Time Travel

Once confined to fantasy and science fiction, time travel is now simply an engineering problem.

-MICHIO KAKU

My reaction toward the future is bleak.  Based on the current situation, the future makes me feel like there is going to be more negative outcomes than positive. Look at our present economic rut. People are losing their jobs, their homes and due to that, their minds. Something like the economy will not change overnight which means we will have to live through this for the next several years. In the essay by Carl Sagan he says, “If we could travel into the past, it’s mind-boggling what would be possible” (Sagan, 2010, p.824). Changing the past would lead to a “butterfly effect”.  For instance, no matter how much we would like to, we cannot change 9/11. If we could travel back in time to prevent 9/11, then we would not be the country we are today. Perhaps bad things just need to happen. Would we want to stop the fall of Rome, the American Revolution, or World War II? No matter how tragic these historic events were, they had to happen in order to make the future we have today.

            Only the future will tell if we are truly alone in this universe. I do not agree with Sagan’s essay on extraterrestrial life. Maybe there are extraterrestrials that can solve all of our present and future problems. Maybe they can stop humanity from driving itself to the ground. Otherwise, we are doomed to commit the same mistake we have made in the past.