• Question: Is time travel possible? how do you think you can travel back in time?

    Asked by hlh606 to Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul, Sarah on 23 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Paul Roche

      Paul Roche answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      There are some solutions to some very complicated equations that some astronomers use that seem to suggest that time travel is possible – but so far, we have never been able to do it, and perhaps most importantly, no one from the future has ever appeared and told us how to do it!

      It is certainly possible to travel forwards in time – you just need to travel very very fast, close to the speed of light – and then your time slows down, so when you arrive home after what you think was days, years may have passed on Earth. That’s all down to Einsteins relativity, so we’re quite happy with that.

      Travelling back in time seems to be extremely difficult, if it’s even possible at all, and it causes all sorts of problems (like what if you go back and kill your grandfather, so your father never exists, so you never exist, so you can’t go back in time etc. – time paradoxes).

    • Photo: Lily Asquith

      Lily Asquith answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      Time travel is theoretically possible using wormholes. Wormholes are little tunnels in the fabric of space time where you can travel through time and space in unusual ways because spacetime is folded up.
      There are lots of problems with time travel though. On of them is that there is a law of physics (the second law of thermodynamics) which says that the universe can only get more disordered. This means that you might be able to travel back in time to eg 1950, but the 1950 you travelled to would be a *different* 1950 from the one that has happened… sorry I’m probably getting confusing now.

    • Photo: Mark Roberts

      Mark Roberts answered on 22 Jun 2010:

      The theoretical possibility is widely debated, but everyone agrees that the practical problems are so immense that it is, in all likelihood, never going to happen…….

      Some of the experiments at the LHC will look into aspects of physics relating to time travel so we are finding more about it but I reakon that the technical problems of doing it for a person means it will never happen

      and anyway – If time travel is possible, why are we still waiting to welcome our first visitors from the future?

    • Photo: Sarah Bardsley

      Sarah Bardsley answered on 23 Jun 2010:

      I think there is a possibility. Some scientists believe experiments at the LHC might open up wormholes which can facilitate time travel. Lily, is this a possibility!?

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