cause and effect... but what preceeds cause?
As I drove into work this morning I realized that the fundamental nature of time is that it's like a river. If we're all traveling down said river in a constant motion and each decision or indecision we have is a stroke of the paddle or a flail of the arm that hastens us down the river of time. However, rivers are a part of nature, just as much as time is. So couldn't time be as unpredictable as a river?
My point is, along the river there could be a storm upstream which causes a flood downstream, but eventually the flood receeds and everything returns to normal. There are also offshoots of rivers into creeks and ponds and lakes which are still a part of the river, but seperate entities themselves. One could theorize that if time is a wound up river full of curves and offshoots, that it's very possible to bypass the flow of time, return to a moment earlier which could have disastrous effects, but nature corrects such abnormalities.
As far fetched as it may seem, this may be the cause of deja vu, or even ghostly apparitions that one experiences. Nature correcting the shift in time or a time traveler's mistake of changing cause before effect. Which leads me to the subject of this post. How can effect influence cause? As linear as our minds work, we take for granted that each effect gives birth to another cause. A car crashes into a tree causing the tree to fall, the effect of the tree falling causes the animal to die that lives in the tree. Cause effects cause effects cause... inifinitely. A cascading of events.
I imagine it like a champagne glass pyramid... you start pouring into one glass which fills, filling two more and four more and the like until all the glasses are trickled down. Each decision is a glass, each filling of the glass is the probability wave that comes with every decision. (Remember Shroedinger's cat?) Put this together with the river analogy to time and you have the way our universe could work.
The way to physically enter the past? Hawking predicts that upon entering a black hole, one could come out of it (assuming they miss the event horizon) and arrive BEFORE you actually flew into it. Now in doing that no information would actually come out because on a quantum level, the matter would be converted to energy and come out as antimatter... so what actually happens would be the antimatter spewing out of a black hole is actually our future particles being destroyed by the black hole itself.
An interesting concept but not too far fetched seeing as how every day we observe the birth of universes that are all but dead now simply because the light that has reached us is trillions of years old. Entire galaxies may not exist because a black hole has eaten them and not found it's way into our region yet. How would we even deal with a black hole with the technology we have today?
The limitations of the human mind should be able to be broadened to encompass more. Spirituality may be one of the keys. I mean look at the mayan's and aztec's both extremely skilled civilizations that were technologically advanced compared to others, but unfortunately with the technology, they still had no concept of protection against diseases simply because they had focused all their energy on understanding the eternal. How's that for irony.
Lots of times people wonder what could have, should have, would have... but the fact is that it did, can, will, didn't, wouldn't, couldn't, and shouldn't but did all in the nature of time.
My point is, along the river there could be a storm upstream which causes a flood downstream, but eventually the flood receeds and everything returns to normal. There are also offshoots of rivers into creeks and ponds and lakes which are still a part of the river, but seperate entities themselves. One could theorize that if time is a wound up river full of curves and offshoots, that it's very possible to bypass the flow of time, return to a moment earlier which could have disastrous effects, but nature corrects such abnormalities.
As far fetched as it may seem, this may be the cause of deja vu, or even ghostly apparitions that one experiences. Nature correcting the shift in time or a time traveler's mistake of changing cause before effect. Which leads me to the subject of this post. How can effect influence cause? As linear as our minds work, we take for granted that each effect gives birth to another cause. A car crashes into a tree causing the tree to fall, the effect of the tree falling causes the animal to die that lives in the tree. Cause effects cause effects cause... inifinitely. A cascading of events.
I imagine it like a champagne glass pyramid... you start pouring into one glass which fills, filling two more and four more and the like until all the glasses are trickled down. Each decision is a glass, each filling of the glass is the probability wave that comes with every decision. (Remember Shroedinger's cat?) Put this together with the river analogy to time and you have the way our universe could work.
The way to physically enter the past? Hawking predicts that upon entering a black hole, one could come out of it (assuming they miss the event horizon) and arrive BEFORE you actually flew into it. Now in doing that no information would actually come out because on a quantum level, the matter would be converted to energy and come out as antimatter... so what actually happens would be the antimatter spewing out of a black hole is actually our future particles being destroyed by the black hole itself.
An interesting concept but not too far fetched seeing as how every day we observe the birth of universes that are all but dead now simply because the light that has reached us is trillions of years old. Entire galaxies may not exist because a black hole has eaten them and not found it's way into our region yet. How would we even deal with a black hole with the technology we have today?
The limitations of the human mind should be able to be broadened to encompass more. Spirituality may be one of the keys. I mean look at the mayan's and aztec's both extremely skilled civilizations that were technologically advanced compared to others, but unfortunately with the technology, they still had no concept of protection against diseases simply because they had focused all their energy on understanding the eternal. How's that for irony.
Lots of times people wonder what could have, should have, would have... but the fact is that it did, can, will, didn't, wouldn't, couldn't, and shouldn't but did all in the nature of time.