Dr. Wolf argues that time is an artifact of consciousness, inseparable from mind itself. He describes real devices currently on drawing boards, including work by physicist Yakir Aharonov involving accumulated micro-shifts in time, and explains how a dense hollow sphere could create gravitational conditions allowing a person inside to age backward or forward while the outside world continues normally. He confidently predicts working time travel devices will emerge within the 21st century.
The discussion tackles the classic grandfather paradox through David Deutsch's parallel universes interpretation of quantum physics. Dr. Wolf explains that traveling back and altering events would simply place the traveler in an alternate universe, eliminating contradictions entirely. He points to the double-slit experiment as direct evidence that parallel universes exist and interact with our own.
Key Moments
Time Equals Mind: Wolf argues time has no physical definition - we are really counting with memory - and concludes that time and mind are the same thing, an artifact of consciousness.
Solving the Grandfather Paradox with Many-Worlds: Wolf walks through David Deutsch's parallel-universes solution: kill your grandfather and you simply branch into a new universe in which you were never born, while your memories travel with you.
Double-Slit as Proof of Parallel Universes: Wolf walks Art through the single-photon double-slit experiment: the interference pattern only appears when the particle has a choice of slits, which Wolf says is direct evidence of parallel worlds influencing this one.
Escaping a Terrorist Bomb by Branching Universes: Wolf and Art apply the multiverse model to a chillingly contemporary scenario: if a bomb goes off in your world, you could in principle jump to a parallel universe where it never happened, possibly even talking the bomber out of building it.
Where Wolf Would Travel: 1920s Germany: Asked where he would actually go, Wolf picks pre-Nazi Germany - the moment of the great schism between deterministic classical physics and indeterminate quantum physics, paralleled by a society demanding total control.