• Question: is time travel possible

    Asked by to Claire, Ian, Sergey, Vicky, Zena on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Sergey Lamzin

      Sergey Lamzin answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      According to Einstein there is nothing in the laws of physics to prevent it.

      Wether it is possible to actually create the conditions that are required for time travel we do not know.
      It certainly is not within our current capability to generate sufficient power to do it right now.

    • Photo: Claire Shooter

      Claire Shooter answered on 24 Jun 2014:

      Yes, but right now we can only go forwards, at a rate of one second per second

    • Photo: Ian Simpson

      Ian Simpson answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      Einstein came up with the idea of Special Relativity which kind of means time-travel is possible, but in a fairly abstract way and currently only into the future.

      The speed of light is the fastest anything can travel through space/time, that’s 300,000,000 metres/second. Special relativity says that the closer you travel to the speed of light the slower time passes for you than for people moving (much) more slowly than you.

      A scenario that’s often quoted to illustrate this is if you went off at the age of 15 in a super-fast space ship that travelled very close to the speed of light for 5 years (of your time) then when you returned at the age of 20 the people you left behind would be 65.

      So if you left in 2009 you might expect to get back in 2014, but it would in fact be 2059. It would appear to you as if you had travelled forward in time 50 years.

      It’s not really clear whether travelling back in time is theoretically possible or not the science is much less understood.

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