Time
Time. Have you ever sat and really thought about it? How much have you thought about it? What is it? Is time a tangible thing of its own, or a descriptive element like distance or volume? How about those descriptive elements, how much have you thought about them? Have you considered exactly what an inch is? Or a liter? So what is a second, a minute, an hour? Is an inch something of its own, or a way to describe the amount of something else (in length)? A liter is nothing in itself, but a description of how much of something there is. So what is time describing? Change, location, states of existence? Do we not base our measurement of time on the change of location of the Earth around the Sun? The best definition of time I can conceive of is, "the measure of the relative position of all known objects in the universe, and the change in this position." With all this in mind, could time ever be manipulated? The length of an object is not manipulated by adding or subtracting "inches," but by adding or subtracting an amount of that object measuring those inches in length. So what would need to be changed in order to manipulate time? Even if such a concept could be conceived, would it ever be possible to implement? If time is a measure of location and change in location, could the very fabric of space ever be manipulated at a level necessary to manipulate what we label as "time"? Even an object we perceive as stationary has motion in its smallest constituent parts. Could we ever manipulate the smallest building blocks of matter in a way that we could reset its location to a previous state, exactly? I personally postulate the answer is no. Even if it were possible to manipulate these tiny parts on an incredibly small scale, truly "reversing time" would require manipulating these very building blocks of matter across the planet, the galaxy, and even the universe. Such manipulation would require a level of energy and technological advancement that is far beyond current (or possibly any future) human comprehension. This is why I believe time travel is, was, and will ever be impossible.
