is time travel possible?

Question

is it or is it just science fiction?

Answer 1

Absolutely.

In fact, you are traveling forward in time right now, as you sit here reading this!

Jests aside, the only realistic method of traveling in time is to move at respectably close to the speed of light. Lets say, you hop on a hypervelocity space liner, and cruise roundtrip to Upsilon Andromedea (a nearby extrasolar planet system.) You would float along at the leisurely speed of, say, 99.7 % of light. For you, this trip would seem to take several months, but back on earth, about 110 years would have passed.

General relativity requires that objects can only move *forward* in time (thus avoiding the so-called "Grandfather" paradox.) Hypothetically, if you wanted to travel backwards in time, you would have to move faster than the speed of light. But this means that your momentum would be *greater than infinity*

The main tenet of General Relativity, is that things like momentum, distance, velocity, and time depend on your point of view. This is why such "time dilation" is possible, at least in a "relative" sense. The only absolute here is the speed of light- the speed at which the apparent momentum of an object becomes infinite, and it's time seems to vanish.

Hope that's not too confusing,
~W.O.M.B.A.T.

Answer 2

i recieved a best answer for the following a couple weeks ago

hooray beer
S Best Answer - Chosen by Asker

there are known to be solutions to the equations of general relativity that describe spacetimes which contain closed timelike curves, but the physical plausibility of these solutions is uncertain, this would allow matter to return to its past by traveling in a 4-D circle. but the only way today you are going to travel back in time is by traveling in a lear jet. you can leave london and arrive in new york before you left, other than that it would require travelling faster than the speed of light to go visit grandpa as a child

Answer 3

its a theory that keeps on going back and forth
u need a really really really big amont of energy
like nearly trillion times more energy created by the largest atom smasher in the world.....
so not anywhere in close future
its though 2 be that if u go in a black hole than its might through ur somewhere else cause it bends space in a certian way cause of its huge gravitational energy

if we could create that much gravitational energy than we would be able to fold sapce and time and maybe go back in time

that would be called a wormhole not a blackhole

Answer 4

At the moment it's science fiction. In the future, who knows? But if someone does discover it in the future, then they're b*stards for not coming back and telling us! :)

Answer 5

Nope. The only way you can travel through time is forward, just like everything else.

Answer 6

Yes it is. In fact, I have invented a time machine to prove it. If it works, when I press this button, it should take you back to the exact moment you read this answer.

Answer 7

Technically, yes. Practical, not really. It would require parking yourself near something with a huge graviational field to slow your time relative to other people. You can see other's opinions on this here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/time/