Time Travel

I've been off the grid for a few weeks getting some rest, relaxation and change of scenery. This is called a vacation.

One of my favourite things to do, wherever I am, is to imagine what a place was like 100, 200 or 5000 years ago; who stood on this spot before me?

We are taught to think of time as linear, meaning that once this moment passes, it will never be here again. This gives rise to past, present and future.

Fasten your seat belts because I've been thinking about this:

When we look at stars twinkling in the night sky, we are seeing the light (the energy) of that star. Now we all know that even the closest stars are millions, even billions of kilometres (or miles for those who prefer Imperial measurement) away and that the light energy

produced by that star has to travel all that distance to reach us. That takes time. Lots of time, and the distance that light travels in one of our years is a light-year. You can do the math as well as I can so you know that is a very long distance.

9,500,000,000,000 km

(about 10 trillion km)

That twinkle we are wishing on is actually an event that happened millions of years ago and we are witnessing it right now.

The Tarxien megalithic Temples on the island of Malta are over 5000 years old.

Five thousand years ago, people built these temples, lived in them, walked around in them, told jokes, died.

If someone on a distant planet say, 5000 light years away, were looking at this spot on earth at this moment in time, that is what they would be seeing; a living, thriving temple full of people.

You get the idea.

As I stood in this temple a few weeks ago, I realized it is a living, bustling community 5000 light years away. Further away, it hasn't happened yet and closer than 5000 light years it is a thing 'of the past'.

Not really, though.

According to Einstein, even light can be bent by objects of massive gravitational force, which occurs aplenty in the universe. I like to imagine, then, that our prehistoric temple's energy could even possibly curve around the universe and head straight back at us.

Past, present and future never really disappear then; it is all existing at the same time.

It's all out there

Like the internet.

Forever.

One thousand years from now, on a planet 1000 light years away, someone could peek through my living room window and see my cat yawn, stretch, roll over and go back to sleep while I sit at my dining room table typing these words.

Hmmmmm. How does that make you feel?

I feel like standing at my window and waving hello.

#time #spacetime #energy #past #present #future