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There are many commonly accepted theories on time travel. Some of the most popular involve travelling faster than the speed of light, the use of cosmic strings or black holes, Wormholes or Alcubierre drive. The list goes on and on. Some theories discuss inter-dimensional time travel, time travel which not only travels in time but travels through parallel universes in the time dimensions within the space-time continuum. One theory states that when a being makes choices in their “life” it creates a “fork in the road” in the dimensional aspect of the space-time continuum. It goes further to explain that, like we noticed in the movies to be discussed later, that when a change is made in the space-time continuum through time travel the being is then aware of the dimension, and only the dimension that split off of one of the previous forks which determined that the “old” existence was a parallel universe that is no longer aware to the being being monitored. As we do not notice what happened in the previously accepted chain of universes but more so what is now accepted in the chain of universes that were chosen by taking a different route at the specific splitting point of the parallel dimensions that we are interested in for this explanation. A problem experienced in most of these time travel theories is that this time travelling equipment will not actually travel through time, but more so provide a passage through time. So most of these theories accept that the time machine would only be able to travel back to the date of which the machine was built. This could provide an alternative explanation for Stephen Hawking's observation: “a time machine will be built someday, but has not yet been built, so the tourists from the future cannot reach this far back in time”. I think that this is the most reasonable explanation for why we haven’t encountered time travelers traveling back to our time. Another theory describes a configuration of a number of wormholes arranged in a symmetric polygon that could act as a time machine, although this theory is highly debated. A Japanese scientist conducted an experiment, sending waves through a sphere of cesium gas in such a way that the package appeared to exit the sphere a few nanoseconds before its entry. But a wave package is not a single defined object but instead the average of multiple waves of different frequencies, and the package can seem to move faster than light or even backwards in time even if none of the pure waves in the average do. This effect cannot be used to send any matter, energy, or information faster than light. Another scientist claims that he could move photons faster than light between two prisms using the quantum tunneling effect. A problem arises in measuring this phenomenon, any equipment we have on earth is limited to the speed of light because that is the speed at which electrical signals travel. Therefore there would be more delay in the wires to the measuring device than in the system being measured. So with our current technology this wouldn’t be possible to “witness” the particles exceeding the speed of light. This just backs up a main point of quantum physics, a particle exists in all possible states until it is observed. There are also a great deal of theories that use time dilation, which is permitted by Einstein’s general and special theories of relativity. These theories state that, relative to an observer, time passes more slowly for objects moving quickly relative to that observer. Care must be taken when adjusting clocks on systems such as the satellites for the global positioning system. Their speed, as well as differences in gravity forces must be taken into effect when making these clocks align with clocks on earth. It has also been calculated that a person could travel forward in time at a rate four times that of distant observers by getting inside a spherical shell with a small diameter and the mass of a planet. For this person, every one second of “their” time would correspond to four seconds for observers at a distance. Of course, getting the mass of a large planet into such a small area is not expected to be in our technological capabilities in the near future. Now I don’t understand how this would be used for time travel, but quantum entanglement is my favorite part of quantum physics. This is because I believe that the pair of entangled particles could be used to transmit information “instantaneously” or faster than the speed of light. You simply send a stream of particles out, each one of the pair in opposite directions. At one end you affect the particle, and at the other end the entangled particle that was paired to it will be affected in the same way according to quantum entanglement. So maybe you could send information to the future, but that doesn’t explain sending to the past or to the present from the future. Yet again the problem lies in the same problem that the equipment is not sufficient for providing the return trip. One way time travel is limited in usefulness enough, but one way time travel only forward? Practically useless. You could cause a lot of trouble and no good. Another popular theory concerns gravity wells, small hemispherical blips in the gravitational field of space where theoretically gravity gets stronger with an exponential function. A gravity well can be simulated with a sheet of rubber, this rubber must have a uniform elasticity. The rubber sheet is suspended in a field of uniform gravity. When a collection of objects are placed on the sheet, they will be mutually affected by gravity in roughly the way predicted by Newton's law of gravitation. This method is only a rough estimation because it simulates a 1/r force law. To get the correct 1/r^2 force law, you would need a three dimensional rubber sheet bending in a fourth “spatial” dimension. Gravity lenses are related in that a black hole or similar object with extreme mass will bend light similarly to a lens except for that they bend in an inverse hyperbolic curve which would be inversely proportional to the curve generated by a conventional lens. This effect can be observed by watching the sun during a lunar eclipse bending light from stars nearby. Black holes are one of the favorite topics of time travel theorists. One of the most intersting theories on black holes involves using quantum entanglement to send information to the future or to the past by using energized particles. It simply works by firing a pair of entangled particles in opposite directions, with one direction entering a black hole. The particle in the black hole would keep it's charge, due to the state of it's entangled particle, until it is ejected from the black hole through the process of Hawking Radiation at a delayed point in time. This particle could be captured and have it's charge read and stored into a computer. A stream of particles could be sent to transfer complicated data. And however you affected the charge of one particle, the entangled particle would be affected as well. Overall, through the research of almost hundreds of articles, it seems like there is no method for transporting a person. Although there is plenty of theortical methods for transporting energy and information. I hope you enjoyed my Physics extra-credit essay! Thanks for your interest! |
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