Human Fascination with Time Travel
And is it Really Possible
Throughout history humans have been fascinated by the concept of time travel and the possibilities that go along with it. Such books as the time machen are embodiments of this fascination. However is all the speculation really founded, is time travel really possible. Many scientists came to the conclusion that time travel was only possible at speeds exceeding light making the question now weather or not it is possible to travel faster than light (in a vacuum). Einstein himself displayed evidence to the contrary with his famous equation E=mc2. According to this equation nothing could surpass light, but recent experiments have proven the contrary sending information as much as 4x faster than light.
H.G. Wells Author of the time machine represents the ideas of humans traveling through time. Though it is written in a fiction environment it makes the reader almost believe that time travel could really work based on the ideas of the "Time Traveler". He equates the third dimension with the other three as a spacious dimension, and most closely with the concept of vertical travel saying that you can "jump" back in time with your imagination just like humans could jump up and down before the invention of the airplane. Within the book this is about the extent of the explanation of wither time travel is really possible or not, and it goes on to the tale itself.
Are all of the time traveler's ideas founded in fact; does modern science support his theories? To come to a conclusion in this area we have to further examine what time itself is. By definition time is a nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future. This is a complex definition, but in simple terms it states that first of time is not a spatial dimension as H.G. Wells says, and that time is an irreversible sequence. There are also many different types of times such as solar time and standard time. Solar time depends on the apparent movement of the sun through the sky. This was probably the original version of time utilizing such devices as sundials. A more modern version is the standard time method of measurement. It divides the wold into 24 time setting the point of reference at zero degrees longitude in Greenwich, England. With all these times the most accurate method of measuring them is with the atomic clock based on the cesium-133 atom which exactly measures the measurement of a single second.
The next step in understanding the principals of time travel is Einstein's theory of relativity. The famous statement E=mc2 is the actual equation to the theory, but what does that really mean to an outside observer. To start with, when the equation is written out with ought any abbreviations it states that energy is equal to mass times the speed of light (in a vacuum) squared. The most important repercussion of this statement for time travelers everywhere is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light because of its increase in mass. However to understand why this maters we have to take a look at what the space-time continuum is because it relates speed to time. According to the space-time continuum, space and time are not independent or precise, but are actually altered by one another. As you approach the speed of light, time will actually slow down. Theoretically if you hit it time would stop, and if you passed it time would go in reverse. This is why our "universal speed limit" of light is so important, because it stops us from reversing the flow of time.
Within moderation, the theory that time slows down as you accelerate has been proven. Thinking back to the atomic clock I mentioned earlier in the essay, one of these was placed aboard an airplane that traveled around the world at speeds over mock one, and upon returning its time was compared with that still on the ground and found to be slightly behind. This difference was so small that not even the most sensitive human could perceive it, yet it proves the theory of time-space.
There are some circumstances in which the theory that nothing can travel faster than light is debatable. For example if a point of light is fixed on the moon from earth (yes, a very powerful light) and is then rotated at an angle of 10 degrees, the point of light would have changed positions faster than light. This however is not a circumstance that disproves the theory of E=mc2 because a point of light is bot matter, or for that matter a real object so it has no mass to cause a problem.
That aside for now there are other problems that would be incurred in the process of traveling through time. One of the most common of these is the paradox issue. Say that for example you went back into time to kill Hitler and preventing WWII and the holocaust. However now that the hole event has been stopped from ever happening there would no longer be a need to go back in time to fix it, so it would still happen after all. This is a paradox that could go on forever, not a good thing when traveling back in time. There is one theory in explanation to this, and that is that all the people who will travel back in time and change events have already been take into account so that in your attempts to assassinate Hitler you would encounter many mishaps preventing you from doing so. Another way that could allow for our time traveler to affect history would be that after he killed Hitler, a new universe would split off the old one with no Hitler in it at all so that the time traveler would not have had to go back in the first place.
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