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What's the first letter of our middle name?

"is it a wormhole type activator?"

There are a lot of proposed methods, likely to be more as we learn more, I like the concept of a "warp drive" the most.

"how much energy does that require (1.21 gigawatts)?" depending upon the method, where it comes to the hypothetical construction of operational warp drives, the cost was shaved down by more than half.

"Is the time travel a physical phenomenon? If it is on the subatomic level, what is consciousness? Will a "reassembled" version of a person still contain all of the memories, thoughts, personality, knowledge, etc?"

1. All things which affect the physical world are physical by necessity.
2. Consciousness is merely the part of the mind that experiences it's existence, all mental activity from all mental faculties, and all the data from sensory organs are merely received and experienced by the consciousness, so no, it does not contain anything like thoughts, feelings, memories, personality, identity, etc.
3. It is merely the thing that, as long as you have it and it is active, allows you to experience being alive, or to simply just experience being, period. I strongly suspect that a specific component of the brain is responsible for it. That consciousness is physical, material, natural. I'd be perfectly fine with calling this part of the brain the "seat of the soul", if it were possible, transplanting it into another brain will allow the same soul to experience being an entirely different being, entirely different, as in, in all traits of the body and mind, aside from the part that gets to experience being that being, of course, such a vast difference in everything except that "great receiver" which is the "soul's throne" could be argued to make them a completely different being than the one they used to be, as there'd be almost nothing meaningful in common (aside from that one thing which was transplanted). Anyways, that would be the closest thing to a technologically achieved reincarnation.
4. If one were to create an exact copy of someone, it would be an exact copy, like in the game "soma", they'd have all the exact same qualities as the person they were copied from at the moment the copy's template was made, so they'd be indistinguishable from the person whose template they were created from in body and mind, remembering a past they never had, the past of the original, and be identical to them at the moment the original was used to create the template, and the copy was created from the template, after that, all differences are down to different environmental experiences, but if you made two copies and exposed tem to the exact same experiences, they'd both react in the exact same way.

"What is a soul? Can a consciousness/soul exist in two places at once? (this is much like the clone question)"
I explained what I assume a "soul" is, as for the other question, it's actually different from the clone question: the clone and original, assuming they both exist at once, each would possess their own consciousness/soul and each be receiving their own experience of reality, meanwhile, for one soul/consciousness to experience two existences at once would certainly be an interesting idea to explore, two different brains, each transmitting to the same brain-part which is responsible for taking in the experience of existing, thus letting someone truly live two different lives at once, as two truly different people, would such a thing be possible? I recall this movie that was "the matrix" before "the matrix" - it was called "dark city" and I recommend that you watch it, it's not exactly this, but it approaches a similar ground in the ball-park of this philosophical idea.

"Is time travel more mental? That is the route I am going with my theory - and I tie into the multiple parallel universe idea as well.
But mental time travel does not allow for interaction unless there is the ability to "take over" a physical form at some point - think ghosts, etc, that do not have the ability to communicate with people."
So, the idea of sending the information stored in one's head back to another brain that existed at the previous point in time, such that the past's recipient has what is essentially a prophecy about the future, or access to some knowledge that wouldn't be known by the mind of origin until some point in the future. It's not a person who travels back in time, but information. Interesting as it would be easier to send something like data back in time than it would be to send back something larger and more complex.

"Also, since Stephen Hawkins didn't get any visitors (neither did Sheldon on Big Bang Theory) at his party, it seems improbable that the current generation or two has created the ability to physically time travel."

God, I hate this objection.

Okay, Imagine I'm someone who lives in a world where I have access to time travel, I read a book that tells me about this party that was thrown in the past for time travelers, which had famously received no visitors, I hop in my time machine and go back to that time in order to attend the party, I attend the party, and then head back to the future, but it's a different future, as my trip to that moment had naturally altered the flow of history from that point on.
Meanwhile, in the future I started in, the books still say that no one had attended the party that was thrown for time travelers, but since my departure, this future is from then on permanently without my presence in it, as I am now instead in an alternate version of that point in time, the one which diverged from that point in time which I had travelled back to in order to attend the party thrown for people like myself.

It's kind of like the Fermi Paradox, it's a misnomer, as it is not actually a paradox, the anthropic principle is enough to justify why we haven't made first contact yet, without needing to resort to any crazy justifications, we haven't met them yet because we haven't, regardless of how probable first contact should be between aliens and us, there still has to be a time before when we do make this first contact, and we exist in it. Space is vast and dangerous and expensive to travel through, they won't be going anywhere unless they know it's worth the trip, there wasn't much of a reason to seek us out until very recently on a scale of cosmic time, perhaps they will visit us tomorrow, perhaps they are here right now. Think about it this way, we've had two world wars and are about to have the third, we have mapped the world with the most advanced technology, yet somewhere in the world right now there probably is an island that hasn't been discovered, and it may have people on it that haven't ever encountered other people, or (more likely) had made contact with other people, but had not since left any evidence of their existence with any people in the world aside from theirs, nobody is in a rush to discover these people, nobody has any reason to, nor would they likely have any desire to go out and see if the world is larger than they thought, and if there are others like them in it.

Now, this is the earth, much smaller, easier to explore and map out, etc. the universe is fucking huge, and full of all manner of things that interfere with looking at it. The simple act of looking at the universe is almost impossible beyond a very small bubble that exists around our solar system, because of the great distance of it, and even that is full of pollution of all kinds that prevent us from getting a clear sight of it, even with the most advanced technology we have made for such a purpose. So let's understand that even if they were all around us, and listening intently for signs of new life bearing planets, that the prospect of them so much as catching our signals in all the cosmic noise is extremely small, furthermore, they'd also have to recognize it for what it is, and not what they want it to be, before they can justify the costs and risks of sending some explorers out to search for us, and even then, after the expedition was sent out to find us, we might not be contacted by them, ever, they might fail, and we might not be worth another try. Naturally, they might caution other species they've encountered not to try to get to us either, and given how common such advisements are likely to be, they'd likely be listened to by tat other species.

I think that making contact would largely be a matter of luck and happenstance, and that maybe not making contact with other species may be a good thing for us, especially with out culture being as vulnerable to outsiders as it is now. If we can't handle the illegal aliens of the terrestrial nature, how could we hope to deal with the more fantastical version that is extraterrestrial life?

What we are seeing now is not a paradox, in fact, it is quite probable, even if Fermi's calculations are 100% on point.

I looked into this and it checks out. AWKW is communicating from 48 minutes ago and this seems to be increasing at a steady pace.

Also yes time traveler, dial gayer now than we previously thought was even possible.