Realistically, how far away are we from time travel?

Question

I'm just curious if there's a general consensus about how many years away we are from being able to travel through time.

Answer 1

It might be something just to leave alone for the time being....

Answer 2

Using current definition of time, and I'm assuming you mean "humans" travelling through time (as opposed to sending electronic signals or subatomic particles through time), I'd say we're about fifty years away from being to able to travel forward in time, and one hundred years away from being able to travel backwards. Still, I think we'll have a new definition of time in twenty years which will redefine time-travel.

Answer 3

For more desirable mundane area holiday, possibly a decade? The Saturn rockets used for the Apollo project are lengthy when you consider that retired, the gap go back and forth is basically solid for shorter journeys AND that's about to be retired in 2 years, and the Ares is a minimum of seven years away. Following that, it will be various years previously we may be able to go back to the moon, so as that milestone will be round 2018 - that's the projected time line for it. For Mars and different planets, that'll require complete new kinds of spacecraft - a Mars project, operating example, would contain 9 months on a spaceship now a minimum of, then having to stay there for a superb at the same time as, then yet another 9 month holiday decrease back. So we are going to choose new spacecraft and new procedures of surviving when we get there. A manned Mars project is projected for 2038. previous that, we would commence sending manned missions to the outer planets in, say, fifty years time. of route, that's all with truly modern-day technologies. enable's say we deal with to have fusion reactors operating in ten years, perchance through utilising the cooling structures at present used for the great Hadron Collider. Then, we are going to manage to construct quickly, severe-powered spacecraft a lot faster. have you ever heard of project Daedalus? it truly is a layout for a fusion-powered starship that would want to holiday at .10 of the speed of sunshine - a procedures speedier than something we've ever made previously. The aims then will be interior sight stars - it became designed to be an unmanned project, yet which will be replaced. something speedier will require technologies we received't, as yet, imagine. yet another option, of route, is a era deliver or ark deliver. An ark deliver will be an unmanned deliver the position its crew and passengers are both in suspended animation, or are basically fertilised ova placed in to storage, to be revived on the destination. And a era deliver is a spacecraft that would want to take, nicely, generations to attain interior sight planets, yet would provide adequate of a residing ecosystem for the individuals in between to stay and artwork in interior the propose time. yet both one among those are, accordingly a procedures, hypothetical.

Answer 4

Well, that's a paradox. If we WERE going to travel back in time, for example, to change something, it would be done and changed by now. Therefore there would be no need for the time travel to occur. What's to say we haven't already discovered it and it has been disshelved in the process?

Answer 5

I don't know if that's really possible.

Scientifically, nobody's ever been able to prove the existance of an alternate and/or parallel universe. Without these kind of universe, we can't exactly travel through time.

Answer 6

well this is all based on the theory of 8 dimensions,were every dimmension is in a certain point in the time space continuim,so really a time machine would be a dimmension shifter,which shouldnt take long,as soon as we figure out how to shift out of our dimmension and back in,we should be able to shift to other dimmensions also the theory of being able to shift to a particular year is an irrelavent no,as every dimmension is set in a set time away from ours

Answer 7

We are already in the time travel era. If you catch the next plane you would travel a few fractions of a second into the future, due to the high speed the aeroplane (according to Einstien ofcourse).

Answer 8

There's a huge paradox involved with this question.


Lets assume that time travel will exist in the future.

Assuming that is so, and assuming that mankind has not drastically changed by that point, it is reasonable to assume that man will use that technology to visit the past for a variety of different reasons, both relatively nobel (to learn the truth about historical events shrouded in various contradictory versions, for instance) and relatively base (to increase their own wealth in their own time by manipulating past events - as a trivial example, going back in time to buy a lottery ticket that you know from the future will be the winning combination.)

Unless such time travel occurs in such a way as to prevent all contact with the persons living in the past time visited (i.e., time travel where you cannot interact, only observe), such time travel will eventually have the effect of changing history.

Because there is no reason why time travelers who can travel to the past cannot travel to a time that occurs before right now (to us), there is also no reason to presume they could not change OUR history as well.

Because we are unaware of any changes to history, we can assume only one of three possibilities -

1) History simply cannot be changed - doing so would cause a ripple to the future time travel event which would cause the event not to occur.
2) History can and has been changed, despite our unawareness of that fact - and we are living in the new timeline that is the result of those changes.
3) History can and has been changed, causing multiple independent timelines to radiate from each change point, and we are merely living along one of those axises, which may or may not be the "true" timeline from which the future traveler departed - there are parallel timelines which branched off before _now_ (to us), and there are those which will branch off later than _now_ (to us).

The first case requires "coincidence" to be non-coincidental. It implies the existance of a higher physical law which effectively governs "bad luck." Possible, yes, but Occam's Razor disfavors that answer.

The second case requires that either all future time travel has already occured (of which there is potentially an infinite amount, since time travel from the year 3000 to the year 1000 could cause a change inspiring a time traveler from the year 2800 to visit the year 1150 who otherwise would not have gone, for instance), which effectively means there is no free will (the future is already predestined, from the perspective of a person further in the future), or that our past is in a constant state of flux (which does not match our experience.) Neither of these are really satisfying answers either.

The third is possible, but the implications are also contradicted by Occam's Razor - there would be an infinite number of futures from our "now" perspective, each of which is capable of traveling to our past and changing it. It effectively devolves to the case 2, which leads to an unsatisfying answer.


I believe that because of these paradoxes, any future time under which we eventually discover time travel is doomed to collapse itself, because time travel ultimately runs the risk of changing the past such as to, for instance, kill off the person who invents it by causing that person never to be born. That self-collapse means that we will inexorably continue only on possible future timelines where time travel ultimately is not discovered. It is the only possibility I see which preserves free will and does not require us to invent new physical laws to cause random chance to cease to be random.

Answer 9

Realistically, a gazillion years. That's optimistic.

Answer 10

no one knows...but i think in about 300 years because it kinda seems like a myth...i mean it might never even exist...making a time machine is confusing work...think we have to make like wormholes and vortexes