this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

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If Eternalism is real (the theory of past, present, and future existing simultaneously) then time travel is going to a WHERE more than going to a WHEN. (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Elaboration:

Imagine Spacetime as a movie film reel. All of time (past, present, future) exist at the same time just like all the frames of that movie exist on that reel. If you want to time travel you go to the frame location on that reel. That location we call a WHEN but it is also a WHERE on the reel. Also, when physicists state that time and space are interwoven a film reel analogy encapsulates that theory well. So, time travel could be simply going to a specific coordinate in Space.

Theoretical Physicist Sean Caroll uses the film strip analogy in this video:

Sean Carroll Explains Presentism and Eternalism

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

The illusion of time : past, present and future all exist together

Is Time A Single Block? Eternalism And The Andromeda Paradox

Time: Do the past, present, and future exist all at once? | Big Think

Disclaimer: Obviously, I have been watching too many Youtube videos and none of the concepts are my own. But I did think of the WHERE VS. WHEN regarding time travel analogy as I haven't seen anyone state it that way yet.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Hmmm, wondering if Eternalism is even a necessary component here.

If we take spacetime as a 4 dimensional continuum, then I would just reword this as: "when" is just a specific version of "where" that refers to the time dimension.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Relatively literally means that the difference between when and where depends on your reference frame.

Inside black holes time becomes space, the reason it's impossible to avoid falling to the singularity once inside is the same reason it's impossible to avoid tomorrow.