Does The Past Still Exist?

In The Langoliers by Stephen King, a plane flies through a strange wave of light and ends up landing at a deserted airport. Suddenly, strange creatures start consuming everything, including the ground. They surmise that they have somehow flown just slightly into the past, and the creatures are destroying the present. Once the Langoliers are finished, there is nothing left. The present has disappeared, consumed.

We think that there is a past because we can remember what happened and see the artifacts of the past — whether it is everything that is around us (that coffee shop on the corner that you go to was there yesterday, so it will likely be there again today) or our memories. We see the present, and we see the past in its artifacts. But does the past still “exist” as a place?

Much science fiction focuses on time travel. Quantum mechanics has shown that particles can travel back in time at the quantum level. Even the second law of thermodynamics states that entropy increases over time, and in the end, the universe will dissolve into nothingness and disorganization, uniformity. But life has anti-entropic effects. The fact that anti-entropic effects can be observed means that maybe time is malleable.

We are told by investment firms that past performance is no guarantee of future results. If you are at a roulette table and the ball rolls to red 100…