Time Travel: Fact or Fiction? (or "Look out, the Nerd has a beer!")

So tell me, is "Time Travel" possible?

First off let me give credit where it is due. This post was inspired by my good friend "Florida Cracker" at http://pureflorida.blogspot.com/ from a recent post of his where he apprehended an alleged "Time Traveler". Further credit is due to Albert Einstein who's mathematical reasoning helped to explain what was, until his time, unexplainable. Einstein had a wonderful theory about relativity, which most of you have probably heard of but really didn't take the time to try to understand. It's really common sense once you have explored it, but I'm not going to bore you with too many details. Please feel free to read it if you have trouble sleeping at night (or happen to be a fellow "nerdy scientist")! By using my understanding of Einstein's theory, and a little imagnination, I hope to stimulate your thoughts enough to entertain the idea that "Time Travel" is more than just a plausible theory.

Please do not blame "Florida Cracker" or Albert Einstein for this post, they were merely inspiration and should not be held accountable in any way for the following! ;-)

Now to be clear I'm not talking about traveling through the centuries or visiting another dimension, (come on I admit to being nerdy, but I'm not insane) I'm merely stating my observations. I have the pleasure of working for a truly global company and in my current occupation I have the opportunity to work with some of the world's most innovative scientists. I don't mean for this to sound boastful, but hopefully it will help to explain my postion on this topic. Anyway, I myself work on teams of people that are in several different geographies. Each one of these locations are in different time zones. Because of this my work day can start as early as 6:00AM and end as late as 9:00PM depending upon individual situations.

For example: I am on Eastern Time(ET), but I might need to have a teleconference with someone on Central Time(CT), here in the US, along with someone from Europe, and someone else from Asia. So, (stay with me here) it's 6AM for me, 5AM for CT, Noon for Europe, and 6PM for Asia (based on 24 hour day, standard 12 hr clock). No, this isn't the time travel part, but I needed to explain this to get there.

So let's say that we need to meet in person to have a discussion. So we decide to meet in Europe, because it is as close to a central point as we can get.
(Alright, I will boast a little here. This is the awesome part of my job! I get to travel a bit, and the frequency is just about right. It seems like a trip always comes along about the same time Lightnin asks: "Don't you have someplace to go for a few days?!"; This is also one of the secrets to a good marriage, but that's for another post).
Ok, where was I before I almost bored myself to sleep. Oh yeah, so here comes the math lesson (not really, but it might seem like it). So we meet in Europe at 8AM, that's 1AM to CT, 2AM to me, and 1PM to Asia.

Hang with me here, I'll get to the point in a minute. Get ready though beacause this is where it gets wierd!

I just got off of an 8hr flight, but I'm now 6 hours in the future! Think about that for a minute!
Now try this one: my colleague from Asia just traveled 6hrs into the past, yet we're now in the same place in time! I call my lovely wife to let her know that I have arrived safely. (Hopefully you're keeping up with me) She's 6hrs in the past and I have already traveled through those 6 hours!

If your head is starting to hurt, please take a break and maybe sit down and have a beer, hey that's how all this thinking started anyway!

With business concluded a few days later, I board a flight to return home. This is an 8 hour flight, that will take me to 6hours into the past, but when I arrive it's only 7 hours later (flight left at 10AM and arrived 5PM)! Don't even think about the fact that I have just lived 6 hours twice! (I said, don't think about that).

So, you tell me. Is "Time Travel" possible? Doesn't it happen every day? Maybe I just gave you a reason to read more about the theory of relativity! (OK, but it was worth a try!).

I think the key here is to remember that Time is a man made measurement. This measurement is relative to the distance between sunrise and sunrise, at one particular place on the earth. Once you move to a different place on the earth the original measurement, time in this case, is no longer relative. To say another way: once you leave your timezone that time no loger exists, at least for you, because you are now in a different time!

So again, you tell me Is "Time Travel" possible?

I say: "It's all relative"!



Ok, this is the prize for actually reading the ramblings above. This is a picture of Newcastle, England that I took on one of my trips. There are actually four bridges in the photo.