Time Travel

Years ago as a young boy, I used to listen to Journey into Space on the radio. It was a classic series and what happened in my imagination far surpassed what CGI does now. Anyway, back to the subject of this page…

A feature of the series were The Time Travellers. They were accompanied by a ping…ping…ping sound which created a lovely image in my mind of a people with not a care in the world, blithely visiting various points in time.

So, last night, I carried out my own experiment. It was Ash Wednesday (by which time I used to think fiestas should be replaced by the gloomy meditation of Lent). Also it was St Valentine’s Day, which one cathedral promoted with so much enthusiasm that they seemed to overlook the religious significance of the day.

I was walking back from the beach in Arrecife when I came across 4 floats being unloaded from transporters and groups of people in strange costumes. Yes, it was yet another cavalcade. I waited till they started at 6pm and then began walking along the route because that was my way home anyway. And after a while, I had gone past the head of the procession and was now looking at an empty street. I had travelled ahead in time to where the cavalcade had not yet arrived. To see a point in time where the procession had not yet happened. This experiment only really worked because the procession was moving considerably slower than the speed of light. So, I suppose that I have to travel faster than the speed of light to catch up with the procession and overtake it as it hurtles out into space.

Then, how to travel into the past? Well, I guess if I walked back to the origin of the procession, that would do the trick. If one believes in the Block Universe, past and present, the procession, are written down somewhere, although it hasn’t yet happened. This was the great strength of Einstein: he was able to visualise thought experiments, at least in the early years. I will have to be satisfied with watching carnival processions, and getting very confused!