There is something about time travel that is so alluring that we just can’t let the idea go. Maybe it’s because of the ability to undo any wrongs that it offers or the ability to foresee everything in advance.
That’s why it has been one of the hottest trends (and kind of overused) in our countless movies, TV shows and novels and we just can’t wait for it to actually happen in reality.
Well technically, we are constantly time travelling into the future, every second, every minute. But that’s not the kind of time travel we’re interested in, are we? We want the good stuff, to be able to travel to any time, forward or back.
So, could time travel ever be possible? Do the laws of physics allow it to happen? Or are we going to always have to satisfy our time travelling cravings watching movies? Well, the answer is: yes, it’s possible. But don’t get excited just yet.
Time Travel To The Future
Let’s look at time travel to the future. While there are many theories as to how it can be done, let me talk about the two most common ones. I will try to keep it as simple as possible.
Travelling Close To The Speed of Light
Einstein’s theory of special relativity states that time passes at different rates for two people who are moving relative to one another. However, this difference only becomes noticeable when the speeds involved are closer to the speed of light.
You might already know that speed of light is the fastest anything can travel in the universe and it is very, very difficult to reach that speed, technologically speaking.
But let’s say, you did manage to build a spaceship that can travel at like, 99.5% speed of light. Then you leave Earth and cruise at that speed for 5 years before returning home. Upon returning, you would notice that, the world has not advanced 5 years but 50 years! And all your friends have become old.
This happens because as you are travelling at speeds closer to the speed of light, time slows down for you considerably relative to the people back home, for whom, it stays the same. Therefore, you experience just 5 years of time while they experience 50 years! This essentially means that you travelled into the future.
Orbiting A Black Hole
If you have watched the movie Interstellar, you must be aware of this already. Basically what happens is that objects in the universe with an extreme gravitational pull also slow down time considerably for any objects that are near to them.
Black holes have some of the strongest gravitational pulls in the universe. The greater the pull, the greater the difference in time. So, in theory, you could use this to travel to the future.
For this, you would need to locate the nearest black hole and head in its direction. Once there, you would need to orbit around it and head back home. Depending on its gravity, that one orbit could be months or years for people on Earth while you would experience only a fraction of that time.
If you wanted to travel even further into the future, all you need to do would be to take more revolutions around the black hole. You would need to be in perfect orbit though or you would get sucked in!
Time Travel To The Past
This one is where things get really tricky. While technically, time travel to the past may not be impossible per say, but for all intents and purposes, it sure looks that it is highly improbable.
Many scientists believe that it is just impossible and that time flows in only one direction. This also explains why we have yet to meet a time traveller from the future because nature just doesn’t let it happen.
There would be all sorts of paradoxes if people could travel to the past, the most famous being the grandfather paradox where if you went to the past and killed your grandfather, you wouldn’t be born and therefore you couldn’t have gone to the past to kill him in the first place.
There is one theory that allows for it but it is a highly speculative one which involves creating a wormhole and accelerating one mouth of that wormhole to the speed of light. That would still not allow you to travel further back in time than the point it was created. So, I see no point. Plus it is just technologically impossible at this point.
Yes Time Travel is possible but only forward, backward is impossible.
That's what I said too :)
I would just want to tell myself in the past to buy all the BTC I could afford :)
wouldn't we all? :D
I remember an exercise I had given to my students long time ago, where they computed that reaching a speed of 0.999999998 times the speed of light would allow to get to the center of our galaxy in less than 40 years. On Earth, this would have meant more than 60000 years ;)
The tricky part of the calculation is that the spacecraft cannot accelerate too quickly, without killing the people on board because of too many g's in their face. Therefore, you need to account for this. In principle, it takes a year to reach speeds close to the speed of light if the acceleration equals 1 g.
From there, the only problem can be the energy necessary to maintain an acceleration equal to 1g during a year.
oh yes, I remember Stephen hawking talk about this as well. Forgot to mention that part in the post. Thanks for pointing this out :)
I didn't know about Stephen Hawking mentioning this. But the exercise is very common in special relativity books. I have by far not invented it ;)
hehe sounds interesting. I would like to learn it too :D
The only reference I have is a book in French. I cannot find anything on the web. I may write a post on it next week, if you want. That is a funny topic :)
@sauravrungta
Very well compiled and really intresting.
In fact, in India mythology, there are very interesting stories on time travel.
By reading the article, especially the Einsteen's theory, I recollected one of the stories related to King "Kakudmi"
Revati was his Daughter and was so beautiful that when she was at marriageable age, Kakudmi, the king, thinking no one upon earth was worthy enought to marry her and went to the Creator himself, Lord Brahma, to seek his advice about a suitable husband for his daughter.
When they arrived, Brahma was listening to a musical performance, so they waited patiently. After the performance was finished, Kakudmi made his request and presented the list of his shortlisted candidates.
Brahma laughed loudly, and explained that time runs differently on different planes of the existence. During that short time of musical performance, 27 chatur-yugas (a cycle of four yugas, totalling 108 yugas, or Ages of Man) had passed on earth.
Brahma said to Kakudmi, "O King, all those whom you may have decided within the core of your heart to accept as your son-in-law have died in the course of time. Twenty-seven chatur-yugas have already passed. Those upon whom you may have already decided are now gone, and so are their sons, grandsons and other descendants. You cannot even hear about their names.
I believe so, some even say aliens/extra-terrestrials/inter-dimensionals are humans (or an evolved form of humans) from the far distant future. If you believe in aliens that is.
In my opinion linear time is an illusion, all threads of time are connected, the past/present/future is happening this very moment.
Ever heard of the Mandela effect? This would probably be an example of other dimensional activities taking place. Different dimensional time-lines start to overlap one another.
Of course, this is all to entertain ones own thoughts, it's up to you to decide what to believe or not.
Oh yeah, I have heard of that theory before and is really fascinating, isn't it?
"DOC, DOC!!!"
"What is it Marty??"
"In the future there is something called Steemit which has cryto currency!"
"Great Scott!"
Is it from Doctor Who? Coz I haven't watched it.
That's Back to the Future ;)
There's 3 movies 1985 to 1990, all three are quite fun!
Nah It's Back to the future, it's an awesome classic! But they got almost everything wrong for 2015
Nice!
I like your work keep it up
I follow you, let's work together!
Thanks :)
Time travel is always very intresting .
Upvoted.
Yes, it's fascinating :)
Laws are ment to be broken. So is it for the "laws of nature" too. Or better said: We don´t fully understand the laws yet, so there can be a way to do this we don´t know yet.
I agree with the later part. It might be that we don't fully understand the laws yet and things could change.
I am not sure if we can brake the laws of nature, but i am sure with a better understanding we can use them to our advantage.
We have had experiences close to this. We drove to Vermont, two hours away. We had breakfast and did some sightseeing, then decided to drive back home. We left Vermont at 1:00 p.m. and looked down at the clock.....it was already 3:30 p.m. and we had only gone about 45 to 50 miles...we hadn't stopped anywhere......this has happened to us several times on several different trips away from home where we have hours we cannot account for?????
I wonder what it could be!! That sounds strange.
We have no clue. We take pictures on our outings and check the times they were taken....we note gas stops, or food stops. There are hours unaccounted for and we still aren't sure. One day was a 9 hour drive and only 6 can be accounted for.....where were we??
That sounds really creepy! Maybe you should video record the whole journey. That might help.
Good idea!!! I will post about it if we do ;)
Cool :)
Damn I hope so that I can go back and stop selling my BTC for cheap ;)
Yeah, that's about the first thing I would do. Go back 4 years and by a ton of BTC ;)
Yes but better is we go back in 2009 there was BTC so damn cheap and easy to mine ;)
haha yes, exactly :D
When you look at the stars you look back in time. Maybe millions, billions of years. That's pretty cool, but I think it's as close as we will get 😀
Yeah, that is beautiful how that works, isn't it? :)
It is not possible. Goes against the laws of nature.
Going into the past does not going into the future.
Definitely an intriguing read. Yes I would love to time travel mostly to the past. I think it fascinates my intellect. There is an entertainment factor too. But more to experience rather than to change my past. I would rather decades or centuries before my birth. - Thanks for sharing.
Yeah, I would love to as well. But sounds almost impossible at this point though.
Great post! I love this sci-fi science stuff.. Keep it up! Resteemed and upvoted :)
Thank you :)
Good original content! Whale done:)
Thank you kind whale!! :)
whale your on the topic of time travel you should check out Slaughter House Five by Kurt Vonnegut awesome time travel book.
will do! thanks :)
ha wow, this is mindblowing. It is so cool.. I'd go back and get some BTC. ;)
Me too!!! Thousands of it! :D
For those interested, the next meeting of the time travelers Association is yesterday at 12 noon, so please don't be late as we have a full agenda, my friends
haha, so right (-:
Agreed, and we did miss you at the meeting tomorrow afternoon, by the way.
I will be there, shhhhh ;)
Hurry, you're late already, lol
When you can time travel, you can never be late ;)
Rainbox six..
What is that?
Its possible if one can find a worm hole.
Yeah, but that would just be the start of the process. Still very speculative, I think.
"Who" knows what the future holds... cool post !
haha I see what you did there.
Thanks!!
There are many videos on the internet about supposed time travelers (fi: a man with a cell-phone in a video of 80 years ago...). I am sceptic, but I like the science aspect of it. Especially deforming of time when you travel at different speeds.
What I am sure of is that the theory of relativity we have now is far from 100 % correct, and we really have not learnt all there is to know about the relation between time, space and matter... Keep on steeming, I love these kind of contributions to Steemit!
That had been explained. There was available a small dictation tape recorder at that time.
Oh, ok, never seen that explanation! tnx
You can google it. I just don't have the bandwidth to recover that link for you now.
I am a sceptic of all those videos. Anybody could make those kinds of videos or twist the existing ones to explain something that is not there.
Great Post :)
Thanks :)
wow
thanks
Am just imagining how the world and life would be if humans are able to control time...wont that be good enough...oh yeah to some extent...thanks for sharing
IT would change us forever! Seriously, the repercussions would be drastic!
Lol
If we can we would already be visited by people from the future.
exactly!!
Then again can we be sure that hasn't happened? lol
there are so many of these of so many famous people that it is almost creepy. I wonder why that happens.
Maybe reincarnation.
May be!
Thank you for sharing, I loved your post, I hope you follow me back, so new here.
Thanks! :)
yes...time travel is possible.
the travel is one way.
forward.
Yeah, that's what the general consensus is anyways.
I'm not sure that this is technically true. It may be the highest rate of speed in which we can calculate, or that we have observed, but I don't think the phrasing is correct.
Also, don't you remember these guys!?!
source
No never heard of em. I belong to a different part of the world :)
Woah. You need to check them out ASAP! If not only for the fact that George Carlin is in the movie :D
Will do :)
Check this out , once of recent most interview of time traveller.
https://steemit.com/travel/@feel.good/believe-it-or-not-but-here-is-the-time-traveler-interview-from-2028
Time travel is a fun concept to think about.
If we are looking back at time , then maybe we could travel backward in time, just not forward. The paradox issue would be non existent if when we stepped back in time a new time branch was formed. We may be able to travel backward in time, but not forward. So you are stuck in a time you chose with no possibility of returning to your home time. What you think will happen tomorrow may or may not happen the way you remember it, could deja-vu be the remnants of time travel?
No what that statement means is that light from those distant stars and galaxies take millions and even billions of years to reach us. So, essentially we are staring at their past. We cannot use this property to travel into the past.
If you go 99% the speed of light then time slows down dramaticall. What if Einstein was wrong and there was a way to transcend the speed of light, could it then make time stop when it equals the speed of light then run backwards when it goes faster than the speed of light.
If I knew the answer to that, I would be pretty popular ;) hehe
But yeah, who knows. Maybe he was wrong about this. Only time will tell. See what I did there? :D
I like to see my future in steam..
me too :)
Great post i love the universe, it is just overwhelming. And for sure it always brings me back down to earth.
That's deep!
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STOPOpen ended question: Would being under a past life hypnosis be considered time travel?
I mean technically, you are re-visiting a former life in the past - you see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and even feelings arise from visiting the certain era of your soul.
I think it would be a concrete time travel if you could change it. But that's just my opinion. :)
I'm going with my instinctive answer, which is yes, time travel is possible. I remember thinking about travelling in time before I was even 6 years old, and I hadn't read any books on time travel at that point nor had I seen anything on TV to give me this idea.. I put the idea on the back burner when they dismissed the idea of time travel being possible at school. The teachers would laugh off the idea that we might one day travel faster than the speed of light. But, quietly, I've always thought that one day, time travel would be possible, and may have already been done... I'm not sure of the how yet but, that doesn't mean it's not possible...
Yeah, we have been exposed to this idea so much that somehow it feels that one day this will be possible and who knows it very well might! Science and tech always manage to surprise us.
Very nice post in timetravel
Good information timetravel. Orbiting A Black Hole in future
First, we have to find what is time ? how it is created ?
Time is not created. I believe it came into existence at the instance of big bang along with space. Hence space-time.
Just finished reading a book titled: A History of Time Travel. It was fascinating. It dissects the various concepts of time travel, the evolution of our understanding of it, and rules of traveling through time. For instance, did you know that the concept of time travel is only about 100 years old? In fact it appears that since about the time of the industrial revolution, our entire view of the future has changed. We aee it as this distant often hopeful place. For our ancestors, things barely changed year to year or even generation to generation, so they did not have our fascination with tomorrow.
Anyway, very cool stuff. I highly recommend it!
Wow, This is so fascinating!! I didn't know that the idea of Time Travel was just 100 years old. And you're right, things didn't change much for our ancestors over the years as the pace of technological development was extremely slow. Now, however, it is really fast.
I will definitely check out that book.
Do you know the story about the man from the future?
Just reminded me of the series 12 monkeys :)
If I could travel back to the past I would save th dodo birds.
The paradox issue of travelling back in time is easily solved if you accept the many worlds theory of quantum physics. For every event, from the most insignificantly small sub-atomic interaction to the gigantic collision of galaxies every possible outcome actually becomes reality in its own universe. Basically, anything that is possible is real, but it may not exist in your universe. This means there are an infinite number of universes constantly branching into an infinite number of new directions in time. You can travel back in time and kill your grandfather because in the universes that move forward from that moment you won't be born, but there are alreay an infinite number of universes where you already were. Confusing, isn't it?