I have been a “trekkie” probably almost all my life. And like many of you, I think Star Trek: the Next Generation was the best series to-date. Like many of you, I especially like the hope for humanity’s future ST represents.
Anyways, my question. I was recently watching the ST: TNG series finale “All Good Things” on cable and a local tv station. And they mentioned the very interesting theory of “anti-time”. They said it was a “relatively recent” theory, which for the time the series is set could be now, or in our immediate future.
Is there really such a theory in physics now as anti-time? In “All Good Things” they said its relation to ordinary time is analagous to matter to anti-matter. This certainly makes sense to me at least.
I did a couple of brief searches of the internet. And so far, I can’t find “anti-time” in any context except ST: TNG. Could this really be another ingenius invention of the writers of ST? Or did they get it from some place else?
It’s not an ingenious invention of the writers of Star Trek. It’s a silly, inane invention of the writers of Star Trek. It’s just another meaningless bit of technobabble. Now, in the original series, some writers actually made some attempt at making their technobabble make sense, but by the time of Next Gen, they had pretty much given up on that.
As a non-physicist and someone who considers himself a non-trekkie who has regularly tuned into the various series over the years, (DS9 was good, all the rest were hit and miss at best), I’ll just point this out…
Matter is a, relatively speaking, well understood concept that is based in the physical universe and has a long history of scientific inquiry. Matter is, putting aside the mathematical components, generally understood to be positively charged particles which exist in a physical space and are arranged in whatever form they happen to be in. Sometimes we arrange those particles in some way, sometimes they happen randomly. Anti-Matter, as a popular concept, is understood to be a negatively charged opposite of those positively charged particles. Their actual existence seems to still be up for some debate, though I admit I am not an expert on this subject.
“Time” is, I understand it, more of an abstract/philosophical concept based more on our own perceptions of the universe around us. There is of course the concept of entropy and decay, but I don’t think that covers what you’re talking about and, though I haven’t seen this particular episode in well over a decade, I don’t think it covers how “Star Trek” generally handles the subject. “Anti-Time” can’t exist as a physical theory because “Time” only exists as an abstract concept, not a physical one. It is, as Chronos so succinctly points out, “bunk”.
I profess no expertise in the field of physics and I may or may not return to this thread depending on how technical the discussion gets.
