Scientific Views on the Concept of Time Travel

The Truth Behind Time Travel

 Time travel is often defined or believed to be a malleable concept that one can alter. Some believe time travel is a scientific phenomenon that has occurred in the past. Some also believe time travel has not occurred, but is a completely possible and universal concept. Others believe that one cannot engage or interact with a time before or after their present year. Despite one’s personal position on the topic of time travel, they cannot deny the fascinating aspects of the possibility that time is a metaphorical game of hopscotch. “Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you, you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once.” – Margaret Atwood, Cats Eye.

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 In 1945 Robert Victor Goddard (An air marshal) had an interesting experience aboard his Hawker Hart biplane. While leaving Scotland to his home in Andover, England he decided to fly over an abandoned air field at Drem a place that was not far from Edinburgh, Scotland. This air field was full of broken-down planes and animals started to graze where old air planes were once parked. After passing over the abandoned piece of land Goddard ran into a storm. He then lost control of his aircraft and began hurdling towards the ground. When he started to get closer and closer to the ground he noticed that his aircraft was falling back into the direction of Drem. As he came closer the storm stopped and was gone. Now Goddard was flying in sunny, beautiful weather. When he began looking around, he realized that the run-down air field that he had once crossed appeared to now have four brand new parked airplanes. Three of them were painted a yellow color, but the fourth plane happened to be a monoplane. This plane wasn’t around during 1935, which was his present year. Observing this intently he also was surprised to see that the mechanics working on the field were dressed in blue uniform. During Goddard’s time all RAF mechanics dressed in brown uniforms. These mechanics also didn’t seem to notice that Goddard’s aircraft was flying overhead. When he left the area, he went back through the storm, but this time making it to Andover. Another instance was one of a couple in 1979 who were traveling to Spain, they were looking for somewhere to stay for the night. They encountered some men who told them that there was a hotel down the street that they could stay at. When they approached the old timey building, the only name on the outside was “Hotel”. When they went inside to check in they noticed that everything was made of old wood, and there were no telephones. When they went to their room they discovered that the room had no locks, just wooden latches to keep the door shut. Strangely enough there were only wooden shutters and no glass windows. While eating breakfast after their stay the next morning, there were two police officers they crossed paths with wearing what seemed to be old capped cop uniforms, officers stopped wearing these in 1905. The couple didn’t think anything of it and continued their trip. After staying in Spain on vacation for a while, they thought on their way home they would stay at the same hotel because it was cheap. This time though it was nowhere to be found. The hotel had completely vanished. There was no proof that it even existed in their time. It is believed that the couple must have somehow traveled back in time to when this hotel was first created. In addition, in 1932, J. Bernard Hutton and his photographer Joachim Brandt were asked to gather research on a Hamburg- Altona (shipyards in Germany) for their town paper. They arrived at the shipyard and were given a tour by a shipyard executive. After gathering the information, they needed for their story, they began to walk to their car to leave, on the way to their car they heard a drone of an airplane overhead. Thinking that this was a drill neither of them paid it any mind, until bombs began exploding and everything around them went dark. They then noticed that they were actually in an air- raid, thankfully being near their car they quickly drove away from the shipyard. While leaving they noticed that the sky had gone back to its normal appearance before this air-raid took place. Unsure of how this was possible they looked back at the shipyard to see the destruction they had barely survived; Hutton and Brandt saw that the shipyards were fully intact with no destruction from the explosions. There was also no trace of the aircrafts that had been there minutes before. Since there was no proof of the incident the two men kept the story to themselves, until eleven years later when the British Royal Airforce attacked the same shipyards around the same day and time. Brandt before fleeing Hamburg-Altona, during the bombings, took photos during the occurrence hoping he could use it in his story. He then tried to develop the pictures, but there was no evidence of the bombs or the aircrafts.  Because there was no proof of the shipyard’s destruction, the reporter and the photographer were unable to prove that this actually happened, only that they somehow must have traveled into the future.

 Scientific research has shown several possible ways that time travel could take place. One possibility is to travel faster than the speed of light, light travels at 186,282 miles per second. Einstein calculated equations that show that an object at the speed of light would have to have an infinite mass and length of zero. This seems physically impossible for a human to endure. Although other scientists have stretched his equations and concluded that it could quite possibly happen if the circumstances were right. Nasa has also thought of creating “worm-holes” (a theoretical passage that would create shortcuts through the universe) between space and time. Though Einstein’s equations prove suitable evidence of this being possible; The worm hole would most likely collapse quickly and would only be usable for small particles. There was another man, Frank Tipler (an Astronomer) he had a theory that if you took and object 10 times bigger than the suns mass, and rolled it into a long, dense cylinder. After spinning the object up very fast, a near by space ship could then follow around the cylinder, then it could then possibly get itself on a time- like curve. Scientist say cosmic strings make this theory possible as well. Cosmic stings are tubes of energy stretched across the whole universe. These regions, that were left over from the early cosmos, are predicted to contain large amounts of mass and could possibly distort the areas around it. Cosmic stings are infinite, the connection of two strings side by side would bend space-time so quickly in a specific way, it could make time travel possible. Finally, the time machine. For a time machine to work it would have to have a negative form of energy density. This matter would have bizarre probabilities such as moving in the opposite direction of normal objects when applied pressure. Due to time machine research, it is believed one may not even need exotic matter to work. It begins with a donut shaped hole within an area of normal matter. Inside this vacuum space-time could bend upon itself to form a time-like curve. To go back in time, the traveler would race around the donut, going farther and farther back in time with each lap.

 Others believe time travel is not possible because there is not enough physical evidence to support its occurrence. All evidence on time travel is theoretically based, therefore people are biased to its existence. Those who have “claimed” to have time traveled seem to never have any photos or scientific background to back it up. It is said that to time travel you must be moving faster than the speed of light, the only thing that could come close to achieving this is a jet that goes at the speed of sound. The speed of sound usually travels a mile in 4.7 seconds, this is very slow compared to the speed of light that travels at 186,282 miles per second. Time travel has been researched and questioned for decades. With this being the case, many feel that with our scientific technology today that after all these years there should be a way to prove the phenomenon.

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 In conclusion, I believe time travel is something that can be done, but not with our current technology. For example, in the theory that you could time travel using a vacuum, moving at the speed of light, the human body would disintegrate. This would happen because as the speed of the object increases and begins to reach fractions of the speed of light, the size of energy going in to make the mass of the object increase would make the amount of energy larger. Therefore, nothing can travel as fast or faster than light. If people could travel into the past or future anything that they touch in that time would affect the present. Based on the law of relativity, if a portion of space minimizes or enlarges, time in that area of space will simultaneously contract or expand, but the objects or people within that area would be unsure of this happening because space and time expand and contract in unison. If someone or something is outside of this area they would most likely feel time passing more slowly or quickly, but the two portions of space-time cannot interact with each other, so it remains the same. Therefore, even though there has been said to have been paradoxes or more dimensions than just our own, it would be almost impossible for one to cross over into another dimension successfully. The person, or object, itself cannot leave the space they are in because they are a part of it. If time travel was possible it would create huge problems in the present time that they left behind. Buildings and cities wouldn’t be the same, some wars may have not happened or could then happen in a completely different time. Our history as we know it would be mutilated by those who went back in time.

Works cited

• NASA, NASA, spaceplace.nasa.gov/review/dr-marc-space/time-travel.html.
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, www.iep.utm.edu/timetrav/.
• You Cant Travel Back in Time, Scientists Say – Live Science. www.livescience.com/1339-travel-time-scientists.html.