this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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I prefer the theory of "OMLY FORWARD!"
Basically, you can only travel forwards in time because going backwards violates causality
However
Because of the possible 4th dimensional geometry of the universe and what that means for how it behaves over deep time intervals, it could theoretically be possible to go so far forward you end up back in time.
This possibility relies on the accuracy of the theory of the bang and crunch cycle, which basically states that the universe is a bubble of infiniteness and that if you figure out how to ride out a big crunch and following big bang, you can just keep fast forwarding infinitely until random happenstance takes you far enough forward in time to a universe that is identical to ours except you're arriving to a point that is identical to one that was "back in time" from where you started.
It's probably one of the more depressing takes on time travel since it's impossible to ever go "home" but then again in that sense you've never returned to the home you left from in the morning, because the one you return to exists forward in time from where you left.
There is a great Futurama episode that visualises this. The Late Philip J. Fry - Futurama S06E07