Can You Really Stop Time? (Sci-Fi Style)

For centuries now, science fiction has been trying to sell you on the idea that you can stop time. In fact, science fiction was not even the first to arrive at this party. Religion got there first! There are theological references that date back thousands of years hinting at some God-like being’s ability to stop time.

But what does science have to say about this business of stopping time? While religion and fiction were trying to sell you on the idea, physicists have been waving their hands trying to warn you about not buying into it. So, should the common man listen to the physicist and conclude that it is taboo to even think about stopping time?

Well, I for one say that “stopping time” is not a taboo topic. It is perfectly fine to talk about it. However, one needs to be able to do one’s own reasoning ground up. We don’t need experts or religion to explain things to us.

In this essay, I will be constructing a few classical science-fiction “time-stopping” scenarios and working out the scientific implications using fundamental (first principles) reasoning. This will be fun. But even before we dip our toes into fiction, we need to clarify what we mean by “stopping time” first.

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What Does “Stop Time” Really Mean?

When we use the phrase “stop time”, we actually do not wish to stop time. In fact, the phrase “stop time” implies that time is moving. Objectively speaking, time does not move; it is our universe that moves.

A clever reader might try to argue that “time flows like a river in one direction”. But we can easily dismiss this line of reasoning by asking the following question:

At what rate does time flow?

The word “rate” works only in the context of change measured between two points in time. So, in order to measure the rate of time flow, we need another time; a higher-dimensional time; a hypertime! Let us assume, for fun, that such a transcendental hyperspace indeed exists.

Just because our time “appears” to freeze with respect to this hyperspace does not mean that our time stops (note that hypertime is different from relativistic time). For whom does our time stand still? To an observer in the hyperspace. We would not even realise any change. In other words, time would not stop or freeze from our point of view.

So, what is it exactly that we mean when we utter the phrase “stop time”? Well, the answer to this question lies in the following realization: it is the concept of change that requires time; the notion of time does not require change in our universe.

So, when we utter “stop time”, we really mean “stop any change in the state of our universe/local reference”. Now that we have established this key realisation, let us jump into science fiction and build a world in which time stopping might be possible (this is the fun part).

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Science Fiction — A World Where You Can Really Stop Time!

Suppose that you have some sort of super power to stop time. You know the drill. Everything around you comes to a standstill; you walk about in awe as everyone is frozen in action around you.

As you exit the mall and walk onto the main street, two frozen frames in particular catch your attention: a child (who for some reason ran onto the road with heavy traffic) is about to get hit by a truck, and an mischievous thief is in the act of snatching a poor old lady’s purse.

Of course! As the “hero” who is blessed with this magical ability to stop time, you first gently pick the child up and place her safely on the side walk. Next, you take the purse back from the unsuspecting thief and place it back in the hands of the distressed old lady.

As time resumes (when you will it so), people who thought they were about to witness a horrific accident are shocked to realise that the child is safe. And the thief comes to an abrupt stop (from his run) to realise in disbelief that he doesn’t have the old lady’s purse in his hands anymore. The old lady is equally shocked, but is elated to have her purse back.

As these people are puzzled and dazed at the “sudden” turn of events, you walk away with a smile on your face. You are the silent hero who protects this town without revealing the nature of your power. You operate from the shadows of time; you are the silent guardian of this town.

That, folks, is a nice sci-fi world right there. As you fondly contemplate further possibilities in such a world, let me throw a rusty wrench at your imagination and break the glass. Don’t shoot the messenger just yet, but this world cannot exist under the physical laws we know so far. “Why?”, you ask? Let us find out.

The Physics of Stopping Time

For starters, let us assume that you share the same time-dimension as your environment when you stop time. Now, let us track back to the scene where you walked in awe past frozen people around you.

This would not happen in the reality we know because, when you “stop time”, you also stop photons/electromagnetic radiation/light from moving. No photons would get reflected from the objects around you, thus rendering you blind with darkness.

The same goes for sound and every other sense you can think of; you’d be deaf, feel no sense of touch anymore, etc. Because of the lack of any sensation, you yourself would be rendered motionless, with only mental processes firing. The story now quickly turns from science fiction to survival horror, as you lose your sanity the longer this “time freeze” lasts.

Human beings tend to hyperventilate when they are stressed. So, naturally, you would try to breathe faster. But guess what? Air molecules have been frozen by your “time stop” power. So, not only will you be horrified by losing all your senses, but you will also start suffocating yourself due to the lack of oxygen/air.

Surely, if you even have a modicum of control over your power left, you would resume time flow to save yourself from a horrific death. It turns out that what you have is not a super power but a quirk for self-induced survival horror. At this point, we have to go back to our fictional world and redesign your power to stop time.

What if You Could Create a Hypertime Bubble?

Imagine that you could create a field or bubble of some sort around you, where you could “unfreeze” time. The only way you could do this is to operate in some sort of hypertime, while the ‘normal’ time-dimension peasants are frozen outside.

If you want everything else frozen, you can only have your hypertime bubble big enough to envelope your body. Let’s say that you dynamically activate hypertime as you move about. So, the space you occupy constantly shifts to the hypertime dimension. This should work out better than the last iteration of your ‘super power’, right?

Well, wrong. Time outside your hypertime bubble is still frozen; no electromagnetic radiation/photons; no sound; no nothing! At the boundary of your hypertime bubble, you would receive a diffused/distorted collage of singals that your brain would not be able to make sense of.

You would probably not realise if you got cut by a knife before it was too late. A hypertime bubble, then, does not save the day either. What if your hypertime bubble slows time down instead of stopping it completely? Some “flashy” science fiction super heroes operate this way.

Alas, that wouldn’t work either. Human senses are the challenge here as well. As time slows down outside the hypertime bubble, the speed at which photons/sound waves travel would reduce too. These frequencies would be too low for human senses to pick up.

You would still receive distorted signals at the hypertime boundary, which your brain would not be able to process. Considering all of this, is there no real hope of stopping time?

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Can You Really Stop Time?

When it comes to the thought of stopping time, we seem to be limited by our human senses. The solution, then, is for you to transform into a super-being that is somehow able to process the distorted signals that it receives.

Furthermore, you would also benefit from very fast reflexes and hyper quick movements to navigate a world that operates at very short notice. All these transformations mean that you will no longer be human.

If you think about it, science fiction typically associates these abilities with aliens, while religions associate these abilities with Gods. Pick your pill. Either way, the notion of stopping time for mere human beings seems to be impossible under the physical laws we know thus far.

I humbly apologise if I hurt any feelings or crushed any dreams of science fiction fans out there. The scientifically oriented reader might have noticed that I did not even attempt to go into the discussion of relativistic time. My reasoning for that is simple: Why add unnecessary complexity while fundamental reasoning suffices to do the job?

All things said and done, I hope you enjoyed reading this essay. Quite fascinatingly, I was able to collect a wealth of literature and scientific work related to this question. I am still processing them as I construct my analyses. So, if you enjoyed this essay, then watch this space for more on this topic in the future!

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References: Martin Gardner, Sydney S. Shoemaker, and Isaac Asimov.

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Further reading that might interest you:

• What Do Black Holes And The Big Bang Have In Common?
• 3 Reasons Why Deep Space Travel Is Really Challenging
• Ant On A Rubber Rope Paradox – How To Solve It?

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