Time Travel Irony: Why Neil deGrasse Tyson Needs To And Take His Own Advice

"One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you're right but not enough about the subject to know you're wrong." - Neil deGrasse Tyson

The late Stephen Hawking's greatest fault was his penchant for attempts at being witty instead of trying to be wise. For those who knew him and were paying attention, Hawking could just as easily slip into an act of clueless arse-holism - like he did when he directed an assistant to make an illustration of a black man being electrocuted by lightning so he could say, "the future of time travel looks black - or blindingly white" as he did in a lecture on time travel for Kipfest at Cal Tech.

And so we have DeGrasse Tyson's biggest fault - falling into the same pot hole in his quest to become the next major popular science popularizer after Hawking, cutting off Michio Kaku on the same race track. His unbridled arrogance, his self-aggrandizing rhetoric, his wide eyed expressions as he smiles and talks enthusiastically with his hands with those knowing looks that say, "Yes! Isn't it all amazing that I'm this BRILLIANT?!" But I deGress...Get it?

Before I proceed, for those who don't know who I am, among other things I'm a quantum physics trained, R&D engineer with a fundamental research background in temporal mechanics and time travel physics - meaning that I don't just study the subject, I am actively involved in trying solve and resolve the major questions left unanswered, because it matters. You'll see why at the end of this article.

So what brings me to this topic is the fact that I've finally gathered enough research, conducted enough experiments, and tested enough theories that I can finally scream ENOUGH IS ENOUGH at deGrasse's blabberings and braggings about time travel which haven't really changed over time, despite the fact that the research area has exploded with more progress within the last 10 years than any other time. Time travel is not a subject that Tyson's done any real study on and in fact, it is the one subject that I can say that he's done himself in on. No better example can I give than his own words in the opening video that I've quoted at the beginning of this article - "knowing enough about a subject to think you're right but not enough about the subject to know you're wrong". For Tyson, that subject would be time travel and I'm going to prove it, with relish.

In the video below Tyson hits the ground running, waxing about the delay time between when things happen and when the light reflecting from them reaches our eyes, and with that classic deGrasse, "isn't this AMAZING" act. He and stand-up comedian, Chuck Nice, play "Wheel of Science" but when Nice tries to make a joke by saying deGrasse's upcoming lecture is the most exciting thing he's ever heard of happening in Las Vegas, I know even Stephen Hawking would've remarked that he needs to get out more.

The first question is "Would it actually be easier to travel forward in time rather than backward and what would that require (gravity, speed etc)?". Tyson wastes no time regurgitating the classic, pedestrian level response about how it's "easy" to travel forward in time (never mind that to do so at any appreciable amount is a non-practical solution), of course putting an educational spin on it by citing special relativity and then, like a pro bowler who shockingly throws a gutter ball on his first turn up in the championship, he says, "All you have to do is go into a lower gravity field relative to other people..." WHAT?!!!!!!

The problem with his answer is that he used the term "low" to describe the level of gravity in question and that is not a consistent description and could be viewed as meaning "little" or "less" gravity. If zero gravity means none, the 'low' could mean little when in fact in some cases it means "low" in terms of the distance between the object and the source of the gravity. The "low" gravity potential. Tyson himself has failed to use that description in the video below and I never use it, instead vying for "little", "small", "less"or "weak", which are clearer.

At :40 on the counter, DeGrasse says, "When you move away from a source of gravity, your time speeds up..." So when he's answering the question of some young layperson, he should know to be clear and not use terms that could be misinterpreted.

Back to the previous video, he says, at one point that the GPS satellite experiences less gravity than the clock on Earth, once again exhibiting why I don't like the use of "low" because of the similarity with less. Moving on, the next question in the original video is "How might time travel via wormhole work?". His answer proves immediately that he's a poser when it comes to time travel expertise. But first, he returns to a comment about faster than light travel being a method to reach the past.

"If you manage to travel some place faster than light, you have the capacity to move backwards in time. We've got that one established as well..."

WRONG. The reason why people think this is true is because the relativistic math seems to indicate that but, in reality, that math is centered around what various observers would see of a round trip made by a spacecraft to a distant planet and back and that is not what temporal mechanics is concerned with. Temporal mechanics deals with the physical nature of time and if relativity theory solved all those issues then there wouldn't be any arguments over what time is, does, or even exists as exemplified in this paper I wrote, An Authoritative Response To Time In Cosmology.

An article on a NOVA website, Can You Really Go Back in Time by Breaking the Speed of Light? sums it all up like this -

"So, simply going faster than light does not inherently lead to backwards time travel. Very specific conditions must be met—and, of course, the speed of light remains the maximum speed of anything with mass."

And of course since nothing can go faster than light the proper answer that Tyson is so clearly ignorant of there is no going backwards in time by going faster than light, just like there is no getting Gwyneth Paltrow to marry you just because you think she's sending you messages through the TV. They're both crazy ideas with no basis in reality. So why does deGrasse, who's always talking about science, giving such an unscientific answer? Hmmmm?

Tyson then commits the ultimate sin that a credentialed physicist can, who claims expertise in time travel - which gets me looking down my nose at 'em forever. He invokes the grandfather paradox and not even by name, but by the supposed fear that people have of it - that by going back in time and preventing someone's parents from meeting, that some kind of crazy paradoxical loop is the inescapable result. Well, for anyone that thinks that loop is anywhere close to reality, they're about as smart as someone's pet that will chase a laser pointer around and around. The physics is just too far above their head, as simple as it really is. Let me explain:

1. The reason why people like myself hold people who promote these kinds of paradoxes with such disdain is because these people have never scientifically looked at the geometries that would be involved with such a scenario and yet claim this scientifically proves time travel is problematic. So what do I mean? The first step to deal with is not what anyone does in the past. The first step is the fact that they got there in the first place. That's the first paradox because they weren't there before.

2. Having identified the first paradox, the next thing is to understand what that means scientifically. For the record, this puts us out of any discussion involving Einstein, period. That's the problem with physicists like Tyson. Everything for them is governed by relativity and they aren't smart enough to look elsewhere for the answers. They just like to wallow like swine in the muddy ambiguity of it all instead acting like the intelligent people they purport to be. So, the obvious answer takes you to quantum mechanics and that presents you with a challenge - the implied geometry, taken at face value, is a violation of the Copenhagen interpretation - the most accepted one by most physicists. But that doesn't rule out time travel, it just bounces the answer over to the next most accepted interpretation - the Everett Relative State, which involves parallel universes. However, Tyson avoids it.

After he gives a pedestrian level explanation of how a wormhole works, he then proceeds with a lame brain description of how to use one for time travel. And I mean lame brain. Beginning at 4:17 on the counter, he gives the most inaccurate description of wormhole time travel that I've seen yet. It's bad enough that the original concept is rife with problems which I have documented before, but deGrasse completely leaves out an description of how the wormhole method becomes effective, which must involve some sort of time dilation on one end of the hole, which confirms yet again, that Tyson has no qualifications to be talking about time travel as if he's an expert. He's not.

The first question from this next video clip (above) was originally derived from Stephen Hawking and I must say when I saw Hawking state it himself, in one of his PBS TV specials, it was when I first realized he truly had a flawed psyche. Let me set the record straight - anyone, and I don't give a damn who they are, that thinks that's not a stupid question or assumption to make, then guess what? They don't have the grey matter to be involved in time travel discussion. Look at Hawking. The nature of time and time travel were his worst subjects. The worst. Why am I being so harsh? Let's look at it - 1. Anyone smart enough to do time travel and then turn it into a business is not going to risk their clients by randomly showing up and not protecting their true identities. After all, they're paying to see the past - not get arrested in it. Anyone that's not obvious to, is not qualified to discuss time travel - but there's more. 2. Then there's the mathematical foundations behind it. The original quote from Hawking mentioned why weren't we being invaded by time travelers from the future which is ridiculous because that assumes that time travelers would not only go to the same points in history but that doing so would cause a pile-up of temporal visitors. That completely ignores the reality that a key portion of time travel would be the selection of which version of history that you would want to visit. Any expert would know that you want to target a version of the past that others haven't arrived in. There's no way that time travel tourists would be invading any single point in the past that would be exclusive. That Hawking and Tyson would even think such a thing only proves that neither one of them has any experience seriously studying the subject.

At 1:59 on the counter - "I think that's a, a pretty good argument and I don't have a rebuttal for that." No rebuttal? Well, there Tyson goes - proving my points for me. If that was only the worst of it. At 2:14 on the counter he states that "The only secret that can be kept between two people is when one of them is dead." Ha, ha, ha! And so Tyson proves conclusively that he has no business teaching any one the subject of time travel. This is the exactly the personality flaw that Hawking had and was behind his making that asinine statement to begin with. Let's not forget the many brave people who have kept secrets at the risk of their own lives - sometimes losing them. Every day men and women in law enforcement, investigative services and in the intelligence community, do exactly what Tyson thinks the mere thought of is worthy of a stupid joke that he thinks makes him look so incredibly smart - when it just certifies what an arrogant, clueless jackass he is.

If that weren't enough he continues at 2:40 on the video counter, talking about how perhaps time machines can only go to the future, that way they also avoid creating paradoxes. OK, so "Mr. Astrophysicist" here misses the fact that anyone using such a device would be on a one way trip, and not be able to return home. That's so inherently dumb because if you can only go to the future, you have no idea what kind of conditions you'd be landing in. That's why the really smart people want to go to the past and wouldn't mind it if it was a one way trip - they know the past they'd be traveling to and usually want to escape the future.

However, that's not the worse of it. Again, Mr. "I'm an astrophysicist" prattles on about paradoxes and other nonsensical time travel tropes without a single basis in physics.

The Big Think has an article on an interview that Tyson does with the host of Vsauce3 exhibiting Tyson's total and complete inability to just see what's obviously conceptually problematic and the utter lack of intellectual curiosity to look for solutions - instead of offering knee-jerk, half baked conclusions based on erroneous hidden assumptions.

"In the end, Tyson doesn’t believe that travel back in time is possible, agreeing on that with Stephen Hawking. He thinks that at some point, physicists will discover a new law that will explain what prevents backwards time travel, adding 'we don't know what that law is or why it must exist but everything we can imagine that allows it totally messes everything up.'”

Well, Hawking was wrong. Big surprise. Wrong about his chronology protection conjecture, his time travelers invite to his birthday party, and his Mad Scientist Paradox for which I got recognized for proving wrong and that elementary school kids could see it too, like J.R. Oppenheimer predicted. Since Hawking's death, it has now become even more apparent that there is no law preventing time travel to the past but there are plenty that prevent the asinine assumptions about time travel made by deGrasse and his ilk, who prefer to ignore the role that quantum mechanics and information theory must obviously play in the ultimate answer, instead burying their heads in the sands of relativity.

And so it comes down to the very simple fact that Tyson totally lacks the brains for time travel physics and I will prove it conclusively by showing that despite all his bravado about science and how that's all that matters, it's really just how he sees it that matters, despite the facts. In the clip below, the conversation is about the science or lack of in Avengers Endgame. I'm only going to focus on the most devastating hits, exposing Tyson's ludicrous hypocrisy.

My points of contention begin at 7:35 where Tyson is asked on the video counter which movie represented time travel more consistently with modern theories, Endgame or Back To The Future? Now, before I go any further, I want to quote another section of that Masterclass intro that I did at the beginning. At :25 he says, "What I'm going to do in this Masterclass is to teach you how to think..." Then at 7:37 Tyson is asked, "Which movie actually represented time travel more consistently with modern theories, Endgame or Back to the Future"?

I know what the answer is. It's Endgame as Back to the Future is a joke when it comes to best representing time travel in relation to the modern theories. It violates the Copenhagen interpretation as well as the Relative State Interpretation. The whole premise of Marty fading away as it becomes less likely that his parents will hook-up, means that there is a connection between the past and the future Marty is from, which means that energy could flow through and destroy the connection as Stephen Hawking would argue with his chronology protection conjecture and even though it's wrong, the reason why it's wrong is that there is no such connection as portrayed in BTTF. In fact, in relation to modern theories, it can be proved with experiments that I've done and the work of Rainer Plaga and others, that all connections from time travel are discontinuous. So all of the stupid BTTF gimmicks wouldn't be possible. But what does Tyson say?

"Maybe the stuff that happened in Endgame that I didn't fully understand..."

WAIT A MINUTE! Tyson has pawned himself off like a time travel expert and he didn't understand ENDGAME? Not that I'm surprised but he's just admitted that he's not an expert because believe me, if he didn't - he isn't.

"Back to the Future, Back to the Future tried to be as consistent as it possibly could at every turn..."

Tyson reveals his own personal bias over the science because that wasn't the question. The question was which film was the most consistent with the modern theories. It wasn't what Tyson thought was the most self-consistent. Right when the question is asked, Nice indicates that BTTF is Tyson's favorite but that wasn't the question. So Tyson, because of his personal bias and his obvious, actual ignorance of real time travel science, as opposed to the BS in the movies, gives the wrong answer, simultaneously contradicting the very premise for why he's doing his Masterclass - or so he claims.

Next at 8:30 on the video counter, Tyson starts this whole thing about how for the story to remain internally consistent, Endgame required a much more complicated set of timelines branching off from each other. Well, Golly! That's just the way it would work in real life. After all, they were trying to make it realistic instead of hokey, but it would appear that Tyson prefers the later despite the fact that he's always talking about objective science. It appears the slip to his hypocrisy is showing.

If that weren't bad enough, Tyson shows his ignorance of the subject once again when at 8:40 he states, "All that happened in Back to the Future is they created a single alternative time line." WRONG. Tyson doesn't seem to know the difference between a changed timeline and an alternative one, which would support my previous accusation of his lacking the grey matter for this subject. If what Back to the Future had done was create an alternative timeline, then inherently there would be no paradoxes to worry about, but I guess Mr. "I'll teach you how to think" didn't grasp that.

Furthermore at 9:49 on the counter, Tyson starts whining about how he didn't like it when characters in Endgame from different timelines interacted with each other when actually in physics, there's nothing against that except in the so-called "rules of time travel" adhered to by pop geeks who wouldn't know a Cauchy horizon from a singularity. The point Tyson misses is due to alternate timelines being involved, interactions don't matter. He also seems to have difficulty keeping track with all the action that results, but that again, is how it would really work.

Unfortunately, the writers of Endgame themselves don't stay true to the science completely, but I excuse them after having put up with all of the other sci-fi dreck ignoring the real time travel science, especially after fighting and winning my war against the producers of NBC's time travel failure, Timeless, and watching everything I predicted that would lead to the cancellation of that show, come true. I'm sick of all these time travel shows that are as accurate as having astronauts disembark in their swimwear after landing on Mars.

At 40:15, Tyson is asked about a scene where Tony Stark solves how to do time travel by using a Mobius strip and after calling that gobble-ti-gook, Tyson goes into his own explanation of what a Mobius strip is, totally unaware of how geometries of space-time and reality can take form and are realized. The Mobius strip is not one sided - that's a common misconception like a Necker shifting 180 degrees when it's actually 90 degrees. In fact, at 41:30 on the counter, Tyson describes making a Mobius strip by giving a loop a 180 degree turn. But that would mean that at some point the edges of the ribbon would meet and they don't. The Mobius strip has 90 degree twist and decoherence in quantum mechanics happens at 90 degrees. Following the strip then is seen as path that goes to a parallel universe with the twist and then returns again. But in advanced level conceptualizations, the path is not a direction of movement but a direction of energy level, where the twist kicks in the decoherence from one universe and then back again.

Which brings us to the EPR paradox and Deutsch proposition at 47:12 where Tyson admits that he's never heard of it. Fair enough as it was given a made-up name but Deutsch would be David Deutsch and it even said so in the opening of the movie. The fact that Tyson claimed familiarity with the EPR paradox but not Deutsch, even when David Deutsch was mentioned in the film, shows Tyson's on personal bias against time travel solutions outside of relativity, which is not being objective.

David Deutsch is the quantum physicist in the video below who first applied the Everett Relative State interpretation to time travel. Deutsch's work and mine are related and moving in the same direction toward making time travel a reality.

Now, you can completely ignore the man who came on at 2:58 with his "As far as I'm concerned..." line. That's Ronald Mallett, professor of UConn who's a fake time travel scientist who's never written a real time travel science paper in his life. He made those statements in 2002. In 2017 I proved him wrong with the first experiment proving specifically the Everett Interpretation and its links with retrocausality as photographed below.

There is a direct link between these types of experiments and the method of building a functional time machine first postulated by American Science Award Medal winner, Yakir Aharonov, reported in 1992 by Discover magazine. The idea was a machine controlled by quantum measurements. Since that time the R&D has come along way with individual contributions from the likes of Andrew Cleland, Rainer Plaga, and of course the work of the late John Archibald Wheeler, to the point that I authored the study, A Special Report: Temporal Escape, about how time travel to the past is a greatly superior alternative to save Humanity from an extinction level event than Space travel ever could be and that we're only about $100,000 away from making the initial required breakthrough.

In short, true time travel science has its origin, not with Albert Einstein but with John Archibald Wheeler and his delayed choice experiment. It all comes down to this section in a June 1, 2000 Discover magazine article about Wheeler, written by science writer Tim Folger, where he discusses the delayed choice experiment on a "cosmic scale".

"By the time the astronomers decide which measurement to make, whether to pin down the photon to one definite route or to have it follow both paths simultaneously, the photon could have already journeyed for billions of years, long before life appeared on Earth. The measurements made now, says Wheeler, determine the photon's past. In one case the astronomers create a past in which a photon took both possible routes from the quasar to Earth. Alternatively, they retroactively force the photon onto one straight trail toward their detector, even though the photon began its jaunt long before any detectors existed."

The key phrase there is, "in one case the astronomers create a past...". All that needs to be done is to create a present that is a copy of an era in the past, a kind of inverse sleight of hand, and that's time travel. In other words, via a specially synthesized quantum measurement, the present in a localized area will become a copy of the past. By doing so, no energy is transferred to the past nor changes in entropy as this copy of the past did not exist until the time travel act was executed, thus resolving the perceived problems, by some, with the idea that time travel to the past would involve a prohibited transfer of energy to the past, or for that matter, require tremendous amounts of energy. These little known facts are being promoted as part of this year being the International Year of Time Travel Science, which is another reason why I wasn't tolerating Neil deGrasse Tyson's phony time travel expert shtick anymore.

So in conclusion it's pretty obvious that Neil deGrasse Tyson needs to never mention the subject of time travel ever again, unless he's actually going to take the time to learn about it and I don't mean that outdated, relativistic garbage that he's used to riffing off of.

So as I'm writing this, while we're in the middle of this COVID-19 pandemic, it is worth noting that, as usual, the value of concentrating on being a smart alec is equal to that of the stupid kid that can't seem to do much more than throw spit balls from the back of the class. Just as deGrasse likes to make jokes about time travel, I'm busy seeing it as the sole best response for the continuation of human life in the face of the next pandemic or other extinction level event, either of which is unpredictable. A best response that we best get resolved, before it's too late. I'm not expecting deGrasse to grasp the relevance of it all, but I do know this - his approach will do nothing but get you killed. At least with mine, we'll have a fighting chance...