Tag: ethics

This is an update to an earlier blog that I wrote, tongue-in-cheek, in 2017 on “evidence” of time travel from a painting. I just found out this post had gone viral sometime.

This prompted me, and my AI friends, to look into and write about the latest science on time travel. I also add another painting to the mix, one from the 17th Century, that Tim Cook swears has an iPhone in it. Plus, I must pet Schrodinger’s Cat, face Time Paradoxes, and, as usual, add many Midjourney AI graphics that I crafted for maximum right-brain impact. So put down your prayer books, read this for a few minutes instead, and see where and when it takes you.

Introduction

The past blog, Mr. Pynchon and the Settling of Springfield: a baffling lesson from art history, concerned an oddity of art history, a painting by a semi-famous, U.S. painter, Umberto Romano, which supposedly contains evidence of time travel. The painting was created in 1933 and clearly shows a Native American staring at an iPhone-like object. It is not a fake painting. You can see it for yourself in the original article that is included below. What does it look like to you? The providence proves it is not fake. It was painted as a mural on the wall of a Post Office in Springfield, Massachusetts. People have been walking past it every day since 1933. They look but do not see.

Of course, this future image transfer might not be the result of physical time travel, but instead, the young artist, Umberto, could have had a dream or vision of the future. Perhaps the vision was intentionally induced in a hypnagogic state, or by drugs of some sort? That seems much more likely to me, but still poses intellectual problems.

Whatever the cause, discounting chance or mass delusion, any accurate vision of the future is a mystery. It is evidence of the permeability of time, which should, by logic, and old Newtonian science, be a solid wall of causality. Visions of the future should be impossible, and yet? Schrodinger’s Cat? Infinite parallel universes? Everything, even iPhones, everywhere, all at once. Welcome to 21st Century spooky science.

Tim Cook and More Art Evidence of Time Travel

In my opinion, the 1933 painting with iPhone by Umberto could be admitted into evidence, that is, if there was ever an actual case or controversy where time travel was relevant. Of course, we have now seen that the centuries old case or controversy requirement may be waived by the Supreme Court. Apparently this can be done any time a majority of the Justices deem that is necessary to drag the country back in time. Time and law are so malleable these days.

For evidence of time travel, I would also call Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, as a witness to the stand. Cook has publicly stated, just after seeing an original painting by 17th-century Dutch artist Pieter de Hooch, that the man in the painting is holding an iPhone. The below photos of the art have not been altered, aside from color variation, which I did not do. Sure looks like an iPhone to me. Tim will swear to it.

LadBible reported that Cook was asked in a conference, the day after seeing the painting, “Do you happen to know Tim, where and when the iPhone was invented?” Cook replied: “You know, I thought I knew until last night…. in one of the paintings I was so shocked. There was an iPhone in one of the paintings.” Acknowledging that his claim may come off as ridiculous, he explained, “It’s tough to see, but I swear it’s there. I always thought I knew when the iPhone was invented, but now I’m not so sure anymore.” Proof of time travel? 350-year-old painting seems to feature an iPhone, Tim Cook agrees. No further questions of this witness.

Time Paradox: a major problem of time travel theory

Traveling forward in time, in the sense of experiencing time dilation due to high velocities or strong gravitational fields, is well-established in physics, supported by both special and general relativity. It has been proven true many times with atomic clocks on planes and other methods. Time for anyone will slow down relative to a stationary observer. Their time keeps slowing down as their speed approaches the speed of light, or it slows down within a strong gravitational field, such as near a black hole. When they return to their prior time-space, they will have traveled into the future. Space and time are relative.

In Einstein’s unified four-dimensional space-time framework, time and space are interconnected. But, the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court aside, there are major theoretical problems with time flowing the other way, chief among them, time paradoxes. Travel back in time would logically disrupt the conventional sequence of cause and effect.

The best known time paradox is the “grandfather paradox.” In this scenario, a time traveler goes back into the past and inadvertently or deliberately kills their grandfather before their parent (the time traveler’s mother or father) is born. Consequently, the time traveler would never be born, but if they were never born, then they couldn’t have traveled back in time to kill their grandfather in the first place. This cycle presents an intractable contradiction.

Such paradoxes are the result of a linear perspective of time, where causes precede effects. Most physicists and philosophers argue that time paradoxes prove that backward time travel is inherently impossible. Others suggest that they could be resolved through a “multiverse” theory, in which the time traveler’s actions create or move them into a parallel universe. There are other explanations, such as bending space, wormholes, etc., but this one is the most popular now.

Time Travel and the Multiverse Theory: ‘Everything, Everywhere, All At Once’

The multiverse theory of time travel suggests that there are potentially an infinite number of universes, or “multiverses,” each existing parallel to one another. When one travels in time, they are not actually altering their own past or future within their original universe. Instead, they’re moving into a different parallel universe. So much for Leibniz’ “best of all possible worlds.”

One way to comprehend this concept is through the idea of “quantum superposition,” as seen in the thought experiment “Schrodinger’s Cat,” which posits that all possible states of a system exist simultaneously until observed. Similarly, for every decision or event, a universe exists for each potential outcome. Hence, when you travel back in time and change an event, you merely shift to a different parallel universe where that different event occurs.

This theory serves as a solution to time travel paradoxes. For instance, in the case of the grandfather paradox, you could go back and kill your grandfather, but that would be in a different universe. In your original universe, your grandfather still survives to have your parent, and subsequently, you. Hence, there’s no paradox.

Several renowned theoretical physicists have lent their support to some variation of the multiverse theory, including:

Hugh Everett III. Way back in 1957, Everett proposed the “Many-Worlds Interpretation” of quantum mechanics, which can be thought of as a kind of multiverse. According to this interpretation, every quantum event spawns new, parallel universes.

Stephen Hawking. Although he did not like the idea, Hawking often referenced the multiverse and was proposing experiments on it at the end of his life. He would reference it in the context of the anthropic principle, which states that we observe the universe the way it is because if it were different, we wouldn’t be here to observe it.

Max Tegmark. He proposed a taxonomy of multiverses, classifying them into four different levels.

Level 1: The Extended Universe: This level suggests that if you go far enough in any direction, you’d start seeing duplicates of everything, including Earth and yourself. It’s because the universe is so big, and there’s only a finite way to arrange particles, so patterns must repeat eventually.

Level 2: The Bubble Universes: This level suggests that our universe is just one “bubble” among many in a bigger cosmos. Each bubble universe may have different physical laws, so what’s possible in one might not be possible in another.

Level 3: The Many-Worlds Universe: This level comes from a way of interpreting quantum mechanics, where every possible outcome of a quantum event happens but in a different universe. So, if you flip a coin, it lands both heads and tails, but in separate universes.

Level 4: The Ultimate Multiverse: This level suggests that every mathematically possible universe exists. It’s kind of the catch-all multiverse, where anything you can describe with mathematics, no matter how strange or unlikely, has a universe where it’s real.

Geraint Lewis. Lesser known than the first three, Professor Lewis suggests that the burst of inflation in the early stages of our universe might be eternal, with individual universes crystallizing out of it, each written with its own unique laws of physics.

Science says time travel is possible, albeit it is very, very unlikely that you can go backwards. So time travel to the future might be possible, but there is no going back. Thus, if you could, for instance, somehow go from 1933, where no one has ever seen or even conceived of a cell phone, to today, where they are ubiquitous, you could not return back to 1933 to include these cell phones in your paintings. That is, unless there are an infinite number of parallel Universes, in which case anything is possible. Everything may all be happening at once, and time itself is a kind of delusion to help us make sense of it all.