Does Time Travel Exist?

Maybe?

We have a lot of movies and stories that look at the possibility of time travel. As a culture we seem to be at least as fascinated by the possibility of changing our past as we are about knowing our future.

Short of actually inventing it, there’s only one definitive way to test for the eventual existence of time travel: nuke the planet.

It’s a big step, but here’s my thoughts.

If time travel exists at some point in the future, we will probably not be able to nuke the planet. Someone has to be around to come back and prevent it from happening. I am assuming that humans are around on the planet and that we haven’t killed ourselves off (by something like nuking the damned planet) and been replaced by another intelligent species.

If humans are around in a future where time travel has been invented, then their history will show that some crazy-ass billionaire tried to nuke the planet and almost succeeded. They were thwarted mysteriously via some means that was completely unexplainable at the time, but clearly comes from that future time. We will have no choice but to go back in time to prevent the nuclear holocaust we already know doesn’t occur.

Alternatively, if humans are around in a future where time travel has been invented, their history will show that some crazy-ass billionaire did nuke the damned planet and kill 90% of the population and create a nuclear winter so devastating that civilization wasn’t able to crawl out from the ruins (figuratively speaking) for centuries. As a time travelling scientist with a couple of friends in the military, I would be obligated to prevent that from happening. Imagine where we would be as a species if we had those centuries back and didn’t need to start over! Of course, that assumes that the people of the future feel that preventing the holocaust would be better than not. As soon as the decision goes to committee, it would be shot down. This scenario would rely on a “lone gunman” kind of play.

If we successfully nuke the planet, future generations can be assured that at least one path of science will never be travelled. All that effort won’t be wasted trying to come up with time travel and can instead be applied to things like crops that grow in a nuclear winter and making the last of us immune to radiation poisoning.