If it's possible to travel around the world in less than 24 hours, then is it possible to travel back in time?

Answer 1

No. This one is simple. You may be able to get ahead of a time-zone, but you are still in the web of absolute time. You may get to re-do YOUR morning on someone elses schedule, but that just means you're internal clock will be well-and-truly fornicated.

Answer 2

Time traveling and traveling through different time zones are 2 different things. Time traveling is when you mess with time or manipulate the time to travel to the past where the days are faster and shorter to the future where the days are slower and longer. The Earth was divided into 24 time zones with 15 degrees longitude per time zone because there are 24 hours in a day. 24 times 15 adds up to 360 so there's 360 degrees in a perfect sphere.

Answer 3

The sort of time travel you were implying doesn't apply, but as to the question of time travel itself, yes and no.

The time zones and hour differences you would find every time you went 15 degrees around the world are just methods humans have used in order to maintain a uniformity of clock readings with respect to the sun's location. They don't give actual indications of time in the universe.

If instead you consider time travel as meaning going back to a point in time that has already occurred, the subject becomes more complicated. There are very strong indications that microscopic objects can go back in time, but that it's difficult or impossible for macroscopic objects to accomplish this same feat.

Without getting into black holes and wormholes, it seems that any feature or distortion in spacetime that would allow direct travel through time would quickly become unstable or just not form. For a macroscopic object to go back in time would require huge amounts of energy in order to sustain the wormhole, which it may not even be possible to form.

Another possibility comes from Einstein's theory of relativity. If you travel faster than the speed of light, due to the relativity of simultaneity, there will be certain reference frames in which you arrived before you set out. Since all inertial reference frames are equally valid, this isn't just a fun little thought: it would actually haappen.

Unfortunately, traveling faster than light would require an infinite amount of energy and is therefore impossible, but it was a nice thought.

Lastly, I would like to mention the grandfather paradox: What would happen if you were to go back in time and kill your grandfather? If he dies, then you were never born and therefore you couldn't have shot him.

There are two main attempts to resolve this paradox (assuming that time travel is possible). The first one uses a similar concept as the movie "Back to the Future." When you change an event in the past, it creates a new timeline that branches off from the first one and you now exislive in that timeline and no longer experience events from the timeline from which you were removed. The other resolution is that a time traveler could only do what it was "predetermined" that he could do. He could only do things that had already affected the future because he had already done them when he went back in time. It would therefore be impossible to kill your grandfather.

Answer 4

No, the ability to travel around the world in less than 24 hours has no impact on whether or not we can travel back in time. The ability to travel around the world in less than 24 hours does require a large amount of speed; however, moving quickly should not allow people to travel back in time, but instead to move forward in time at a slower pace (according to Relativity).

Answer 5

It would work to an extent. For example, I can fly from Grand Rapids, MI to Chicago, IL in 30 minutes. Because of the time zone change, I will land a half hour BEFORE I took off, local time.

However, this traveling west trick will only work until you reach the International Date Line. Once you cross that line, you gain a full day to make up for the 24 hours you attempted to go backwards though :)

Answer 6

Exactly what do you mean?

The only thing I can say is that you take one hour more if you travel westward around the world as opposed to eastward because of time zones, considering that the conditions and transport used both ways are exactly the same.

Answer 7

ok first of all, going across time zones isn't time traveling, the time zones have names. im using GMT( greenwhich mean time) or utc or zulu as the milatary uses. america can use PST (pacific standard time) so its not time travel.

and second, it is possible if you step into the event horizon of a stable wormhole which lead to a place on the opposite side of the sun in the exact moment of a solar flare. this would slingshot you back.

Answer 8

Yes it is I just traveled back from the year 2038. President Bush is about to begin his 9th term as president. I wanted to see what went wrong with the up coming election.
Looks OK so far????????????

Answer 9

if you travel to one of the poles you can cross the international date line repeatedly with far less effort. just run around in circles

be careful though, if you do it too quickly you might disappear up your own @ss

Answer 10

Yes. I do it all the time and I'm never late for work.