(Source 4)
H
aving just watched Stephen Hawkings' "Into the Universe" miniseries, I am very excited about aliens and time travel and things that are vastly improbable but exist anyway, like life on this planet, for instance! So I thought I would summarize Episode 2: "Time Travel" in this series before it dribbles out of my head and becomes abstract again (Source 1). Hawkings said the option described in #1 is the most practical, probable way he has thought of up till now...1. Build a fast train that could circle the Earth 7 times per second. Thus the train would approach but not exceed the speed of light (because exceeding the speed of light is impossible). Put passengers on that train and have it race around the Earth at the speed of 7 circles around the earth/second for one week. The passengers would exit the train after one week of riding it, 100 years later. This is because the laws of the universe slow down time inside the train because it is going so fast, to make sure nothing in the train exceeds the natural speed limit of the universe, which is the speed of light.
This would allow for forward time travel, into the future, but not for backward time travel into the past because backward time travel creates a paradox of, well, why can't you shoot your grandfather or your past self? If you did, who would shoot you? Did you create a clone out of thin air? And you can't have the effect of the death without the cause of you shooting yourself first, so you're reversing the logic of cause before effect. So that's a paradox and the universe and its laws can't allow it, or the laws of physics would, like, explode.
Side note - so Superman zooming around the world to turn back time is actually almost good science? Cool! Except he could only fly around it to go into the future, not the past, because of the paradox issue. Also only he would time travel, not the people on the earth because they're not approaching the speed of light, only he is.
(Source 5)
(Source 2)
Problems: Cost, technology. International cooperation to build a train that circles the whole Earth. How to choose who would get to ride this train? By money, merit, or heartfelt story?
2. Take a spaceship to the most massive thing in our Milky Way Galaxy, which is the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Time slows down when you are near something with large mass. Illustration: Imagine time is a flowing river, and you are a tiny person standing on a ball that is floating in that river. The ball is the Earth, or if you were orbitting a black hole, the black hole. Like a heavy ball in a flowing river, the heavier the ball is, the slower it will flow along with the current.
Have the spaceship with people in it orbit the black hole, and not get sucked in by travelling at a fast enough speed and aiming the ship right at the edge of the black hole. The spaceship, monitored from Earth will be observed there as making one orbit in 16 minutes. however, onboard the ship it will only take 8 minutes because near the massive object, the black hole, time has slowed down. So if they orbited for 5 years, the people on Earth would have aged 10 years while the ones in the spaceship only aged 5.
Problems: You're only going half the speed of Earth time, so it's not that fast. Black holes--it's hard not to get sucked in. Also our galaxy's black hole is really far away. Cost, technology to travel that far and also to know exactly how to make the spaceship orbit the black hole without being drawn into it.
(Source 3)
Problems: Cost, technology to enlarge a wormhole in the first place.
4. Build a large spaceship that can hold a lot of fuel and go very very fast. Put some people in there, maybe some couples so they could have babies. Start it up, head towards the edge of our galaxy. It would take a while to get to full speed because it was so large, but once it gets near enough to the speed of light, time in the ship would slow down so that one day in the ship were 1 year on Earth. In such a ship, we could reach the edge of our galaxy in 80 years. We would be time travelling and also exploring the galaxy at the same time. The couples on board could have babies, and that way the mission could go on and on, presumably until the fuel ran out. Perhaps they could even try to refuel in space, if we could figure out how to use some element that is common in space as a fuel. For instance, if we bump into a gaseous planet, we could use its gas, or if we can figure out how to harness solar energy, we could refuel by stopping by a powerful star and putting out some solar panels...
Issues: Cost, technology. They wouldn't have any problem finding volunteers because I would sign up!
Bibliography:
1. "Season 1: Episode 2: Time Travel," "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking." Discovery Channel documentary miniseries. Broadcast, 2010. Viewed via Netflix. WWW: http://movies.netflix.com/WiPlayer?movieid=70211618&trkid=2361637&t=Into+the+Universe+with+Stephen+Hawking#MovieId=70211618&EpisodeMovieId=70209126.
2. "Superman Science" blog post by Dan Piraro. BIZARROBLOG, bizarrocomic.blogspot.com. WWW: http://bizarrocomic.blogspot.com/2009/04/superman-science.html.
3. "Time Travel" blog post by who you calling a skeptic?. Whoyoucallingaskeptic.wordpress.com. WWW: http://whoyoucallingaskeptic.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/time-travel/.
4. "Scientists Recreate Evolution of Complexity Using 'Molecular Time Travel'" by Deskarati. Deskarati.com, 2012. WWW: http://deskarati.com/2012/01/08/scientists-recreate-evolution-of-complexity-using-molecular-time-travel/.
5. "Superman ANGRY" video by paulsof69. YouTube.com, uploaded 2006. WWW: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCsHTNP2MaU.
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