How to build a time machine:
 |
| The DeLorean Time Machine from Back to the Future |
Alright, let’s start with a topic many of us have pondered
at least once in our lives, time travel. Perhaps you have thought of going back
in time to change something that has happened. Perhaps you want to travel into
the future to see how your life will play out, or perhaps you just want to turn
back time so you can finish that assignment.
Well now you can build your very own time machine! Sort of… Here’s how:
Materials:
- Knowledge of the fundamental concepts of time
- 1 Spaceship (preferably one that travels near the speed of light)
- 1 Stabilized wormhole
There are two main fundamental concepts of time that you
must understand in order to start thinking about time travel. One concept of
time is that gravity affects time. The other is that the faster you move the
slower time moves for you.
 |
| Sergei Krikalev: Russian Cosmonaut and Time Traveler |
Using these two concepts, we realize that time travelers are
living among us! They’re a special breed of humans called astronauts. If you
think about it, it kind of makes sense; they were in space, which has less gravity,
and they were moving much faster while orbiting the Earth, thereby slowing down
their time. Sergei Krikalev has spent 803 days traveling at 17,000mph in orbit;
because of this, he has aged 1/48th of a second less than everyone
on Earth, effectively traveling into the future. While this might seem
miniscule, scaled up, the results would be dramatic. If Krikalev was instead
traveling on a spaceship traveling at 670 million mph (just under the speed of
light) for 1 year, he would return to an Earth which has aged 10 years while he
himself has only aged 12 months.
 |
| Essentially wormholes from the game Portal |
Now if you stabilized a wormhole (basically a tunnel which
connects two remote locations like a portal) and put one side on that spaceship
while keeping the other on Earth, in one year you would be able to step through
that worm hole into the future since the spaceship has already arrived back to
earth… just 9 years in the future.
Ok, so long duration time travel might not actually be
possible right now, but theoretically it is. While there is no proof of
wormholes existing, there is nothing saying that they can’t exist and while a
spaceship that travels faster than the speed of light doesn’t exist yet, NASA
is working on it. (Scientific article from NASA: goo.gl/ltgxB; Easier to
understand article: goo.gl/JXzWr) LETS KEEP OUR HOPES UP!
Is it possible though for your body itself to enter the stabilized worm hole? This is so awesome! And also, it means that you can't go back in time right? You can only move faster than time? So essentially, the only thing that you can go is forward through time?
ReplyDeleteGreat questions Praz. Something I forgot to mention was that currently, if we were able to stabilize a wormhole, we would be destroyed if we tried to go through it. But if you have the technology to stabilize a wormhole, you probably have the technology to create a suit to keep yourself safe. And for your other questions, the answer is yes... until someone creates a time machine. If we created the theoretical scenario I mentioned in the post, people from the future would also be able to travel through the wormhole in the opposite direction and arrive in the past. They just wouldn't be able to go any further back into the past than to the point at which the wormhole was created.
DeleteSo, without a wormhole, time travel is still possible by just traveling ridiculously fast? I know close to nothing about all this stuff but aren't we closer in terms of developing technology, to traveling at high enough speeds to create time travel than creating a wormhole?
ReplyDeleteThat's correct. There's no need for a wormhole unless you want to go back in time or allow other people from the past to travel into the future without making the long space journey. And yes, we are closer to traveling at high speeds than creating a wormhole.
Delete