posted 10-06-99 10:32 PM ET            

There are many possible situations in which time travel could happen. I think that any of them could be true, and either we will figure out which one, we will become extinct first, or there is no true way of time travel. The following is my own personal theory, and I am not attached to it in any way, except for spreading the word. This theory is based on the idea of time being finite; going from the beginning of the universe to the end, but it could be expanded to infinity. I just won�t do it, for the sake of ease. It is made for just one Universe, and if there are more it would just confuse things.

I�m not sure how I can organise my thoughts, and what sort of metaphor I can use. One metaphor that came to my head while walking home today (June 3, 1999) was that of a series of square pieces of woven cloth all lined up with the flat ends to each other, perhaps with a small amount of space in between them. Like this side view:

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So we have a series of woven fabrics all lined up. I figure that each piece of fabric is a plane of time. The vertical weaves are space, and the horizontal weaves are time. Now, each piece of fabric is the basic unit of time, we�ll call it a T-Penguon for ease, a T-Penguon being, perhaps, a billionth of a billionth of a second or something like that. There is a piece of fabric for every Penguon that has ever happened and will happen. For example, if I am on one piece of fabric (hereafter called an F-Penguon) and you are on another, you will be one T-Penguon in either the past or the future, depending on which side of my F-Penguon you are on (if you are on the left, let�s say that you will be in the past). So there are a lot of F-Penguons. We are all on one single piece of F-Penguon, which, I suppose, contains all the information contained in the Universe at that exact moment.

Now to the exciting part, the time travelling. If time travel is possible in this way, it would be rather tedious and energy-consuming. According to this theory, to travel through time, one must �jump� from one F-Penguon to another, going back or forward in time, one T-Penguon at a time. It may be possible to go more than one at a time, but who knows? This way, one could go slowly back in time and change the horizontal threads (time lines) of the other F-Penguons. The only thing you can�t do is to directly change the time line of a single F-Penguon. At least that�s the way the theory goes. Maybe if you change the other F-Penguons you will change the past in your own, but that�s an indirect change and doesn�t apply to the last statement, so never mind.

This theory could explain the old paradox of going back in time and killing your parents. If you went back in time this way, you would be in a different F-Penguon and killing your parents would just interrupt that other F-Penguon.

EXPANSIONS:

Maybe one F-Penguon could have a horizontal string for every atom in the Universe at that time. Then, every atom in the universe would move along the F-Penguon at the same time (represented by passing the vertical strings).

If the F-Penguons represent all of the T-Penguons in the lifetime of the Universe, perhaps they can be expanded into different universes. Maybe we can jump from one Universe to another in much the same way as we could jump from one F-Penguon to another. Where is all this information stored? I haven�t a clue.

Could the �threads� of the F-Penguons be superstrings?