Things to Remember When Time Traveling

The year is 2019, or maybe 1600, or maybe there isn't even a calendar system in place yet. There is no BC or AD because, you know, it hasn't happened yet. But somehow, you've managed to travel back in time.

Okay, first things first, don't panic. However you manage to do this, I'm not really sure, but nice job! Now you're quickly going to realize how much the past actually sucks. There's no clean water, there's no Febreze to cover up the terrible smells, and all the luxuries that you took advantage of are nowhere to be found. No one understands what a laptop is, and the idea of even a light bulb is a concept as foreign as the jeans you just showed up in.

You're immediately going to be drawing attention from almost everyone around you. So what exactly do you have to do in order to get society headed in the right direction? And can you make the future a place that is better for all of humanity?

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First things first, language. Let's assume you're able to speak English in the modern world; English is one of the most universal languages spoken around the planet. But even if you've only gone back a couple hundred years, you're still going to struggle to make conversation with almost anyone. If you've ever read anything by Shakespeare, you'll see how different and honestly just how confusing the language was.

Invent the printing press thousands of years before it was actually invented. Take the dictionary you've brought with you; you quickly mass-produce modern English, and there you go! You've revolutionized language, pushing us ahead thousands of years already.

Okay, also we're going to need a number system for counting and math and stuff. Written numbers first appeared over 40,000 years ago and predate written language by tens of thousands of years. But it definitely wasn't the greatest! It's pretty simple to tell that these are three circles; these are four squares. But quickly, what number is this? The answer is who cares; I don't have the time to count that. It's 53, by the way! Instead of using this number system for tens of thousands of more years, how about we skip all of that and head straight to what we use today—Arabic numerals?

Those are the numbers you're familiar with. Like, the number five is much easier than counting lines for hours on end, and there's only ten numbers you need to memorize. One of them represents nothing; it's zero! Don't try and divide it; we've been trying forever, and you just can't do it. There are also things like fractions and decimals and irrational numbers, but we'll let everyone else figure those out on their own. We have better things to do!

Now that we have language and numbers out of the way, and people are functioning, we need units! First off, we've figured out that light is the fastest thing in the universe, and we've somehow managed to actually calculate its speed. It's a pretty good thing to know; it's going to prove really useful when we discover some things later on. But wait, no one knows what a meter is.

Take a pendulum. Wait! These haven't been invented yet either. Anyway, invent pendulums and take credit for it. Create a pendulum with the length that takes one second to swing from end to end, and you'll have the length of one meter. But we don't have the length of a second either. Just for simplicity's sake for now, it's the amount of time it takes you to say one Mississippi.

Divide the length of a meter by 100, and you have the length of one centimeter. Also, there's the thing called temperature—it's how hot or cold things are. Take some water, wait for it to get really cold, and eventually, it'll turn into a solid. You'll need to assign a number value to whatever temperature this happens at. If you choose for that to be zero, congratulations, you have just invented Celsius!

Take the same water, now frozen, and put it into a container above a fire. Eventually, it'll begin to boil. For all intents and purposes, this is 100 degrees Celsius. You know how pretty much every basic unit of measurement you'll need for anything you do. Civilization is much better off now and is much more efficient, but none of this matters if people aren't alive long enough to learn and make the discoveries that will push society forward.

Health is super important, and this is where you'll bring all the knowledge you have into play. Germs are a thing; you know this! Everyone else doesn't. They are quite literally everywhere, so make sure people are washing their hands and bodies as frequently as they can. Getting something like a small cold thousands of years ago could be enough to kill somebody. Fight germs with hygiene and antibiotics.

But you don't have any antibiotics! Penicillin works wonders. Take some moldy bread, throw it under a microscope, and if you see this weird-looking hand thing, that's called penicillin. This can then be extracted from the mold, purified, and boom! You have penicillin. It's super effective against infections because it stops the other bacteria from reproducing, making you healthy again.

Viruses are like germs, but they can't reproduce on their own. They need a host like you to grow and spread. Viruses spread diseases like the plague. To prevent this from happening, vaccinations are necessary! Vaccines help keep the body prepared for multiple diseases that exist by building up an immunity to them beforehand. Luckily, you're in the past, and no one knows what these are, so you don't have to worry about anti-vaxxers screaming at you for trying to keep the world safe.

To make vaccines, draw a small culture of the virus and then heat it up. The heat will then kill the virus! But now, since it's dead, it can be used to teach your body to fight it, creating a resistance to the virus. Take the dead virus and inject it into your body. People are going to think you're insane, but in reality, you're the one preventing them from getting smallpox, so just do it; they'll thank you later!

You probably have some cows by now and have figured out that they have milk. The problem is that these germs we just learned about are still in the milk, and you definitely don't want to drink that. Take the milk, heat it up right to below its boiling point, and let it sit for a minute. You've just invented pasteurization and created clean milk for everyone to drink.

Now let's talk about science! Here's an equation that will change the way people see the world. Isaac Newton came up with it, but no one knows that you can take credit for this. It's an equation powerful enough to define gravity itself, and it can even take you to the moon! Seriously, we did that!

But don't forget the basic building blocks of everything—atoms. Atoms consist of a nucleus at the core made out of neutrally charged neutrons and positively charged protons. They're surrounded by negatively charged electrons. These are going to prove to be useful in a minute. Atoms with the same number of protons and electrons are considered electrically neutral; otherwise, they'll have a positive or negative charge.

This is also most likely the first time anyone's going to hear the word electric in their lives, and you're about to change everything for them! Technology is a thing, and there's a lot to cover. You're probably still using water wheels or coal to create energy, but electricity is single-handedly the one invention that is going to propel civilization into the modern era.

Instead of having to live by rivers for water wheels or near mines for coal, electricity will allow you to live anywhere you want and have energy transferred to you at the speed of light. This will cause mankind to spread at the fastest rates possible. Go to the sites of any lightning strikes and look for lodestone, or look for magnetite on beaches; they're magnetic!

Get something to rotate, wrap that rotating thing in coils of wire, place your magnetic stones in the middle, and you'll generate electricity. Congratulations! You've just discovered electricity and AC currents at the same time. You now have the foundation of the modern world, and you did it so quickly!

Here are some more inventions that'll prove to be useful. Create a magnet that can move on its own, and you've just invented the compass! You can now have directions to anywhere on the planet without having to rely on the North Star. Take your newfound electricity and run it through tungsten—now you have light bulbs! If you run powerful electricity back and forth through a wire strong enough, you've invented radio.

Transmitting radio waves at a certain frequency will allow you to send signals to and from multiple antennas, allowing for Lightspeed communication. You can also take high-frequency radio waves, send them out, and see how long it takes for them to bounce back to you. You have just invented radar!

There's a lot of inventions that are going to be super helpful, but there's also some that you should avoid. You introduced the world of atoms to everyone, and that's gonna change a lot. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, just converted. Use this super special equation that you discovered to convert between the two.

A very small amount of mass can be converted to a lot of energy. The energy released during fission or fusion of atoms can be used for electricity and have many other positive impacts. But it can also be used for destruction. By bombarding uranium-235 with neutrons, you will induce a nuclear chain reaction. If you have enough uranium, this is the result. These weapons have caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people and have almost resulted in the end of humanity on multiple occasions. Do not let these weapons be made!

Most of our inventions have been made to reduce the amount of work we need to do in our daily lives. Pretty much, we work to find inventions that make life easier and, in turn, make us lazier. A lot of inventions throughout history have had the same effect.

Why would I walk across the world when I could create a harness and use a horse? A compass is perfect for figuring out where things are without having to leave signs along the way. Lightbulbs are great because we don't have to keep fires lit throughout the night. Radio was useful so that we can communicate long distances without having to physically make that journey. But most of these are saving us physical energy.

What about mental labor? Jobs where you have to perform complex mental tasks day in and day out? What if you could make a machine that can perform your work for you?

Wait! That's what you're using right now. Letters are used to create words in the same way logic gates are used to create computations. With enough logic gates connected in the proper way, you'll have something with enough power to do complex computations at the speed of light. We call these computers!

Connect multiple of these computers together, and you'll have created the internet! It took until 1903 to invent a vehicle that could fly. Being able to take to the skies is one thing that will allow you to conquer the planet quickly! Use airfoils that are shaped in a way that allows for air to generate an upward force—it's called lift.

Attach these wings to something with an engine; if you can move fast enough in one direction, you'll eventually start lifting off the ground and begin flying! Congratulations! You've discovered the art of flight! You can now travel to almost anywhere on earth.

If you don't have one yet, here's a map. This is our world, and it's all we have. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, things started to go wrong. Greenhouse gases occur naturally; we actually need them to survive to keep Earth warm enough for us to live without freezing off.

But due to the past few centuries, the world is currently reaching levels that are starting to get out of hand—levels that haven't been matched in millions of years. The climate is changing faster than it ever has! Our energy sources are not sustainable long-term; the planet as a whole is warming, with the hottest years on record topping each other year after year after year. It's all our fault!

Relying on fossil fuels and other non-renewable energy sources are one of the main reasons why the cars we created and mass-manufactured have been spitting out toxic gases into our atmosphere for the past century. There's literally a hole in our ozone layer because of what we've done.

Work on finding clean, renewable energy sources from the start; you'll actually save the planet! If changes aren't made, then there might not be a future worth waiting for. The thing is, people don't really care, and that sucks. You have all the resources necessary; all the knowledge we have is at your disposal.

The planet today is dying, so if you're going to do anything in the past, save us from ourselves! Inventing everything in this video might be a little tough. Before this video, I honestly couldn't tell you how complex logic gates work or how to create them. But luckily, Brilliant had my back.

They have an online course on logic, and it even has a section on logic gates themselves. It has everything you need to understand the technology necessary to build computers and figure out how they make decisions. Brilliant has courses on everything math and science-related. If you're capable of going back in time, study up on their courses on calculus and classical mechanics first— they're important building blocks to note when starting civilization all over again.

There's something for everyone, and they make learning interesting and simple with daily challenges to keep you on top of your game. It's a very effective way to reinforce the concepts you have learned so you can apply them elsewhere. If you're interested in learning more about the topics that I covered in this video, head over to brilliant.org/aperture for a free trial.

The first 200 subscribers to check it out get 20% off of a premium subscription. It will allow you to take as many of Brilliant's courses as you'd like.

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