Death and time travelling.docx

7/29/2019 Death and time travelling.docx

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Death and Time TravelingSpeculations on the science and fiction of dying to get

to the future

by Jim Walker

Rewritten: 25 Aug. 2001Additions: 22 Dec. 2005

How would you like to visit other worlds, the stars and planets on the other side of the

galaxy? Or how would you like to live in the future, say several thousand years from

now? The impenetrable light-speed barrier and the brief life span of humans appears to

prevent any entity from achieving these goals. In spite of the life span and light-speed

barrier, I will describe, not only how one might get to the stars and to the future, but that

one can travel there, not by traveling close to light speed, not atthe speed of light, but

much quicker. Instantly.Instantly.

Before you commit this idea to pseudoscience, what I will describe does not violate any

known laws of physics. Nor will I appeal to scientific speculations on superliminal

loopholes, anti-gravity, wormholes, tachyons, quantum tunneling, curved space, etc. I

will, however, resort to a thought experiment using fiction as a method to explain the

concept.

Time travel occurs in such a facile and straightforward manner that nature has already

done it for millions of years. Natural time travel occurs so simply that we tend to

overlook it because of its seeming banality. Science fiction authors have expounded on

this in its mechanical manifestation for many years, but always in the wrong context. InSci-Fi terminology it goes by the term "suspended animation." If you can stop and

preserve your information carriers (the molecules, genes, and cells of your body) and

restore them to full function at a later time then, in effect, time travel occurs.

Regrettably Sci-Fi authors regulate suspended animation simply as a means to preserve

human bodies rather than promoting its time jumping properties. In science fiction, the

spaceship always gets the credit for the journey but the suspended animation device

never receives full due its time & distance travel capacity. To break this impasse

requires a shift of perspective, a paradigm shift, to use Thomas Kuhn's phrasing.

Even with the simplicity of the physics involved, unfortunately, the technology does not

yet exist to achieve practical time travel for large biological life forms like humans. Inspite of this temporary limitation, the technology already exists for preserving small

living things such as cells, embryos, and even small animals. In this respect, one can

show that, in principle, suspending a large living being falls well within the range of

foreseeable technology. To demonstrate just how time travel works requires the use of a

thought experiment. Once you undergo this thought experiment, you will understand

that instant time travel, indeed, can work, albeit, only in forward time.

Science and science fiction's description of space travel


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In science fiction the authors always regulate the spaceship as the sole device for

traveling in distance and time regardless of how its crew undergo suspended animation.

Among the best known spaceships that used suspended animation chambers include the

U.S.S. Discovery (from the movie, "2001, A Space Odyssey"), and the Nostromo (in

"Alien").

Other Sci-Fi stories use Faster-Than-Light spaceships such as Star Trek's Enterprise

which uses warp-drives. In the movie, Star Wars, the Millennium Falcon used

hyperdrives to achieve Faster Than Light (FTL) velocities through hyperspace. The

Guild Heighliner in Frank Herbert's "Dune" can "fold" two spacetime points together

and transport itself without moving.

In science & technology, aerospace engineers usually attempt to design spacecraft

capable of achieving the fastest possible velocity through space. In the 60s, for example,

Robert Bussard of the TRW Corporation proposed using interstellar hydrogen atoms as

fuel for a ramjet. An enormous scoop would collect and funnel the hydrogen into a

nuclear reaction motor. The faster it goes, the more hydrogen it collects and the more

efficient it becomes. The British Interplanetary Society came up with a Project Daedalus

to design a craft using thermonuclear reactions to achieve velocities of about 10 to 16

percent of the speed of light. At these velocities it would take approximately 40 years to

reach a star 6 light-years away. [Herbert]

Needless to say, all of these sub-light-velocity spacecraft lack the capability to travel

galactic distances within the life spans of their passengers. Even if scientists figure outhow to travel at light speed velocities, consider the vast impracticability of it. Even at


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warp factor 8 (the maximum velocity of the first Star Trek Enterprise), it would take

195 years to cross ourMilky Way galaxy, which has a diameter of around 100,000 light

years. (Warp factor 8 equals 512 times light speed. Warp factor 1 equals the speed of

light , the total velocity equals the cube of the warp factor.) Clearly, light speed travel,

even at warp speeds, (even if achieved) would deem abysmally insufficient as a usable

form of galactic space travel (from the perspective of observers outside the spacecraft.To the passengers of warp-speed spacecraft, clocks outside their spacecraft in the

direction of travel would appear stopped or going backwards!).

Science and science fiction's concept of time travel

Perhaps the most renown story of time travel comes from H.G. Well's 1894 classic,

"The Time Machine." Most time travel stories describe both backward and forward time

travel. One of my favorite stories come from the movieSomewhere in Time (1980),

even though it doesn't involve a machine. Unfortunately, none of these stories describe a

convincing mechanism for actually achieving time travel, and many don't attempt an

explanation at all. Of those that do, they borrow from the speculations of scientists. Wealso have to disregard the paradoxical inconsistencies and the violations of causality (for

example, what happens if the time traveler kills his father before the time traveler's

birth, etc.).

When physicists hypothesis and speculate on time travel, it comes simply to that.

Speculation. In their attempts to propose a method of time travel, they can only resort tothe most hypothetical aspects of relativity or quantum theory such as time compression

light-speed travel, FTL, superluminal wormholes or quantum tunneling. Although, point

particles such as electrons can achieve a kind of time jump (quantum tunneling), but

when the hypothesis gets applied to macro objects the size of living beings, the concept

falls apart. Regardless of the attractiveness of their speculations, the problem lies in the

inability to design a machine, in principle, to satisfy their hypothesis. Indeed, it may

turn out that superluminal loopholes and wormholes have no validity whatsoever (most

scientific ideas do not pan out). Our method of time travel avoids all the trappings of

these hypothetical guesses.
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Nature's time travelers

Examples of nature's time travelers

Nature and natural selection have utilized time travel via suspended animation for

millions of years, all without using quantum loopholes. Seeds provide the most common

example of natural suspension. Some seeds like those from Lotus plants last as long as

2000 years and can stillgerminate. Spores, and microbes have remained suspended for

hundreds, and in some cases, millions of years before they come to life. Bacterial spores

have lasted for 25-40 million years discovered in a bee preserved in amber. In 2000,scientists revived bacteria that had lain in suspended animation for 250 million years

encased in salt crystals deep in the earth. [seearticle]

Brine shrimpgive another excellent example of nature's time travelers that you can test

out for yourself. You can actually buy dried brine shrimp eggs from most pet stores

(aquarium owners use brine shrimp to feed their fish). Brine shrimp eggs come in a can

or packet and you can store them for long periods of time. In the can, they look like

dried brown powder. Just sprinkle them into purified water and stir gently for about one

minute and they will hatch. Instant life!

Insects such asperiodical cicadassuspend their lives while in the nymph stage. Theyemerge after 13 or 17 years, literally time-jumping past the life span of possible

predators. According to Lloyd and Dybas, in any particular area, all life cycles remain

synchronized, with the result that each area experiences a cicada plague every 13 or 17

years. This presumably results in predators being swamped in plague years and starved

in intervening years. Lloyd and Dybas suggest that the long life cycle results in an

'evolutionary race through time.' Interestingly, the time periods always come in prime

number sequences (17 or 13) because a predator with a shorter life cycle might

synchronize with the cicadas every second or every third time around! [Dawkins]

In another example of natural time travel, some species offrogscan go through the

winter with one-half of their body's liquid turned into ice. In this frozen state, they cango without breathing, eating or even without a heartbeat. In the spring, they thaw out

and live out their lives. [Health, Mar.1987]

Unfortunately humans have yet to achieve time travel but some think that Keith

Richards of the Rolling Stones might have something to do with it. Actually he doesn't

time travel at all; he just looks aged beyond his time.

Suspended biological animation in the laboratory
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For years scientists have suspended various life forms by the process of freezing. Live

blood cells have remained suspended for as long as ten years by protecting them in low

concentrations of glycerol (to prevent crystallization and destruction of the cell walls).

The blood gets frozen in liquid nitrogen at around -150 C. Thawing the blood takes

about ten minutes [Technical Manual of the American Association of Blood Banks].

According to reports, the first successful animation of a mammal occurred in 1951 by a

Yugoslavian biologist who froze hamsters for several hours. In the 80s, the biologist

Paul Segall claimed to have suspended two dogs by replacing their blood with a

cryoprotectant (an antifreeze), and brought them back to life after 20 minutes of

suspension. The dog's hearts had stopped beating and by all standards, had died and

then came back to life [Health, Mar. 1987] Today, various cells, tissue, sperm and even

human embryos get commonly stored in cryogenic suspension for years.

Although no one has yet suspended life forms as large as a human being and brought

them back to life, nothing in physics prevents this, at least in principle. The difficulty in

suspending a large body mass comes with freezing tissue cells deep within the body atthe same time as all the other cells and without destroying them by crystallization.

Fortunately there does exist, promising new techniques that may produce practicable

freeze suspension methods. Some of these methods use a form of magnetic cooling.

Magnetic time suspension

At Los Alamos National Laboratory, researchers have developed a new type of

cryogenic refrigerator, a magnetic unit that uses the magnetocaloric effect (MCE). The

magnetic refrigerator has many advantages over conventional gas-liquid refrigerators.

Because they use a magnetic field to cool a refrigerant, magnetic refrigerators don't

carry the energy-draining baggage of conventional machines. Magnetic refrigerators can

operate at up to four times the efficiencies of conventional coolers and have very fewmoving parts. Magnetic refrigerators also have a higher cooling capacity per unit

volume than gas-liquid freezers because of the density of the magnetic material. As

development continues superconducting magnets should yield even more efficient and

powerful refrigerators. [Chemical Week, Sep. 4, 1985]. [Also check out these sites:1,2,

3,4,5]

If for one moment you doubt the ability of energy fields to suspend objects in time,consider the experiments of Lene Vestergaard Hau, professor of Applied Physics at

Harvard University where he successfully froze atoms to the point of suspending the

energy of light that relays to and from them. By using a magnetic field to trap sodium

atoms, and using coupling lasers, Hau and his team have frozen atoms to within a

millionth of a degree of absolute zero. The information that produces and transmits the

light actually gets stored within the atoms and thus he has effectively stopped and

restarted light within a test chamber. ["Frozen Light," Scientific American, Jul. 2001]. If

you can suspend the movements of matter and energy, you have essentially stopped

their time. (Note, that although I accept the idea of freezing atoms, I feel suspicious of

their terminology of freezing light. Light may not exist between events at all. See "Does

Light Exist?")
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I will use magnetic suspension technology to illustrate a thought experiment (below),

but first we need to understand a little bit about the nature of time and space.

The interconnection of time and space

"Henceforth, space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere

shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality."

-Hermann Minkowski

Scientists think of time as a measured movement of some external object or simply the

period of an event. For example, one earth year represents the period of duration of our

planet moving once around the sun. A day represents the period of one planetary

rotation about its axis, etc. Virtually all expressions of time represent some form of

measured events.

One of the most interesting consequences of Einstein's relativity theory comes with the

realization that you cannot separate space from time. The four-dimensional continuum

consists of the familiar three spatial dimensions and the temporal or time dimension

which, together, physicists callspacetime. Actually Einstein didn't come up with the

idea of 4-dimensional spacetime but rather it came from Minkowski's geometric

formulation of the theory of Special Relativity, where later Einstein incorporated the

spacetime continuum into his general theory of relativity.

To better understand the meaning of dimensions, think of them as the coordinates

necessary to find an object in space. To locate, say, an airborne aircraft, you would need

to know 3 coordinate dimensions: the longitude, latitude, and the altitude above sea

level. But you would also need to know the time at which to find the aircraft at those

dimensions. Therefore you also need time to locate objects in space. Physicists think in

terms of spacetime rather than space andtime because when you alter space, you

invariably alter time, and vise-versa. Thus space and time have no more independence

of each other than the three dimensions of space [Russell]. This bears importance for

understanding time travel because when you travel in distance, you travel in time; when

you travel in time, you travel in distance. One cannot avoid this interconnection.

Unfortunately, the direction of travel goes only one way in our experiment. Once you

commit yourself to the future, you cannot come back. Sorry.

An intriguing aspect of time travel comes with the realization that if you go very fast,

time appears to slow down. Relativity theory predicts that as a material object

approaches the speed of light, three things happen: mass appears to increase toward

infinity; one of the spatial dimensions shortens toward zero; and time slows to a stop

[seelight-speed chart]. This presents us with the light-speed barrier, for to accelerate an

object to the speed of light would take an infinite amount of energy and would result in

a infinite mass, a loss of a dimension, and stopped time. Needless to say, light-speed

travel presents vast difficulties, not only in expense but in efficiency.

However, if you do the opposite of going fast, you get the benefit of not only traveling

in spacetime, but the cost of building a time-machine becomes considerably lower. Bysuspending and stopping every cell in your body though some process of controlled
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dormancy you would, in effect, drastically alter time from your perspective. Of course

when you stop all your life processes, you would essentially have killed yourself, at

least temporarily. Ironic as it may seem, by dying, you can extend your life into the

future and achieve instant spacetime travel. To illustrate just how this works requires a

thought experiment.

A spacetime travel thought experiment

"Sleek. Fast. Handles like a dream. Delivers the ultimate performance. From 0 to

800,000 years in 1.2 seconds."

-from the 2001 movie trailer,The Time Machine

Imagine for the moment that a group of physicists and engineers have developed an

efficient biological suspension chamber that can hold a single human being. For the

purpose of this thought experiment, imagine that the chamber uses magnetic fieldtechnology where superconducting magnets can literally halt the vibrations of every

atom within its chamber. Instead of freezing a refrigerant (as present MCE units do),

imagine the human body itself, as the refrigerant! If a human happens to sit in the

chamber with the magnetic field turned on, every cell in the body would undergo

virtually instantaneous super-cooled freezing which avoids the problems of cell

crystallization produced by slow gas-fluid freezers. Computers control all operations,

from turning on the magnetic field and holding the body in suspension. When arriving

at its time destination, the computers shut down the magnetic field which instantly

returns every atomic structure of the body back to its previous state, thus avoiding the

difficulties of slow-thawing.

Because the chamber has automatic computer control capability, this allows a single

person to operate the time-machine from a simple instrument panel without assistance

from anyone else. Fortunately you had the funds available to purchase the first modeland you get to serve as the test pilot.

Your spacetime-chamber looks like this:
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(Click on picture for details)

Now imagine yourself as the pilot of this craft. In spite of it being bolted to the floor and

the realization that this machine will halt every atom in your body, you will shortly

embark on a journey of millions of miles and into the future. Instantly. Remember,

nothing here violates any known law of physics.

You climb into the chamber and clamp the side door shut. Before you appears an

instrument panel:

The controls appear simple. You see a digital clock with the present time showing.

Below that you see a "stop time" clock where you can enter the time period you wish to

appear in. You dial in a timer to set the count down cycle. If, during the count down you

wish to halt the procedure, you can simply hit the "cancel" button.
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Let's say you entered the chamber on Oct. 15th, 2001 and you wish to suspend yourself

for one year. You set your destination or stop time one year ahead to Oct. 15th, 2002.

To give yourself a little time to settle yourself before your journey, you program the

count-down timer for 10 seconds. When you feel ready, you press the "GO" button and

wait for your travel to begin. The process starts automatically. The computers take

control and prepares to turn on the magnetic field. The timer begins its count down: ten,nine, eight, seven... Your anxiety rises. Six, five, four, three... You feel your heart

pounding. Here we go! Two, one, zero...

Something went wrong. Nothing happened. Strangely the present-time clock reads the

year 2002 and you feel frustrated. You climb out of the chamber and check out the

equipment. Nothing seems wrong. You go to the nearest newsstand and to your

amazement, all the newspapers have 2002 dates. You realize that, indeed, the time

machine worked! [Click on the instrument panel above for details]

Not only have you jumped into the future by one year but you have traveled a distance

of 584 million miles, the distance of the orbit of the earth around the sun! And you did itinstantly. (And this doesn't count the distance you traveled around each revolution of

the earth.) The interconnection of space and time yields that traveling in time means

traveling in distance. If you had set the clock to 50 years ahead, you would have

traveled 50 times around the sun and when you woke up, everyone around you would

have aged 50 years (or died) and you wouldn't have aged at all.

But why wouldn't you feel anything? Because while undergoing time-suspension you

would have no feelings to feel with. You would have died. Your body would have lain

in a deceased state for an entire year, halted in the present like a movie in freeze frame.

The zero on the count-down timer would appear as the last and next thing you saw after

a year of suspension. The interval between the start and stop, to you, would seem

instantaneous. It doesn't matter if the interval consists of a second, a year, or a million

years; as long as all body functions get stored and revived as before, the time period

would appear instantaneous from the perspective of the time traveler. Relativity theory

posits that no frame of reference gives precedence over any other frame of reference.

Your reference appears just as valid as any other. So from your point of view, you

would have jumped ahead one year with the added bonus that you wouldn't have aged at

all. For those outside the chamber, you would simply have appeared dead for one

standard earth year.

You might find it fun to contemplate what you could do with such a time machine. If Ihad the fortunate opportunity to own such a device, I think I would install it in an

undisclosed location, perhaps in a cave to protect it from the environment and from

unscrupulous people. A nearby stream or river could supply the necessary energy to

drive a small electrical turbine to supply power for the computers and the magnetic

field. I wouldn't tell anyone about it. At first, I would time-jump in weekly stages.

Visiting family and friends over the weekends could prove interesting, especially if you

don't tell them your secret of staying young after so many years. When your friends

have reached old age, you would still appear young. After everyone you know had died,

you might want to take longer time jumps, perhaps months or years into the future.

Unfortunately these time jumps can only go one way; you can't go back in time. But if

you feel unhappy in a certain time period, you can continue time-jumping until youreach a more favorable time. If a dangerous period occurs, say a war or worldwide


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depression, you could literally jump around it into a more settled future. Have fun, make

new friends, perhaps stay for awhile. Money should present no problem. Investing in an

interest bearing account for many years without touching it would yield a nice nest egg.

You wouldn't have to work! Storing away collectables would turn into valuable

antiques. Even cheap nostalgic items like toys, coins, and pop icons should dramatically

increase their value after hundreds of years. You might even reach celebrity status ifnothing more than for your considerable historical knowledge of your time period. And

if you could explore the future on earth, imagine what you could do with a time

machine installed in a starship to explore the universe?

For a QuickTime teaser of the Dreamworks movie "The Time Machine," clickhere.

A better way to travel though spacetime

Our thought experiment served to explain the simplicity of spacetime travel by jumpingonly one year into the future, as an example. Yet, imagine the possibilities of such a

machine in space, between the stars, where the natural coldness of space could

substitute for the magnetic freezer during long interstellar voyages. (A time-suspended

spaceship might utilize a magnetic field to first put human occupants into suspension,

then once achieved, it could use the near-absolute-temperature of space to continue the

process with virtually no energy input.) All of the energy to run the computers, sensors,

and propulsion engines (or light sails) etc., it could get by using photon collectors to

store the energy from starlight.

Instead of designing inefficient propulsion engines such a thermonuclear thrusters or

anti-matter drives in an attempt to approach light speeds, designers could utilize low

energy systems such as ion engines, or photon sails to capture electromagnetic energy.

Gravitational sling shot techniques could serve to travel from planet to planet or from

star to star while using low power propulsion units for course corrections.

It doesn't matter how long it takes the ship gets there because the time-traveler uses a

different time frame reference. The ship exists in universal standard time; the time-

traveler's mind and personality, however, doesn't exist at all during the voyage because

he or she would remain in a death state until awakened. The time-traveler exists only

during conscious states from the time-traveler's own frame of measurement. If

something went wrong with the spaceship during the voyage, say, the computers brokedown and kept the time-traveler suspended forever, or if an asteroid collided with the

ship and blew it to smithereens then we would essentially have to consider our poor

space traveler, dead. Forever. Which brings up the next question.

Death, what does it mean?

By all criteria of life as a functioning entity that grows, breeds, feels or thinks, death

must then mean its opposite. Death means the termination of life. A life form that does

not move, breath, eat, feel, think, or have any bodily function, whether by natural cause,bullet, fire, or frozen suspension, we must consider no longer living. Likewise we must
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also consider the time-traveler in our thought experiment as having undergone death.

Whether the time traveler gets revived or not makes no difference. A nonfunctional life

form that no longer has brain waves or consciousness, means death by any biological

standard.

Regardless of how obvious this may appear to the materialist, death does not meanultimate death for many believers, especially the religious. Death to them means a kind

of metamorphosis, a transformation into another form. Hindus believe in reincarnations,

Christians and Muslims believe in deathless souls that live in eternal hell or heaven (I

prefer to call them the undead. Hey, if they can call fetuses, the unborn, then I get to call

them the undead. For fairness sake, you know.). The concept of suspended animation

should present interesting questions for the theologian or spiritualist because if, indeed,

a life spirit world exists beyond biological life, or if souls can live in heaven or hell,

limbo or purgatory, or see God, Zeus, ghosts, or Jesus, then just such a time-chamber

should present an excellent instrument to answer these questions. If the tunnel-of-light

visions in near-death experiences actually pan out then one could simply explore the

tunnel by taking a time-suspension journey into death. One could actually investigatewhere the tunnel leads. Can one really float above their body and observe from another

astral dimension? Can one's soul inhabit another animal, or meet with Jesus, or talk with

God or see your deceased relatives, or spend eternity meeting the trillions of the

undead? (What a horrible thought to think that some other entity has control over your

life or that you have to spend the rest of eternity with your relatives, but I digress.)

Of course I have no knowledge about the supernatural but I will bet theirlives that none

of these spiritual things occur. If the supernaturalists prove right, however, a time-

suspension machine would still benefit both believer and unbeliever. For if a godly

spirit world exists, believers could explore the supernatural realm, and the poor atheists,

who would most certainly go straight to hell, could escape by coming back to our

familiar and wonderful sin-filled material world. Whoopee!

The unique thing about suspended animation involves, not only controlling time, but

controlling one's life and death and when and where to do it. An experienced time-

traveler would have no fear of death for the simple reason that he or she would have

undergone it many times. Here we would have the realization of a form of designed

reincarnation. Hindus would, no doubt, yawn with the obvious.

Unfortunately for Catholics and many Protestants, to put oneself in such a suspended

state means that one has to willingly die, even if temporarily. This amounts to nothingless than a form of suicide which, according to Christian doctrine, means committing a

mortal sin. Ironically this would leave the majority of the heavenly explorers to the

unbelievers who would have more knowledge about the undead than the religious (if,

indeed, the undead realm exists).

No doubt eternal death may still result if your body gets destroyed, but this still leaves

an unknown and yet unanswered aspect of possible outcomes. Consider the following

proposition:

If something proves possible and if matter-energy-spacetime occurs infinitely and

forever, then that something will eventually occur.


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Since we know we exist, we know its possibility (at least a probability of 1). Therefore,

we need to find out more about infinity. If in any sense this proposition proves correct,

the vast time it takes to get to the next possibility would appear instantaneous from the

time frame of the entity. But imagine if we have control over our own existence and the

time periods we live in, we would in effect, have made the proposition viable.

Considering that scientists continue to improve the ability to record DNA and through

magnetic suspension techniques can store energy states, not only should it deem

possible to store copies of bodies, but along with it, brains and the emerging property

from them-- minds. In the future I suspect that only the person who believes in the spirit

world will fear death.

Note: To those who's death will come near, you have nothing to fear. Although dying can producetemporary pain, the Great Sleep comes sweet and forever. No more pain or aching memories, a halt, a

stop in time; no scary heavens, no eternal hell. Death erases fear along with everything else. Time passes

as if in a time machine, not knowing if the infinity of time will restore life as before, entirely new, or

forever and ever traveling in that silent chamber through empty space.

The problem with humans

In spite of my description of human time travel I did this mainly because people love to

read about themselves. I pulled a fast on you and I sincerely apologize but I seriously

doubt that human beings, at least the 21st century specie, will ever undergo such form

of space travel for the simple reason that most people feel too connected to earth's

environment to have any real interest in far reaching explorations. Why? Because in

spite of our nature to explore other places, most people want to return home to tell thestory. Tooling about the solar system describes one thing; leaving the home planet

forever describes another. Note that virtually all the spaceships designed for extended

voyages past our solar system begin with the premise that they must return to the home

planet. This home bound thinking effectively limits the possibilities for practical space

travel. Trade-offs must occur and the most dramatic sacrifice comes with the realization

that to effectively explore the far reaches of other star systems, one must forever

abandon the concept of getting back to the home planet.

Another problem with humans will occur when biologists figure out how to extend the

life span of humans. If you couple this with moral laws against contraception, the belief

in the fruitful multiplying of people (Gen. 1:22), while ignoring the evidence forincreasing pollution and green-house effects, you have the makings of a very crowded

and defiled planet. For a terrestrial species to survive and evolve, death appears

necessary only when living in an environment with a finite amount of space. But in the

vastness of space, eternal death has no necessity. Unfortunately humans have their

genes adapted for earth's environment and not for the vacuum of space.

In the 70s, Gerald O'Neill proposed building permanent earth-like structures in space to

hold colonies of people. [O'Neill] These artificial planets would not take them to the

stars, nor can they compare with the diversity of earth's abundance. Indeed they might

serve as useful space rigs, floating hotels, or perhaps temporary homes for asteroid

miners. At best they might serve as a replacement planet if we manage to destroy planetearth. Regardless of how close they resemble the earth, they would only have achieved


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duplicating a home planet and we go back where we started, with a finite amount of

space and a requirement for death, or severe population control. If humans can't control

a planet, why in the world would we expect them to control an artificial one?

Homo sapiens evolved out of the earth as air breathing, carbon based life forms that

require water and the consumption of other DNA based life forms to stay alive. To livein space requires bringing along vast quantities of earth stuff-- food, air, and the ability

to eliminate waste products. In spite of genetic engineering, so far, no one has figured

out how to make artificial food exempt from genetic material. The necessity of food

requires storing or growing or raising genetic based life forms, and in space, this

presents a problem. Consider that a suspended animation chamber might adequately

service a human being, but the space-ship engineer would also have to make room for

many more life forms: the very food products for which a human would need to

consume in order to survive.

We would have to confront the realities: living in space means boredom and humans

just do not have the biological equipment suited for permanent space voyages. Thespaceship designer must consider a vastly different life-form more suited to live in

space. In effect this means designing the ship as the life-form and it must forever

abandon the earth along with all its cherished beliefs. (I didn't say this would prove

easy, only that it would not violate any known physics.)

So forget everything above about the human designed suspended chamber; that served

as a step to get you to the next stage. Now that you've got the concept of spacetime

travel you can apply it to a better adapted form of life.

Designing a space traveler (Cyber sapiens)

What we need involves putting human evolution into the control of ourselves rather

than leaving it up entirely to the contingencies of natural selection. Considering the

barriers of religion and the moral henchmen against modifying life, this could take

longer to overcome than developing the technology for space travel. Regardless, we

need a life form that can adapt itself to space. Instead of living from earth stuff, it would

evolve and adapt to the environment of space. Here again this involves nothing

extraordinary in physics or biology even though the technology does not yet exit to do

so. To design a space-being we might start by taking the natural human qualities such asour thinking and feeling capabilities but with the added ability to live off of another

energy source. Instead of biological wetware, digital codes might replace the hormones,

cells and neurons of the brain. Instead of living off of genetic material, a cybernetic life

form could, in principle, live from the energy of light. Plants do this by their very

nature. Computers can operate from solar cells. Whether this form evolves from

recombinant DNA techniques, cybernetics, or a combination of scientific techniques, I

haven't the slightest idea. The point here aims to illustrate that for an efficiently

designed life-form, it should have the ability to live off of starlight, and that nothing

here, in principle, violates any known physical laws.

Interestingly, identifying this new life-form would quantum leap all known biologicalclassifications. Not only would this life-form not fit within any specie, genus, family,


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order, class, or phylum, but it would not even fit within any kingdom! In fact it would

not fit within any biological classification system at all. The classification of life would

have to split between biological and non-biological life, DNA based and non-DNA

based. This new non-biological life would also benefit from having come almost*

entirely designed by intelligent beings (whereas biological life evolved entirely through

natural selection). The jump from Homo sapien to Cyber sapien would represent a newkingdom of life. Of course evolution will still act on non-biological life, but it will

include artificial selection and memes, along with natural selection.

* I say "almost" entirely designed by intelligent beings (us) because blind evolution still works within

intelligent life. For example, human language, even though practiced by conscious intelligent beings, did

not get designed by humans through conscious design. Who, for example, designed the French language?No one person or a group of people decided to invent French. It simply evolved out of Latin from

multicultural people who spoke in different accents across a period of time (and something to think about

for creationists who demand transitional fossil evidence, French evolved from Latin [as do all languages],

would also have to include transitional languages, not spoken today). Regardless of how much

intelligence one has, no being can predict the future with certainty, and blind evolution acts across time

through the unpredictably of natural events.

Entropy

"Death is only a special case of the Second Law."

- Rudolf Clausius [Broda]

In spite of the relative coldness and vacuum of space there exist all kinds of dust

particles, gas and high energy cosmic particles flying about. If given only a few years,

perhaps even a few hundred years, our space traveler could survive without much of a

problem. However the intent of our spaceship aims to live and explore the galaxy in

jumps of thousands or millions of years. The accumulated effects of all the cosmicparticles, heat, gravitational tidal waves, and who-knows-what over time would

eventually lead to a slow disintegration of our spaceship due to the Second Law of

Thermodynamics, sometimes referred to as entropy. Rudolf Clausius invented the term

in 1865 but it came from Ludwig Boltzmann who gave it the meaning of a measure of

disorder or randomness in a closed system. Entropy also results in the arrow of time,

since everything eventually degrades over the forward direction of time. In other words,

eggs easily break but to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, through chance,

violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics. (Actually it doesn't strictly violate the

Second Law, but only makes it numerically and impractically improbable.) Even

ordered systems such as biological life undergo random destruction over time due to

thermal wear (and I don't mean the Fruit-of-the-Loom kind). Sunlight can damage DNAand cause skin cancer; random oxidants can destroy cells. Every life form eventually

succumbs to accumulated damage. We all age and then die. The same goes with our

spaceship. Eventually it will accumulate tiny crater hits from cosmic particles, a

molecule at a time. Imagine our space traveler waking up after thousands of light years

only to discover that his ship has become pockmarked with miniature craters. Just a

second ago it looked clean and sleek, now it looks like a disintegrated hunk of space

debris. Atomic particles can also decay spontaneously over long periods of time. If

enough atoms decay in, say, a critical piece of brain circuitry, it might adversely affect

the life of our spaceship (this problem would magnify itself in biological death states to

the point of possibly preventing them from ever achieving long term storages, thus

giving yet another reason why humans don't make good space travelers.) Clearly,

allowing our spaceship to decay won't do and we would need to address this problem.


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Since the unconscious state of our spaceship will undergo many years of suspension,

some method of continual examination and restoring of the integrity of the spaceship

must occur. Not only the outside hull, but also the insides must keep its functional

ability. Our spaceship would also require "eyes" to detect dangerous large objects like

stray pieces of dark matter that might collide with the ship.

The spaceship and the space-traveler would, in effect, become synonymous. The ship

itself would consist of the body and space as the environment. A human body contains

unconscious biological functions (blood filtering, blood pumping, programmed

instincts, etc.) and nature's biological robots, the symbiont organisms that help digest

our food (for example, E. coli, metabolizing in human guts) and beneficial bacteria to

help our immune system . Likewise, our space traveler would also require full

autonomy, perhaps using symbiont robots and computer immune-system programs to

maintain its existence though space. If something breaks, the spaceship must repair

itself. It might head for an asteroid and mine its minerals to build and replace

nonfunctional parts. Replacing brain circuits and performing software backups could

prevent the damaging effects due to entropy. Instead of using cryogenic refrigerators tofreeze biological cells, the conscious part of its cybernetic brain would simply shut

down its circuits for long voyages. Considering the speed of today's advanced

superconducting transistors and Josephson junctions, switching all circuits on and off

should take only a few microseconds. The ability to switch its circuits in such a manner

allows this life form to conserve energy and to choose when and where it will exist

during its conscious state. From this switching ability emerges a particularly important

concept that allows control of velocity through spacetime (explained below).

Our space traveler would utilize computer controlled navigation while it remained in its

unconscious shut down state. If some form of, say, dark matter appeared in its path,

radar would detect it and the computers would direct its engines to steer around it. In

case of an emergency, the computer would wake our space traveler so it could make

important decisions.

The propulsion system

Instead of using nuclear explosions, hydrogen-oxygen burning, or some other high

energy propulsion method, our spacetime traveler would require a low energy system

that could utilize the energy of light from the stars. In this sense the spaceship wouldserve as a true starship.

One idea that engineers have proposed for moving a spacecraft amounts to using solar

sails. A solar sail can capture the energy from a star as long as the spacecraft remained

near a sun to utilize its energy (light quanta impart a small momentum on matter, so

you'd need a lot of light to produce a usable force). For solar system travel, simple sails

would suffice. However, for travel between the stars, a sail alone would not work well

because the starlight energy from all directions would cancel out. Some designers have

contemplated using lasers to shine on the sail, but this would require a solar system

based laser to aim its energy at the sail as it progressed on its journey. We wish to avoid

any home-based system because, remember, our spacetime traveler will not return andwe want him to live self-sufficiently and with the ability to explore the galaxy. If our


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spacetime traveler used a sail for interstellar flight, it would need one that reflects

photon energy on one side but invisible to starlight from the other. In principle this

might work similar to a radiometer which has its rotor blades painted white on one side

and black on the other (although a radiometer does not strictly run off light, but rather

the photoelectric effect where light heats up the black side and knocks out electrons

from its surface. The momentum of electrons leaving the surface propels the rotor, notlight directly).

Another method might use an efficient ion engine. Although ion engines have low

power, and therefore can only produce very slow accelerations, our spacetime traveler

can use all the time necessary to get to where he wants. Unfortunately ion engines

require chemicals and this creates storage and entropy problems for engines intended for

continuous use.

Perhaps the best way to travel between the stars involves using no interstellar

propulsion system at all. In the early 60s, Michael Minovitch pioneered the use of

gravitational assist techniques that spacecraft use today for accelerating within our solarsystem such as the Cassini, Voyager, and Galileo spacecraft [seeGravity Assist

Maneuvers]. Future spacetime travelers might usegravitational slingshotsas a means to

get to other gravitational masses outside our solar system. Stars and massive planets

make wonderful gravitational sources. This gives another advantage for cybernetic life

forms because to get a good gravitational sling, the starship would need to pass close to

a planet or star. Human based spaceships would have to protect its delicate passengers

from gravitational tidal forces or heat. A ship protecting a crystal-based cybernetic life

form could withstand much higher forces and temperatures. After the slingshot, the

starship would coast to the next target star or planet. By using a series of many

slingshots our spacetime traveler could literally steer its way through the galaxy. If our

traveler used a black-hole orbiting a star for a slingshot source, he could achieve very

high velocities, perhaps enough to even reach other galaxies.

During the cold emptiness of space between stars, the starship might require short bursts

of energy for quick maneuvering to avoid dark matter or stray comets. For this, it could

use a more conventional fuel based propulsion system, perhaps hydrogen burning

thrusters. However, this would use a minimal amount of fuel which it could replenish

by gathering hydrogen from Jupiter-like planets or collecting stray hydrogen atoms

along the way. Hydrogen appears as the most common element in the universe so this

shouldn't present a problem.

Another problem looms in slowing the starship down to manageable velocities in order

to get to its destination. Since this also requires energy, our starship would need a way

to slow down without carrying enormous amounts of fuel. Sails might offer one solution

again, but in reverse, as a kind of solar parachute. While approaching its destination, it

might steer a course along the perimeter of several solar systems while deploying a

solar parachute. This would create only a small deceleration but by using several solar

sources, it could eventually slow down to approach orbital velocity to its destination

planet or star. However it could also use gravitational assistance to decelerate by flying

in front of a body in its orbit. The spacecraft Galileo did just this when it arrived at

Jupiter, passing close in front of Jupiter's moon Io in its orbit, where it decelerated,

helping it achieve Jupiter orbit insertion and saving propellant. [SeeInterplanetaryTrajectories]
http://www.science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast24jun99_1.htm#gravityassisthttp://www.science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast24jun99_1.htm#gravityassisthttp://www.science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast24jun99_1.htm#gravityassisthttp://www.science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast24jun99_1.htm#gravityassisthttp://mathpages.com/home/kmath114.htmhttp://mathpages.com/home/kmath114.htmhttp://mathpages.com/home/kmath114.htmhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf4-1.htmlhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf4-1.htmlhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf4-1.htmlhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf4-1.htmlhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf4-1.htmlhttp://www.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf4-1.htmlhttp://mathpages.com/home/kmath114.htmhttp://www.science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast24jun99_1.htm#gravityassisthttp://www.science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast24jun99_1.htm#gravityassist


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Regardless of what form of interstellar propulsion, deceleration or slingshot system gets

used, again, nothing here violates any known laws of physics.

Duty Cycle time travel

Perhaps the most fascinating way to travel though spacetime involves using duty cycles.

Although natural biological life-forms cannot take advantage of duty-cycle time

traveling, it will apply itself best to cybernetic forms of life. The term "duty cycle"

comes from electrical engineering terminology. (No, it does notmeanHowdy Doody's

bicycle.) A duty cycle represents a periodic ratio of on and off states. Usually duty

cycles get represented as square waves or rectangular pulses. If you've ever operated

your microwave oven at 50% power, or adjusted the thermostat on your air-conditioner,

you'd realize that they operate by turning on for a period of time and off for a period of

time. Microwaves, stepper motors, power drills, as well as many computer controlled

devices use duty cycle power controls. An example graph of a 50% duty cycle showing5 on-states looks like the following:

Now that you understand duty cycles, imagine a cybernetic space-traveler that controls

its own duty cycle to match the aims of its voyage. Since it utilizes electrical circuits,sensors, and software for its intelligence, it can switch its "brain" on and off almost

instantly. The on-state part of the duty cycle represents the conscious state and the off-

state as the time suspended (death) state similar to our human based thought

experiment.

Important to the concept, you should understand that the off-state part of the duty cycle

would remain off for extremely long periods of time, perhaps hundreds or thousands of

years, while each on-state may last only a second or a fraction of a second. However,

since only the on-states get perceived, conscious time would appear seamless to the

time-traveler. The duty cycle from the perspective of an outside observer for thespacetime voyager might look like this:

With duty cycle time traveling, the experience of traveling through space becomes

dramatically transformed. Imagine our space traveler controlling a duty-cycle "throttle"that can accelerate and decelerate similar to driving a Formula-one race car through an
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Italian road course or a spaceship entering hyper space. If you've ever seen the first Star

Wars movie, you know the virtual feeling of flashing past the stars. Our duty-cycle time

traveler should experience a similar kind of exhilaration (except that the stars would not

appear as streaks, but would pass by like tiny lights in the dark in Star Trek fashion).

The starship, Millennium Falcon, entering hyperspace in the first StarWars movie

Imagine flying through the galaxy the way an airplane soars through clouds.

Interestingly G-forces would have no effect on our space-traveler because his awareness

(on-states) would appear between stars while the starship travels in constant (non-

accelerating) standard universal time. (Actually you wouldn't feel acceleration even

while using a gravitational sling shot because you would freefall toward the

gravitational source, similar to the acceleration of a sky diver falling toward earth.)

One light year represents the distance traveled at light-speed in a vacuum for a period of

one year. This calculates to a distance of approximately 5.88 trillion miles. But to the

space voyager, the conscious period would feel continuous and he would have no

awareness of the off-states. Our spacetime traveler would experience a period of 5

seconds of consciousness like this:

So in 5 seconds our voyager would have traveled a distance of 4 light years or over 23

trillion miles!

In these illustrations I have given each conscious state a period of one second. Actually

it would more likely fall far shorter. A human brain processes visual stimuli within

about 50 msec [Dennett]; an advanced computer could switch in microseconds. Since it

would power on for only a few microseconds every light year or so, the power

consumption would prove exceedingly low.


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If you still have a problem understanding this, imagine a camera in a spaceship taking a

snapshot of the universe at a distance of every light year or so. After you've taken a

thousand snapshots (covering 1,000 light years) and assembled each snapshot into a

movie film, you'd have about 30 seconds of film showing a voyage through the universe

(motion-picture frames display between 24 and 30 frames per second). If our time

traveler set his duty cycle at this rate, it would take only a few days (from his timeframe) to reach the other side of the galaxy! Of course our time traveler could get there

instantly if he set the duty cycle to one cycle (off when you begin the journey and on

when you arrive).

A spacetime traveler could also accelerate or decelerate by adjusting the duty cycle to

match "throttle" and "brake: inputs:

The down side of this kind of space travel, but only from an earth based perspective,

comes with the realization that planetary civilizations would rise and fall within a few

cycles of the journey. The term "home" would have no meaning for such a being except

in the context of the starship's body itself. Since our space traveler controls its

spacetime, it exists when and where it wants. Homo-sapiens control only three

dimensions, but our evolved time traveler would also control the fourth dimension--

time.

The following illustration gives one idea of how an early evolved starship might look:


If the time warp and superliminal wormhole ideas of science prove impossible, then

perhaps suspended animation might serve as the only practical way to travel long

distances through space. If this serves the case then such beings may have already

evolved to take advantage of this. If so, how could they keep in touch with each other?

Communications
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A spacetime traveler would have a difficult time surviving alone in space, especially

considering the unknowns it would encounter. It would appear no more reasonable to

expect a spaceship to survive anymore than a single member of an animal specie

surviving on a terrestrial planet. Since our spaceship would possess intelligence and

awareness, it should have the qualities of all known intelligent mammals-- a social

structure. All mammals live within some social group to help them survive so we mightapply the same to our spacetime specie. Several spacetime travelers would have an

advantage for survival because they could cover more area, explore more star systems,

and accumulate more data and knowledge. But to convey this information to each other

requires a way to communicate.

The most obvious method of transmission would consist of the fastest known kind of

communication: electromagnetic radiation. Our travelers might use radio, microwave,

light, or perhaps high energy gamma rays. But even at light-speed velocities, they

would have a problem with communicating unless they stuck close together. Consider

that it takes 10 minutes for signals to reach Jupiter from Earth, imagine the years it

would take to reach even the nearby stars. What they would need amounts to a fasterway to communicate. Again, duty cycles come to the rescue. Duty cycle

communication. Faster than light. Instantaneous.

Consider two spaceships separated by a distance of 25,000 light years. We'll call them

spaceship Evanova and spaceship Zardoz. Let's say Evanova decides to communicate

something to her boyfriend, Zardoz, and so sends out a signal to him. (Yes of course,

sex in space!) But right after Evanova transmits, she shuts herself down and goes into a

death state. In the meantime the signal would take 25,000 earth years to reach Zardoz.

Also in the meantime, Zardoz slumbers in his own shutdown death state. When the

signal finally arrives, his onboard computers detect the signal and wakes him up. Zardoz

reads the message and sends out a reply to Evanova, and then goes back to sleep (just

like a man, eh?). From the perspective of Evanova and Zardoz, they have communicated

to each other instantly. In spite of the delay between transmissions, robots and

computers could monitor and handle emergency situations while our travelers undergo

their off-states. The time-shifted communications should present little problem as

algorithms already exist for internet communications that could apply for our spacetime

travelers. Computers and software routinely shut themselves off and re-route and

receive time delayed information, collated and presented at the appropriate time. Of

course our advanced life forms would have to establish and maintain protocols and

standards.


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Imagine multiple spaceships and intergalactic server buoys sending messages to eachother via duty-cycle transmissions. A galaxy network. Each spaceship would experience

instant communication with each other while they watched the galaxy slowly spinning

around them. Indeed, if you have the power to duty-cycle your life, you could virtually

control the spin rate of the galaxy! Relativity theory posits that no frame of reference

gives precedence over any other frame of reference.

Transmitting cargo (another form of communication)

Uniquely, not only would a duty-cycle spaceship have the ability to literally time jumpat lightyear distances and communicate instantly to other spaceships, but they could also

transport cargo to each, again, by utilizing the same method of duty cycles. Just like

Evanova and Zardoz communicating a radio message across the galaxy, Evanova could

actually transport herself and her cargo to Zardoz. Realistically, transporting material

cargo also means transporting information and may actually prove a more efficient way

of communication than electromagnetic signaling. Why? Because radio and light

transmission loses bit information as the distance increases (the cone of light increases).

This means you would need an extremely powerful transmitter just to send simple

messages over long distances. Not very efficient. Sending cargo, on the other hand,

means sending matter and matter remains compact over long distances, unlike radio

communication. You can put a lot of information into atomic structures (think ofmicrochips, brains, and DNA). The downside, of course, means a lot slower


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transmission method, but this applies only for limited planetary life forms; our time

travelers would not have this handicap.

Let's say Evanova finds something interesting, perhaps a few tons of platinum on an

asteroid near the Crab Nebula, and decides to give it to Zardoz as a present. After

mining the metal, Evanova would tell the computers to navigate toward Zardoz, athousand lightyears away. Even though it may take millions of earth years to reach

Zardoz, from both their perspectives the transportation time would seem instantaneous.

If intelligent life has already evolved to live in space in some manner describe above,

then it would present an interesting problem to figure out how we might find such

beings. There might exist literally millions or perhaps trillions of thriving space beings

living, communicating, and sharing with each other the way social terrestrial beings do

on earth. But because they have shifted into a different time frame from terrestrial

beings, their communication would appear very slow to us. How in the world could we

detect such beings if they exist?

SETI and the search for extraterrestrial life

SETI, the organization for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence devotes itself to

finding intelligent life on terrestrialplanets. Recently they have embarked on the hunt

for high energy light flashes from extraterrestrial beings with the assumption that other

beings might use powerful but brief pulses as a kind of light beacon for contacting other

life forms. [see newsarticle] However, I submit that if, indeed, life forms capable of

such transmissions exist, they may not come from planetary beings at all but rather from

evolved interstellar beings traveling and living in spacetime.

Frank Tipler has argued that if extraterrestrial beings exist, our galaxy would have such

an enormous number of Von Neumann machine proxies that we could not have missed

them [Physics Today, March 1982, p. 26]. This might very well hold for terrestrial

beings, but if planet life evolved to live in space, perhaps the spacetime environment

demands that such beings must live in extended time periods (duty cycles), and if so, we

may very well have missed them. If high energy flashes from intelligent beings exist,

such beacons could serve as useful navigation lighthouses for establishing data points

for adjusting time cycles and dimensional locations. Discovering and encoding their

transmissions may prove difficult if not impossible. A duty-cycle life form wouldprobably not send out its signals in a continuous period of time but rather in short bursts

separated by hundreds or thousands of years, perhaps to match its own duty cycles.

They may also choose to send their signals cryptographically to keep others from

listening in, perhaps cicada-like in prime number sequences. If each pulse represented a

bit (or a packet of bits with only enough information for decoding a single bit) and each

packet got sent out at random intervals spanning millions of years, it would virtually

isolate them from terrestrial beings. Then, again, interstellar life may not transmit by

electromagnetic means at all, but rather by sending out matter capsules which could

hold vast amounts of information in a more efficient manner. It would come from them

to decide to contact us, not the other way around.
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Considering that one of SETI's criteria for evaluating signals requires confirmation of

more than one signal, this could prove impossible to confirm. Because of the vast

expanse of spacetime, the nature of interstellar beings would rarely show themselves to

terrestrial beings that live in the constraint of planetary standard time.

Many SETI debates have talked about the possibility that aliens might hold hostilitytoward other planetary life. Some say we should not try to contact them but only to

listen for them. Violence and hostility may very well hold true for terrestrial beings who

compete for territory, food, and valuables on a planet with finite resources or who own

superstitious beliefs. But does this reasonably hold for beings who might live in the

environment of space? If such interstellar beings exist, they would have little need to

compete for territory or food for they would live in the vast limitless universe.

Obviously a universe provides enough room and material resources for everyone. I can't

imagine what reason they would have for need of war or violence. The nature of the

scale of the universe and the lightyear distances between stars might very well mold the

ethics of such interstellar beings to a benign and peaceful form of existence. What

would they need to compete for? The animals on the Galapagos Islands comes to mindhere. After many years of evolution without competition, many of the animals on the

Galapagos Islands have evolved as non violent creatures and without fear of predators.

In fact, the expanse of the universe may very well bar violent terrestrial beings from

reaching other inhabited planets at all; perhaps only evolved space travelers could make

such journeys. If they decided to live in space, the very nature of the universe might

very well force them to evolve in a propitious manner. Certainly an evolved space-being

would have high intelligence and no doubt would have an awareness of terrestrial

inhabitants. If such beings found earth and examined our life, they would probably not

feel impressed. Why would an advanced intelligent being want to communicate or have

an interest with earthlings who kill each other over supernatural beliefs, who have an

excessive interest in themselves, and where some of them actually love to watch Pro

wrestling?

From machine life to star life

"I would almost conjecture that a fixed slow-motion camera occupies their

cranial space, and that they gauge all their movements by this markedly

different clock upon the world."

-Stephen Jay Gould[Gould]

From here on, only speculations can fuel our imaginations. The results of self-evolutionwould explode with possibilities. At no time before on earth's history would a life form

have the capacity to evolve with such rapidity. The step-by-step process from biological

life to cybernetic replicants; making use of Einstein's theory of relativity to modify life-

cycles to achieve spacetime travel; all these advances do not violate any known laws of

nature. If intelligent terrestrial life has evolved past planetary disasters, biological

threats, and supernatural beliefs, the universe would appear open wide for them. Once in

space, their future progeny would appear like no other specie on earth. They would

appear as dark matter to 21st century humans. Their long term duty cycles might

explain why we haven't found them or ever will find them. However, there might occurvolumes in the universe where they might roam more than in any other volume.


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An evolving life form in space might take advantages of certain places within the

galaxy. It would need materials, fuel, and energy to sustain itself-- its food. Perhaps the

prime area for gathering such materials might occur in the place where all the atomic

elements reside. Supernova halos might serve as an excellent source for harvesting the

elements since novas create the heavy elements and throw them out along with the

lighter elements. They might even take advantage of using an isolated black-hole as amassive gravitational slingshot to propel them to other galaxies. They might utilize stray

star systems between galaxies as oasis points to gather energy for the long intergalactic

voyages. So if the possibility exists for us to find them (if they so decide to send out

signals to terrestrial beings), perhaps we might best find them at their feeding grounds.

If we cannot find individual life forms, perhaps a multitude of them leave a detectable

signature. If, indeed, these space creatures exit in the millions, perhaps we could scan

areas looking for blinks in the sky (like camera flashes in a football stadium). Looking

closer at Nova halos, black holes, and isolated stars between galaxies might reveal these

flash signatures where they might tend to communicate with each other in shorter

intervals.. These brief flashes would appear to us as random so we probably could not

decipher them, but at least we might have some knowledge of interstellar life.

Their duty-cycle lives would play out as though a slow-motion camera occupied their

brains. The conjecture in Gould's quote above applied to the common earth sloth, not to

interstellar beings, but nothing known in nature prevents such creatures from taking

advantage of time-shifting either on earth or elsewhere in the universe.

Imagine cold dead ships gliding silently through space. Rarely seen by planetary beings,

they live in periods of microseconds separated by years of unconscious suspension. But

to them, they live in different time dimensions, experiencing a thriving life, exploring

different worlds, collecting knowledge of the universe and communicating with each

other instantly. Instead of genes, they transfer memes (actualmeme machines) and they

could self-evolve with a rapidity never before seen by natural selection, and perhaps

with the ability to evolve until the heat death of the universe.

An evolved spaceform


The meek shall inherit the earth
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According to Psalm 37:11 the meek shall inherit the earth. Considering the boundless

belief of the religious, this may very well prove a self-fulfilling prophesy. With the

earth's population growing, pollution rising, the greenhouse effect compounding, and

the chance of nuclear or biological war increasing, our planet may not serve as a livable

planet in the near future. Sadly, many people believe that the world will end by God's

hand, as foretold in the story of Revelation, for the sake of an alleged restored paradise[see note 3]. A society that contains such dangerous beliefs just might very well carry it

out to make certain the "prophesy" comes true. However, if humans can develop the

technology in time before we annihilate ourselves, perhaps we would have a chance at

escaping the mess we've created. But to live in spacetime without terrestrial support

means throwing away cherished beliefs, traditions, and human customs. It would

require self-evolution by transforming our bodies and minds to adapt in space. The first

travelers may consist of robots, exploring the solar system and beyond with the ability

to fly and navigate without the aid of the earth. Actually this has already begun with

NASA'sDeep Space One, where a spacecraft uses ion engines and its own autonomous

navigation system (Autonav). The next stage might aim to reach the nearest stars,

sending back information about celestial bodies, mining distant asteroids and the gassesof heavy planets. This would give us an incentive to evolve the spacecraft further,

perhaps including our own neurological makeup into cybernetic neural networks to

make it more "human." These stages of evolution would literally transform the human

species into another form and for yet unforeseen functions. I think many people would

choose to undertake this risk, but not everyone would. So the meek may very well

inherit the earth but those who decide to leave will inherit the universe.

References

Broda, Englebert., "Ludwig Boltzmann: Man- Physicist- Philosopher," Ox Bow Press,

1983

Dawkins, Richard, "The Extended Phenotype," Oxford University Press, 1982

paperback [see page 64-65 for a description of periodical cicadas]

Dennett, Daniel C., "Consciousness Explained," Little, Brown and Co., 1991 [See

Chapter 6 on How the Brain Represents Time, p. 144-153]

Gould, Setphen Jay, "Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms,"Harmony Books, 1998 [See chapter 20, "Can We Truly Know Sloth and Rapacity?"]

O'Neill, Gerald, "The High Frontier. Human Colonies in Space," Bantom, 1978

Russell, Bertrand, "The ABC of Relativity," The New American Library, 1958

Herbert, Nick, "Faster Than Light: Superliminal Loopholes In Physics," New American

Library, 1988

Technical Manual of the American Association of Blood Banks, American Association

of Blood Banks, 1977
http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/http://eet.com/story/OEG19990806S0028http://eet.com/story/OEG19990806S0028http://eet.com/story/OEG19990806S0028http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0918024242/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0918024242/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0918024242/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192860887/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192860887/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192860887/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316180661/freethinkershttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316180661/freethinkershttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316180661/freethinkershttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609601415/freethinkershttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609601415/freethinkershttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609601415/freethinkershttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415154294/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415154294/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452263174/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452263174/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452263174/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1563951150/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1563951150/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1563951150/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1563951150/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1563951150/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0452263174/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415154294/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609601415/freethinkershttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316180661/freethinkershttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0192860887/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0918024242/freethinkers/103-9893005-4450228http://eet.com/story/OEG19990806S0028http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/ds1/


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Notes:

1) Death and Time Traveling developed from an earlier paper , "On Death and Time

Traveling," submitted to GEnie (General Electric Information service) in early 1987 andlater published in Search magazine (summer 1987).

2) This article deals with forward only time travel. There does, however, exist the

possibility for backward time travel without violating any known laws of physics or

violating causality but this will take another article for explanation.

3) If for one moment you doubt the seriousness of many religious people who actually

wantthe world to end, check out these scary sites:1,2,3,4,5,6,7. These provide just a

few samples; literally hundreds of such sites exit on the net.

Copyright 2001 Jim Walker. All rights reserved

AnE-Primedocument

1

Second coming of Jesus Christ and the end of the world

The Second Coming, the return of Christ to Jerusalem, and the end of the world

(end of the age) alluded to by Messiah Jesus Christ, should occur between the

years 2018 and 2047. Final settlement of the middle east conflict over Jerusalem

and the templemount, was scheduled for complete and final settlement by

September 15, 2000 by the Sharm Memorandum signed by Israel and the PLO on

September 5, 1999. Agreement on the permanent status of Jerusalem, including

the temple mount and the Dome of the Rock, has been elusive due to the

intransigence of the parties involved. This volatile situation will be solved,

and could result in the covenant or agreement described in Chapter 9, verse 27, of

the Book of Daniel that Christ referenced in Chapter 24 of the Book of Matthew.

This treaty could start the 7 year countdown to the end of the age (not the "end of

the world")-resulting in the construction of the third temple on Mount Moriah and

the mid-point "abomination of desolation" that Christ described in Matt. 24:15.

The battle of Armageddon will be at the end of this seven year period.

We will have to watch developments in the Middle East and be aware of the Third

Temple teachings of Scripture. An event such as war, terrorism, an earthquake,

etc., may be the catalyst in the rebuilding of the Temple. Jesus said "watch" for

His coming, and that is the purpose of this site, constructed in September of 1999.

We will also diligently and logically examine the Scripture that is related to thisgreat event! God has said that His temple will be built during this last 7 year
http://secondcoming.freeservers.com/http://secondcoming.freeservers.com/http://secondcoming.freeservers.com/http://denig.com/christian/prophecy.htmlhttp://denig.com/christian/prophecy.htmlhttp://denig.com/christian/prophecy.htmlhttp://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnelly/http://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnelly/http://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnelly/http://www.raptureme.com/scgi-bin/rrnews_list.cgihttp://www.raptureme.com/scgi-bin/rrnews_list.cgihttp://www.raptureme.com/scgi-bin/rrnews_list.cgihttp://www.armageddonbooks.com/http://www.armageddonbooks.com/http://www.armageddonbooks.com/http://www.countdown.org/http://www.countdown.org/http://www.countdown.org/http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/7895/aarapture.htmlhttp://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/7895/aarapture.htmlhttp://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/7895/aarapture.htmlhttp://nobeliefs.com/eprime.htmhttp://nobeliefs.com/eprime.htmhttp://nobeliefs.com/eprime.htmhttp://nobeliefs.com/eprime.htmhttp://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/7895/aarapture.htmlhttp://www.countdown.org/http://www.armageddonbooks.com/http://www.raptureme.com/scgi-bin/rrnews_list.cgihttp://www.stanford.edu/~meehan/donnelly/http://denig.com/christian/prophecy.htmlhttp://secondcoming.freeservers.com/


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period and is THE sure sign of His return. The prophesied regathering of the

Jewish people into a reborn Israel in 1948 and their regaining control of Jerusalem

in 1967 are sure signs(Joel 3:1-2) that this is the last generation(40 to 80

years) that Christ said would see His return. This generation will also witness the

anti christ, the abomination of desolation, and the great tribulation-all end time

subjects of Bible prophesy. Believers and non-believers, Jews and Gentiles alike,are invited to check into this site periodically to keep up with the latest

developments in all of the world events related to the Messiah's coming. BE SURE

AND CHECK LATEST UPDATES ATjerusalemtemple.

second_comingClick here to compare what the BIBLE says about the RETURN OF

CHRIST and the recent events that suggest we should start LOOKING FOR HIM

BETWEEN 2018 AND 2047.

end_of_the_worldClick here to see what the Bible says about the End of the World

(Age).

prove_God_prove_BibleClick here if you would like to PROVE GOD or PROVE

the BIBLE using the method God has given us in the Book of Isaiah.

prove_ChristClick here if you have DOUBTS ABOUT JESUS CHRIST as our

SAVIOUR AND THE JEWISH MESSIAH.

heavenClick here for the GOSPEL, the good news on how to have ETERNAL

LIFE with God.

solomon's_templeClick here to see what God says about His perpetual Jerusalem

Temple

jerusalem_templeClick here for the LATEST NEWS AND PROPHECIES about

the Final Status talks on Jerusalem between Israel and the PLO, and the

rebuilding of the third Jewish temple on Mount Moriah. The "abomination of

desolation" that will occur in the rebuilt temple is the su

Documents

Death and time travelling.docx