What are the odds that a time machine will be invented in the Future? Do you think it's likely?

Answer 1

This is actually a fairly tough question. Some thoughts:

1. Strange as it might seem, you can go into the future without a time machine -- you're already headed in that direction quite naturally. The problem right now is that at some point on that trip we're all taking, we get old and die. And sometimes we're impatient -- it's a long trip, as one has to wait about 30 years to find out what life will be like in 30 years. However, if we get much better at cryogenics, you could go to sleep and wake up several generations from now, assuming that nothing happened to you in the interim. Of course, you wouldn't be able to go back -- at least, not on the same transportation system.

2. Traveling into the past is more problematic. My understanding from a steady diet of pop science reading is that it would take an obscene (galactically obscene) amount of energy to open up a wormhole large enough to travel through. What would happen if you went back and killed your own grandfather is then the usual question, and the most satisfying answer I've heard is that you'd end up splitting off some parallel universe in which your grandfather got killed by a visitor from a universe in which that victim lived longer. Something like that, at any rate. In short, traveling into the past may just create parallel universes with time travelers in them. However, from my meager understanding of the resources required to pull off the trick, my guess is that no one in the future or otherwise has traveled backward in time.

3. Keep in mind that time is a weird thing, being relative to your speed of travel. We on Earth travel faster than some grains of sand on other worlds do, and so -- based on Einstein's relativity theory -- time is also moving at a different rate for us than it is for those grains of sand. Weird, but tests using fast-traveling aircraft have proven that faster aircraft end up with slower clocks, so Einstein was apparently onto something. What does this mean? Well, in some ways, you can speed up or slow down your trip into the future just by moving faster or slower relative to other things. In short, anything fast is a time machine.

Answer 2

Stephen Hawking once conjectured that no one would ever be able to travel back in time, at least not to this time, because if it was possible then we would be flooded with people from the future. It's an interesting thought.

Special relativity gives you a method for traveling into the future -- just accelerate away from the earth to some speed near the speed of light and then come back to earth. When you return, you will have aged very little and earth will have aged a great deal. You will have traveled "into the future" by slowing how time ticks in your reference frame.

The theories about how one would travel back in time that use the closest to actual verified physics all suggest that you would not be able to travel back to an arbitrary time but rather to a time after the time when your time machine was be invented. In other words, you could place "one end" of your time "tunnel" here and then someone from the future could travel back through it.

For the reasons Stephen Hawking pointed out, it is unlikely that someone will ever invent a time machine that will bring anyone back to the present time. However, it seems conceivable that one day we may travel at speeds where we start noticing time dilation (which lets us travel to the "future"). It's hard to imagine that we'll ever have technology that lets us travel back into the past, but it seems like we will someday understand the physics that would make it possible.

Answer 3

If a time machine is invented in the future we would already know about it because they would have used it to visit us in the 'past'. Since they have not visited us, the 'future' has not resulted in the invention of a time machine!

Thanks for the fun question!

Answer 4

Hi I like your name and I'm canadian to!
If a time machine was invented in the future dont you think someone would have come from the future to the past to let us know? Then time machines would have always existed!?

Answer 5

The possibility, believe it or not, has always existed. It won't happen. If it did, there would be something to inhibit a ' time traveller ' to interfere with history. Small, artificially created black holes, believed to aid in the speed aspect of such a thing are in the works or experiments done to see if it is at all possible. Anything on earth and beyond it is ' likely ' - whether it comes to pass is another thing altogether.

Answer 6

It's already been invented. Where to you think all of this new" and "Original" programing is coming from on the TV these days. Hollywood has been using it to prove that we really would sit mindlessly watching Reality TV before they actually invested in the productions.

Answer 7

if one is built in the future that can go back in time, we would already know because someone would have come back in time and told us " Hey I figured out how to go back in time" so a machine that goes backwards is not fesiable. but maybe going fast enough to outrun light so in a span of 1 year you go forward 5 is possible, when we figure out how to get rid of friction

Answer 8

The odds are exactly zero. Hate to break it to you, time travel can only happen in science fiction. But, oh yeah, I'm sure you'll get several "anything is possible" answers from the ignorant unwashed masses that get their science education from Fox Television.

Answer 9

I saw one on Fox recently. It was cool. Time to wash my face.

Answer 10

There's one built into everyone of us, pal...