This is a subject that has always fascinated me-whether it will ever be possible to actually travel through time. To go to the past to change something you regret you did. To go into the future to see how things will be. To then want to change that future by going back to the present. However if it is the future, them maybe nothing you will do will ever change it. Still with me? I hope so.
I know that there are a lot of people who are really closed minded on this subject and I don't blame them. But some scientists-some people, also believe that as things can travel through space, why not then through what makes up the other part of the continuum? Why then wouldn't it be possible to travel through time?
"Because travelling through space is a whole lot easier" said my work colleague. Good point.
Now I am myself by no stretch of the imagination a scientist. But that does not mean that I can't have theories and ideas about time travel.
I think the speed of light is supposedly 186,000 miles per second (mps). Imagine if you could build something and somehow that you could put a person in that travels at this speed. 186,000 mps is the same as travelling around the Earth at 7 times per second. Imagine going around and around and around the Earth at this speed for a long time. The time on Earth will be passing as normal, but as you are travelling so fast the time will be different. Time would be travelling slower for yourself than it would be on Earth. 10 years later (this 10 years being on Earth) and you won't have aged 10 years like everyone else as you would be in something that was travelling faster so if you eventually stopped and got out, the time on Earth will have passed as normal. After a certain time you were in this thing that was travelling so fast and then stopping and you got out, you would be around 10 years into the future.
I read an article in the newspaper a few years ago about a scientist who wanted to travel back in time to save his father who had died of an illness. He wanted to stop his father getting the illness in the first place. He had spent years of his life trying to build some kind of time machine by trying to find a wormhole in space. Then his plan was that he would go back in time to save him. Unfortunately, there are are a few problems with this:-
Firstly, the most common and popular problem when it comes to time travel is what is called The Grandfather paradox. This is basically a scenario where a person has travelled back through time and wants to shoot his Grandfather before the Grandfather has met his Grandmother. If he succeeds in doing this then he himself wouldn't have come into existence as the Grandfather was unable to have had a son or daughter who would be the gunmans' father or mother. So if the gunman who shot his own Grandfather didn't and never could have possibly existed, then who fired the shot? It simply can't happen can it? Therefore if the scientist who wants to stop his father getting ill and wants to find a way to go back in time, how would it be possible to do so when the father had to die for the son to then want to find a way back into the past to stop it?
But going back to the Grandfather getting shot scenario, some also believe that if it was possible for a person to go back in time to shoot his Grandfather, then there would always be something that would happen to stop the gunman killing his Grandfather. The universe simply wouldn't be able to allow it. Every time, the gunman would go to pull the trigger, for him to be there could (if time travel exists) be possible but for him to be able to do it, to actually pull the trigger would be impossible as he would cease to exist but as he does exist and has existed, he would be unable to physically to do this. Make sense?
Also say for example if a person somehow found a way to send something to the future like a letter. Somebody in the future then received it and then replied to it.-if in the future, technology would probably be faster, the person from the future could send back a reply to the letter a lot faster than the time it took in being sent and it could mean that the person from the past receives the reply to the letter before the original letter was sent in the first place, thus making no sense at all.
Another problem is that if a time machine was built, you wouldn't be able to go back to the past purely because in the past a time machine had never arrived and as the past has already happened (with no time machine having arrived when the past was the present), this would be impossible. So I guess it makes sense that if a time machine was built, you wouldn't be able to go to the past and that is why no travellers from the future have arrived as no time machine has been built yet. But that means you can't travel back in time? I am very wary of the following as it is one thing that that I haven't read anywhere from anyone in all the research I've done and that is this:-
Imagine if a thousand years ago, there was a person somewhere in a remote part of the world who had somehow built a time machine but never used it and kept it a secret. He never went in it and it wasn't proven to even work. Say for example the person was too afraid to use it. So that person told his son about the time machine. He was also too afraid to use it. So that person told his son and so on and so on until a thousand years later where that particular son decided to break the trend and actually try the time machine. It worked and if the theory of not being able to go back in time to when before the time machine was created is a valid theory, then as it is a thousand years later theoretically, that person could travel back in time to a thousand years. But then comes the paradox again in the fact that would he ever be able to meet his grandfather as they didn't have anyone from the future arrive when the past was the present (sorry if I am confusing you). But the point is-although it is highly unlikely-is that if a time machine or a way to time travel does exist and is only ever known by a single person until he passes it on before his death as mentioned and that person lives in a very remote part of the world where he doesn't interact with hardly anyone, then paradoxes could potentially even be avoided especially if they couldn't go back to the remote part of the world where they lived but the time machine would also have to land in the past where nobody was there-otherwise that would have already happened in the past.
In 2005 in Perth, there was an experiment where they were trying to get people from the future who might've created a time machine to come back and to demonstrate it to the people that were there at the present time. It was supposedly a heavily publicised meeting time and place for future time travellers to meet. Needless to say, nobody from the future turned up.
Stephen Hawking said that travelling into the past would be impossible. But travelling into the future, using the travelling around the Earth at the speed of light example could be possible. You would just need a tremendously huge amount of fuel and a lot of energy. However some scientists do believe that you can travel back in time and the future then will be a through a different time line.
For example, if someone went back in time and killed his Grandfather, a new time line would then be created. It is in this new time line that the Grandfather would be killed and as the gunman is still alive and well, it would be in the old time line where the Grandfather has survived thus going on to create his Grandson. Therefore maybe creating a parallel universe. But then what happens to the gunman in the old time line after he has gone back in time? Does he just completely disappear? What happens to that time line? Also, in the new time line, does the gunman have a Grandfather or Father?
All scientists believe that for every action, there is a reaction. Some scientists also believe this:- There are alternative universes. For every single decision you make, there are endless possibilities and an alternative history for each one. It is very far fetched. That could mean that somewhere in a parallel universe, I am The King of everything or a Superhero and all the world worships me and all the ladies want to stroke my face. Even I have trouble that this particular point could be true but it would solve the paradox problem.
Some believe that time is a fixed line where there could be a way of propelling yourself along that line, forwards or backwards. Even if things have happened and things are about to happen-the line of time is there.
Some scientists believe that there is a single fixed history that is impossible to change as it is done and dusted history. It has already happened so how could you change it? But other scientists believe that history is open and things can be changed but major events cannot be changed. But in the film The Butterfly Effect, it's the significant changes in the main characters' own history that causes big changes in the future but their own future. So as some believe that the tiniest or biggest of personal changes in the past can cause massive effects on those certain people. People often say that it is only historic world events that are unchangeable. As they were meant to happen no matter what. So if someone for example went back in time to stop the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, they wouldn't be able to stop it happening as it was meant to happen. I remember watching an episode of Quantum Leap when I was a child and it was about a scientist who wanted to develop a way for a person to travel back in time from when that person was born. It ended up going wrong and he kept "leaping" into other peoples' lives one by one in times of crisis. He would stay in them until he would solve whatever problem that person was having by being that person. One time he (Dr Sam Beckett was the character name) leapt into Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of JFK. Sam was then convinced that as he was now Lee Harvey Oswald, he could stop the event from happening-but he couldn't. As Lee Harvey Oswald, he ended up shooting JFK anyway.
In an episode of The Twilight Zone, a woman goes back in time and ends up as a housemaid in the Hitler family. The woman plans to kill Adolf Hitler when he's a baby. She is unable to at first but eventually, she kidnaps the baby and then jumps into the river with him, sacrificing herself in the process. Another housemaid witnesses this and in a panic, ends up buying a baby from a gypsy and replacing him without the family knowing. This of course would be the new Adolf Hitler and would go on to kill millions and millions of people. So ironically, the woman tried to kill Adolf Hitler to save people but ended up being the cause of their deaths.
In an AMAZING episode of The X Files titled "Monday", a woman called Pam ends up going through the same day over and over and over again. The woman's boyfriend would go to rob a bank with a bomb tied to himself and it would always end up unsuccessful and in people's deaths-including Mulder and Scully who are the main characters. The woman tried over and over again to stop it happening and although the day would have different things occuring, the story and the outcome would always be the same. During the episode Mulder who is a believer anyway, would keep getting a sense of Deja vu which would give Pam hope that he and Scully wouldn't end up going into the bank or that they could stop the deaths from happening. But this was never the case and Pam believes that she is trapped in hell. In the end, one scenario that hasn't happened before happens and Pam throws herself in front of Mulder and accidentally gets shot by her boyfriend and her last words are "This never happened before". She was meant to die for time to continue.
There have actually been many different books, films and TV shows involving time travel all exploring various ways and what impact it can have if there was a way to do it. The people that do believe time travel could be possible have a ton of theories on the subject.
So is time travel possible? Will it ever be possible? Has it even happened and we don't know it??? Only time will tell!
