Looking Through the Wormhole

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

When you look through the wormhole, you see what's on the other side, right? You don't see flashing lights. It's not a subway. You see whatever's on the Other Side. And therefore what you see is that clock ticking at one second per second, just like your clock. If I'm outside and I look at both clocks, one does a little twin paradox motion and goes forward one hour in time, one just stays stationary and goes forward two hours. So now they're out of sync. But if I, instead of looking them from the outside, look through the Wormhole to borrow a phrase, they're in sync,. They both read the same time.

Time! It doesn’t stop, psychological effects of being under lockdown notwithstanding. How we experience time depends on our situation, but time itself just marches forward. Unless, of course, it’s possible to travel to the past, as countless science-fiction scenarios have depicted. But does that really make sense? Couldn’t we then change the past, even so dramatically that our own existence would never have happened? In this solo podcast I talk about both the physics and fiction of time travel. I point out that it might be allowed by the laws of physics, and explain how that would work, but that we really don’t know. And I try to make sense of some of the less-sensible depictions of cinematic time travel. Coming up with a logical theory that could account for Back to the Future isn’t easy, but podcasting isn’t for the squeamish.

Support Mindscape on Patreon.

But wait, there’s more! I was contacted by Janna Levin, who we fondly remember from Episode 27. Janna moonlights as Chair and Director of Sciences at Pioneer Works, an institution dedicated to bringing together creative people in art and science. Like the rest of us, they’ve been looking for ways to offer more online content in these pandemic times, so we thought about ways to collaborate. Here’s what they came up with: artist Azikiwe Mohammed has created an animated video backdrop to this podcast episode. The visuals are trippy, colorful, and inspired by (without trying to directly illustrate) what I talk about in the episode. You can check out a brief write-up at the Pioneer Works site, or view the video directly below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHy1j4LiyGQ

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.