Is time travel possible? To what extent?

Question

Im pretty sure it is if u can get moving at the speed of light, or near it. Can some1 please explain it a little more scientifically....I am educated, but not a genius so somewhere in the middle if u could. If it is possible does it look like we'll ever achieve it. What about going back in time? Any comments, input, answers on this topic welcome. Thanks

what about the atomic clock experiment.....they took 2 clocks and put 1 on a jet plane and flew it for a few hrs and kept 1 on the ground....After the 1 returned they were slightly different. Doesnt Einsteins theory of Rel. say the faster u go the less affected by time you are

Answer 1

I have a quick answer, just give me a min. to type it up...

Essentially, "time travel" into the future is possible due to the theory of relavtivity. Basically, the principle that makes it all possible is that light always travels at the same speed (in a vacuum) and so no matter what, wherever you are light will appear to be moving at exactly the same speed. The problem is that if you are travelling half the speed of light, the light moving toward you will still appear to be moving at the speed of light, and not only half (such as if you throw a rock from a moving car, the rock's speed = the the cars speed plus the speed you threw it, this doesn't apply to light). This has been scientifically proven and tested... so how is it still percieved to be moving at the same speed regardless of how fast you are moving (in any direction)?

The only solution is that time (for you) slows down to account for the difference. If you were in a car travelling very near the speed of light, and you turn your headlights on, they will appear the same as if you were sitting still (moving away from you at 186,000 m/s) however, from someone witnessing this event outside the vehicle, the lights will be slowly moving away from you, because time is relative (hence, relativity). Its simply a matter of reference frame. The problem is that as acceleration increases, so does mass, and to travel at the speed of light would increase your mass to a nearly infinite amount, so based on the physics and technology we have available to us... it isn't feasible now. Potentially (likely through the study of quantum mechanics) we could find alternate methods or solutions to these problems, but it is all quite a ways off.

Answer 2

Your time traveling right now, at a constant rate of 1! Are you excited?! If you travel at the speed of light, technically time stops. If you travel beyond that, time should travel backwards, but this does not necessarily rewind you through history. Accelerating to light speed is out of the question, I don't think we'll ever build something that can carry humans and do this. If we found ways to compress and decompress time though, we could ride time like a wave to achieve speeds greater than the speed of light (in theory). I don't know what would happen though :)

Answer 3

There is no evidence that time travel is possible, even at or near the speed of light.
Well, actually, I am time traveling now, but only at the rate of one second per second forward. If I were going faster, I would age at a different rate, but that is aging, not time travel.
As Terry Prachett wrote: "When is my life going to flash before my eyes?" "THAT'S WHAT JUST HAPPENED SINCE YOUR BIRTH. IT WILL SEEM LIKE A FLASH COMPARED TO WHAT COMES NEXT."

Answer 4

You can't go backwards, only forward at 1 second per second.

If you feel like it, your seconds can take longer than everyone else's. Just accelerate yourself near the speed of light and then come home. Everyone else will be old or dead, and you can still be young. Unfortunately, you won't be able to get back to the present (or call back on the crank phone) so you'll be stuck in the world of talking atheistic otters with no Wii to play with.

Answer 5

Time travel is not possible. Thye clock you have with you will always move forward and at the same speed for you... It violates causality; how could you be somwhere before you left for it or before you were born.

Answer 6

You can slow down time, but you can't really "travel" through it. Let me explain.

Einstein explained that we travel through time at the speed of light.

Think of it as a car doing runs on a salt lake (like those that you see to break spped records). The car can go at a speed of 300mph. Lets suppose Bob does 4 runs at different times, and each run his time from when he passes the start flag to when he reaches the end flag is longer. When Bob looks at the results, he realizes that his first run was a straight line, but his 2nd run was slightly akewed so that it wasn't a straight line but sloped to the left. The 3rd run was further sloped to the left and the 4th was even more so. Why were the times of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th runs longer?
Because in the 1st run, the car was using all its speed to travel on a straignt, lets say east-west, line. By the 2nd run, part of the cars speed was being used to travel on a north-south axis instead of on the east-west axis, so it took the car longer to travel the same distance in the east-west axis. So, as you see, since the car can only do 300mph max. the speed in one axis is relative to the speed in another axis (is afected by the speed in another axis).

Going back to my first postulate, that we travel through time at the speed of light. Space-time has 4 axis (east-west, north-south, up- down and time). At rest, we travel through time at the speed of light, but as soon as we start moving in any of the other axes, we start "bleeding" our time speed. This explains Einsteins paradox of an astronaut returning from a space mission to find his twin brother is older than him (he "bled" more speed from the time axis, while his brother was "stationary" and thus travelling at the speed of light through time). It also explains why nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

Answer 7

I don't know about time travel with the body.But technology has come a long way.Some day it may be possible.But for now,I travel back into the past and ahead into the future...through reading..

Answer 8

Of course! We are all traveling through time.

Answer 9

Sure you can... warp 8 around the sun puts you in slingshot...



Oh, sorry.

Answer 10

you have to close your eyes and do it in your head, or you gotta travel faster than light