Time Travel

Nick Redfern

Description

Fact or fiction? Real or impossible? Movement through time explored, examined and explained!

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity postulates, and scientists have proven, that the faster you travel, the slower time moves. Clocks on airplanes, satellites and rockets are slower than clocks on Earth, and time travel is indeed real. Can time machines, time-tunnel wormholes or tales of fictional time-traveling heroes be so far-fetched? Covering the history of time travel in both reality and fiction, Time Travel: The Science and Science Fiction investigates the long history, myths, science and stories of movement from the present to the past and into the future.

Timely in its telling, Time Travel chronicles more than 30 instances, accounts, stories and famous examples of time slips, such as …

The theory of relativity showing the link between time and space

H.G. Wells’ epic novel of 1895: The Time Machine

British physicist Stephen Hawking’s famous paradoxes surrounding time travel

Charlton Heston’s character Taylor in the Planet of the Apes discovering that he is home, 2,000 years in the future

Wormholes, the shortcuts through both space and time

And many more!

The idea of time travel fascinates because it offers the possibility, however remote, of revisiting and recapturing moments from our youth. And if travelers of the future have secretly visited us—well, that proves that our future is secure. Stories of time travel abound in books and film, and it’s been a source of endless fascination—and speculation—surrounding UFO sightings and conspiracy theories. This richly researched reference ripples with fascinating information. With more than 120 photos and graphics, this tome is nicely illustrated. Time Travel also includes a helpful bibliography and an extensive index, adding to its usefulness. Time will fly by as you ponder the possibilities. Don’t hesitate. There’s no time like the present. Get your copy today. The future is waiting!
Doppelgängers and Multiple Timelines

Ever heard of “doppelgängers”? You’re about to. We’re talking about exact doubles of ourselves and how these tie in with the matter of time travel—specifically in relation to the previously discussed controversy surrounding time lines. The Britannica website says that the doppelgänger is, “in German folklore, a wraith or apparition of a living person, as distinguished from a ghost. The concept of the existence of a spirit double, an exact but usually invisible replica of every man, bird, or beast, is an ancient and widespread belief. To meet one’s double is a sign that one’s death is imminent. The doppelgänger became a popular symbol of horror literature, and the theme took on considerable complexity. In The Double (1846), by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, for example, a poor clerk, Golyadkin, driven to madness by poverty and unrequited love, beholds his own wraith, who succeeds in everything at which Golyadkin has failed. Finally the wraith succeeds in disposing of his original.”

The BBC has addressed this issue, too: “Folk wisdom has it that everyone has a doppelgänger; somewhere out there there’s a perfect duplicate of you, with your mother’s eyes, your father’s nose and that annoying mole you’ve always meant to have removed. The notion has gripped the popular imagination for millennia—it was the subject of one of the oldest known works of literature—inspiring the work of poets and scaring queens to death.

“But is there any truth in it? We live on a planet of over seven billion people, so surely someone else is bound to have been born with your face? It’s a silly question with serious implications—and the answer is more complicated than you might think.

“In fact until recently no one had ever even tried to find out. Then last year Teghan Lucas set out to test the risk of mistaking an innocent double for a killer.

“Armed with a public collection of photographs of U.S. military personnel and the help of colleagues from the University of Adelaide, Teghan painstakingly analyzed the faces of nearly four thousand individuals, measuring the distances between key features such as the eyes and ears. Next she calculated the probability that two peoples’ faces would match.

“What she found was good news for the criminal justice system, but likely to disappoint anyone pining for their long-lost double: the chances of sharing just eight dimensions with someone else are less than one in a trillion. Even with 7.4 billion people on the planet, that’s only a one in 135 chance that there’s a single pair of doppelgängers.”

Ancient Origins provides the following: “The mythology of spirit doubles can be traced back thousands of years and was present in many cultures of the past, holding a prominent place in ancient legends, stories, artworks, and in books by various authors. Perhaps the most well-known reference to spirit doubles or ‘alter egos’ is the doppelgänger, a word still used today to refer to a person that is physically or behaviorally similar to another person.

“Doppelgänger is a German word [meaning] ‘double goer’ and refers to a wraith or apparition that casts no shadows and is a replica or double of a living person. They were generally considered omens of bad luck or even signs of impending death—a doppelgänger seen by a person's relative or friend was said to signify that illness or danger would befall that person, while seeing one’s own doppelgänger was said to be an omen of death.

“Some accounts of doppelgängers, sometimes called the ‘evil twin’ suggests that they might attempt to provide advice to the person they shadow, but that this advice can be misleading or malicious. They may also attempt to plant sinister ideas in their victim’s mind or cause them confusion. For this reason, people were advised to avoid communicating with their own doppelgänger at all costs.”

Consider these words, too, from Atlas Obscura: “Doppelgänger encounters continued in the U.S., with several cases following a pattern of three sightings preceding death. Soon after his election in 1860, Abraham Lincoln saw his reflection doubled in the mirror, with one face beside the other with a ghostly pallor. He tied to show his wife the apparition, which appeared two more times when she was not present. While Mary Todd was at first worried about this behavior, she took the vision as a sign that he would serve two terms, but would die before the end of the second.

“Lincoln is far from the only American to meet their double in the 1800s. The antebellum South was home to numerous accounts of fateful sightings, each under similar circumstances. Linda Derry, site director at the Old Cahawba ghost town in Alabama, is a curator of folklore originating from that region. She has uncovered several cases with similar circumstances as Lincoln’s sightings.”

And how about this, from Paranormal Guide? It states: “Although the combining of the words to form the term is relatively recent, a little over two centuries old, the idea of a spiritual, ghostly or demonic double (will just use the term ‘ghostly’ from here) of living people have existed for millennia. These doubles may at times be seen by others as performing a person’s actions before the real person makes them, or they may be a shadow, performing the same movements, but after they have happened. They may also be seen in ones’ reflection; however the reflection is facing away. Much of the time a doppelgänger is viewed as an omen for a tragedy, illness or death of the person who is copied. If someone sees their own ghostly double it generally bodes very badly for them, and a number of quite famous people have had the ghastly experience.”

Now, let’s get to the issue of time travel and doppelgängers. Outer Places states: “Traveling to the past at the risk of destroying oneself is a common staple of science fiction, not to mention the central concern behind the Grandfather Paradox. In real life, we still have no idea if time travel is really possible, but a physicist determined in a recent study that if it were possible to travel to the past, it would likely involve the creation of a pair of ghostly twins that ultimately annihilate each other.”

It’s this issue of twins being created as a result of traveling through time that may have a significant bearing upon the matter of doppelgängers. In other words, maneuvering through time just might result in the manifestation of countless versions of ourselves, every time a new time line is created. And if one of those time travelers just happens to intrude upon our time line, then—hey, presto—there is another incarnation of you, of me, and of who knows how many people?

One of those who suspected that the doppelgänger phenomenon was caused by time-traveling doubles was the late paranormal authority and author Brad Steiger. He had a very good reason to suspect that was the answer to the mystery. And why might that be? Well, I’ll tell you: Brad had a fascinating story of his own to tell. He shared the story with me just a few years before he died. It goes as follows:

“The cases above are baffling, but in the following cases I suspect a human agency involved in a strange campaign that was conducted regarding Steiger imposters who spoke at various conferences around the United States. On occasions the imposters allegedly conducted themselves very well, thus making the whole enterprise of Counterfeit Steigers a seemingly futile project. On other occasions, the imposter’s assignment was quite obviously to taint my reputation.

“On an unfortunate number of occasions, I received letters complaining of my outrageous and insulting behavior while speaking at a conference. There were claims that I had openly berated my audience, calling them stupid for accepting the very premise of UFOs. A close friend happened to arrive on the scene after one pseudo-Steiger had departed and tried his best to assure the sponsors of the event that the rowdy, disrespectful speaker could not have been the real Brad. In his letter, my friend warned me that he had visited a number of lecture halls where the imposter had damned his audiences. ‘Someone seems out to damage your reputation,’ he advised.

“In a most bizarre twist, dozens of men and women have approached me at various lectures and seminars, congratulating me about the manner in which I bested Dr. Carl Sagan in debate. The event allegedly occurred after a lecture when I happened to bump into the great scientist in a restaurant. The eatery, according to the witnesses, was crowded with those who had attended the seminar, and they egged on a debate between myself and Dr. Sagan. I mopped up the floor with him, countering his every argument against the reality of UFOs.

“The truth is that I never met Dr. Sagan, therefore, neither had I ever debated him. But from coast to coast, there are those who claim to have witnessed my triumphal bout. Even more individuals claim to have been in the audience when I delivered a rousing message from the Space Brothers in Seattle. Regardless of how often I deny that I was not in Seattle at that time and have never channeled the Space Brothers, those who were at that event are puzzled why I would deny my eloquence.”

Multiple Brad Steigers wildly careering their collective way throughout the time lines? Don’t bet against it.
About the Author

Acknowledgments

Preface

Introduction

1. Worming around the Universe

2. The Mystery of Black Holes

3. How to Find Time Travelers

4. Time Travel and Pop Culture

5. From Invisibility to Time Leaps

6. Through a Time Tunnel

7. Time Travelers Dressed in Black

8. Cars of the Men in Black

9. Not Quite a DeLorean

10. Prophetic Dreams of a Nightmare Future

11. UFOs from the Future

12. Heading into the Past

13. Remote Viewing Millennia Long Gone

14. Time Traveling to Mars

15. The Roswell Incident and Time Lines

16. Little Green Time Surfers

17. The Mystery of the Missing Thunderbird Photo

18. Doppelgängers and Multiple Futures

19. Disaster in the Skies

20. Mothman and Future Events

21. The Man Who Came in from the Cold

22. Robots from Centuries Ahead

23. A Crop Circle Connection to Time Travel

24. The Dark Side of Moving through Time

25. The Most Famous Time Traveler

26. When Animals Go through Time

27. Some of Them Are Tourists

28. The 11:11 Phenomenon

29. Loch Ness and Time Portals

30. Déjà Vu and the Matrix

31. A Bigfoot Connection

32. Conclusions

Further Reading

Index

Sujets

• Unexplained Phenomena
• Popular Culture
• La máquina del tiempo
• Body (disambiguation)
• Time traveler
• Time travel
• Quantum mechanics
• Physics
• The Time Machine
• Time machine
• Relativity
• Time
• H. G. Wells

Informations

• Publié par: Visible Ink Press
• Date de parution: 05 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781578597550
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 8 Mo

Extrait

CONTENTS
Photo Sources
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Worming around the Universe
Chapter 2: The Mystery of Black Holes
Chapter 3: Time Travel in the World of Entertainment
Chapter 4: From Invisibility to Time Leaps
Chapter 5: The Man Who Traveled Time-or Didn t
Chapter 6: Time Travelers Dressed in Black
Chapter 7: Not Quite DeLoreans, but Close
Chapter 8: More on Those Mysterious Cars
Chapter 9: Prophetic Dreams of a Nightmarish Future
Chapter 10: Strangers in the Skies
Chapter 11: Heading into the Past
Chapter 12: Using the Mind to Head into the Past
Chapter 13: Time Traveling to Mars, the Red Planet
Chapter 14: Timelines and the Roswell Incident
Chapter 15: Little Green Time Surfers
Chapter 16: The Mystery of the Missing Thunderbird Photo
Chapter 17: Doppelg ngers and Multiple Timelines
Chapter 18: Disaster in the Skies
Chapter 19: Mothman and Future Events
Chapter 20: A Time Traveler Comes In from the Cold
Chapter 21: Alien Robots and Time Maneuvering
Chapter 22: A Crop Circle Connection
Chapter 23: Mutilations in the Fields
Chapter 24: The World s Most Famous Time Traveler
Chapter 25: Time-Traveling Animals
Chapter 26: Tourists of the Time-Traveling Type
Chapter 27: The Loch Ness Doorways
Chapter 28: Black-Eyed Children and Shadow People
Chapter 29: Bigfoot, Wormholes, and Time Portals
Chapter 30: The Matter of Teleportation
Chapter 31: From D j Vu to the Matrix
Chapter 32: Stones and Time
Chapter 33: Examining the 11:11 Enigma
Chapter 34: When Disaster Is Predicted
Chapter 35: A Brief Walk around Versailles
Chapter 36: The Women in Black
Chapter 37: Conclusions
Further Reading
Index
PHOTO SOURCES
19srb81/Shutterstock: p. 101
Agarin/Shutterstock: p. 11
Aleks1949/Shutterstock: p. 264
allanw/Shutterstock: p. 55
Michae Allen/Shutterstock: p. 146
Sheri Armstrong/Shutterstock: p. 120
joe arrigo/Shutterstock: p. 204
Rod Bacon/Wikimedia Commons: p. 130
Jason Ballard/Wikimedia Commons: p. 286
Steven Beck/Shutterstock: p. 206
beeboys/Shutterstock: p. 278
Bell Photography 423/Shutterstock: p. 83
BlueBarronPhoto/Shutterstock: p. 117
William Booth/Shutterstock: p. 103
Martin Callow/Shutterstock: p. 122
canbedone/Shutterstock: p. 194
Richie Chan/Shutterstock: p. 73
John M. Chase/Shutterstock: p. 158
Valentyna Chukhlyebova/Shutterstock: p. 232
Anthony Correia/Shutterstock: p. 225
Matthew Corrigan/Shutterstock: p. 68
CrackerClips Stock Media/Shutterstock: p. 186
Gregory M. Davis Jr./Shutterstock: p. 164
Delcarmat/Shutterstock: p. 9
Anna Demianenko/Shutterstock: p. 105
Designua/Shutterstock: p. 4
Pablo Elder/Shutterstock: p. 174
Elenarts/Shutterstock: p. 141
Daniel Eskridge/Shutterstock: pp. 248 , 266
Everett Collection/Shutterstock: pp. 147 , 152 , 154
footageclips/Shutterstock: p. 199
Fotosr52/Shutterstock: p. 188
Viktor Gladkov/Shutterstock: p. 48
Natalia Gorbach/Shutterstock: p. 230
Stefano Guidi/Shutterstock: p. 196
Steve Heap/Shutterstock: p. 97
instacruising/Shutterstock: p. 58
Javvani/Shutterstock: p. 210
jgolby/Shutterstock: p. 303
Gary W. Jones/Shutterstock: p. 268
kadumago/Shutterstock: p. 60
Juraj Kamenicky/Shutterstock: p. 287
Cennet Karaca/Shutterstock: p. 149
KK Stock/Shutterstock: p. 219
Andrei Kobylko/Shutterstock: p. 260
Korvit/Shutterstock: p. 290
KREML/Shutterstock: p. 70
ktsdesign/Shutterstock: p. 80
Alvydas Kucas/Shutterstock: p. 298
Oliver Le Queinec/Shutterstock: p. 170
Lena_graphics/Shutterstock: p. 190
Rainer Lesniewski/Shutterstock: p. 85
Felix Lipov/Shutterstock: p. 38
Anna Lurye/Shutterstock: p. 226
MattLphotography/Shutterstock: p. 116
meunierd/Shutterstock: p. 136
Mopic/Shutterstock: p. 8
Nagaer12345/Wikimedia Commons: p. 14
NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory: pp. 111 , 113
Natata/Shutterstock: pp. 66 , 236
NesaCera/Shutterstock: p. 308
oleschwander/Shutterstock: p. 53
Only_NewPhoto/Shutterstock: p. 102
Other edge/Shutterstock: p. 282
Eugene Partyzan/Shutterstock: p. 257
Peshkova/Shutterstock: p. 272
Jurik Peter/Shutterstock: pp. 2 , 108 , 273
Pseudociencia/Wikimedia Commons: p. 43
Public Domain: pp. 17 , 238 , 251
R Vi/Shutterstock: p. 216
Reshetnikov_art/Shutterstock: p. 26
Bruce Rolff/Shutterstock: p. 138
Rost9/Shutterstock: p. 180
Lukasz Sadlowski/Shutterstock: p. 82
Sammy33/Shutterstock: p. 95
Sarunyu L./Shutterstock: p. 42
Sgerbic/Wikimedia Commons: p. 37
William Silver/Shutterstock: p. 208
Denis Simonov/Shutterstock: p. 20
SimpleB/Shutterstock: p. 162
SJ-3009/Shutterstock: p. 294
SMA Studio/Shutterstock: p. 168
Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock: p. 77
StockPhotosLV/Shutterstock: p. 212
Subarite/Wikimedia Commons: p. 93
Thomas s Pics/Wikimedia Commons: p. 52
ThreeRivers11/Shutterstock: p. 24
U.S. Department of Energy: p. 29
Visual Generation/Shutterstock: p. 36
Vlue/Shutterstock: p. 244
Patrick Wang/Shutterstock: p. 176
Dana Ward/Shutterstock: p. 61
Albert Ziganshin/Shutterstock: p. 128
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to offer my very sincere thanks to my tireless agent and friend, Lisa Hagan, and to everyone at Visible Ink Press, particularly Roger J necke, Kevin Hile, and Christa Gainor.
INTRODUCTION
From 2000 to 2001, the world of conspiracy theorizing was rocked when a man using the name John Titor came forward claiming to be a time traveler from the future, specifically from 2036. Such was the fascination with Titor s story that conspiracy researchers took deep notice of what he had to say, to the point that what began as an interesting series of claims quickly became a veritable phenomenon. But was Titor all that he claimed to be? Was his story of being a member of the U.S. military true? Was he really a man from the future? Or was the whole thing a strange hoax? Before we get to the matter of answering those questions, let s first take a look at the history of time travel in both reality and fiction.
Within the specific genre of science fiction, fantastic tales of time travel to the far future or the distant past are hardly rarities. Take, for example, H. G. Wells s epic novel of 1895, The Time Machine . The book tells the story of a brilliant scientist, inventor, and adventurer from London, England, who journeys to the year 802,701 C.E. where, to his complete and utter dismay, he finds that the human race-at least in the form that we understand it-no longer exists. In its place are the Eloi and the Morlocks. The former are relatively human-looking beings, albeit of smaller stature, who utterly lack vitality, imagination, and any desire to learn or advance. The Morlocks, meanwhile, are fearsome, savage, and nightmarish beasts who dwell in dark, underground lairs and use the Eloi as present-day humans use cattle: namely, as a source of food.
In the 1968 movie Planet of the Apes , Charlton Heston s character, Taylor, a NASA astronaut, arrives on a nightmarish world run by a ruthless race of talking apes. Only at the film s climax, as he stumbles upon the broken remains of the Statue of Liberty, does Taylor realize with horror that he has not set foot on some far-off planet after all. Rather, he is home, 2,000 years in the future and after a worldwide nuclear holocaust has destroyed human civilization and given rise to the world of the apes.
Then there is The Philadelphia Experiment , an entertaining Hollywood film allegedly based on real events that tells the story of two sailors, David Herdeg and Jim Parker, who are propelled through space and time from a ship in Philadelphia Harbor in 1943 to the Nevada Desert circa 1984. And we should not omit the BBC show The Flipside of Dominick Hide , in which the main character travels through time from 2130 C.E. to 1980 in London, England. Ostensibly there to observe the transportation systems of the past, Hide subsequently finds himself on a quest to locate one of his distant ancestors. Let s not forget Michael J. Fox s character, Marty McFly, who in the 1985 Hollywood comedy blockbuster Back to the Future travels through time to 1955, where he almost makes out with his then-teenaged mom, comes perilously close to wiping out his own existence as a result of his time-traveling antics, and singlehandedly invents rock n roll. And there was D j Vu, starring Denzel Washington, a 2006 movie that told the story of U.S. government agents trying to solve a terrorist attack by using secret time-travel technology to look into the past. And who can forget 12 Monkeys , starring Bruce Willis as a prisoner who travels from the 2030s back to the 1990s? In other words, at least as far as mega-bucks movies and literary classics are concerned, the theme of time travel is a spectacularly successful one.

Tales of fictional time-traveling heroes and strange futures aside, what of the real world? Is it possible that one day we might travel through time in much the same way that we now hop on a plane to take a vacation?
Time travel is not theoretically possible, for if it was they d already be here telling us about it, British physicist Stephen Hawking famously said some years ago. And even if time travel did one day become a possibility, it would be beset by major problems, as Hawking noted: Suppose it were possible to go off in a rocket ship, and come back before you set off. What would stop you blowing up the rocket on its launch pad, or otherwise preventing you from setting out in the first place? There are other versions of this paradox, like going back and killing your parents before you were born.
Mac Tonnies, the late author of the book After the Martian Apocalypse , which is a study of the controversial Face on Mars mystery, believed he had the answer to the potential problems cited by Hawking: Stephen Hawking condemned time travel because, in his opinion, it should enable a constant stream of visitors from our own future. He assumes, perhaps unwisely, that we d be aware of these visitors, when in truth it s remarkably easy to think of reasons our ancestors might choose no