Who
hasn’t wondered about time travel? With all the shows present today such as Dr.
Who and Futurama, and also plain old human nature, how could you not wonder
about the possibilities? Even though, according to Sarah Goudarzi, there are
many scientists who believe time travel cannot be realized, with the
advancement of math and human knowledge, who is to say that time travel cannot
one day be possible? Although some believe that traveling to the past is
impossible, that is more easily acceptable because there have been no
experiments to prove otherwise, only theories. Traveling to the future, on the
other hand has been tested. One day with the right equipment, then we will
figure out a way to travel to the future. Even
though it’s been more easily proven that people could someday travel into the
future, according to a mathematician named Godel, if we make “a round trip on a
rocket ship in a sufficiently wide course it is possible… to travel into any
region of the past, present and future” (Davies 243).
Even though several sources seem to think that travel into
the past is possible, some also believe that it isn’t possible to travel to any
time before a time machine was ever invented. When it comes to how close we are
to actually achieving time travel, we are significantly closer to someday
traveling to the future. Traveling into the past would require
worm-holes and black-holes, all kinds of holes, while traveling to the future
would only require “getting to the future more quickly” in comparison
(Al-Khalili, 121). We aren’t sure that any of this hole business would work,
but on the other hand, there have been experiments that show how traveling into
the future, even if by a miniscule amount today, is possible. With this experiment, an example was made
about a girl named Alice and her brother. Alice is the one who went into space
and later returned younger than her brother. Jim
Al-Khalili says that “less time elapses for her, she is moving on a
different time track to Earth’s,” (114) which is what makes the new age
difference between her and her brother. Could you imagine all the
possibilities when we someday have a better understanding of mathematics and
science? Even though today the difference is tiny, some day the difference
could advance to days, months or even years in difference.
In
just two decades, the technology involved in a cell phone, for example has
exceeded what so many people would have expected. If scientists spend more time
making experiments like the one with Alice and her brother, then maybe
sometimes in the next few centuries, we will have a time machine. If you listen
to the theory of relativity, then space and time are the same thing (Ramirez).
So in theory, if it’s possible to travel through space, then it should also be
possible to travel through time. This theory of relativity is really a theory,
though and not fact. So it’s difficult to assume that time travel exists based
off of that one idea.
When
it comes down to it, creating a time machine is not a priority for scientists.
Although it’s an interesting idea, its not something that’s necessary for the
human race. If anything, it would actually probably harm us due to all the
paradoxes that comes along with messing with time. However, the fact that a
time machine has not been invented yet does not mean that it will never be
invented sometime in the future.
Work Cited
Al-Khalili, Jim. Black
Holes, Wormholes, and Time Machines.
England: CRC Press, 2012. Print
Davies, Paul. About Time. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Print
Goudarzi, Sara. “You Can’t Travel Back in Time,
Scientists Say” Live Science. 7 March
2007. Web. 3 Nov. 2012.
Ramirez, Anthony. “Time
Travel Isn’t What it Used to Be.” New York Times. 28 Jul. 2002. Pg C3. Historical NY
Times. Web. 12 Oct. 2012.
