Proof That Time Does not Exist

As a young child, Travis Klein was fascinated with the concept of time travel.  He read a few science fiction books, watched every episode of the original Dr. Who series, and even watched the film release of H.G. Wells’, The Time Machine.  As he got older, he grew more interested in the science part of science fiction.  It was mind-blowing that when he looked into the sky at a star or galaxy, he was seeing that heavenly body as it looked thousands or even millions of years ago.  In a way, he was a time traveler looking back in time at an era before humans existed.

His view of science changed profoundly when a friend introduced him to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity while he was just in middle school.  Although he didn’t possess enough knowledge about physics and math to comprehend everything, he found the whole concept enlightening and intriguing.  As he increased his knowledge of physics and advanced mathematics, he grew to understand more about how the universe works.  It inspired more in-depth thinking about time and how it related to 3-dimensional space.

One day he was thinking about stories and films about time travel and realized that traveling back in time without movement within the other dimensions could not produce the results depicted in most science fiction stories.  In other words, if someone stepped into a machine that only moved, or jumped, an occupant rapidly through time it would be extremely difficult for someone to end up in the exact location on earth, but at a different date and time.  What would actually happen is that the machine and traveler would end up in space quite far from earth because the machine would maintain its position while the earth would be in a different position due its rotation, orbit around the sun, motion around our galactic center, the motion of our galaxy, the motion of our galaxy cluster, and the expansion of the universe.  In order to remain on earth, the machine would have to predict the precise location of the earth at a particular time in history due to the aforementioned motions.  The slightest miscalculation would be catastrophic as well as very entertaining.

This, of course, was not a serious pursuit because Klein always regarded the idea of traveling back in time as complete fantasy.  But this did initiate critical thinking about our perception of time.  During his college years as an astrophysics major, he formulated a question that he hoped to answer one day.  Can time exist without motion and energy transfer in 3-dimensional space?

He later came up with a thought experiment.  He imagined that all physical motion within our entire universe suddenly stopped, even at the subatomic level.  Of course, he had to assume that this sudden deceleration to stasis didn’t obliterate everything in existence.  After an unknown time frame, everything instantly started back again.  The time period everything was paused might have been for a few seconds or a few million years.  He imagined that he was the only being in the universe that knew this happened.  How could he prove it happened?  How could he calculate the time period that everything was frozen?

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