Motion And Time

(This weekend, changing the modem might delay blogging.)

In relativistic physics, the apparent endurance of a three-dimensional body through time is really the extension of a world line along one of the dimensions of space-time. I question the validity of this account. See Space and Time. However, Poul Anderson's accounts of time travel refer to world lines.

From a "world lines" perspective, Jack Havig's three-dimensional body (in There Will Be Time) does not move along time. Any apparent three-dimensional body is merely a cross-section of a static world line. Havig undergoes time dilation, i.e., his bodily and mental processes slow down in relation to everyone else's while, simultaneously and inexplicably, he becomes invisible and intangible.

Havig's account:

a force, operating in at least four dimensions, moves him;

if the force, or field, has an electromagnetic component, then it might catch and carry a few photons, thus explaining his feeble vision while time traveling;

body energy generates and applies the thrusting force - time travel tires;

because of its rest mess, matter, even air, cannot be caught or carried;

resonating genes generate time travel.