This sounds like when I was working on my BS in CS, while Hollywood was making Star Trek The Next Generation. US CS students would argue about time travel paradoxes as though it was actually possible to travel in time and worth arguing about what would happen. LOL
I am with you on that one. I have never believed it would be possible to travel in time because I believe time is an artificial human construct.
When we die I am lead to believe there is no time in Heaven. If true then for most of the eternal existence of our soul there is no time. :-)
I had that debate in 1545 before I left to 1959.
Such an argument is no different than arguing how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's a totally irrelevant argument. A "virtual engine" simply does not exist, regardless of the characteristics imagined for it.
Like Schrodinger’s Cat, ‘Time Travel’ is and isn’t possible.
Let’s say you actually invent a machine that can traverse time.
You get inside it and do whatever it requires for start-up, press the ‘GO’ button, and POOF! you are GONE!
At least from this ‘time’.
Where did you go?
It doesn’t matter which ‘direction’ you chose, backwards or forwards in time, nor does it matter the length of time you dialed up.
One thousand years or one second is all the same.
You will be dead.
Why?
Because we do not live in a ‘static’ Universe. Everything in our universe is in motion. From the tiniest atomic particle to the largest Black Hole, everything is moving.
The Earth you stand on is rotating at about 1000 MPH and revolving around the Sun at approximately 67,000 MPH.
The Sun and it’s entire retinue of planets, asteroids, comets and dust is revolving around the Milky Way’s central Black Hole (which will eventually subsume us all) at a leisurely pace of 140 Miles per Second.
The galaxy itself is travelling, depending on your frame of reference, thousands of miles per hour.
The speed of the Milky Way galaxy varies depending on the reference frame and the specific motion being considered. According to various sources, the Milky Way and its neighboring galaxies, such as the Andromeda galaxy, are moving at a speed of about 130 km/s relative to each other.
Additionally, the Milky Way is part of the Local Group of galaxies, which is moving at 600 km/s in the direction of the constellation Hydra.
The Milky Way itself is moving through space within the cluster of galaxies it is a member of, and this cluster in turn moves through space towards another larger cluster of galaxies off in the direction of the constellation Virgo at a speed of approximately 300 km/s.
Furthermore, the Milky Way is moving at a speed of about 550 km/s with respect to the cosmic microwave background (CMB) rest frame.
These speeds are relative to different reference points and can vary depending on the direction of motion.
To top that all off, the Universe itself is expanding............
From BRAVE AI:
The expansion of the universe is measured by the Hubble constant, which quantifies how fast space itself is expanding. Recent measurements indicate that the universe is expanding faster than previously expected. For instance, data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope suggests that the universe is expanding at a rate of approximately 73.4 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/s/Mpc), while measurements of the cosmic microwave background suggest a slower rate of about 67.4 km/s/Mpc.
This discrepancy, known as the “Hubble tension,” highlights a growing mystery in cosmology.
The expansion rate is not a fixed speed but a proportional rate. For example, space expands at about 70 km/s per megaparsec, meaning that for every 3.26 million light-years of space, the distance increases by about 70 km/s.
At very large distances, this expansion can result in galaxies moving away from each other faster than the speed of light. However, this does not violate Einstein’s theory of relativity, as the expansion of space itself is not constrained by the speed of light.
The current estimate for the Hubble constant is around 73 km/s/Mpc, with some measurements suggesting it could be as high as 73.5 km/s/Mpc.
This means that the universe’s expansion is accelerating, and the distance between cosmic objects will double in about 9.8 billion years.
The exact value of the Hubble constant remains a topic of active research, as resolving this discrepancy could provide insights into the nature of dark energy and the ultimate fate of the universe.
So to conclude, even if you had a machine this very second that could traverse ‘time’ as we know it, you would suddenly find yourself in interstellar, or intergalactic, space. Temperature near absolute zero, no oxygen, food or water. If you were ‘lucky’ you would reappear inside a Black Hole or an active star and be instantly crushed into oblivion or incinerated.
So, while Time Travel may be possible, it will never be practical...................