Through time and space.

If someone asks you if you want to join him to fly through time and space, what would be your answer ? If you had all of time and space, where would you like to go ? In the past or the future ? Or in another world, in another galaxy or even in another dimension (like parallel universes) ?

This is a question that I am asking myself a lot since a few months. Last night I went to watch Interstellar, the new Christoper Nolan’s movie, and it was actually a great experience. I began to watch the TV show Doctor Who six months ago, and I’m still not able to answer those previous questions. What would I do ?

The possibility of travelling through time and space is a human’s dream since a very long time. Lots of films and books have been created by people who are passionate about that subject. Through the years, science have been able to develop theories, and will probably go deeper in those primary questions.

Even if I have seen Interstellar in french, I had watched 2001 : A Space Odyssey in english and I still watch Doctor Who in original version. What I find really interesting is more the link between the characters and the distorsion of time and space than the scientific aspects. In my opinion, knowing the consequences of these quantic effects is essential, but I think that it is more important to know if we, humans, are able to bear all those effects.

I think that the most disturbing thing when you travel through time and space is the dilation of time : in Interstellar at one moment, they have to travel near a gigantic black hole to go on a particular planet, leaving behind them another astronaute. It is said in the film that every hour spent on this planet is equivalent to seven hours for the other astronaute left behind. How can the human brain understand and accept that ? In Doctor Who, the Doctor is always accompanied by a human being. During some episodes, this companion is torn knowing that he is already dead when he travels in the future, and the fact that the earth can die is unbearable. It’s quite understandable : the idea of travelling through time and space is really tempting and exciting, but how would you react by knowing the truth of the future ? How would you stand the temptation to change your past ? Could you be able to stand the loneliness and the silence of being in space ?

In all those films (either Interstellar, 2001 : A Space Odyssey, Doctor Who, etc.) the explorers are really enjoying what they are doing first. But then they gradually tend to be opressed by this huge adventure, and even to suffer from it. In Interstellar, the main character is heartbroken when he watches the recorded videos of 23 years of his son’s life, because he was away just for a few hours. In Doctor Who, it is more the accumulation of little things that makes the companions of the Doctor to leave him. In every case, they are doing a great sacrifice to discover new worlds, a sacrifice that they don’t know before leaving everything behind them.

I really believe, after thinking about this issue for a long time, that it would be great for me to travel through time and space, but knowing the fact that I am ignorant if I could bear those consequences, I would probably choose to do it reasonably.

Ressources :

 « Interstellar » (2014) Christopher Nolan

« Doctor Who » (2005) Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat

« 2001 : A Space Odysey » (1968) Stanley Kubrick