It doesn't really end up as a priority in anyone’s life, but yet, we often sit down, gaze upon the heavens above and ask ourselves, is time travel really possible? Can i make a time machine and go back to see my great grandfather or go forward to see my great grandson?Well, the answer is..YES. But for now, you can only travel to the future. Dont be jumping with joy just yet, you aint going nowhere anytime soon.
Before 1905 there wasn't much to say about time. In the 17th century Newton defined time as something that continues, no matter what, without any link with reality and according to its own nature. Everybody believed that time had its influence on the environment, but if you believed that the environment had its influence on time, you really had to be mad! That changed in 1905 with Einstein's special relativity theory, in which he showed that time can be influenced. But this doesn't mean time can be changed in such a way that you can travel to the future or the past.
Einstein, based on a few experiments, showed us that time can actually slow down or speed up based on 2 factors, gravity and speed of light. The more closer you place a clock to the earth’s center, the faster time runs. This has been demonstrated by noting that atomic clocks at differing altitudes (and thus different gravitational potential) will eventually show different times. The effects detected in such experiments are extremely small, with differences being measured in nanoseconds.
Another theory states that, time slows down as an object accelerates. Time will stand completely still if an object were to travel at the speed of light. Take for example, an express bus moving along the freeway at 100 km/h. If you were to stand stationary, you will see the bus move across you at 100 km/h. However, if you were travelling at 100km/h beside the bus, the bus would appear stationary. Thus is you were to move at 101km/h, you will slowly but surely overtake time (the bus) itself.
Time is space is called spacetime. This spacetime is usually distorted by matter. It curves around matter thus taking a longer route.
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In the picture above, time is represent by the grid and the matter is represented by earth. As matter distorts time from its path, it curves, thus slowing down the speed by increasing its travelling distance from one point to another. To put things in perspective, here’s another example. If you are travelling a total distance of 200km on A STRAIGHT ROAD, you are guaranteed to reach faster than taking a windy road towards your destination. This is because the straight road has less distance compared to the windy road even though both the roads have a same displacement of 200 km.
Here’s a 2d picture of how time bends with the presence of matter nearby in space. Now, if we were travelling using the displacement of time, and not the distance, we would have overtaken time and thus, travelled to the future. Another good example of distance vs. displament can be shown by an ordinary 15 cm plastic ruler. Take the ruler, and bend to a “n”. Notice that to travel using the distance, it would be a full 15cm. But if you take the displacement route to get from one point to the other , the distance is only about 7-8cm. This is the theory Einstein had put forward and it has been proven over and over again by both mathematicians and physicist.
In fact, Cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev holds the world record for TIME TRAVEL. He traveled 0.02 seconds into the futureThere's no time-traveling phone booths. What Avdeyev did to travel in time is to orbit the Earth 11,968 times over the course of 748 days in the Mir space station. By the time his stint in space was over, he had experienced 0.2 seconds less than the rest of the world did.This made him 0.2 seconds younger than he would have been if he had never gone into space. To put it in another way, he traveled 0.02 seconds into the future.
There you go, not the ideal thing but hey, its travelling through time man!
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