Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.... Part 2

In July 2019, the Independent 7 had an article about scientists in Oak Ridge National Laboratory in eastern Tennessee hoping to open the first portal to glimpse a parallel universe, a shadowy dimension which could be identical in many ways to our own, with mirror particles, mirror planets and possibly even mirror life. The TV series 'Sliders' used the parallel universe theory as the backdrop to their storylines. A scientist working on an antigravity machine, accidentally created a portal in the form of a vortex-like wormhole to "slide" to a parallel universe, activated by a handheld timer device. He and his comrades prematurely used the timer to escape a dangerous situation, causing the timer to lose track of the coordinates for their home universe. The series recounts their adventures as they slide between different parallel Earths, trying to find their way back home.

Again, in 2019, New Scientist 8 reported that, using Bell's theorem, some ideas about the quantum world appear to suggest there are many versions of 'you' spread out across these many parallel universes. John Stewart Bell's 1964 paper entitled "On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox" 9 showed that local hidden variables of certain types cannot reproduce the quantum measurement correlations that quantum mechanics predicts. The theory of quantum entanglement predicts that separated particles can briefly share common properties and respond to certain types of measurement as if they were a single particle. In particular, a measurement on one particle in one place can alter the probability distribution for the outcomes of a measurement on the other particle at a different location.

As recently as the 8th April 2020, New Scientist magazine 10 reported that strange particles observed by an experiment in Antarctica could be evidence of an alternative reality where everything is upside down, and it may be indicative of a parallel universe going backwards in time. In the article, it claims a thorough analysis has determined that particles spotted by a giant balloon in Antarctica can’t be explained by our current understanding of physics and the race is on to figure out what they are.

Time travel — moving between different points in time into the past or future — has been a popular topic for science fiction for decades. Doctor Who, Primeval, Star Trek, Back to the Future, The Time Machine, The Terminator, Planet of the Apes, Déjà vu, Edge of Tomorrow, About Time and The Time Traveller's Wife are just a handful of the dozens of films and TV shows that have seen humans journeying to the past or future. Each one comes with their own time travel theories. 11

Some general relativity spacetime calculations, that permit travelling faster than the speed of light, suggests time travel to the past is theoretically possible. This is through means such as cosmic strings (hypothetical one-dimensional defects in space-time), traversable wormholes (a tunnel in space that is believed to connect different parts of the universe), and Alcubierre drives (a spacecraft would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel) 12. Not all scientists believe that time travel is possible. Some even say that an attempt would be fatal to any human who chooses to undertake it.

Time travel brings up paradoxes that break the laws of physics by creating potential logical problems and inconsistencies that would arise if a person were to travel to a past time and change it, such as the Grandfather or Grandmother Paradox: a person travels to the past and kills their own grandfather or grandmother before the conception of their father or mother, which prevents the time traveller's existence. So, the time traveller is not in existence to travel to the past and kill their own grandfather or grandmother, and therefore they are born. If time travel is possible, it somehow must avoid such a contradiction. 13

Anomalies created by the grandfather paradox doesn't necessarily mean that time travel is impossible. One set of reasoning that has been suggested is branching universes, i.e. the universe we are in splits with each instance of time travel, creating two different universes, allowing similar timelines to run alongside one another creating the previously discussed multiple parallel universes 14 This was very strongly used in Back to the Future, the trilogy of which ultimately created no less than 8 timelines. According to Dr. Emmett Brown in Back to the Future Part II, whenever a time traveller alters key events occurring in the past, they effectively bring an alternate timeline into existence at their point-of-entry. 15

It is generally understood that travelling forward or back in time would require a device — a time machine — to take you there. Time machine research often involves bending space-time so far that timelines turn back on themselves to form a loop, technically known as a "closed time-like curve."

Research by the theoretical physicist Amos Ori at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa is exploring the concept of using a donut-shaped hole enveloped within a sphere of normal matter. Using focused gravitational fields, space-time could get bent upon itself inside this donut-shaped vacuum to form a closed time-like curve. A traveller racing round inside the donut would be able to go further back into a past time with each lap.

"The machine is space-time itself," Ori said. "If we were to create an area with a warp like this in space that would enable timelines to close on themselves, it might enable future generations to return to visit our time."

Ori emphasized one significant limitation of this time machine—"it can't be used to travel to a time before the time machine was constructed." 17

References

7. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/parallel-universe-portal-mirror-world-science-stranger-things-oak-ridge-a8987681.html

8. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2213756-a-classic-quantum-theorem-may-prove-there-are-many-parallel-universes/

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stewart_Bell#Bell's_theorem

10. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532770-400-we-may-have-spotted-a-parallel-universe-going-backwards-in-time/#ixzz6LxG22gHE

11. https://www.space.com/21675-time-travel.html

12. https://www.reddit.com/r/timetravel/comments/dtfu0i/time_travel_to_the_past_is_theoretically_possible/

13. https://www.space.com/grandfather-paradox.html

14. https://www.newscientist.com/article/2227304-time-travel-without-paradoxes-is-possible-with-many-parallel-timelines/

15. https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Back_to_the_Future_timeline

16. https://www.livescience.com/1817-time-travel-machine-outlined.html

17. Full article in Physical Review D Journal. https://journals.aps.org/prd/

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space.... Part 1

What, then, are time and space? Space and time are the most fundamental features of our universe, and yet they are also the most puzzling. Are there alternative parallel worlds and universes with their own Earth's with alternate histories? Might time travel be possible? Can you bend space and similarly bend time also, so that you could move faster than light and travel backward in time to exist in two places at once? Could time go backwards? Or are time and space an illusion, essentially just a human invention?

Wikipedia defines time as "the indefinite continued progress of existence and events that occur in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future."1 Our human ancestors, (and some other cultures today) viewed time as cyclical, circadian, seasonal and rhythmic, matching with the Circle of Life. Physicists have many different ways of conceptualizing time: Albert Einstein showed that time is an illusion; it is relative and can vary for different observers depending on the particular observer's speed through space.

Chronometry, or the measurement of time, takes two forms: the calendar for periods of over 24 hours and the clock for periods of up to 24 hours. In 1752, 11 days went missing and as a result, 3-13^th September 1752 never existed. It would be great to have some amazing time travel story to explain this away. However, the mystery of the missing days was drearily due to Britain abandoning the Julian (Old Style) calendar in favour of the Gregorian (New Style), so 3 September instantly became 14 September. 2 An agreement on the nature of time became increasingly necessary with the launch of the industrial revolution; Greenwich Mean Time, created in 1847, was used by British railways, the British navy, and the British shipping industry. This was calibrated to the mean solar time, the hour angle of the mean Sun plus 12 hours, at Greenwich Royal Observatory.1

Is the universe we live in the only one out there with its unique 'rules' about Spacetime? Scientists can't be sure what the configuration of space-time is, but as there are a finite number of ways particles can be arranged in space and time, it is thought that it must start repeating at some point. The Many-Worlds Theory says that anything that could have ever happened and anything that will ever happen all separately and simultaneously exist in different parallel worlds and timelines and gives rise to the possibility of many more dimensions to our world than the three of space and one of time that we know. Quantum mechanics describes the world in terms of probabilities, rather than definite outcomes, with the mathematics suggesting that all possible outcomes of a situation could occur — in their own separate universes. 3

A parallel universe, also known by a bewildering array of other terms: alternate universe, alternate reality, alternate timeline, alternate dimension, dimensional plane, interpenetrating dimension, parallel dimension, parallel world, parallel reality, quantum universe or quantum reality, is a hypothetical self-contained plane of existence, co-existing with one's own. The entirety of all theoretically potential parallel universes that constitute reality is often termed a “multiverse", with a hypothetical group of multiple universes comprising everything that exists: the entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them.

The American theoretical physicist and string theorist Brian Greene discussed nine types of multiverses Quilted, Inflationary, Brane, Cyclic, Landscape, Quantum, Holographic, Simulated or Ultimate.4 He and Max Tegmark devised classification schemes for the various theoretical types of multiverses and universes that they might comprise which I will summarise thus: Level I: An extension of our universe, Level II: Universes with different physical constants, Level III: Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, and Level IV: Ultimate ensemble. 5 A lot of scientists are generally sceptical but Professor Stephen Hawking was a proponent of the multiverse hypothesis and possible evidence has come to light in the last few years, suggesting this is in fact may be a reality.

In 2017, there was an article in the New York Post 6 stating that some scientists believed they may have discovered evidence of a parallel universe that crashed into our own in "a galactic impact mirroring a car crash". That impact was so incredible, according to this research, that it pushed energy out of a huge region of space, resulting in a Cold Spot. Since 2004, when it was first spotted by NASA, scientists have been baffled by the discovery of this unusually cold region of space, which is 1.8 billion light years across and colder than its surroundings. It was originally thought the region might have been colder because it had 10,000 fewer galaxies than other areas of the same size. However, researchers at Durham University now believe it could be the first evidence of a “multiverse.”

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time

2. http://www.projectbritain.com/calendar/September/calendar.html

3. https://www.space.com/18811-multiple-universes-5-theories.html

4. http://everything.explained.today/Multiverse/

5. https://infogalactic.com/info/Multiverse

6. https://nypost.com/2017/05/18/scientists-think-they-found-proof-of-a-parallel-universe/ (originally published by News.com.au)

 

Border Hopping in Chirk

Our final walk was around Y Waun and Glyn Ceiriog AKA Chirk and the Ceiriog Valley on the Welsh/English border. Chirk is thought to be a corruption of church as the original Welsh name was in fact “Eglwys-y-Waun” (Church on the Moor), with the Welsh name now shortened to “Y Waun”. Chirk was a staging post on the London to Holyhead Mail Road.

On what turned out to be a beautiful, dry, settled, sunny, hot day we parked up at The Davies' Gate of Chirk Castle, a Marcher fortress dating to 1310, built by King Edward I. It overlooks the Ceiriog Valley and Berwyn Mountains to the south and Clwydian Range to the north. The estate parkland is a tranquil Site of Special Scientific Interest with veteran trees and an important habitat for fungi, bats and deadwood invertebrates. We followed paths through the estate starting on the Llywyn-y-cil walk and then joining the woodland walk until it brought us round to the castle.

After lunch we proceeded to visit part of the castle gardens. The garden has modern and old-fashioned roses, a woodland garden, herbaceous borders, alpine rockery and Yew topiary. There are good views of the surrounding area, particularly to the south of here.

After leaving the gardens, we joined a(nother) section of the Offa's Dyke path, past “The Oak at the Gates of the Dead” or “Crogen Oak”, a tree thought to be more than 1000 years old. It is located on the site of the 1165 Battle of Crogen and near the burial site of the dead from the battle. The battle took place during Henry II's 1165 campaign against an alliance of Welsh Princes' led by Owain ap Gruffudd who was the grandfather of Llywelyn the Great. Owain ap Gruffudd (born c. 1100) was King of Gwynedd, North Wales, from 1137 until his death in 1170. He was called "Owain the Great" (Welsh: Owain Mawr) and the first to be styled "Prince of Wales".

Crossing the Afon Ceiriog (River Ceiriog) and the Welsh/English border, we had a steep uphill climb through a field with good views back towards the castle. This is one of three places where Offa's Dyke path meets the Shropshire Way.

From here we dropped down into Bronygarth where we had to take a detour following part of the footpath being washed away. At this point on the Offa's Dyke Path and the Shropshire Way, it is also part of the Llwybr Maelor Way and the Ceiriog Valley Walk. The former is another long distance footpath. We followed the valley east through Pentre Wood to Pont-Faen (stone bridge) where we crossed the border once again.

We stopped for a tea and cake break before proceeding to Chirk Aqueduct and Viaduct. The Chirk Aqueduct is a 70ft/21m high, 710ft/220m long navigable aqueduct of the Llangollen Canal, striding across the border. Adjacent to it is the Chirk Railway Viaduct. The Aqueduct is part of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Llangollen Canal World Heritage Site and was built between 1796 & 1801 by William Jessop and Thomas Telford; it has ten circular masonry arches. The Viaduct was built by Henry Robertson in 1846-48 and opened in 1848; it has ten spans with round arches and stands 30ft/10m above the Aqueduct. Both can be seen from the Aqueduct footpath/towpath.

Just down the towpath is “Chirk Tunnel”, known locally as “The Darkie” due to being pitch black, was one of the first in the UK to have a towpath and was built between 1795-1802. The walk from here took us back up through woods to the castle gates where we'd parked.

Moel Arthur

We followed a gentle route, through the park/Clwyd Forest, the southern-most of four routes from the car park. The route follows a bridleway contouring the hillside gradually ascending from 190m AOD to 300m AOD over a mile and about 45 minutes walk.

Joining the hill road above Glyn Arthur, we proceeded east until we met the Offa's Dyke path. We followed the signed path northwards up a steep 500m climb before departing the Offa's Dyke path to climb to the summit.

The hilltop is crowned by the earthworks of an Iron Age Fort built over 2000 years ago by Celts. At 450m Moel Arthur provides extensive views including Moel Famau to the south.

Continuing northwards on a small path down the hill, we rejoined Offa's Dyke path and followed it back to the car park.

Llangollen

First stop was the photo stop for the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct; designed and built by Thomas Telford and William Jessop, Pontcysyllte means “ the bridge that connects” and is part of a World Heritage Site.

The walk starts properly by crossing one of the traditional 'Seven Wonders of Wales'. Built sometime in the 12^th Century and improved some 200 years later by John Trevor, Bishops of St. Asaph, Llangollen Bridge over the River Dee has been rebuilt and altered several times.

We followed the signposted path to Castell Dinas Bran, through a snicket and up Sunbank Walk to “The Pancake”. From there is a 20m zigzag climb to the summit. On the summit are the ruins of a medieval castle built in the 1260's by Prince Gruffudd ap Madoc but abandoned in 1282.

A much larger prehistoric settlement covered the top of the hill long before the castle in about 600BC. The Hillfort would have been naturally protected by a steep slope to the north; the rest was surrounded by ditches and an eastern embankment.

Dinas Bran is sometimes referred to as “Crow Castle”. Bran is Welsh for crow; crows and other corvids an often be seen flying around the castle. The views from the top are the dramatic limestone escarpment called “Eglwyseg Rocks” leading to “World's End” in the north; the east is the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and canal World Heritage site; the south is dominated by the Berwyn's and in the east is another hill fort, Moel y Gaer, in the Llantysilio Mountains.

The walk proceeded down the other side of the hill. Before meeting the Offa's Dyke path, it kicked back following the bottom of the hill and joining the history trail. The path skirted along the hillside of Fron Fawr with views across the Eglwyseg River valley and Coed Hyrddyn.

We came out near the Pillar of Eliseg whose origins date to the 9^th Century. An inscription recounted the family tree of Cyngen ap Cadell to his great-grandfather Elisedd ap Gwylog (Eliseg). The origins of the mound on which it stands dates to at least 4000 years ago to the early Bronze Age and was probably topped by a cross.

Further on is the Valle Crucis Abbey, the ruins of a medieval Cistercian abbey built in 1201 by Madog Ap Gruffydd Maelor, Prince of Powys. It's Latin name (Valley of the Cross) refers to the nearby Eliseg's Pillar.

Skirting round Coed Hyrddyn, we joined the canal for the last mile of so of the walk, Llangollen Canal. This is a navigable canal crossing the border between England and Wales on the Wrexham-Denbighshire border.

Moel Famau and Foel Fenlli

A reasonably challenging and steep route lay before us through woodland and moorland to Moel Famau, in the heart of the Clwydian Range and Dee Valley. The route to the summit was along a clearly defined forest track from Coed Moel Famau car park. Passing through Forestry Commission conifers, the area is reputedly home to Willow Warblers, Chaffinches, Goldcrests, Wrens, Robins, Great Tits, Blue-tits, Whinchats and a few Redpolls. Sparrow Hawks and Tawny Owls have also been sighted.

Emerging into moorland, wildlife purportedly seen here include Kestrels, Buzzards (we saw one), insects,voles, Red Grouse, Meadow Pipits, Skylarks and Ring Ouzels. From there it was a short, sharp ascent to the summit (though there was the option of an alternative longer, but easier route).

At the summit, the highest point of the Clwydian Range at 554m/1818ft, are the remains of the Jubilee Tower, built to commemorate George III's (mad King George) 50 years reign. The foundation stone was laid with great ceremony on Thursday 25^th October 1810 when 3000 people climbed the summit.

The tower, designed in Egyptian style, with a rectangular base and four bastions topped by a simple obelisk, was intended to reach a height of 115ft. Instead, the work was never fully completed. In 1846 the tower was already crumbling and a guidebook to North Wales warned that “in all probability it will tumble down”. It was another 16 years before the tower collapsed, suddenly on 28^th October 1862, in the aftermath of storms lasting a couple of days and narrowly missing two people.

There are exceptional views from the summit and this is reported to be one of the finest viewpoints in Wales: Snowdon, Cader Idris, North Wales Coast, Isle of Man and parts of Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumbria and the Pennines included.

There was a steady descent following the Offa's Dyke trail down the the Bwlch Pen Barras car park, passing Corsican Pines en-route. The trail was very well marked until the car park was reached. From there, we continued following the Offa's Dyke path for an ascent up to Moel Fenlli, one of a string of hill forts along the range.

The walk takes you round the western perimeter of the Hillfort crowning the summit, but we briefly left the Offa's Dyke path to climb to the top (511m). The earthworks rise to 35ft above the outer ditch in places and completely enclose the hilltop. Two entrances originally gave access to the fort and a wooden palisade would have topped the ramparts. There was such a cold wind that we didn't stay long but reportedly within the defences, remains of over 30 hut circles, along with fragments of 5^th Century Romano-British pottery and coins have been found.

We re-joined the Offa's Dyke path and followed the contouring path past a belt of conifers, woods and fields before leaving it be a large stone-built farmhouse, following a track (and a short section of lane) back to the car park.

Bryn Alyn & Moel Findeg

An excellent walk with superb views of the central Clwydian Range. The route skirted the limestone escarpment of Bryn Alyn; we added a detour to admire the views from here. Via the woods and pastures of Nercwys Mountain, we walked though Moel Findeg Nature Reserve (created in 1999), up to the Moel Findeg Summit.

Bryn Alyn is 408m high and a Site of Special Scientific Interest with dramatic west-facing limestone cliffs. It is the 8412^th highest peak in the British Isles and 985^th highest in Wales. Rare in Wales, but found on Bryn Alyn, is a limestone pavement. Views of the Clwydian Range to the west includes the conical top of Foel Fenlli, Moel Famau, Moel Gyw and Moel Llanfair, with views east towards the route.

By contrast, Moel Findeg is 364m high with views east over the Cheshire Plain and Wirral. Hazily, much of the Clwydian Range could be seen in the west. The summit itself, known as the Bishop's Chair, is within the 56-acre local nature reserve with a unique example of lowland heathland. Old quarries and lead mines lie hidden within birth woodland and heathland of the reserve.