Introduction - In this paper, we shall do a sci-fi expansion upon the notion that the past is still "all there," perfectly preserved and frozen in time. However, we add the twist that if a disturbance is introduced, for example by a time traveler, that streams of the past can be re-enlivened and people of those lines of influence can be forced to relive part or all of their existence in modified ways, from that point forward. We shall examine some of the potentially-apocalyptic dangers of meddling in the past.

This paper is a continuation of the themes of two previous papers: [ Time travel theory; Operational considerations]. In the first, it is hypothesized that a compressive type of force field, produced by a bipolar discontinuity in the 4-D spacetime, can be employed to build a time machine. The concept of a "frozen but not dead" past is also introduced, wherein a mere flick of a disturbance by a time traveler can jolt the local scene back to life. The second paper gives some of the characteristics and limitations of time travel as hypothesized, and introduces the concept of the past as a vital storehouse of plant, animal, and human genetic materials that must be preserved and protected. Top

It is odd that we are led by a logical progression from our previous hypothesizing to talking about apocalypse in the past. Every other sci-fi, futuristic, and religious prophecy scenario places any such catastrophe in our future. However, we, ourselves, exist at a moving point in a time continuum. It might be that we are in the future of those at earlier times, and in the past of others who are farther along in time. Indeed, if we believe that future people can come back in time and visit us in the present, then we are implicitly assuming that their past is not dead. We might be in their reactivated, re-enlivened past, living it out in a different way. If so, we would have (almost) no way of knowing. We shall explore this notion in more detail, below. Top

Reactivating the Past - What do we mean, "reactivate the past?" To explain, let us begin by reviewing the original hypothesis about "where" and "what" the past is. First, consider the Big Bang model of the universe. Approximately thirteen billion years ago, all of the mass of the universe was created and continues to exist today. It, or its energy equivalent, exists mainly in the form of photons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos, and electrons. All were created within a tiny volume of the Absolute Void, and they made up a new universe which has been expanding ever since. We conjectured that the universe is four-dimensional, with ct (c=speed of light, t=time) as the fourth coordinate. Special and general relativity tell us that space and time are inextricably bound up with each other, implying that time is included as a fourth coordinate. Nothing can be done to the one without affecting the other. Top

Next, consider a single proton that was created in the Big Bang. As time elapsed, it grew a world line in 4-D spacetime, trending generally along the time axis. It might have darted every which way in 3-D space, but always trended in the forward time direction. The world line embodies the entire history of the proton's existence. Every position that the proton ever took in three-space had a unique time coordinate. As this world line was created and left behind in the past, it became frozen in position, normally destined to remain so, forever. If we could somehow step back and see this world line, then it might look like a hair-thin wire with lots of twists, turns, and sharp kinks, laid out in the direction of the time axis. Now, let a time traveler go back to some point along this world line and strike it with a photon and turn it in another direction. This creates a disturbance in the world line that propagates forward in time (possibly backwards, also, but we do not consider that scenario) with the normal progression, ct. The proton regenerates a new, repositioned, reconfigured world line from that point forward, including all new interactions with other world lines. The proton lives out a new existence, wiping out the old one (world line) in the process. Moreover, the new existence cannot be played out without bumping into and interacting with other particle world lines in the immediate vicinity. The effect of one photon, one tiny, infinitesimal point disturbance, cascades forward in time into an ever-widening sphere of influence. Top

All ordinary matter in the universe, including every human being, is made up of elementary particles, as above. We infer that every particle in the universe is growing a world line in the time direction at the rate ct. In the 4-D space, a human body is represented by a large, coordinated bundle of world lines (many billions) whose collective twists and turns depict every pose and every physical action ever taken by that body. Suppose that we take a photon and plink a single electron world line in someone's brain in their otherwise frozen past. This electron could be knocked out of a hydrogen atom, creating a free electron and a free proton which would then move off in different directions. In doing so, they would bump into other atoms in the brain and begin a stream of chemical reactions. Consequently, this person of the past would have an initial thought, which would cause him to move his body. Now, this collective set of disturbances ("the person") would race forward along the existing bundle of world lines, modifying them as it goes. The person's uniform movement in the time direction would, from his perspective and through his thin-slice view in time, apparently cause the universe around him to come to life. Top

Here is an interesting sidebar: If we could somehow supernaturally stand by and watch as this person reawakened, then we might see that the process could take several seconds or more to complete, during which time his actions would disturb his surroundings and set them into motion, also. He would "come to," smoothly. Upon full awakening, his consciousness, perceptions, mindset, and memories would all be exactly as they were in that instant of the past, because substantially every proton, neutron, and electron of his brain would be in precisely the configuration as they were then. Everything around would be as they were then. He would find nothing amiss, and would simply go about his business. Top

Similar statements apply to all other potential chemical or physical processes on Earth. At the primary particle level, there is no qualitative difference between a human being and a lump of coal. By our hypothesis, any small disturbance anywhere in the frozen world of the past can cascade forward into widespread, unpredictable consequences. Top

Inadvertent disclosure - In the second paper of this series, [2], we argued that if our descendants of the far future achieve time travel, then they would want to conceal that fact from all of us in the past, especially those of us in the time period -40,000 CE to +2,000 CE. The reason in general is that they will have essentially wiped out all of nature as we know it, and would view the past as a wonderful storehouse of plant, animal and human genetic stock that they would want to preserve, from which to replenish their own biosphere and human genome. The time period that we have indicated is especially important because it includes pristine genetic materials of advanced plant and animal life, plus that of modern humans. This might be the last era in which that is true, because we are already starting to meddle in the genetics of all life, on the one hand by bioengineering and on the other by driving species extinct by predation, pollution, and habitat destruction. Once a bioengineered modification is out into the gene pool, it takes on a life of its own, changing its species irreversibly. There might never again be a biosystem with this richness, robustness, and diversity of life forms. Our future civilization, with its crowded trillions, wouldn't have the space nor open atmosphere and oceans that are required. The only way to reproduce it with any degree of completeness would be to recreate the world in its entirety, from the beginning, then let it re-run its entire evolutionary course.

Under the present hypothesis, our descendants would know that when they come back to collect samples, they might trip the past into motion in ways that would destroy large blocks of genetic stock that they consider valuable, even essential, to their own continued survival. They would try to keep their presence and actions completely hidden from us, but there are many ways in which slipups can occur. Top

If we accept the full hypotheses of these papers, then we must assume that our descendants even in the far future will still be substantially like us. They will be using our human genetic material as their reference baseline, at the least. Consequently, they will still be very human, with all of our psychological traits and tendencies. They are, after all, our descendants. And therein lies the rub, as far as concealment is concerned. They will never be able to believe that we, away back here in such technologically primitive times, could ever recognize and understand anything that they were doing. It would be the same for us in our present, if we were guessing whether an intelligent person of -20,000 CE could make sense of television, say. In our conceit, we would tend to believe that it would be unlikely to a vanishingly-small degree, and would dismiss our candidate with snide remarks about "cavemen." Only the most pragmatic and wise among us would be able to acknowledge that, yes, this person from the past might be more than our equal in shrewdness, perceptiveness, and intelligence, and might be able to read situations, patterns, and behavioral clues even better than we. He could certainly recognize his friend Og in the picture, and even reason about where and when the picture was made. After all, he survived with just his hands and his wits in a harsh, dangerous world in which we wouldn't last the first day. Therefore, we may expect that our far descendants will occasionally make unwarranted assumptions about our perceptiveness and reasoning ability, and will leave clues that we can read. Top

They will know about our very human trait that causes us to simply ignore and dismiss any odd occurrence, any isolated anomaly, that we can't readily explain and that is not immediately threatening. They will use it to great effect in their intrusions and concealments in our world, by giving every element of every incident some bizarre aspect that, generally speaking, does not otherwise fit into our current world view. They will also try to make every appearance and behavior of every incident completely random and irrational, which will make them abhorrent to any orderly and logical world view. But "our world view" is not the same as "everyone's world view." Our far descendants might fail to perceive the wide range of differing world views that are being embraced by today's inhabitants, partly because their more-crowded world will dictate a far greater conformity of thought. One need only rummage around on the internet for a few hours to see that an astonishing range of ideas, concepts, and world views are being explored at present. No idea is too bizarre or extreme to be fitted into someone's thought basis. Someone, somewhere, is going to be noticing any given event and will be trying to fit it into their own, unique, logical (or illogical!) framework. Any discernable pattern will be detected, the only question being whether the larger society can be induced to embrace the insight. Top

Conversely, though we dismiss anything isolated, random, or irrational as insignificant, we notice and attach great significance to recurring or oddly-related incidents or sequences of incidents that would otherwise be very rare, especially if they are tied to events or occurrences that are directly important in our own lives. If we can't immediately account for them, then we give them an aura of the mystic, often of the religious variety. For example, most people never see an owl in their lifetimes, except possibly in a zoo where it is fully explained and accounted for. If some individual does see an owl more than once, separated in time, and in various settings, moreover preceding significant personal events, then he might tend to interpret it as something mystical (never mind that the owl simply might have moved into the neighborhood!). Our descendants can exploit this tendency by setting up some odd, unlikely sequence of events that "mystically" urges the individual in some desired direction. It is a safe and unobtrusive tactic, because it can be done with holograms which can be faded in and out, ghostlike. Top

Worldwide earthquake - This next hypothetical is set in the far future, but we discuss it here because we in the present are beginning to do things that could set it up. In the second paper of this series, [2], we predicted that world population would expand possibly into the trillions and that this huge overload would completely destroy our ecosystem. In its place, we would construct enclosed biospheres that cover much of the middle and upper latitudes of the whole globe. That prospect is lamentable enough, but in addition it creates an enormous danger that is not generally recognized. The building and support of this brave (?) new world will require a dangerously-large adjustment and redistribution of the mass at the upper surface of the Earth's crust. Even now, we are already removing several billion barrels of oil per year from small areas of the crust and basically redistributing it uniformly over the Earth's surface by burning and releasing water and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. In the far future, we hypothesize that we will go so far as to use up the oceans for the extractable water, oxygen, and hydrogen that they contain. We will mine and remove the polar ice caps for fresh water. Add to this the enormous shifts of mass by mining and construction of the enclosed biospheres, and we have a significant redistribution of mass in the upper crust of the globe. Weight and downward crustal pressure will be removed from certain areas and will be added in others. All of this will change the dynamic balance of the upper crust, just as an automobile tire can wear into an out-of-balance condition. Top

We already know that the forces, tensions, and pressures within the crust are very delicately balanced. In some areas of the American West, the mere pumping of water from underground aquifers has caused low-level earthquakes. The normal centimeters-per-year movements of the crustal plates sets up slow-motion collisions that generate destructive earthquakes, but they gradually adjust the crustal forces and the dynamic balance. What if our human machinations overload this natural rebalancing act? We know that the crustal plates float upon a layer of molten rock lying about forty miles down. This is kind of like a layer of viscous lubricant, upon which is floating an enormous mass (the crust) that is moving at 1,000 miles per hour at the equator. Certainly, if we could lift out one of the continents and plop it down in a position that produced global imbalance, then the whole crust would probably catastrophically wrench and slip to a new orientation with better rotational stability. In like manner, if we move enough mass around on the surface, i.e., the oceans and the polar ice caps, then we might well trigger a crustal shift. If so, it would cause the mother of all earthquakes, extending throughout the world. It would collapse substantially all of our enclosed biospheres and kill most of humanity. There would, of course, be plenty of indication as the time neared, so many people would in various ways get off of the surface and survive. People in our moon and planetary colonies would be unaffected, so humanity would continue. Nevertheless, it would be the single most destructive event ever witnessed by man. Top

If there were a crustal shift as described above, large areas of dry land would be submerged into the sea, and other areas of seafloor would be thrust up above sea level. It would be reasonable to expect shifts in ground level of plus or minus one mile, for the simple reason that the uneven thickness and weight of the crust creates dimples and troughs in the underlying magma. If the crust were shifted, some areas would move into depressions and some onto high spots. Mountain ranges, with their excess mass, ride low in the magma like a ship, creating a trough. Their variations in height, with their accompanying variations of draft in the magma, are easily plus or minus one mile. For example, if the North American continent were shifted to the southeast by a few hundred miles, mid-America would sink into a trough and go under sea level, as it had been approximately 250 million years earlier. The Appalachians would rise even higher than they are at present. Top

Adding to the devastation produced by the above (or any) earthquake would be the fact that our living catacombs would necessarily be built without adequate steel reinforcement, for the simple reason that there is not enough steel in the world to do so. Consequently, the catacombs will be only a few stories tall, and will be spread uniformly over the surface. They will be made of concrete or similar materials, such as fused salt or sand from the oceans. Consequently, this brittle mass will simply fracture and fall in an earthquake. Even if it didn't fall, the local inhabitants would die, anyway, because their artificial atmosphere would escape through the fractures. Top

Concealed manipulations - As we have emphasized in several places, our descendants of the far future will want to preserve the continuum of the past, undisturbed, because of the vital genetic stock that it contains. They will know that if they come back and tangibly disturb anything, then that could set the whole process back into action, in potentially disastrous ways. At the same time, they will need to come back and will come back, so that accidental and undesirable sequences of events are inevitable. When they see this happening, is there anything that can be done? Top

They would really be on the horns of a dilemma. Events cascade forward in an ever-widening way. The longer they go on, the more drastic and wide in scope are the actions are required for correction and limitation of damage. However, the more drastic actions, themselves, represent even greater disturbances that could cause events to spin off even more violently in some other direction. The original, small disturbance requires a larger disturbance for the attempted correction. This would tend to spiral out of control. The best that they could do would be to gently influence events and turn them in a less-destructive direction. It would be like stopping a large herd of stampeding buffalo: The herd follows the leaders, so one must get out in front and apply just enough threat, force, or distraction to get them to turn in a wide circle. Eventually, they quit running and quieten down. Top

If any one event or action by one or a few individuals sets off a destructive sequence, then the thing to do would be to send a "situation cleanup" team back to immediately prior to the event and steer it in another direction. Even if the sequence has been underway for some time, these statements still hold. A "purposeful replay" could be instigated in order to erase the "accidental replay." We would have no way of knowing the long-term result of our "correction," but only that it would erase the effects of a known destructive trend and replace them with something that we hope will be better. Once begun, this correction process would have to be monitored and steered continuously. Top

As regards their society's history, the first group will remember theirs as it actually happened, and will have no knowledge of the second (following) group's actions, though they might be very close together in time. Similarly, the second group will also record their own version of history as it happens to them, and will be unaware of those who precede them. Top

Perhaps the least-obtrusive, yet effective, thing that the team could do would be to speak directly to key individuals without materializing anything into their world, in order to influence them to act in a certain way. Recall that in the second paper of this series, we conjectured that our technologically-superior descendants will know how to directly stimulate the human brain in such a way as to simulate speech. They could do this while only minimally and impalpably impinged into their subject's reality. The subject would see nothing, and would merely hear a voice in his/her head. Consider the following situation: We know that the Soviet-American standoff of the Cold War had the potential to spin out of control and embroil the whole world in apocalyptic war. Potentially, biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons could have been used. Somehow, we got through it safely. Suppose that a historian of the far future comes back to study these tense and pivotal times. In doing so, suppose that he/she accidentally starts the action all over from 1945. Odds are that we would never get through that whole sequence safely, again. Once our descendants saw that events had been reactivated, a "situation cleanup" team would have to be dispatched. At key times, the team would invisibly approach the Russian and American presidents in their quiet moments or in sleep, and in a disembodied voice give them advice and reassurance: "God is with you...They aren't going to push that button...You won't have to push that button...Everything is going to be all right...God is with you." In moments of stress and fear, something like that would have a powerful, calming effect. Top

Our far descendants will also know that the human mindset, philosophy, and whole outlook on life can be changed by some psychologically dramatic event such as near-death sickness or accident. Consider the scenario wherein two pivotally-important cultures of the past have been accidentally reactivated, and a leader of one of the two is on his way to a location where he will cause the persecution and death of members of the second culture. His actions might change all of Western history. If I were directing the "situation" team, here is what I would do for his psychological makeover: Catch him on the road in an outlying area. Stop his conveyance. Fix him with a blinding light that would distort his sensory framework. Hit him with a beam that paralyzes the motor control area of his brain, leaving him conscious but unable to move, almost like in a dream state. Add to the beam some special frequencies and modulations that throw him into a state of ecstacy. Then, say to him from inside his head, "Saul...Saul...Why persecutest thou me?" Top

Religious wars - No doubt, many disturbances will not be amenable to quick, "nip it in the bud" correction by directly influencing a few key individuals or events. Many will get underway quickly and spread rapidly, possibly leading an entire culture in some detrimental direction. Our "situation team" would have to get into the middle of this and initiate some counter cultural movement that would, over time, oppose and nullify the detrimental movement. Again, it would have to be done in the least-obtrusive way, so as not to make the whole thing blow up. Top

Now, the following might offend many people, but it is not meant to. Any reader who has read even a moderate range of history will recognize that its basic premise is true. The most systemically effective way to turn a culture, change their mindset, reform their practices, and remotivate them in another direction is to create a new religion whose basic tenets oppose the destructive effects that are underway. The reason that it is so effective is that it engages the deepest emotions of its adherents. Secondly, it can be established by a few, even one, individual who can be motivated anonymously, as above, and who will then willingly and passionately spread it throughout the culture. One may recall Moses at the burning bush and Jacob's dream at Beth-El, just to name two examples. It might require some time to see results, but it is effective and minimally intrusive. Top

Indeed, the Judeo-Christian religion began with a pivotal, revealing, event wherein Abraham was given his "marching orders" directly from God, who spoke with a disembodied voice. Part of it didn't seem relevant to the main purpose and commandments - until now. I am referring to the part where God tells Abraham, a single individual,

Clearly, Abraham was a singularly-important individual living in the geographical area of the beginnings of Western civilization, at a pivotal time in history. One may argue that God was inferring the importance of both his moral actions in the world and his genes far past his own lifetime, because he was told that if he would follow a new moral code as instructed, then his progeny and his posterity would go on forever. Top

As an aside, some say that modern science is a form of religion, albeit one that also engages the conscious, rational part of the mind. Though many do not want to admit it, science is embraced just as emotionally, passionately, and sometimes even as irrationally, as any religion. Its proponents can be just as deeply invested and psychologically dependent. Orthodoxy is rigidly enforced. If you don't believe it, then let some prominent relativity specialist, for example, publicly express a new-found belief in the aether and say that Einstein was wrong. That would be like publicly lifting the skirts of the Pope. A huge uproar would ensue. His peers would immediately ostracize him and force him out of the field, without even hearing him out. He wouldn't have time to blurt out "Just kidding," before they would have him bum-rushed out the back exit. Top

As for effectiveness, there is a problem with religion, however. People being the unpredictable creatures that they are, there is no telling what they will do with the original message. It might start well, but lose direction as people begin to overly focus upon some very minor, unimportant element. That is how we have small, rural, uneducated congregations handling rattlesnakes. [Unfortunately, no one tells the rattlesnake what is supposed to be going on.] The religion can even take a cruel and destructive turn, as happened in the Inquisition. When a religion goes bad, there is only one thing to do: oppose it with yet another religion, one with counterbalancing motivation. Of course, fighting is bound to break out, but good can eventually win out. This type of corrective action might need to go through multiple cycles over hundreds of years, like playing chess. The idea is to lessen the net damage over time and to keep society from spinning completely out of control. Top

To a lesser degree, one could make the above arguments for political movements, social systems, and philosophical ideas. However, none are as effective as religion because they do not engage the emotions as deeply. Top

The Rapture - For our final scenario, consider the case wherein a time traveler went back to some time in our own adult past and did the unthinkable: accidentally set off a worldwide apocalypse, say by nuclear war. A huge disturbance would sweep through events throughout the world and would impinge somewhere in our frozen past. How would our past persona perceive it, and how would events unfold for us, personally? Remember that, at any point in our past, we are frozen in some position and are in a state of suspended animation, and will remain so until events reach and awaken us. As a consequence, at any of our past, quiescent points, we will not see it coming! We could not possibly do so, because any disturbance approaches any of our past points in time with a speed c. So just how would it unfold? Top

As we have explained earlier, if the disturbance which reanimates us is infinitesimal, say a strike by a single photon, then we would gradually awaken into the state as we were then, and would merely resume and replay our former existence (in the absence of additional external disturbances). We would have no inkling that any of this had occurred, and would feel perfectly normal. However, suppose that we are directly in the path of a major catastrophe. We might be reawakened to sudden and catastrophic disaster. For example, if a worldwide nuclear war were somehow tripped off, then we would suddenly awaken and find ourselves in the middle of it, with no forewarning. Our experience would be the same as if it happened to us in the present. We would begin to relive a modified, vastly different past. Nevertheless, it would be one that our world view of that time could accommodate. We might be surprised, we might be terrified, we might be many things, but we would not think it unnatural. Top

It could happen, however, in a way that we would think strange. Suppose that our blundering time traveler reanimated a small village in Britain in 200 AD, and at the same time unintentionally introduced some foreign microorganisms that caused the deaths of everyone there. Remember that all of these people and their progeny are in our past, hence have coordinated bundles of world lines that run the length of their lives and that generate successive coordinated bundles for their children and subsequent descendants, all the way to the present. When the original village is decimated, a dispersing disturbance propagates forward in all these already-established bundles of world lines. The disturbance moves forward with a speed c. At any point forward, the person who was there simply goes "poof!" as her bundle of world lines, hence the atomic structure of her body, disperses. The second law of thermodynamics would well see to this. Action at speed c is going to produce photons, so there would be a sudden burst of light and other electromagnetic energy across the full wavelength spectrum. If our previous self happened to be positioned next to a person when they disintegrated, then we would be reanimated by the event and would "come to" with full memory of recent events leading up to it. We would think that things had been perfectly normal, then the poor schmuck next to us had suddenly disappeared in a flash of light! This, we would find baffling. That is, unless we were devout Christians. In that case, we would cry out in anguish, because we would think that the Rapture had occurred, and we weren't taken! Top

Incidentally, speaking of Christians, did you ever notice anything odd about the story of the Rapture? Doesn't it seem unfair that most worthy individuals, including from among the dead, go immediately to heaven in a flash, but the 144,000 Chosen individuals have to stay behind and experience the horrors of the Tribulation? Why not take them all to safety and to their reward? And why is the event described as being like a worldwide flash of lightning? In light of all that we have said, now you know. Some of humanity's original seed have to stay in order to preserve a valuable block of the past. Top

The difference in the two "past reactivation" examples, above, is that in the first, the initiating event, itself, instantaneously caused our reanimation, and in the second it occurred well before our perception of its effects and propagated forward to us along localized, well-defined lines. This is a subtle but important point. Things disappearing in this way or objects suddenly snapping to new positions would tell us that we had been reawakened in a past part of our life, and that we were beginning to relive it in a different way. It might seem that we had suddenly snapped into an alternate reality. Furthermore, the cat would be out of the bag. We would know that time travel had occurred. Top

Conclusions - Atmospheric scientists tell us that the great ocean of air above our heads is so subtly turbulent and chaotic that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in one part of the world can set off a sequence of actions that leads to a hurricane in another location. Similarly, the actions of one ordinary human life go forward in time into an ever-widening cascade of events, some of which may be highly beneficial and some catastrophic to future humanity. We have no way of knowing. Therefore, each of us should listen to our inner voice, that "...still, small voice," and accept its advice and reassurances, knowing that even the least of us with our ordinary, mundane actions might be setting off a sequence of events of unimaginable import in the grand sweep of human destiny. Top

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© March 2003
Clyde M. Davenport
cmdaven@comcast.net