A Matter of Time

Time Bound: The Science of Time Travel

Related quote goes here. Said Who

There was a young girl named Miss Bright
Who could travel much faster than light
She departed one day
The Einsteinian way
And came back the previous night

A. Buller (Verma - The Little Book of Scientific Principles).

What first comes to mind when you think about time?  Many think about things like: how many hours you may need to finish a certain amount of work, or what time your friends are going to arrive, or why time always seems to slip by so quickly.  Do you ever stop to think about time in a more scientific sense?  In a physical sense?  Listen to how one scientist describes time:
“It turns out that, in some sense, we are all time travelers. As you sit at your desk, doing nothing more than clicking your mouse, time is traveling around you. The future is constantly being transformed into the past with the present only lasting for a fleeting moment. Everything that you are doing right now is quickly moving into the past, which means we continue to move through time.” (Bonsor)
Have you ever considered yourself a time traveler or even pondered this very intriguing notion?  If you could travel through time, where would you go?  What would you see?  What would you do?  What could you do?

The science of time travel is not a simple one to describe.  In the field of time physics, it is undoubtedly a highly debated topic, riddled with contradicting theories and perplexing paradoxes—making it a favorite topic of science fiction writers (Johnson).  Questions about time travel have boggled the minds of scientists and lay people alike for years: What would be the consequence of traveling back in time and changing a major event?  How many human lives could be saved?  How many disasters could be prevented?  What if you traveled forward in time and met yourself 5 years from now. Would there be two of you at that meeting? And if the two of you traveled forward in time another 5 years and met yourselves once again, would there be four of you now?  Will humans ever achieve the technology necessary to achieve time travel?  Should they even try?  Questions like these beget more questions and we don't seem to be getting any closer to answering any of them.

When Einstein developed his theory of relativity, he brought the concept of time into a new light.  His findings became the spark that prompted a fascination with the possibility of time travel.  Einstein’s theory of relativity defined time as a fourth dimension, thereby transforming three-dimensional space into four dimensional space-time (Johnson).  This transition had a significant effect on the research of many experts in the field of time-related physics.  One well-known part of the theory of relativity proposed that nothing could move faster than the speed of light. This hypotheses is important for time travelers because it helps explain why a person who travels through space at the speed of light might return home to a completely different world.  Why is this so?  According to the theory, it's because time slows down for the space traveler in comparison to the passing of time on Earth (Sagan).  According to Einstein's calculations, an event that took a day to complete by someone standing on the earth, would only take 12 hours to complete if they were traveling at 87% of the speed of light.  If you could build a spaceship that could travel even faster, things get even more exciting.  An event (like a birthday) that takes 1 year to complete on earth, would take only 8 hours to complete if you could travel at 99.99995% of the speed of light, according to Einstein.  The potential benefits to those who can travel at speeds close to the speed of light are enormous.  Traveling at those speeds, you could travel for a week and come back to earth 20 years from now. 

Thus, scientists today are able to imagine the distinct possibility of traveling through time into the future. Time travel into the past is another issue altogether and the mathematics here are much more complicated, more theoretical and less hopeful for the time traveler.  Whether we want to travel into the future or back into the past, it all comes down to our ability to travel close to the speed of light. How can humans travel into the past, or even significantly far into the future, if they cannot break the speed of light?  After viewing the research of various scientists in the field, one will discover that many share the following opinion, despite all of the doubts and paradoxes on time travel: “...the disturbing reality is that the laws of physics do not prevent time travel” (Gawande 58).   If this is true, then why haven’t humans started time-traveling yet?

The answer is simple: we still do not have all of the answers on time travel and— more importantly—we do not have the technology.  Some theories on time travel focus on the usage of black holes as a means of transport from one time to another.  Theoretically, black holes have the ability to create a tunnel through space-time (Johnson).  Wormholes constitute a similar theory, which says that two incredibly large masses applying force to space-time could create a tunnel connecting these two points in space (Bonsor).  String theory is another theory that relates directly to time travel by accepting the notion of dimensions beyond the four we know: three special ones and time. The fact remains however, that no matter which theory scientists choose to promote, they do not have the necessary technology to turn these theories into anything more than advanced speculations.  Some day, scientists may be able to obtain this technology, answer all of the questions and erase the paradoxes, and thereby make time travel a reality.

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