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Time travel has been a popular feature of science fiction for decades. From a Marty and the DeLorean to Dr. Who and his Tardis, viewers enjoy the concept of moving throughout space time. But this begs the question: is time travel possible? Possibly.
Time travel has been a popular feature of science fiction for decades. From a Marty and the DeLorean to Dr. Who and his Tardis, viewers enjoy the concept of moving throughout space time. But this begs the question: is time travel possible? Possibly.
If time travel is possible, it would be nothing like what we see in the movies. Going back in time may be impossible almost entirely. To travel back in time we would need a bridge connecting the past to the present. The only viable bridge to the past would be a wormhole -- but there are complications involving this method. Wormholes, as originally theorized by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in 1935, collapse very quickly and are not open for a period long enough to travel through. Wormholes are also predicted to be microscopic in size, rendering further useless. If there was a way to create a wormhole that would stay open long enough and be big enough to pass through, it wouldn’t be something of science fiction for decades, because you would only be able to travel back in time to the moment the wormhole was created. So altogether traveling to the distant past seems highly unlikely.
If time travel is possible, it would be nothing like what we see in the movies. Going back in time may be impossible almost entirely. To travel back in time we would need a bridge connecting the past to the present. The only viable bridge to the past would be a wormhole -- but there are complications involving this method. Wormholes, as originally theorized by Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen in 1935, collapse very quickly and are not open for a period long enough to travel through. Wormholes are also predicted to be microscopic in size, rendering further useless. If there was a way to create a wormhole that would stay open long enough and be big enough to pass through, it wouldn’t be something of science fiction for decades, because you would only be able to travel back in time to the moment the wormhole was created. So altogether traveling to the distant past seems highly unlikely.
Traveling to the future on the other hand is a much more possible scenario. One theory of travel to the future is time dilation. Time dilation means that we experience time slower at faster speeds. Traveling down the highway at 80 miles per hour will not affect the time you experience, but if you spend an extended amount of time in a space shuttle
Traveling to the future on the other hand is a much more possible scenario. One theory of travel to the future is time dilation. Time dilation means that we experience time slower at faster speeds. Traveling down the highway at 80 miles per hour will not affect the time you experience, but if you spend an extended amount of time in a space shuttle
Earth you would time travel into the future. To travel at the speed of 17,500 miles per hour it would take roughly 110 years to travel one second into the future. To make any sizeable dilation to time you would need to be going close to the speed of light. With the technology we have today getting a ship to go close to light speed is currently not possible. But there are other ways to travel into the future. A stable wormhole could possibly take you into the future, assuming that the wormhole acted as a tunnel attached to two fixed points in time. Also you could travel into the future with cryogenic freezing. Cryogenics is the low temperature freezing of people in liquid nitrogen in an attempt to preserve their bodies. This is typically used for people who have already passed with the hope that future sciences will be able to revive them. Some scientists are skeptics of this method of preservation because your brain cells will still decay, however slowly, while you are frozen. This also has never been tested on living humans so it may not be very safe.
Earth you would time travel into the future. To travel at the speed of 17,500 miles per hour it would take roughly 110 years to travel one second into the future. To make any sizeable dilation to time you would need to be going close to the speed of light. With the technology we have today getting a ship to go close to light speed is currently not possible. But there are other ways to travel into the future. A stable wormhole could possibly take you into the future, assuming that the wormhole acted as a tunnel attached to two fixed points in time. Also you could travel into the future with cryogenic freezing. Cryogenics is the low temperature freezing of people in liquid nitrogen in an attempt to preserve their bodies. This is typically used for people who have already passed with the hope that future sciences will be able to revive them. Some scientists are skeptics of this method of preservation because your brain cells will still decay, however slowly, while you are frozen. This also has never been tested on living humans so it may not be very safe.
So maybe time travel over vast distances is not something we can attain in our lifetime. Maybe we never will achieve travel through the fourth dimension. At least we can rest assured that we are always moving into the future -- a place where we should keep our eyes on.
So maybe time travel over vast distances is not something we can attain in our lifetime. Maybe we never will achieve travel through the fourth dimension. At least we can rest assured that we are always moving into the future -- a place where we should keep our eyes on.
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Sources:
Contributor, N. T. (n.d.). What is a Wormhole? Retrieved March 17, 2017, from http://www.space.com/20881-wormholes.html
U. (2015, December 07). What Are Wormholes? Retrieved March 17, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF8Ehk7JbkY
D. (2017, March 14). Is Time Travel Possible? | COLOSSAL QUESTIONS. Retrieved March 17, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMV4FAyq76I
T.(2013, October 21). Is time travel possible? - Colin Stuart. Retrieved March 17, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7H3ksmxwpWc
Is Time Travel Really Possible? (2017, February 28). Retrieved March 17, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQC3ErD1YwE&t=42s
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