Ask Tom

Saint Simeon Stylites was a Christian ascetic saint who achieved fame for living 37 years on a small platform on top of a pillar near Aleppo in Syria. He became really famous and even the emperors were seeking for answers from him.

Since I have gotten a lot of questions from my readers, I will publish here some answers to them.

Q: What is the meaning of the life

A: This is a classic question and the answer is not that difficult as you might think. The purpose of life in biological meaning is to continue and develop. The same principle also works in more abstract way. You need to develop your knowledge and make sure that the next generation can continue from there.

In the history of the world it has been very common to forget things and develop them again. It’s hard to believe that in science, technology, arts, medicine, hygiene etc. the Romans were much ahead compared to the middle ages 500-1500 years later.

To make all this meaningful, a man needs to do things that he enjoys. He needs to keep doing it until he masters it fully and then move the skill to next generation. We have long way to achieve that. Enjoy what you are doing and share your skill. That’s most important.

Q: Is time travel possible?

A: Another classic. Yes, time travel indeed is possible. It greatly differs if you want to move forwards or backwards in time. Cryopreservation was invented in late sixties and since them lots of people have been “sent to future” by freezing them and hoping that someone some day could resurrect them. Also time capsules can be seen as a way to send things to future. It seems funny, but if you can bury something in the ground and make sure that it’s found for example 500 year’s from now, the effect is instant. Bury a message saying “If you have time machine, please visit me here second of October 2012 and if you reach the correct person, he should arrive just after you buried your message. A short-scale time travel can be achieved by asking a doctor to keep you in artificial coma for some months. You should wake up in future without remembering much from your “travel”.

In my post Send Me a Postcard I was talking about the ancient time travels. If you think about it, it’s clear that the huge monuments and the embalming of important bodies is a way to send them to future. The monuments contain messages for future generations or maybe just for a certain person in future. The idea is the same as in the cryopreservation – they hope that some day someone can resurrect the body. Maybe we have misunderstood the message or it was not ment for us. Maybe we messed it up?

What I’m not sure is the question if they got the idea of timetravel themselves, or did they get a visitor from future, that wanted to report about his trip to his own time – and built for example the pyramids to make sure that his message will travel all the way undisturbed.

If it was timetravellers, did they do it on purpose or accidentally. My calculations about the nature of the space-time predict that it might occurr that a wormhole is spontanously getting created and might throw an unsuspecting person some thousand years back in time. If such a person happened to be piloting an airplane, he for sure would be treated as a god in the past – and could convice the people to help him in making a statement to his own time.

 

 

 

 

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