Scientifically- is time travel possible?

Question

exp. future/past. Going back in time 1800's future 3000. Not asking about flying from one destinantion exp. Japan to America. I know there is a 16 hr difference there.

Answer 1

Time travel into the future is possible, but not time travel to the past

Answer 2

Nasa has actually done experiments involving the space shuttle and two initially synchronized atomic clocks. they travelled in orbit very rapidly and the clock on the shuttle was behind the one on earth meaning the shuttle travelled forward in time. (by a few microseconds or nearly that). Theoretically, if you achieved the speed of light in a vaccum, time would stop for you, while continuing for earth. Meaning, when you slowed down, more time would have elapsed on earth and you would be in the future. To travel to the past would require exceeding the speed of liight in a vaccum. This is known to be impossible. As far as we know, despite Star Trek, there is no subspace or anti-time. (or at least we wont come into contact with anti time anytime soon. no pun intended). There is anti-matter, but this has no bearing on time travel. The relationship between speed and time does have interesting implications on tracking the position of an electron in a atom. Currently we can only define a region where they exist. They move so fast they can sometimes be best described as a wave which would move at the speed of light. This means we can't define exactly where they are at a specific distinct time. Thus the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
Come to think of it, there was an interesting experiment recently involving the firing of a laser as a carrier beam for another wave. the embedded wave supposedly arrived before it was sent.

Answer 3

Travelling forward in time is inevitable. Travelling backward? It's theoretically possible; but you need an insane amount of energy in order to do so, and you can't go back any further than the time you built the time machine. How it works is: you create a wormhole (don't ask me how), with one endpoint here on Earth and the other anchored inside a spaceship. You then send the ship zipping around at a hair under the speed of light. The Earth-side portal continues moving through time at normal speed, while the portal on the ship (for all intents and purposes) stops in time at the point the ship took off. In this way, anything that goes through the portal on Earth effectively comes out on the ship, going back to the time when it was first launched.

Answer 4

The theories of general relativity do suggest that it could be "theoretically possible" to travel in time, at least according to current ideas and equations that typically govern very sophisticated physics.

However, current technology (and likely no technology) could ever be capable of successfully and safely doing the things that science suggests we could do. For example, if you travel at speeds that are near the speed of light, what happens is called "time dilation," and this actually means that time slows down for the traveler while staying unchanged for everyone else. Crazy, huh? Well, it is actually true and rather complicated. Einstein actually provided an equation that has held up to every experiment and theory tested with it, which can be seen at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Overview

However, moving the speed of light seems to be completely and utterly out of the realm of what is safe and possible for humans to do in the foreseeable future, if ever. I mean, think about how it would be if you were moving faster than the speed of light (which would theoretically make you go back in time). You'd be moving so quickly that you wouldn't be able to see yourself in a mirror because you are moving to quick for the light to reflect off of the mirror. Do you really think you'd survive that? Yeah... probably not.

Answer 5

I think it is possible but not with the technology we have today. Time travel can occur if one overcomes the speed of light meaning that they could be in the past or the future. Like Einstein had discovered, if one goes faster than the speed of light they would be invisible in a mirror because the light would not reflect their reflection on a mirror. The light has not reached the mirror to reflect it yet. Since light determines the time of day in the society we live in, one would perhaps be in the future.

Answer 6

The only way time travel would be scientifically possible is if time were slowed or curved in space. Einstein's theory of relativity acknowledges that if an object is traveling at the speed of light then time is slowed relative to an outside frame of reference. For example lets say we have twin brothers A and B and there clocks are perfectly synchronized. Person A gets on a spaceship that will travel at the speed of light and Person B stays on Earth to wait for his twin brother to come back. Lets say Person A travels to the nearest star which is 5 light years away. At the speed of light Person A will get to the star in 5 years since light can travel one light year in one year hence the name. The amount of time it takes for Person A to get the the star which is 5 years is slower relative to Person B where time is ticking faster. So we can conclude that by the time Person A has arrived back to earth from his journey to the star, many years would have gone by since time had moved faster for Person B. Basically Person A aged slower than Person B so when his twin brother Person A arrives back he will still be many years younger than him. We can also conclude that Person A has traveled into the future because time went slower for him throughout his whole journey. Now the concept of curving time might come from the possible existence of wormholes which are basically two black holes from one end to the other. One black hole exists in our time while the other end of the black hole exists in a totally different time frame maybe many light years away. Scientist believe that if an object were to travel into a wormhole, it would have reached a place in space many light years away meaning you traveled many light years away in only a minute. If you were to go back in the the wormhole to your initial starting point theoretically you would have reached your starting point before you even started thus traveling back in time. I personally believe that time travel exists but only if we were able to slow time and scientifically the only way possible we are assure of achieving that is through traveling at the speed of light and our current technology disables the possibility. Im also intrigued by UFOs because I think these are the people from the future visiting the past and maybe they have found a way to create a wormhole and travel at the speed of light maybe their civilization is a million years ahead of ours. Nothing is impossible because no one in this world has used their brain to the full potential and imagine if we did and what the outcomes would be maybe we may actually have the potential to travel back in time.

Answer 7

Realistically...no. Not for humans.

Theorectically....yes.

Only into the future and you need to be traveling close to the speed of light relative to the place you want to visit.

We have done this for particles in large accelerators.

But to do this for a large complex organism like ourselves would take some serious technology we haven't yet invented.

Google the "Twin Paradox".

Answer 8

i saw somewhere on the discovery channel or science channels that theoretcially it is. right now scientists are working with individual molecules (as far as i know, but you never know what the government is really doing these days). i don't remember the process, but it had something to do with a vacuum or vortex type application. i can tell you however, that it is not possible (as of today) for humans to time travel though. but that leads to another question...if humans can time travel in the future, then why havent any of them traveled back in time to our era and tell us about the future, or how to time travel, or the cure to cancer...?? perhaps the world isnt going to last that far into the futre for us to figure it out...fascinating when you think about it huh?

Answer 9

Right now you are experiencing time travel - you are moving into the future at a rate of 1 second per second.

Answer 10

Scientifically? No.
But it still makes for excellent SciFi movies and novels.