• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Since, as Einstein showed, space and time are intimately entangled, Thorne theorizes that by falling through a wormhole in one direction it might be possible to travel backward in time, while traversing the worm-hole in the other direction one could go forward in time. Thus, a worm-hole would be a time warp as well as a space warp, making it a type of time machine. After publishing his theory in a technical physics journal in 1988, the media got hold of the story and Kip was branded “The Man Who Invented Time Travel.” Not one to encourage such sensationalism, Thorne continued his research and by the early 1990s began growing skeptical of his own thesis. Whether it is possible to actually travel through a wormhole without being crushed out of existence, Thorne reasoned, depends on the laws of quantum gravity, which are not fully understood at this point. Even his colleague Stephen Hawking had serious doubts. As far as we know, Hawking noted only half sardonically, the universe contains a “chronology protection conjecture,” which says that “the laws of physics do not allow time machines,” thus keeping “the world safe for historians.” In addition, if time travel were possible we should be getting frequent visits from future travelers! Where are all the time tourists, Hawking wondered? It’s a good question and, in conjunction with the causality paradoxes and physical law constraints, makes me skeptical as well; until much more is known about quantum gravity and wormholes, virtual reality and the multiverse, I assign this a fuzzy factor of .3.

Heresy 3. Evolution Is Not Progressive

That evolution happened is about as close to factual as a scientific theory can get, but there is an assumption about evolution that is so pervasive that even advertising agencies know they can count on the public’s acceptance of it. You can see it in a full-page ad that ran in the New York Times on June 3, 2001. “THE YELLOW PAGES ARE EVOLVING” reads the copy beneath what is unquestionably the icon of progressive evolution: humans evolved from apes (specifically the chimpanzee) and in the process got taller and smarter. The image itself was made famous by the endlessly reproduced foldout page from a Time/Life book on evolution, but it represents a deeper bias about how evolution works that is wrong on two levels.

First, humans did not evolve from chimpanzees or any other modern ape. Humans and modern apes evolved from a common ancestor we all shared about six million years ago. Although it is true that modern humans are taller and have bigger brains than primates did millions of years ago, evolution has been anything but progressive and linear in this straight-line fashion. In fact, it now appears that throughout the past six million years dozens of hominid species existed, many of them living simultaneously. We know that Neanderthals shared much of Europe and the Middle East with modern humans, that they were bigger than us, had a reasonably complex tool kit, wore clothes, and had brains slightly larger than our own. If evolution is progressive, why are there no Neanderthals around today? The answer is probably language (we had it, they didn’t), but the point is that evolution is best described not as a ladder of progress with each more advanced species on the next rung up, but as a richly branching bush, with each branch and twig shooting off in no particular direction, and no species more “advanced” than any other. The reason is that evolution does not look to the future. Its guiding principle is the here and now—local adaptations to local environments in order to get your genes into the next generation. There is no long-term goal or progressive purpose to evolution.

Second, the bias of progressive evolution can be seen in the grand description of life’s history from bacteria to brains. Wipe out all forms of big and complex life today through a catastrophic meteor impact or nuclear war and, the progressive bias dictates, in a couple of billion years the surviving