• Question: do you think it is possible to travel through time

    Asked by ragustinh to Alexandra, Dean, Jess, Luisa, Sian on 22 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Sian Foch-Gatrell

      Sian Foch-Gatrell answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      This is way beyond my area and I wouldn’t even like to make an educated guess here!

    • Photo: Dean Whittaker

      Dean Whittaker answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Yes. You’re doing it right now (I hope). The question is – can we reverse or speed up time for everyone else relative to us? Einstein thinks so – at least forward through time. If you travel really fast then time starts to slow down for you (or if you look at it another way – speed up for everyone else). So a second to you is half a second to anyone not travelling really fast. The problem is you wouldn’t be able to get back again because you can’t travel backwards through time. And this is actually pretty crucial to quantum mechanics – it only really works if time going forward is different to time going backwards (you can break an egg, but you can unbreak an egg for instance). If this is so, then it implies we wouldn’t be able to travel backwards in time.

      Scientists really don’t understand time properly though – it’s still a hot topic. Why should it be different forwards and backwards?

      You can also jump through space – type wormholes into google and have a look.

    • Photo: Jessica Housden

      Jessica Housden answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      I do – but probably only forwards which might not be so great.

    • Photo: Luisa Ostertag

      Luisa Ostertag answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      If you are an electron, possibly?! (Guess)
      But for humans that’s not working (yet).

Comments

  • Photo: Dean

    Dean commented on :

    Also note – they proved this slowing down of time if you travel fast by taking two clocks in airplanes travelling different directions around the earth (one with the earth spinning with it, the other against). And it worked exactly like einstein said – time slowed down for the faster clock. However, it was only a few miliseconds in a day of flying