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Although we cannot travel back in time, God knew that we would
be curious about the past, how the universe came to be, and where it is headed
- so, He graciously gave us His written Word, providing us the most important
details of history and glimpses of the future as well. In this respect, the
Bible is much like a time machine - when we read God’s Word we are virtually
transported to another time
By Jason
Lisle, PH.D.
What an experience
it would be to have a time machine!
Just imagine
traveling into the future, seeing technological marvels that have yet to be
invented, and meeting our distant descendants.
What will the world
be like in 50 years? Or 100?
Consider visiting
the earth before the global Flood or encountering a living dinosaur.
What would it be
like to meet the apostle Paul, Moses, Noah, or Adam?
Science fiction
abounds with time-travel stories.
This perhaps
reveals a fundamental aspect of human nature: We are fascinated with time.
Animals live in the
moment, but humans are made in God’s image.
We have a sense of
eternity that God has placed in our hearts (Ecclesiastes
3:11), so it’s not surprising that adventures through time captivate
our imaginations.
But is time travel
really possible?
As is often the
case, truth turns out to be stranger than fiction. Scientists have discovered
that time travel is indeed possible.
Furthermore, time
travel has even been documented.
But lest anyone
have fanciful hopes of traveling through time in a flying DeLorean, we must
understand that real time travel is far more limited than the
unrestrained freedom enjoyed by characters of science fiction.
First, it is
limited in direction. It seems that time travel into the future is
permitted, whereas time travel into the past is not.
In principle, it’s
possible to send a person forward 100 years or more to see his distant
descendants. However, he could not come back.
Second, time travel
into the future is limited in degree by our current
technological level.
While it is
theoretically possible to send a human into the distant future by traveling
close to the speed of light, such speeds are far beyond the limits of our
current technology.
The velocity
necessary for noticeable time travel requires energy that drastically exceeds
what we can currently produce.
For the moment, we
can only accelerate subatomic particles through time in any noticeable way. So,
how does this work?
The Physics of
Einstein
In a very real
sense, all of us travel through time.
Simply observing
the ticks of a clock shows that we move from one second to the next. We cannot
stop or reverse our passage.
It would seem at
first glance that we cannot accelerate our passage by any means.
We might
subjectively feel that time passes faster or slower, leading to the expression “time
flies when you’re having fun,” but our watch confirms that the actual
passage of time is utterly unaffected by our emotional state.
Our intuition
suggests that the forward progression of time is absolute and unaffected by
anything we do.
But our intuition
is utterly wrong.
The famous
physicist Albert Einstein discovered that the passage of time is affected
by motion.
A moving clock does
not tick at exactly the same rate as a stationary clock of identical
construction.
We don’t notice
this effect in our everyday lives because the effect is miniscule at the
velocities we ordinarily experience.
But imagine an
astronaut traveling through space at 99% the speed of light — over 660 million
miles per hour.
He would experience
one year for every seven Earth years!
That is, he would
be moving through time seven times faster than observers on Earth.
If he were to
return in 70 (Earth) years, he would have perceived and aged only 10 years.
This effect is called time dilation. It’s strange but true.
Einstein discovered
this effect — but not by doing any physical experiments. He discovered it with
logic and geometry.
By his day, it was
known that the round-trip average speed of light is the same for all observers,
regardless of their motion.
The only way to
account for this counterintuitive phenomenon is to recognize that observers
with different velocities have different measurements of time.
Their clocks tick
at different rates. Using logic and basic geometry, Einstein
calculated how velocity affects these rates.
Physical
experiments have confirmed his calculations. Moving clocks tick slower than
stationary ones by exactly the rate that Einstein computed.
The effect is
miniscule at ordinary speeds but becomes noticeable when velocities approach
the speed of light.
Matter must
accelerate to 14% the speed of light for a meager 1% time dilation. No wonder
we don’t observe it in our everyday lives!
Nonetheless, the
effect has been measured by atomic clocks on airplanes.
Furthermore,
physicists have accelerated subatomic particles to nearly the speed of light,
at which the effects of time dilation become quite pronounced and are easily
observed.
Back in Time
If we could achieve
a sufficiently high velocity, we could send a person into the distant future.
However, three
reasons cause us to think that time travel into the past is impossible.
One is a physics
reason, one is a logical reason, and one is a biblical reason.
Einstein’s
equations show that if a person traveled faster than the speed of light, then
he could travel back in time.
The problem is that
it would take an infinite amount of energy to reach the speed of light.
As a mass is
accelerated, it becomes more massive (“heavier”) and increasingly more difficult
to accelerate.
Since it takes an
infinite amount of energy to accelerate a mass to the speed of light, a mass
can obviously never go faster.
Hence, anything
with positive mass cannot go faster than light and therefore cannot go back in
time.
From logic, we
expect that time travel into the past is impossible for any information-bearing
system.
The reason is that
it could lead to contradictions — situations in which something must exist and
not exist at the same time.
An important rule
of logic is this: Since contradictions cannot occur in reality, whatever leads
to a contradiction must be false.
The possibility of
time travel into the past can lead to a contradiction, and thus we conclude
that the possibility of time travel into the past must be false.
Several such
examples have been conceived, such as the “grandfather paradox” or the
“logically pernicious self-inhibitor.”
With the first, we
imagine being able to send a person back to a time before his grandparents met.
It would then be
possible for him to prevent his grandparents from ever meeting each other,
thereby preventing their marriage and any subsequent descendants, including
himself.
But if he were
never born, then how could he possibly travel back in time to prevent his own
birth?
In this situation,
the man must both exist in the present (to travel back and prevent his
grandparents from meeting) and not exist in the present (since his grandparents
never met) at the same time and in the same way — a contradiction.
And it will not
solve the problem to have the man simply vanish when he prevents his
grandparents from meeting.
After all, if they
never met, then the man could never have existed, in which case he could not
have prevented them from meeting.
The Bible also
seems to indicate that time travel into the past is not possible for human
beings.
God alone is beyond
time, and hence He alone knows the future.
In Isaiah 46:9-10 the Lord says, “I am God, and there is none
like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things
that are not yet done.”
Only God can say at
a given time what will certainly happen at a later time. Humans can only make
educated guesses.
But if time travel
into the past were possible, then we could simply jump back to 1970 and know
with certainty what will happen over the next four-and-a-half decades.
This contradicts
God’s claim that He alone can declare those things that have not yet happened.
Also, in regard to His coming, Jesus said, “But of that day
and hour no one knows… but My Father only.”
But if we could
travel through time, we could jump ahead to the moment of His return and then
come back to the present.
Then we too could
know the day and hour. Of course, God is beyond time and could move a person
forward or backward through time in a self-consistent way without any
paradoxes.
He has full
knowledge of the past, present, and future. But our human ability to time
travel is quite limited.
The Word
Although we cannot
travel back in time, God knew that we would be curious about the past, how the
universe came to be, and where it is headed.
So, He graciously
gave us His written Word, providing us the most important details of history
and glimpses of the future as well.
In this respect,
the Bible is much like a time machine.
When we read God’s
Word we are virtually transported to another time.
We experience
history in light of God’s plan of redemption.
And the Bible even
gives us a taste of the wondrous eternal state to come.
We see how all of
time — past, present, and future — is under God’s sovereign control.
The
Institute for Creation Research (ICR) wants people to know that God’s Word
can be trusted in everything it speaks about—from how and why we were made, to
how the universe was formed, to how we can know God and receive all He has
planned for us.
After 50
years of ministry, ICR remains a leader in scientific research within the
context of biblical creation. Founded by Dr. Henry Morris in 1970, ICR exists
to conduct scientific research within the realms of origins and Earth history,
and then to educate the public both formally and informally through
professional training programs, through conferences and seminars around the
country, and through books, magazines, and media presentations.
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