05-23-2003, 04:26 AM
Time Travel
Some people believe that time travel is impossible. Others disagree. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to enlighten you to a subject extremely difficult to understand. I am of the group that really isnât certain (however I am leaning towards no).
I donât believe in the âTime Paradoxâ of killing ones grandmother at birth thus causing one to never be born, meaning one never would have killed his/her grandmother. There are three possible solutions to this (that I can think of...); The first is that one would move in the fifth dimension into another universe, from which one could never return to his/her current dimension, the second, which is less commonly thought of, is that one would age backwards, meaning one wouldnât be born by the time s/he goes back that far. The last one I can think of is that your attempts to do so are doomed to fail, since you (according to some) can't change the past.
However, another possibility is that time for everyone else would go forward. The reason for this is that if one could achieve the speed of light, then one could travel anywhere instantly, at least so it would seem for the person doing the time travel, (but if s/he really did accelerate instantaneously, s/he would get crushed due to the fact that matter gains mass when accelerated) because time would stop for the time traveler, but for everyone else, it would seem to have taken longer (plus there is the inconvenience that you would need to somehow make the machine able to stop itself right before reaching light speed, or it would go on forever [in an instant...] due to the fact that time would be stopped for it).
If I were to travel across to Andromeda, which is 2.2 million light years away from Earth, and if I were to assume that the speed I would accelerate is the same of the gravity of Earth (9.81 m/s^2) then it would take about 354 days to reach the maximum speed (the speed of light). The reason that is the maximum speed here is that it is commonly believed that it would require an infinite amount of energy, since mass increases as speed does, to reach the speed of light. Also, if you were to reach the speed of light, you would have no way of stopping your spacecraft, since time for you would stop. So if I could stop the acceleration instantly before I hit the speed of light it would take me about two years to reach Andromeda (1 year to reach the midpoint, then 1 year decelerating. Then multiply that by 2 to find out my roundtrip time) However, for the poor people restrained to Earth during this, 4.4 million years would have passed (2.2 there, 2.2 back). The same holds true to traveling anywhere. You could travel anywhere in the universe in just under two years in such a manner (at least for you it would be two years, but for others it could seem like who knows how long). However, for everyone else it would take much, much, longer.
For some reason, some scientists believe that if you manage to get to a speed greater than that of light, time for everyone would go backwards. I think that you would just age in reverse, however the rest of the world would keep moving. Thus you wouldnât really travel back in time, but it would instead be a âFountain of Youthâ of sorts.
Now where would we get such a vast amount of energy? Black holes. If we were to find a rapidly spinning black hole, we could pass a rod through the center, due to the fact that once rapidly spinning it would turn into a torus (doughnut). The rod would then be out of the event horizon from which nothing can escape, Then you could send particles from the rod with a certain charge, then others with an opposite charge in a different area, then you have a charged black hole to draw your energy from. However, we must first find a black hole spinning fast enough. Most black holes are not, and are merely spherical.
This isn't as good as I would like it to be, but due to time constraints, I had to shorten it a little, and not expand on some issues...
Some people believe that time travel is impossible. Others disagree. In the following paragraphs I will attempt to enlighten you to a subject extremely difficult to understand. I am of the group that really isnât certain (however I am leaning towards no).
I donât believe in the âTime Paradoxâ of killing ones grandmother at birth thus causing one to never be born, meaning one never would have killed his/her grandmother. There are three possible solutions to this (that I can think of...); The first is that one would move in the fifth dimension into another universe, from which one could never return to his/her current dimension, the second, which is less commonly thought of, is that one would age backwards, meaning one wouldnât be born by the time s/he goes back that far. The last one I can think of is that your attempts to do so are doomed to fail, since you (according to some) can't change the past.
However, another possibility is that time for everyone else would go forward. The reason for this is that if one could achieve the speed of light, then one could travel anywhere instantly, at least so it would seem for the person doing the time travel, (but if s/he really did accelerate instantaneously, s/he would get crushed due to the fact that matter gains mass when accelerated) because time would stop for the time traveler, but for everyone else, it would seem to have taken longer (plus there is the inconvenience that you would need to somehow make the machine able to stop itself right before reaching light speed, or it would go on forever [in an instant...] due to the fact that time would be stopped for it).
If I were to travel across to Andromeda, which is 2.2 million light years away from Earth, and if I were to assume that the speed I would accelerate is the same of the gravity of Earth (9.81 m/s^2) then it would take about 354 days to reach the maximum speed (the speed of light). The reason that is the maximum speed here is that it is commonly believed that it would require an infinite amount of energy, since mass increases as speed does, to reach the speed of light. Also, if you were to reach the speed of light, you would have no way of stopping your spacecraft, since time for you would stop. So if I could stop the acceleration instantly before I hit the speed of light it would take me about two years to reach Andromeda (1 year to reach the midpoint, then 1 year decelerating. Then multiply that by 2 to find out my roundtrip time) However, for the poor people restrained to Earth during this, 4.4 million years would have passed (2.2 there, 2.2 back). The same holds true to traveling anywhere. You could travel anywhere in the universe in just under two years in such a manner (at least for you it would be two years, but for others it could seem like who knows how long). However, for everyone else it would take much, much, longer.
For some reason, some scientists believe that if you manage to get to a speed greater than that of light, time for everyone would go backwards. I think that you would just age in reverse, however the rest of the world would keep moving. Thus you wouldnât really travel back in time, but it would instead be a âFountain of Youthâ of sorts.
Now where would we get such a vast amount of energy? Black holes. If we were to find a rapidly spinning black hole, we could pass a rod through the center, due to the fact that once rapidly spinning it would turn into a torus (doughnut). The rod would then be out of the event horizon from which nothing can escape, Then you could send particles from the rod with a certain charge, then others with an opposite charge in a different area, then you have a charged black hole to draw your energy from. However, we must first find a black hole spinning fast enough. Most black holes are not, and are merely spherical.
This isn't as good as I would like it to be, but due to time constraints, I had to shorten it a little, and not expand on some issues...