Is Time Travel Possible?

Happy vacations start! Yeah I know… many of you will be working/studying and what not, but if you have at least a couple of days off take some time to plan something cool to do, I dunno, go out with your friends, read a book, visit some exotic place, get a tan… anyway, there are plenty of things to do and we simply don't have the time to do them all… or do we?

Today's post title (in case you haven't figured it out) is a question I first read in a book wrote by Richard Matheson in 1975 called Bid Time Return that later was adapted to a movie starring Christopher Reeve (Superman) and Jane Seymour (Dr Quinn). Without spoiling a thing this novel deals with something many people don't actually believe it can be done… time traveling.

Note: Since I won't be talking about the movie (can do so in another post) I really encourage you if you have the chance to read the book… it holds a GREAT premise, on my personal favorites, the movie is also great, give it a watch if you can!

What do physicists think about all this? Well… believe it or not they have some really cool questions and many peeps have come up with their own answers. I recently read an article by Josh Rubak (http://www.rubak.com/index.cfm) and he has a pretty cool one about the possibilities of time traveling. It turns out there are four 'modes' in you want to travel through time, two involving the past and other two the future, and in each them we can either be a 'viewer' or to be a 'participant'.

Long story short… we can only 'view' the past and 'participate' in the future. I think it makes sense since if we change the past paradoxes will occur and if we participate in the future (and we can go back in time afterwards) we again find paradoxes in our way. What's a paradox? Well, if you want to think something for a long time a debating with folks here it goes… what happens if you go back in time and kill your dad? As you can image… that's a paradox and there're tons of points of view in regard.

I've always liked thinking about those things (not killing my dad, but in time travel), you know, visiting times and places you've only gotten to know in books and movies, having the first tools in practically all aspects of life (so long internet). Can you picture yourself how would you be in the medieval era or before the birth of Christ? What profession would you have? I guess is nearly impossible to get the whole picture, but is a great exercise. In the other hand… what about going to the future? Will there be any resemble to today's world? Imagine all sort of hi-tech stuff spread out everywhere? The possibilities would be incredible!

As you've thought, many people get their references in this sort of matter from the media, I don't need to recall you the amount of movies/books/stories dealing with time travel… my favorites? Well, besides the Bid Time Return book (again, awesome) I'd say in movies Primer and The Jacket. The first one is an independent film about two dudes who 'accidentally' build a time machine and the second one deals with traveling when people gets isolated wearing some kind of straitjacket. Both are really good films in their own right.

We hear all the time science fiction is surpassed by reality… examples? All around us: TV, internet, moon travels, microchips… bla, bla, bla. The real question here would it be… will we ever be able to travel in time? Are there the means and science to ever put a machine able to do so? If there was a chance, would you jump in? As always, please feel free to leave all your comments in the section below (don't be shy, you know you want to see your comment down there) and in the next entry I will post a shocking surprise… see you mid week!

Meanwhile watch this small vid where Michio Kaku explores the possibilities of time travel in terms 'for the rest of us'. What do you reckon?

Magic

Happy Thursday guys! Hope the week has been fun to you so far. Speaking of fun, I honestly try to see that side of things at all times, I might not be someone who laughs out of control every five minutes but I certainly enjoy life as much as I can… I think we all should! We don't necessarily need to lol all the time to have a blast, just, you know, we gotta be happy, we gotta find the way!

There's something that has made me happy in every stage of my life, even since a little kid, all the way to my after-teenage years… magic! I mean, I remember those parties when I was 5 or so and some guy in a tux was doing a card trick, or maybe a classic one, taking a pigeon out of his hat (sorry, I never saw a live show where the guy would take out a rabbit). Even with those clichés we, as children, were amazed because our young mind was telling us those acts were impossible, and yet we saw them with our own eyes, how intriguing…

Then the acts were getting a bit more complex, people getting cut in half in a box, going through walls and making elephants disappear. As we were growing, we feel certain need to know how these things happen. We already know magic is just a synonym for illusion, and that's a word we can understand. Now we don't get marveled with the trick itself, but in the actual mechanics of how it is done… and once we know it, sometimes all the enchantment is gone… forever.

I have to admit, I love to know how things work, and sometimes I'm totally intrigued about a certain act, but I'm sure once I know how it's done, it will never be the same of me, is not like you can go back and pretend you don't know. I guess what I'm trying to say here is, magic can have a different meaning for everybody, for some it can be something mystical and mysterious, for others magic is turning impossible into doable. For me is a mix of both, feeling amazed and with a sense of wishing how it's done.

I recall plenty of people doing magic tricks, but I can easily take one of these guys apart: David Copperfield… that man is out of this world! I remember watching him live in Mexico City on a talk show, and though he didn't perform any real acts (there were a couple of tiny tricks, but nothing compared to the big ones), just his presence and mysticism made me wonder. Sure before that I saw all kind of performances like the disappearance of the Statue of Liberty in NYC or he being chopped in half and walking at the same time. I gotta say, though I know is an illusion I still wonder how he did it, guess that's the real magic for me.

Thankfully magic is not exclusive to shows, if we don't know how something works but it does creating some sort of illusion, well, that's magic. Every day and night, every moment feeling sad, happy, even in love, can't argue that can be called magic. Sure science can explain it, I just hope once we know how it works, we don't lose the sense of wonder and stop being marveled in life. What's the best magic moment you've experienced? Has it been on or off stage? Leave any comments below and see you all this weekend!

Restless Dreams

What's up guys? Last week was full with surprises… some good, some fun and, by all means, some odd. Guess that's what makes our lives entertaining and quite enjoyable, I'd hate to live a day where everything is predictable and totally straightforward… boring! We even are eager to feel surprised, to experience the unexpected… and even better… to like it, that's why people love watching movies, going to new places or meeting new people, we want to marvel ourselves… yeah!

Other people sometimes play videogames. Some like to kill foes, getting in a fast car or playing a world championship… some of us, however, want to experience something quite new, something that shakes us, to keep us thinking, and yes, it gets better when you don't see it coming, it catches you off guard and after a while we are asking for more, to be endless.

Quite an expectation for a videogame, luckily there's been one game to make me feel like that, some may not call it a mere game, but a work of art. What's my opinion? We've come a looooong way since the good ol' Mario Brothers! This game I'm talking about is called 'Silent Hill 2: Restless Dreams', and that's exactly what it is… quite a dream. Maybe you've heard of it, even play it, if so then maybe you've got the hint of what I'm trying to say here. I can type pages and pages about what makes this game a must-have experience, how psychological it can get, but all I'm gonna talk about today is about the first 2 minutes of the game… the premise.

You 'play' as this guy, James, who gets this letter of his wife, Mary. She's the author of this letter, and she tells James she wants them to meet up in her 'special place'… quite lovely. The thing is, she died three years ago. Imaging James, he's been so lonely all this time, with no motivation to move on. All of the sudden he receives this letter, he knows she's dead, but he decides to go, he knows things may not change… but what if? He's not thinking about her living, but within him he expects to find something different from the truth… and well, he decides to go.

Those couple of minutes really got me thinking… what if that happened to you? Would you dare to risk a great deal of your sanity (among other stuff) in order to go to a place where you know you won't find your loved one even if you believe with all your heart that letter is real? What would you hope to find? Peace? Her? Both? Will you be fighting against a weird foe, or against your own memories and dreams? Would it be true… or something else? Man… I want to play it again! I know it doesn't sound like a videogame, but more like a best-seller. If you fancy experiences  like this one and to really question yourself I invite you to check it out, all you need is a PC or a PlayStation2.

But maybe you don't like to push buttons in front of a monitor, if so then you can read -from a great psychological point of view- how this title deals with hope, love, hate and dreams. I def recommend this one made by 'Shamus' in the Twenty Sided webpage:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=341

If you've got a letter from a late relative… what would you believe? Would you go… or stay?

UFOs

How's it going guys? Is life treating you alright? This week has been slightly busy, with things to do, places to go to and people to meet up, you know how it is. You know a lot of people but at the same time you don't really know anyone. We all have our problems, issues and misunderstandings, life can't be any more complicated… can it? How can our lives to be more complex? Simple, give us something mysterious, something we don't understand… well, it turns out there're tons of things to do so, but today I'll pick just one.

UFOs… what hasn't been said about those flying saucers? I bet you already know a lot about them (even if you didn't want to). Everyone is still looking for that secret footage, that real picture or the last piece of hard evidence to put everything to rest… will that ever happen? Is all this  just staged as a diversion to blind us from something different, worse? Tons of questions, no real answers, this is not getting easy. Most lightly you have been part of this phenomena… magazines, movies, series, but still not the big cheese. A lot of people want to talk about the subject, but few really try to provide some kind of proof… yeah, we've seen trillions of pictures, people are interviewed everywhere, the details are always alike but yet, we just can't buy this.

Believe me, I don't want to sound as a nonbeliever, furthermore, I'm eager for some kind of hard evidence, but it's simply not there… or am I too blind to see it? I'm the kind of people who would love to know the truth, or at least to see some kind of proof. I honestly find fantastic how this kind of events evolve and, if true, it'd totally rebuild everything we've come to know, because is not the flying saucer by itself… but the entities riding the thing! A funny idea related to it, have you heard/seen in pictures how much different the saucers are? I mean, they have the shape of an egg, a sphere, a disc, a cigar… I like to think of them as in our cars, where they are just different models and different brands, like saying: 'Hey… check out my Escalade 2008' would mean: 'Hey… check out my Sphere 35423525'… (maybe not). 

Now that I think of it… (and thinking really out there), I know the odds would be to think this entities are indeed from another planet, but who can tell me that's a more plausible idea than to think that those folks are, let's say, people/other entities from the future (wow… I'm seeing pink elephants). I know that's a crazy idea (for the record, that's not my belief), but I guess my point is… is there any idea we can discard on top of any other? I guess at this point we just can't.

Do you have any related story? Have you ever seen one of those saucers? What story or details do you find more believable? Leave your comments in the section below, and maybe we can all find the truth… see you next weekend!