I suppose this topic could just as easily be posted in the 'Astrology & Cosmology', 'Mathematics' or even the 'Pseudoscience' thread. So you will have to excuse me if it seems out of place here. Aboard the USS-Physics.
I suppose my question is this - sort of this: Does information travel through time?
We all know, or at least assume, that physical properties cannot travel through time but what about data? I only ask becasue, if you think about it, data does not travel through space. Yet it travels none-the-less. Lets say Jack decides to write a letter to Jill who lives in another country. He writes some simple piece of information like "Today is Monday, April the 25th and it is raining where I live and my favorite color is red." Only Jack has incrypted the words in a secret code that only Jill can decipher. Jack mails the letter and it takes one week to reach Jill but within that week Jack dies or is struck over the head and he suffers amnesia and what ever inormation that has been written down in the letter has been deleted. At least from Jacks end.
Now the letter - the stamp, the envelope, the paper, the ink, the egraving of the ink - all consist of physical properties that are, in fact, traveling through space. But the information that is represented by the letter - the actual language/communication/data that can only be deciphered by Jill - The information comes back into existence one week later. (Today is Monday, April the 25th and it is raining where I live and my favorite color is red) Does that constitute as time travel?
How about something more simple: On computer A you write a program Pong and you save it to a disc. After you have ejected the disc you destroy Computer A. From there you wait ten days or two days or just thirty seconds and then you insert the very same disc into computer B. Again, the disc is traveling through space but the actual Pong program is merely data. It is not a tangible thing therefore it cannot and does not travel through space. Did Pong just move through time
Or...what if...You don't destroy computer A - what if Jack didn't suffer amnesia and, in both cases, the information still exist in its point of origin -and - at its point of destination at the "Same" time? Perhaps instead of traveling, information simply expands. But not through space - it expands through time.
If anybody has any thoughts here....please help me out.