On Time-Travel in Fiction and Reality
I wanted to make my story (Heart of Fire Time of Ice) both believable and scientifically possible. That’s a real challenge when it comes to both out-of-body experiences and time-travel. I spent a lot of time investigating time-travel as it relates to quantum physics. There are at least a few physicists who think it may be possible. Of these, I chose to use the ideas of Fred Alan Wolf.
Dr. Wolf’s description of ‘Extraordinary Time-Travel’ fits my needs perfectly. Having a time machine would have been challenging. I could have done it, but I had a vision of how my heroine would travel, and a machine would have been difficult for her to handle. In addition, I didn’t just want to say, “Ta-Da! Behold: Time-Travel!”
That’s the general approach one finds in many stories. The plot mechanism is somewhat acceptable, but it requires full buy-in by the readers. What I mean by that is that the readers have to agree (probably subconsciously) that they’ll follow the fantasy rules inside the author’s created universe.
I wanted to make it easier to believe that my heroine could have transferred back to the past, so I had to develop a literary description of Wolf’s ideas. Don’t get me wrong—Dr. Wolf is an excellent writer. However, his description of time-travel is a little too scientific to fit nicely into a work of fiction.
My problem was that I had too much information in my head. My original description of Kathleen’s work and time-travel was so elaborate that almost every reader would have put the book down in disgust when faced with those sections. I ended up chopping out large sections of what proved to be unnecessary descriptions. That’s an unfortunate byproduct of researching your story elements. You end up with hard-gained information that you’d like to pass on to your readers, but the key is to remember that the story comes first and often doesn’t need detailed explanations.
Nevertheless, I wanted to include a section on the possibility of time-travel as described by Wolf, in case some readers wanted to explore the idea further. As a result of that desire, here are my working notes (that didn’t make it into the book):
Notes: Time and possibility are intimately connected in the way that possibilities change to probabilities when awareness enters the picture. The basic idea here is that possibilities exist within your mind, and probabilities exist outside you. Consciousness is the key to changing from the internal possibility to the external probability.
When you become aware of information, you gain knowledge, and as a consequence, probabilities change outside you in what we usually call the real world.
Every situation has a possibility wave representing it. Changing the physical situation will change the possibility wave. This change impacts the result of making choices in the wave we’ve just observed. The effect is that we change our awareness.
Quantum computers work with quantum bits (qubits), which are pure number possibilities. A qubit’s possibility wave oscillates between a positive maximum and a negative minimum. This wave represents the possibility of a qubit having zero value at any instant.
Since a qubit may be either zero or one but not negative, a negative possibility wave value must be squared to convert it to a real number. When two superpositioned possibility waves are squared, they yield a probability curve. Possibility waves may be added and then squared to get a probability curve. The probability curve is directly related to real-world events in a way that the possibility wave is not.
Possibility waves are in the mind, and probability curves correspond to reality. We have a probability curve when we become conscious of reality. We deal with possibility waves when we are internally focused.
Experiments done at Princeton’s PEAR lab show that the mind can impact reality, albeit in what most people would feel is a relatively minor fashion. If Wolf is correct, the mind converts possibility waves to probability curves by squaring, thus producing probabilistic effects in the real world.
Physicist John G. Cramer has stated that possibility waves travel through space and time in both directions: from the present to the future and from the future back to the present.
To generate a usable, real-world result of this bi-directional travel, the original possibility wave must be squared by multiplying it by its complex conjugate wave. The complex conjugate wave is a solution to the same equations solved by the original possibility wave, provided that time runs backward in the solution instead of forward.
Cramer calls the original wave an offer wave and the conjugate wave an echo wave. These waves cycle back and forth until they satisfy various reality requirements and boundary conditions. Then, the bi-directional transaction is complete, and that changes the possibility waves into probability curves.
One interesting point is that if both possibility waves and complex conjugate waves are real, then time must not be one-way only.
Events of the past must still be around, and events that are to happen must already exist. When our brains remember past events, they may not be digging through our memories; instead, they may be constructing the past based on multiplying the forward and backward-moving possibility waves.
This implies that the future also exists. If so, you are sending possibility waves in that direction, and someone also called “you” in the future is sending complex conjugate possibility waves back through time to be received by the present you.
If the modulated waves reach some resonance or strength level, then a real future or a real past may be created.
The rule seems to be that the greater the probability, the more meaningful the transaction and the greater the chance of it occurring. Past and future are simply reference points based on our sense of “now.” “Now” is defined as the most meaningful sequence with the strongest waves.
Everything we do involves a probability curve as we learn to do it. We get better and better with practice, and achieving our desired result becomes more probable. Think of a basketball player learning to shoot free throws. The more he practices, the more likely he becomes to make the shot.
Every skill implies a probability curve in our consciousness, and its effect is expressed through time. When we no longer have to pay attention to the probability curve in any skill, we label the skill a habit.
Possibility waves are not available to us in space-time, but probability waves are. Possibility waves seem to reside in sub-space time. So, how do we access sub-space time?
Western culture believes that all human experiences are rooted in the physical world. That is usually an unspoken assumption that underlies everything we do. However, there is no proof to back up this conclusion.
Your awareness of being in your body at this precise moment implies that there is more to you than just your body. Quantum physics repeatedly tells us that the basis of the idea of a real physical world is flawed and that something exists before space, time, and matter.
This something is an infinitely dimensional sub-space time. Quantum processes are vital here; somehow, consciousness appears to play a fundamental role at the level of even the most primary matter. This is true, even at the level of atoms and subatomic particles, which appear to have a form of consciousness all their own.
Possibility waves appear to exist purely within sub-space time, while probability curves mark time and link the person and the mind. Possibility waves form what may be viewed as interior consciousness and there, in the interior, the mind can be free from the present time.
With discipline, the mind seems able to draw meaning from sub-space-time. In dealing with probability curves, the mind moves from the purely imaginal realm into the physical realm. Two processes are involved in the squaring operation: a mathematical squaring operation that focuses the mind and a second squaring that allows the mind to let go or unfocus. That happens in this way:
When we direct our attention to something, it is at first a giant blur, then a sharp focal point, and then a smaller blur. This is the rule that we are accustomed to in standard time order. When a sequence of such triplets reaches the point where the first blur and the second blur are the same size, we can predict the sequence in the future.
Consciousness acts in the universe like adding energy to a refrigerator, reversing the law of entropy. The act of focusing and re-focusing creates our sense of time. Thus, a form of time-travel is a necessary part of the way the mind functions and the way time works. We can individually move forward and backward through time, either faster or slower than the rate at which objective time moves. The old saying that, “Time flies when you’re having fun,” thus becomes literally true.
Our egos seem to tie us to this time stream in our effort to survive in a hostile world. Freeing ourselves from our ego may then release us from the time stream.
What we think we are and what we truly are are not identical. The ego is a boundary separating the outside world from our internal existence. It does so as an evolutionary attempt to enhance survival.
Time, thus, can be viewed as a projection of the mind. It is as real as thought. If we can defeat our ego, Wolf thinks we can become aware of our ability to travel in time.
Since physics shows (surprisingly) that time travel is a necessary part of physics’ structure, it is also a necessary part of the universe. Wolf thinks that far-reaching time travel paradoxes can be avoided as long as only one person is involved. For big changes to be made in the past involving parallel universes, many people would be needed. The past may not be fixed but instead may be subject to the uncertainty principle.
The common human desire for spiritual change may signify our waking from our belief in linear time. When we realize we aren’t limited by space and time but are continuous and eternal, we can return to the timeless realm.
The most likely mode for this transition would be through a lucid dream or out-of-body experience. Dr. Wolf has stated that if time-travel were to happen this way, one would simply awaken from a conscious (lucid) dream in another time.
In my opinion, we are an energy waveform at our most basic expression of existence in this universe. As the material manifestation of a complex energy structure, I think we could transition to other times, provided that our spiritual development permitted it. We would have to be in an altered state to make this translation, which could most likely be induced through drugs, strong emotions, or practiced meditation.
Stripped of all of the physics explanations, this is the primary mechanism I used in the story: Kathleen is an out-of-body practitioner placed in an untenable situation. To avoid this situation, she slips into an altered state. While in that state, she squares the possibility wave functions, creating a probability of +1 that her energy wave is else-when. When she awakens from this state, she finds she has transitioned to another time. Later, she also finds that there are a series of inviolable rules that restrict her travel.
If you’re interested, I hope you decide to read the story and the four other volumes in the series.
Note: Probabilities, when speaking statistically, are defined as having a range of 0 to 1. They may not be negative numbers, and they do not exceed 1. Exceeding either of these limits makes no physical sense. Consider: What would it mean to have a 110% chance that, say, a dog was in a room with you? The number 1 represents something that has actually happened. The number 0 represents something that has absolutely no chance of occurring.
Apology: If the above confuses you, don’t feel bad. It confuses the ‘H’ out of me, too. Still, I really want to believe it can happen. That belief makes going to sleep every night an adventure with a certain amount of excitement. What if you wake up else-when?
