Do We Time Travel When We Die?

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00:00What comes after we die? How closely linked are we to the rest of the universe? And could it ever

00:05be possible that not only is there life beyond, but that it's fundamentally different to this life

00:11as well? This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question,

00:15do we time travel when we die? Do you need the big questions answered? Are you constantly curious?

00:22Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one? And ring the bell for

00:26more thought-provoking content. Death is perhaps the greatest mystery known to humanity.

00:32It's a threshold that all of us will cross, but that none have definitely returned from.

00:36There are multiple claims of near-death experiences, with the number of people reporting

00:41NDEs increasing in recent times. But we still have nothing by way of concrete, incontestable

00:47evidence of what lies beyond. Many cultures speak of an afterlife, a continuation of consciousness

00:52in some form or another. There are some theories grounded in science that perhaps some part of our

00:57fundamental makeup does and can live on. And, of course, there are a growing number of richly

01:02promised routes to immortality via technology, from digital heavens to artificial resurrections.

01:08But one lesser-spoken-about possibility also manages to tie in another of humankind's greatest

01:14theoretical ambitions… time travel. A small number have asked, could the experience of

01:19death also involve a move backwards or forwards, or even sideways, in time? First, let's look at the

01:25most solid physical theories surrounding time travel. According to Einstein's theory of

01:30relativity, time is relative. It can stretch or shrink, depending on how fast one is moving

01:35compared to something else. Apply the theory far enough, and eventually, we can say that if you

01:41were able to travel at speeds approaching light speed, or through a wormhole connecting two

01:45different points in space-time, then you might, even should, experience time very differently

01:51compared to those who remain stationary… and we have a basis from which to work. What's interesting

01:56from the point of view of dying is that it's generally held to be the human body, or indeed

02:01anything with mass, that holds us back when contemplating light-speed travel, and therefore

02:06time travel. Light can move so quickly because it has no mass. Move anything with mass at close to

02:12light speed, and the science says that time travel might be possible, especially into the future. But

02:18what would really make it possible is if we were to achieve negative mass. This is a hypothetical

02:23form of matter. It has never been knowingly observed or generated in real life so far,

02:28but in theory, if something did have negative mass, then time travel should actually be quite

02:34simple for it. Now's when death comes into the fold. Clearly, there is so much about death that

02:39we just don't understand. Like the event horizon in a black hole, there's a line between life and

02:44death that, once crossed, is impossible to return from… which is why we can never truly know.

02:50However, there are those who claim to have trodden extremely close to that line and come back.

02:56Near-death experiences often feature accounts where individuals perceive themselves outside

03:01their bodies. There are also reports of an NDE-er experiencing events out of sequence,

03:07as part of a sort of temporal dislocation. There is no firm scientific explanation for this.

03:13Among the leading theories is that any of the inexplicable things that appear to happen during

03:17an NDE are purely the result of a brain in trauma, desperately trying and failing to deal with the

03:24danger it's in. However, some have interpreted all of the out-of-body weirdness as a possible

03:29hint to death being a state that's unbound by linear time. There are then further claims that

03:36NDEs may be the first stages in human consciousness, detaching itself from the

03:41body that had hosted it, ridding itself of the mass that had, until then, weighed it down.

03:46At this point, we've stepped into the murky fields of life energy, essence, consciousness,

03:51and the soul. The stories that humankind tells itself are more often than not grounded along

03:56this particular line of thinking. Countless spiritual traditions posit that life after

04:01death generally involves the soul's ascension into higher realms, indescribable places that

04:07are beyond our earthly conceptions of the space-time continuum altogether. No mass,

04:12no time, no limits. Hinduism speaks about moksha. Buddhism talks about nirvana. Many Abrahamic

04:19faiths refer to heaven and hell. All are post-mortem existences that operate outside

04:24conventional physical and temporal frameworks. In themselves, even to simply believe in these

04:29places or scenarios could be deemed to believe in time travel. However, according to some models,

04:35we don't actually need religion or faith to match similar concepts together. Quantum mechanics,

04:40among other things, introduces entanglement as another physical means to truly beat the confines

04:46of time. In short, this is the known phenomenon that subatomic particles remain intrinsically

04:52connected across infinite distances, meaning that some actions upon those particles can happen as

04:58outside of time. This doesn't immediately offer a route towards post-death time travel,

05:03as we know that eventually our lifeless bodies break down and disappear forever.

05:08But, again, there are suggestions that some kind of transcendental being could live on. And then,

05:14if this transcendentalism is in any way connected to quantum phenomena such as entanglement,

05:20then it figures that time is no longer guiding whatever it is of us that's left behind.

05:25From the point of view of humans as we are, we may as well be travelling in time. Although,

05:30really, it's more like we'd simply be existing away from it. Orchestrated Objective Reduction,

05:36or ORC-OR, is perhaps the most famous, or infamous, contemporary scientific theory which

05:41appears to lead us along paths such as these. Proposed by Sir Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff,

05:47it suggests that consciousness is an entirely quantum creation. It isn't made via any kind

05:53of neural set-up within our brains, but is actually the product of unknown forces firing

05:58away within infinitely tiny microtubules. Humans have developed to understand consciousness as we

06:03have, but it's a much wider condition than just what's inside our heads. ORC-OR is considered

06:09highly controversial, although it does also link back to some of the greatest and most widely

06:14debated philosophies on the matter. Such as the, I think, therefore I am argument devised by René

06:20Descartes in the 1600s. Nevertheless, one interpretation of ORC-OR is seemingly that

06:26some part of us could continue to exist after we've died. A fundamental aspect of humankind,

06:31or life in general, is immortal. And therefore, purely by the infinite nature of the universe,

06:37and the physical possibility of time travel, it figures that whatever that aspect is might move

06:43through time without any border at all. Time travel as we currently think of it, in our lowly,

06:48lumbering, comparatively massive physical selves? No. But time travel along a higher plane,

06:54beyond even the general concepts of life and death entirely? Perhaps. Naturally, there's a bridge

07:00that could be taken here, between the possibilities for time travel and the likelihood of parallel

07:05universes. Talk of ascension to higher planes rings close to, say, the many-worlds interpretation,

07:11which says that endless quantum splits are forever fuelling a multiverse where every possible outcome

07:17of every imaginable event is realised. It's another route to some kind of extension to our

07:23current understanding of life. With that said, ORC-OR doesn't need a multiverse to work.

07:28Neither does biocentrism, a separate but partly comparable approach which argues that the

07:33universe is created by us, rather than we're created by the universe. Ultimately, as with

07:39so many more problems in science, the biggest puzzle remains the understanding of consciousness

07:44itself. Is it physical, metaphysical, or something else? Does it die with our bodies,

07:50or does it somehow persist? If the latter, then does it know that it survives, or is that just

07:56an irrelevant dream of humankind? Importantly, ORC-OR does not claim that life after death

08:02exists. It's been suggested that its founders, particularly Hameroff, have suggested that it

08:07does provide proof, but it is very far from confirmed. For now, traditional and conventional

08:13science just doesn't support the idea that we time travel when we die. Broadly, more scientists

08:19are more likely to arrive at nothingness rather than somethingness, whenever they attempt to

08:24explain what happens after death. However, the likes of Penrose and Hameroff aren't entirely

08:29alone, either. Alternate thinkers abound. The numbers of reported NDEs are going up,

08:34and the crossover between life and death might always represent an unknowable journey. And so,

08:40for those reasons, it's a sure bet that our humble species will continue to suspect,

08:45or hope for, something else in the great beyond. What do you think? Is there anything we missed?

08:51Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled,

08:54and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.

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