Concepts of Time Travel
Some people live their lives focused on the present. Then there are those who constantly look ahead, striving to achieve greater things in the future. Regardless of how you look at life, one thing is the same for all of us: time. Time is a train that keeps on chugging no matter what; we are all on this moving train whether we like it or not. What if it was somehow possible to get off the train and board a slower train where time moved slower? Since the train represents time, you age slower on the second train. Once you reboard the faster train, you’d be in the future relative to when you first got off the first train; this is the concept of time travel. Most people at one time or another have been exposed to this concept, though usually through television and movies. In reality, time travel is strictly a theory if not a possiblity. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity opens the door towards the possiblity of time travel. One possible means of time travel is through black holes. On the other side of a black hole is a white hole, while wormholes connect the two. Despite criticism and lack of support, physics tells us that time travel is indeed possible and that the answers lie within the phenomena of space.
First, we must look at Einstein’s theory of relativity. Einstein proved that time can travel at different speeds, and that the speed at which time travels depends upon the state of motion of the observer. The key here is that time is relative to speed and position. For instance, if a traveller decides to travel from the earth to the sun at twice the speed of light, it will take him 250 years to get there since light takes 500 years to reach the sun. Meanwhile, a person observing from earth will age 500 years once the traveller arrives at the sun. When the traveller returns to earth, he will be able to see himself at the sun. This example illustrates the illusion of time; time for the traveller has slowed down due to the remarkable speed of his spaceship. The earth is now 1,000 years older, while the traveller is only 500 years older.
Mark Twain’s Conneticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court is a book about time travel. It was written 1989 which was before science as we now know it, which tells us that time travel is not possible because of paradoxes. This is still a good book that has many good things to say about America versus England, proving that the American way is superior.
If you have ever read Einstein's Dreams, you can appreciate my dilemma. If you have not yet had the opportunity to experience this wonderful novel by Alan Lightman, I guarantee that after you read it you will expand your perception of the nature of time and of human activity. The novel is enchanting. It is a fictional account of what one of the greatest scientific minds dreams as he begins to uncover his theory of relativity.
At a glance, the concept of time travel seems absurd. Yet given some thought, you realise the metaphorical wall between the past, present, and future is smaller than you think. Light travels at a constant velocity of about 300,000 km/s. It is common knowledge that nothing can travel faster than that speed (as I will prove later on) and therefore because your eyes are sensitive to visible light – everything you see is a light wave in some form. Because of this finite velocity of light, if we observe a star, say Alpha Centauri 4 – which is 4 light years away – we do not see it as it looks today, but as it looked 4 years ago! If you look at the Andromeda Galaxy – 2 million light years away – you see it as it appeared 2 million years ago. Just as when you look at yourself in a mirror – 1.5 metres away – the image you see of yourself is not you now, but you 10 nanoseconds ago (0.00000001s)2. In other words, you look into the past every moment of your life.
...ound by time, which includes the ultimate reality of death. Although death limits us by limiting our experiences, our lives are made more meaningful precisely because they are so short. Unlike Tralfamadorians, who cannot change history, we can look back in time and learn from the mistakes of the past. Only in this sense can we truly be time travelers: that we reflect on the past and incorporate its lessons into our present lives so that the future will be more productive.
For many Westerners, more specifically the driven citizens of the United States of America, time is viewed as a straight line. Our children realize this, consciously or not, early on. They make timelines in school, their classes switch on the hour, their intelligence is measured on a scale. We are born, we come of age during adolescence. We set a goal, we work to achieve success. Birth and death, childhood and adulthood are stages that occur only once. Life is black and white. Separate. The past is the past, the future is the future. Traveling on a straight line, we can only look forwards.
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells was an intriguing and exciting book about a Time Traveller and his journey’s through time. In this book, the Traveller explained to a group of men who were discussing the nature of time that time was the fourth dimension; just like the three dimensions of space: length, width and height. The Traveller argued that since time was a dimension, then it stood to reason that people should be able to move along the time continuum, into the past or the future. Most of the men do not seem to believe the Traveller or his theory, but agreed that they would like to travel in time, and talked about what they would do if they could. To illustrate his point, the Time Traveller went and got a model of his time machine from his laboratory to demonstrate and later returned to detail the places, things and people he had seen in his travels with his working Time Machine. Throughout the story, the Time Traveller faced setbacks and challenges, but the book outlined how he persevered and pointed to the future mankind faced.
What is time? Is time travel possible? When nothing is changing does time still exits ? Is that really true? Are you real? Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy that is significant to us when questions and other clams bring curiosity about whether things are real or not.
One way which we speak, experience and conceive of time is that time is something that flows or passes from the future to the present and from the present to the past. When viewed in this way, events which are present have a special existential status. Whatever may be the case with regard to the reality or unreality of events in the future and the past, events that are in the present exist with a capital 'E'. It can then be postulated that it is the 'present' or 'now' that shifts to even later times. If events in time (or moments of time) are conceived in terms of past, present and future, or by means of the tenses, then they form what McTaggart called the A-series (from which the A-theory of time is derived). This type of change is commonly referred to as 'temporal becoming', and gives rise to well known perplexities concerning both what does the shifting and the type of shift involved, which we will discuss later.
Black holes are thought to be a portal to another dimension or a way for time to slip. Mainly all these theories follow the laws of physics and do not cross any illogical possibilities. For a way in which we can achieve any of these would be through many more years of research. If even physically possible for any of these hypotheses to coexist with one another. Learning that there’s a possible way for black holes to allow time to lapse or elapse. The study has been a challenge, finding ways in which these ideas could work. Theories about space time are not always true, but they allow us to have an improved understanding towards the, what ifs.
Lastly time is an illusion because of the way it is used. For example in physics the definition of time is a description of change rather than the definition imposed by society which suggests a force that helps to construct reality. Similarly a paradox is created in every moment of everyday in the fact that the current moment is the present but literally every moment prior and later is the present as well so the definition of the present is constantly in
There are numerous people in society who lack certain skills that they need for survival.
...from the future has given us the secrets to do so? Is it because the future has not been acted out yet? Or has it been, and we are simply the past, seeing it as the present? Time travel has been a long debated subject. One such debate is, can it even be done? Many models of the big bang suggest that it can, while the theory of relativity says that it cannot be done.
I always thought that time passes too quickly for me to pause, take a step back, and really evaluate and elongate the present that I am living in right now. One day, it’s the beginning of 2013, and the year past by so quickly just before my eyes that it’s suddenly 2014 already. Where has my time gone? Why did it pass by so quickly? In reality, it wasn’t time moving quickly, it was my own fault. I let time go by without even stopping and taking a moment to appreciate the time that I have now. I have a bad habit of thinking in the future and recalling the past that I don’t take a single second to even live in the present. My thoughts are so scrambled up and confused about the concept that I don’t get to fully inhale the true meaning of time.
Time Travel has always struck close to the imagination of the minds. From H.G. Wells ' "The Time Machine" to blockbuster films like "Back to the Future" - for years, time travel was the stuff of science fiction and crazy-eyed mad men but as physicists approach the subject of time travel with new advances in scientific theories and equipment, the possibility of time travel has become a more legitimate field for scientific endeavours. This paper will argue the possibility of time travel and the positive effects that this discovery will bring forth to modern day society: technological advancements.
Others have noted that we're all travelling forward in time (in fact, the theory relativity says that we are all travelling at the speed of light through spacetime) so I'll tackle the travelling-backward-in-time part of the question. And that breaks down into issues of whether backwards time travel is a theoretical possibility, and whether it's a practical one.