Stopping time
Why use a machine when boredom and anxiety will do the job nearly as well?
Dr Wenn now unveils a machine which can stop time and does (through the agency of the mischievous Lucy) for a thousand years. Of course, nothing has changed and Lucy is, again, unimpressed. Dr Wenn says that the time machine can be used in conjunction with the time stopper.
Lucy asks about travelling backwards in time, but Dr Wenn says that it’s not possible because the past doesn’t exist. Lucy disagrees. Dr Wenn explains that the past is a memory of present moments, and the present is infinitely small. He thinks that the only thing which is real is the future, which ceases to exist the moment you arrive.
Lucy continues to play the sceptic. The present exists and even although it’s infinitely small, it adds up to something, which is the past. No one would get very far trying to deny past indiscretions.
Who’s right?
I was thinking that we travel through time all the time. I don’t mean with regard to two or three minutes passing while I walk from here to school. If something is fifty metres away from me, it’s fifty light metres in the past. As I approach it, I’m approaching its present. If I walk away from it, it’s receding into the past again. The one thing I can’t do is come at it from the future or move it, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, into the future. Life is all about being aware of the past. Only because of the speed of light and our rather slow perception, can we talk about Now, even although we know, in truth, that by the time we think of Now, it’s Then.
Of course, this is a consequence of the physical world in which we live. As I approach something, I approach its present; as I leave it, I enter its past, but I can’t ever approach it and still be in the an earlier past. In other words, I can’t get to the thing as it was fifty light metres earlier. If I was a four-dimensional being, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Lucy asks about travelling backwards in time, but Dr Wenn says that it’s not possible because the past doesn’t exist. Lucy disagrees. Dr Wenn explains that the past is a memory of present moments, and the present is infinitely small. He thinks that the only thing which is real is the future, which ceases to exist the moment you arrive.
Lucy continues to play the sceptic. The present exists and even although it’s infinitely small, it adds up to something, which is the past. No one would get very far trying to deny past indiscretions.
Who’s right?
I was thinking that we travel through time all the time. I don’t mean with regard to two or three minutes passing while I walk from here to school. If something is fifty metres away from me, it’s fifty light metres in the past. As I approach it, I’m approaching its present. If I walk away from it, it’s receding into the past again. The one thing I can’t do is come at it from the future or move it, ὡς ἔπος εἰπεῖν, into the future. Life is all about being aware of the past. Only because of the speed of light and our rather slow perception, can we talk about Now, even although we know, in truth, that by the time we think of Now, it’s Then.
Of course, this is a consequence of the physical world in which we live. As I approach something, I approach its present; as I leave it, I enter its past, but I can’t ever approach it and still be in the an earlier past. In other words, I can’t get to the thing as it was fifty light metres earlier. If I was a four-dimensional being, this wouldn’t be a problem.
Tomorrow, Dr Wenn makes a wormhole.
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