Reading this month’s Super Interessante magazine about “destiny” I was presented with the temporal question about the theory of relativity. Not that it’s new to me. It has even been said in the magazine itself that the higher the speed, the faster the mass reaches in time and an example that I always found interesting is the one about taking a wormhole on an intergalactic journey at the speed of light and back. Upon return, the wormhole would be a “portal” to the past, as time inside the intergalactic ship would have passed much more slowly.
However, in this latest edition I was given a simpler example: simply going to the bakery by bike or on foot would also be a faster trip in time. This leads me to think about the following: time only passes because we are in constant movement. huh? But I’m standing here reading what this crazy person wrote. Yes, but we stick to the big bang. According to physicists who believe in the big bang theory, the universe is constantly expanding. So, even though we don’t realize it, we are in motion. Basic physics, we don’t see because there is no apparent reference. We are trapped inside our micro-cosmos and cannot see the magnitude of the expanding universe. In other words, the Earth is moving not only in relation to the Sun, but our galaxy is also moving, I don’t know where, but I believe in the opposite direction to the origin of the big bang. As we have no way of entering (and I believe that no one is crazy enough to want to enter) the “Total Perspective Vortex”, nor do we know how to get to “Milliways”, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, we have to make do with our imagination.
But back to the theory (?): Time only passes because we are moving. One fine day the universe will stop expanding. And time will stop. Certainly for a brief moment. Until everything is drawn back to the center of the big bang, causing time to go backwards like a record played backwards. In this sense, would it be possible to create a time machine? It would be enough to know where the center of the big bang is. If we wanted to go to the past we would just go in this direction, if the destination was the future we would just go in the opposite direction.
Does this make any sense? I’m sure it does not! :)
But going to a subatomic level and approaching string theory… And if even at a standstill, as the strings are always vibrating, would that be what would make time move forward? So in this case, even if the universe stopped expanding, time would still move forward.
I’m not a physicist and my knowledge on the subject is close to zero, but it’s interesting to explore these ideas…