Time Travel
In this article, Rylie Revercomb addresses a scientific theory about theoretical time travel through black holes.
Is Time Travel Possible through black holes?
By: Rylie Revercomb
A lot of people enjoy space. There are tons of stars, galaxies, planets, and so much more that we have not even discovered yet. But there is one natural phenomenon that is still quite a mystery; the black hole. And there are some very interesting theories about the powerful space vacuums, too, like the theory of time travel through black holes. This article covers the beginning of this theory to the present time and describes what we are trying to do about this in the future. This is something that you’ll want to stick around for.
Time travel has been considered for many, many, many years, However, scientists normally dismiss the thought of it… that is until scientist Roy Kerr changed everything. It all started in the 1960s, when Roy Kerr proposed the idea that time travel through black holes was possible, but only if you traveled through a specific type of black hole. The black holes that Kerr was referring to are called supermassive rotating black holes. In fact, according to an article by Roy Kerr, he found that in a supermassive black hole, a singularity still forms, but in the middle is a small hole, which scientists today believe we can possibly dive through, without being stretched to death! In the present time, we know that time travel is theoretically possible, but people in the 1960s were not all too fond of the idea of time travel; it wasn’t until the 1970s that “The Kerr Solution” started to become popular. For example, the article also notes that people did not take any interest in the Kerr solution until scientists in the '70s found supermassive black holes in the center of every galaxy. This helped people see that the Kerr solution could be possible, and that our ticket is through these special black holes.
However, not all people were very happy about the new popularity of The Kerr Solution, and Kerr explains that Kip Thorne and his colleagues set out to prove the solution wrong. But after much research, he shows that “They studied the situation from all sides, but were forced to the unwelcome conclusion that there really was nothing in the equations to prevent time travel, provided (and it is a big proviso) you have the technology to manipulate black holes.” They realized that they had no proof against Kerr's theory and, therefore, they just had to shut up and sit back to watch it unfold.
Present Day Time Travel is going much more smoothly than it did back in the '70s, but there are still some bumps in the road-- like how current-day spaceships would take 73,000 years just to travel to the nearest star! Roy Kerr truly sparked an incredible idea into our minds, but the problem with this theory is that we don’t have the materials we’d need to do it. Take Kerr’s article, for example. It says, “...The technology required is awesome, involving taking what amounts to a black hole at a trip through space at a sizeable fraction at the speed of light! We never said it was going to be easy!” And this is true. We don’t even have half the technology needed to complete this feat!
So what do we need? Well, we would need an engine that is very near the speed of light which, as you know, we do not have. In fact, world-breaking records are not even close to the speed of light! The fastest spacecraft record ever was one of NASA’s probes, breaking a world record of over 150,000 miles on its way to the sun. But that is not even close to what we need, according to NASA, “In miles per hour, light speed is, well, a lot: about 670,616,629 mph.” This speed is way beyond our reach at this point in life. Even so, scientists are still hard at work trying to figure out how to make this happen. They will not let light speed, or anything else, stand in their way! Kerr’s article proves this. The author wrote that “Thorne and his colleagues have since worked out some solutions of the equations which *may* allow for wormholes that can be traveled through safely.” This proves that, after working for decades, scientists find possible solutions. It is possible that, in time, we could travel through a Black Hole! We have come a long, long, long way since the '60s and '70s, and with much, much, much research we could figure out a way to do this… in the next hundred years, that is.
Even today, time travel is still melting brains and confusing the public, as scientists try to figure out how to accomplish it, but what about in the future? What will the future have in store for time travel? This is the thing that many people have been asking about. After all, the technology required to build this is most likely not going to be available to us in the next hundred years or so, so what about the future? According to an article by Edinformatics, all that we need to make this possible is a fast enough engine, one that is quick enough to go through the black hole so fast that the crew barely feels a thing. But, the engine that we would need to make this happen would be a light-speed engine, (or near-light-speed), so this will definitely be in the future if it happens at all! Another thing about the future of time travel would be the wormhole part of this equation. How would we control the wormholes, even if we managed to get through a black hole? Well, this I do not have a complete answer to. Wormholes are crazy, and very hard to predict. It would be like if I was trying to predict the weather, but I lived in a bunker with no knowledge of the outside world. Scientists are trying to figure this out though and, maybe, if we get more advanced technology, then we could predict it.
A final question about this topic is: how long would it take to travel to the nearest supermassive black hole, even with a light-speed engine? According to NASA, “If Voyager were to travel to the center of our Galaxy, it would take more than 450,000,000 years to travel, But If it could travel at the speed of light, it would still take over 26,000 years to arrive!” That means that we would have to have those special freezing pods if we wanted to survive the trip to the nearest black hole. Even though this kind of demotes the article, it seems that the possibility of any of this happening is probably near zero. However, hopefully, with a hundred years or so of work, we can figure this all out, and see for ourselves if this theory actually checks out.
It is hard to see this theory working out in the future. After all, we don’t have the technology to achieve time travel. The beginning gave us an idea. Here, in the present, we have hope for this idea, but who knows what the future has to say about it? Perhaps, if we have more people to work on this concept, and we get more resources, we could prove to the world that we can time travel through these supermassive black holes. I believe that, if we really do try, we could get to the nearest black hole, and we could time travel. Although, this is just coming from a random high schooler, and not a professional scientist.
