tapping into their favorite polarity of the Force to make things happen.  This drains their portion of the field though...weakening them in the process.  Not very smart if you ask me.  

     If all these boy-scout do-gooder light side Jedi go around only tapping the light side of the force, they will be consuming the positively charged portion of the Force and create a terrible imbalance.  The Force as a whole will be in turmoil.  If the force gives them such wisdom and clairvoyance you'd think they'd figure this out.  The smart road would be to learn to balance the use of both light and dark so as not to disrupt the integrity of the Force they repeatedly use over and over to save their lives.  

    Not that the dark side is any better.  The Emperor runs around creating high energy lightning out of his fingers all the time which cannot be good for the negatively charged part of the Force.  Again, turmoil in the field and his preferred side is now weakened.  It the only real attack he's got left after getting soft sitting in comfy chairs being the emperor.  Bad move, Palpatine.

    In the end, it's Luke Skywalker who turns out to the smartest Jedi in history.  Crazy.  He doesn't get much in the way of training which is actually a good thing.  He's so undertrained that he just uses whatever side of the Force will work for him when he's in a pickle.  It's just the Force to him.  One big giant energy field of power.  (I'm excluding post movie stuff where he went all dark side in the comics.  Sorry.)  

   This is perfect because he uses all the power afforded to him and keeps things in balance more.  He uses the light side when defending himself and hiding from Vader during the epic finale of Return of the Jedi.  Then he turns and taps that dark side awesomeness to beat Vader down viciously.  He uses his emotions!  He get's angry, he doesn't want his sister getting hurt, which is fair.  Why can't he get angry at someone messing with his family?  I'll allow it.  The dark side doesn't win him in the end though because he has something of a grip on reality.  He uses the force as he sees fit so there's no build up of one charge or another in him to sway him.  He has balance.  

   To summarize, Jedi are silly.  There, I said it.  

   

Gaining Momentum

Momentum is pretty fantastic.  Learn more here!

     In physics you have to understand that most of the things you learn about aren't actually things but rather concepts to explain why things do the things they do.  We often say that object have a certain velocity or have a certain amount of potential energy.  The objects don't actually have these things.  They're not carrying around little briefcases filled with velocity  or potential energy.  It's not something that physically builds up in an object like a static charge or a bacterial infection.  

     Momentum is an attribute we came up with to explain why being hit with a rock hurts so much.  Simply put, momentum is the level of determination an object has to keep on going.  This is us speaking as if rocks have a will of their own but of course they don't.  It's a rock.  We when we talk about momentum, we usually say something 'builds up momentum'.  It doesn't actually build up anything.  Things don't build up a physical thing called momentum like teeth build up a sticky film during the night.  (Brush your teeth kids.)

     Why do we bother making up these things if they don't physically exist?  It's because we have to.  Physics is all about balancing equations.  Sir Isaac Newton came up with all these laws that explained some important fundamentals of physics.  The big one was that you cannot destroy energy.  In any situation, the same amount of energy that it started with must be present when it ends.  So that means we have to start assigning attributes to things to make our equations look good.  Things must balance.  (Big rule of the universe kids.)

     Then momentum was created to explain where all the energy went when the idiot threw a rock at you.  The rock has momentum because someone expelled energy to make it move.  It has a trait now that we can write down on our equation and balance things out.  Balance is maintained.  (Yay!)

Just a theory:

     Now that we know about momentum, we can start applying it other things in our lives other than rocks.  Physics helps us explain how things in the physical world work.  Our brains are physical things that run on energy so why don't we apply momentum to the way we think?  We do!  Let's exploit it; shall we?

     Mental momentum is something we all have experienced at some point in time.  It's what happens when we 'get in the zone' or are 'on a roll' if you will.  Time flies, we get lots of things done and we come up with great ideas out of nowhere.  Most of the time this comes out of nowhere but maybe we can harness this.

     To begin, we should understand how momentum is built.  In the physical world, momentum is the combination of the weight of the object and it's velocity.  The bigger and faster something is, the more momentum it has.  So when we want to have mental momentum we have to apply those ideas to our brain.  Instead of a big object, we have a big event.  Instead of an object traveling faster, we have our thoughts moving faster.  There are a few things we can do to help build mental momentum using these two traits.

     First is the event gaining size.  Whatever this event is, it must be built up in our brain as such an event that it overshadows all other things we need to do.  It must become the most important event in our lives.  Think of a party.  We look forward to it, we plan for it, we can barely contain how excited we are for it.  We build anticipation.  Anticipation is like the mass of our event.  So if we're trying to use mental momentum for something mundane, such as cleaning a room, we need to build anticipation.  To aid us, we should start adding things to our job to make it more grandiose.  We could plan on watching our favorite action movie while cleaning.  We could buy special coffee for the occasion to treat ourselves for cleaning.  We could also plan on capping off our accomplishment with a refreshing gin and tonic when we are finished.  All these little things add up to make simply cleaning a room an event worth looking forward to.  Our anticipation grows as we wait excitedly to treat ourselves with all these new rewards for cleaning.

     Secondly, we need velocity.  We must never forget that the mind is subject to the whims of the body.  Physical activity releases chemicals in our brain that help us keep going.  Adrenaline, endorphins and the like.     These are in place to convince us that physical activity is a good thing and keep us sharp in the face of danger.  We can use these chemicals to aid us in the mundane as well.  We can build in a small workout before our room cleaning to get the body releasing these wonderful little drugs.  We can give our body a little boost with our special coffee we bought for the occasion.  When we get to actually cleaning, we can be smart about how we do physical activity as not to strain ourselves and slow our progress.  Lift with the legs, don't get too comfortable and allow the body to relax and so forth.

     We have now prepared for the event and when we get started, we will have the momentum to get our task done quickly and better enjoy it while we're doing it.   Mental momentum can be used for all sorts of things in our lives to help us out.  I recommend trying it out next time you have something dull to do.

Thanks for stopping at Just a Theory today.

 

Birth

It's lives...somehow.  SCIENCE!
Seriously though, all the free time is going to packing the website with content so there won't be much for updates at the moment.

Sorry folks.