Speaking strictly from a theoretical and hypothetical perspective, let us consider for a moment an alternative use for the block chain technology. Some of this post will seem fanciful, but it is something that has stuck in my mind for the past few days as, if nothing else, a mental exercise. This post makes no declarations of fact, only rather of speculation and is just something to talk about.
Let us pose a scenario where, sometime in the future, we discover technology capable of providing time travel. That is, technology that affords physical movement between alternative time streams. For the purposes of this discussion, let us also assume that multiple time streams actually exist. We can also assume that the infinite number of time streams could correspond to individual "universes" in which one stream would be determined by the state of all particles in that universe.
Now, a traveler from a native stream, let's say the "here and now" stream, decides to move into some other stream. We will forego the specifics of "how" this could occur and just assume the technology exists to do so. For example, let us take a time stream from our present universe at this exact moment and allow the traveler to move forward into a different stream 10 minutes from now. The traveler then returns to the here and now stream. How could such a traveler be assured that they returned to the stream from which they came? How could they be assured they arrived exactly where they started and did not end up in an adjacent timeline separated by milliseconds?
Given that block chain is essentially a global state machine, it seems plausible that the state of the machine could provide an addressable instant in which the traveler could verify their position within the "here and now" universe. Although block chain transactions would need to be performed on a much more instantaneous scale to reduce the margin of error required by the traveler's mechanism of travel, it would seem that verification of a known state of the block chain in the traveler's universe against some locally held copy could act as a litmus for the current timeline.
To put this another way, we can consider the instantaneous positioning of the traveler as they return to an expected universe's time stream. Verification of the locally held copy of the block chain against the globally available block chain, would match only if the traveler returned exactly to the moment in which they left. It is only in this moment that the state of the chain would match that held by the traveler.
There is a huge assumption here. First, I am making the assumption that there is not an infinite number of universes that could not, even if by completely randomness, contain an exact duplicate of the "here and now" state of the chain. This assumption is conceded as a breaking point in the argument. Secondly, an assumption is made that alternate timelines could not generate, by random, an entirely different chain with identical hashes. This too, is a conceded point.
The interesting aspect of this discussion is that, if we consider the fixed state of a block chain at any given instant, we potentially have, for the first time in history, an addressable measure of the state of THIS time stream, and an addressable record of THIS instant.
As block chain miners continue to reconcile transactions, it seems that even their states at any given instance is unique and the hashes afforded could, at least in theory, represent addressable moments in time. Let's say I have a hashing farm. Each machine in that farm is churning away attempting to locate a hash for a given block. Some of the miners capable of 16 TH/s. Each of those hash attempts could represent an instant in time, all occurring simultaneously from within their own "universes." Each of those hashes representing an instant in its world-space on the scale of fractions of a second. Could these failed hash attempts be somehow categorized into a marker that could be remembered and referenced as a state-machine for all particles in the "here and now" universe? Each attempt providing an unalterable address of the state of all particles within the system in that timeline. Could these addresses, the hash signatures, be used as reference to the traveler in some way to determine their position within a timeline?
Perhaps this topic is closer to science fiction than science, but it is an interesting mental exercise. Could a globally definitive state-machine provide a mechanism for identifying state of displacement of a traveler within and external to a given known state, even if that displacement exists purely in the theoretical? I would love to hear what others think even if this whole line of reasoning is abstract and fruitless.
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