The Marquis
Pierre-Simon de Laplace (1749-1827) believed that all events in the Universe
were orchestrated by a mastermind who could see into the past, present, and
future. Laplace claims:
"We
should view the state of the Universe at every moment as the result of its past
state, a cause of its coming state and that an absolute mind is dominating
everything that is going on in nature at every moment, whether in the smallest
atom or the largest galaxy. All the natural laws that the human mind has
devised, whether in the fields of astronomy, mechanics, engineering, or other
branches of science and knowledge, are merely a shadow of the power of this
mind, whose knowledge has expanded everything."
Later, Einstein
presented a new concept of time that perplexed scientists and philosophers for
decades when he demonstrated that time and space are only two sides of the same
coin that he called space time, and that time is as natural as the dimensions that
describe the place as length, width, and height: it slows steadily as the speed
increases until it completely stops at the speed of light. For example, a
hundred years for me could be one year for a traveler traversing the Universe
at breakneck speed.
Perhaps the most
famous twin story best explains this concept: one twin chose to live and settle
on Earth, while the other preferred to become an astronaut, and set off on a
mission to Planet S on his thirty-fifth birthday at a speed of (90%) the speed
of light, then returned after five years to find that his twin on Earth had
reached the age of sixty-eight years, while his age had remained thirty-five.
It's no surprise that time had passed differently between them, because the
first twin's measurement reference was the earth, while the other's reference
was a spaceship traveling at 90% the speed of light. When the astronaut and his
brother met 33 years later, the Astronaut saw his brother's future.
Not far from
these ideas, an important cosmic theory emerged in the first half of the
twentieth century and has remained popular to this day. The Block Universe is
the name given to this theory[1]
It presents an innovative model of the Universe in which time is assumed to be
a fourth and constant natural dimension that begins with the Big Bang and and
ends with the world's final day.
The closed
Universe theory holds that the entire world fits within the boundaries of a
cube, with two of its sides representing spatial dimensions (e.g., width and
height) and the third representing time. This cube contains all of the world's
events: the past (such as the birth of the Universe, the birth of life on
Earth, the extinction of dinosaurs, the outbreak of world wars, and even your
birth and death), the present (in which you are reading these lines), and the
future that will result from all of these events that are surrounded by
space-time. The cube of world events is constantly growing, and new events
emerge at every present moment, paving the way for the future until the world
reaches its final destination.
According to this
viewpoint, the past, present, and future are all present at the same time. As
illustrated in the diagram below:
A traveler who
moves within this cube of events in the direction of the beginning of time sees
the past, while moving in the opposite direction sees the future. To put it
another way, he travels through time.
The truth is that
time travel is not far off. It is well known that when we look at the stars on
a clear night, we see them not as they are now, but as they were in the past;
that is to say: Astronomers use a unit called the Light Year to measure the distance
between stars. For example, Proxima Centauri, the closest star to us after the
sun, is 4.3 light years away, which means we see it now as it was 4.3 years
ago. Some stars in our galaxy are 80.000 light years away, which means we see
them as they were 80.000 years ago. If an intelligent civilization were to
observe Earth from a planet slightly more than 2000 light years away, it would
be able to see the events that led up to the emergence of Christianity in
Palestine, all because of the enigma of light, which possesses the qualities of
both matter and energy, and whose speed is the maximum that can be reached in
our natural Universe.
Assume that the
speed of light is not the maximum natural speed and that a virtual spaceship
has somehow surpassed it. In this case, time is supposed to run back, i.e.,
accidents occurring in the future will reverse their path into the past, but
this is impossible because it violates all the traditional origins of logic;
the principles of attic or causality in which accidents occur in our physical
and perceptible world and plunge us into fundamental contradictions, as the
following fairy tale tells us:
Once upon a time,
there was a master named White. He decided that someday he would travel at a
speed faster than the speed of light. Armed with the knowledge of relativity,
he embarked on his journey. However, to his surprise, he found himself back in
time on the night before his intended departure. In doing so, he had violated
the principle of causality. Confused by this turn of events, he once again
found himself, or someone who resembled him, preparing for yet another flight.
Determined to make sense of the situation, he scheduled a meeting with this
other version of himself, uncertain if it was truly him. As the night before
the new flight approached, he became increasingly anxious, realizing that he
was multiplying into numerous versions of himself.
Such a
contradiction cannot occur in the closed Universe model, where everything is
relative: what is past for you may be future for me; in any case, the time
traveler cannot change the events that happened around him in the past or are
happening now, which are the basis of what will happen in the future, but he
can only act as a witness to these events.
The truth is that
the world is much more complicated than that: although space travel once seemed
impossible, time travel is much more difficult, but human civilization will not
execute the means to travel between world events in the years to come, whether
by developing powerful propellant engines that move future spacecrafts at close
to the speed of light, or by developing corridors that allow space to be
penetrated and move millions of light years in one instantaneous leap.
The Holy Quran
contains several verses that hint at the concept of time relativity, which
aligns intriguingly with modern scientific theories such as Einstein's Theory
of Relativity. Here are a few notable examples:
1. Surah Al-Hajj
(22:47): "And they urge you to hasten the punishment. But Allah will never
fail in His promise. And indeed, a day with your Lord is like a thousand years
of those which you count".
2. Surah
As-Sajdah (32:5): "He arranges [each] matter from the heaven to the Earth;
then it will ascend to Him in a Day, the extent of which is a thousand years of
those which you count".
3. Surah
Al-Ma'arij (70:4): "The angels and the Spirit will ascend to Him during a
Day, the extent of which is fifty thousand years".
These verses
suggest that time, as perceived by humans, is different from the divine
perspective. This concept resonates with the idea of time dilation in
relativity, where time can vary based on speed and gravity.
. Growing block Universe- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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