How do you build a time machine?

Question

You have unlimited cash, power and resources. What do you need to build it? How does it work? How does a person return from the past?

Answer 1

There is a book by physicist Paul Davies with exactly this title

see
http://www.amazon.com/Build-Time-Machine-Paul-Davies/dp/0141005343/sr=8-2/qid=1160984409/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-3270954-1932103?ie=UTF8

But basically you would need to harness the power of a black hole, use a massive particle accelorator, perhaps in orbit around the moon or earth. Collect some exotic matter that would have been present at the time of the beginning of the universe, so called pre-symetry-breaking materials.

Those are a few ideas.

You might find better information at
http://www.zamandayolculuk.com/cetinbal/BUILDTIMETRAVEL.HTM

Answer 2

If you had unlimited cash, power & resources, you might try fixing the world's problems first, or you won't have a world to return to.

The second thing you need to do is develop a good space travel capability as that is the key to time travel - we're talking close to speed of light, so we need some serious power, so you need to set up a deep space laboratory where you can develop that safely.

Then you either go and get a black hole of the right size & characteristics (using your space ship and the anti-gravity devices you invented at the same time) or build one at a safe distance away from our galaxy (fetching vast amounts of matter with a fleet of robot space ships) ensuring that it is rotating - there are serious challenges & costs here, but i'm sure you will overcome them.

Do that first and I'll tell you the next bit ...
...

Answer 3

A certain Albert Einstein can help us here...

To achieve any degree of time travel you need to achieve at least 99% the speed of light (or 0.99c). It is only at this speed and above that any noticeable stretches/distortions in the time line will become apparent.

Now, take E = mc^2 - if you manipulate this formula then you will find that, as a body of mass increases in speed (and again, this only becomes truly apparent at speeds of 0.99c and above) it's mass decreases. When c is achieved (travelling at precisely the speed of light) the mass of the body is zero (check out the mass of photons). Therefore, achieving light speed would result in our body mass being reduced to zero, a feat that I think you will agree is impossible. It follows then that, unfortunately, regardless of cash, power, resources or how healthy your diet :-) time travel, at least with today's technology, is not possible.

Someone has written beforehand about travelling near the speed of light for, say, ten years and then returning to our Frame of Referenece on Earth and noticing that you have aged less than those you left. This theory is called The Twin Paradox and, when studied in detail, states that the time-line is lenghtened as bodies approach the speed of light.

A mind-blower of a question for sure....

Answer 4

I think everyone is missing the point! Ask an Horologist....a clock maker! Isn't a clock (or a watch) a time machine? The question was not how to build a machine which will allow you to travel through time (funnily enough we are all travelling through time without the need for a machine anyway!), but rather the question was how to build a time machine....:-)

Answer 5

I already have a time travel device, but I can't tell you how it works because I discovered it by accident. I can only travel into the future and it is a very slow process. Every second I can travel one second into the future. I've been doing this since 1960, but there has been an effect on everybody else. You all are traveling with me into the future. Sorry about that, but scientific progress can't be stopped because a few (OK,OK, a few billion) people are affected.

Answer 6

Even though you had everything (unlimited cash, power and resources) it is useless if you don't know anything in field of Physics.

A nerd friend of mine tells me if you fully understand the Albert Einstein formula then there is possiblity...

Why you want to go to past...it just give you nightmare hahaha

Answer 7

I wouldn't. I would build a machine to cross from our "reality" into other "realities." Once you start talking about a time machine, you have to start really thinking outside the box. An alternate "reality" would allow to have the sense of travelling backwards or forwards through time, but you wouldn't be able to change what is already happening in our reality by doing so. Once you travelled back in time, you would be creating a new reality, which would not nullify the one we already live in.

Answer 8

You'll need to save up lots of tin foil and foil lids from milk bottles.
Then buy a couple of big bottles of white glue.
Then cut up some cardboard boxed - cereal boxes are good, or other crisp ones if you get those.
Make sure it's bug enough for you to fit in when you tape the bits together (oh, yeah, you need sticky tape too).
The trick is the antenna - shape your foil into antenna shapes. you may have to keep adjusting in miniscule ways until you treach your desired time destination.

Alternatively, if you find yourself still in the current year after a few weeks, check yourself in for a schizophrenia test as this may be developing.

Good luck...

Answer 9

Basically, you don't. :-)

You could in principle travel into the future, but it would be a one-way trip. How do you do that? You accelerate yourself to nearly the speed of light. When you return, say 10 of your own years later, the rest of us will have moved on by a much longer time. So that is time travel of a sort, but not as you (would like to) know it.

Answer 10

If you travel faster than the speed of light then you would see things that have already happened because the light would take longer to reach you. However it is pretty much impossible to travel at the speed of light because you actually get heavier the nearer to the speed of light you get. So you would become infinitly heavier and you would need an infinite amount of energy to accelerate you to the speed of light.