Edited By: Joy Jiang
Time travel is no longer just a cool plot device for science-fiction novels. Many of today’s physicists believe it is actually a very real possibility, including world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who believes the humans will eventually figure out how to journey into the future.
Scientists have not been able to conclusively prove or negate the possibility of time travel. Even though many scientists believe it is a real possibility, we do not currently have the tools to create an effective time machine. However, there have been time machine model proposals in recent years, including the “Traversable Acausal Retrograde Domains In Spacetime” project, otherwise known as TARDIS – named after Doctor Who’s famous time machine.
So what would a time travel machine look like? A great big wormhole.
Wormholes
Albert Einstein proposed the theoretical existence of wormholes, a tunnel or passageway that connects separated areas of time and space. One side of the wormhole, however, would have a greater velocity than the other. His theory has been further developed by the scientific community, with experts like Stephen Hawking and Kip S. Thorne weighing in.
According to physicists, a wormhole would make it possible for an object to travel from one point to another, at a rate faster than the speed of light. Wormholes are essentially a shortcut through space and time, so this would make it possible for an object to journey faster than the speed of light and move from one point to another, without actually moving faster than the speed of light.
Essentially, going through a wormhole is like taking a shortcut through time and space. The existence of a wormhole would then be an interesting exception to our current understanding of physics which hints that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, except for light.
Still, wormholes are only hypothetical at this point, and there’s no current proof that large ones exist that can transport people or objects through space or time. However, some scientists believe we might be able to expand one of space-time’s microscopic wormholes and make it useable.
But here’s what William A. Hiscock had to say on the possibility of wormholes:
“Although the theoretical properties of wormholes have been extensively studied over the past decade, little is known about how to form a macroscopic wormhole, large enough for a human or a spaceship to pass through. Some speculative theories of quantum gravity tell us that space-time has a complicated, foamlike structure of wormholes on the smallest scales–10^-33 centimeter, or a billion billion times smaller than an electron. Some physicists believe it may be possible to grab one of these truly microscopic wormholes and enlarge it to usable size, but at present these ideas are all very hypothetical.”
Blackholes and Infinite Cylinders
Scientific evidence hints that colossal-sized gravitational forces (such as those emitted by black holes or an infinite cylinder) can speed up or slow down time.
According John L. Friedman from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the laws of physics likely rule out macroscopic time machines, although it is still possible our universe contains some microscopic time loops.
All in all, is time travel a real possibility? William A. Hiscock, a physics professor at Montana State University, states that our current knowlegde of physics implies that it is possible to travel into the distant future. To the question of whether it is possible to travel into the past? Hiscock answers, “Maybe.”
