TIME-Travel

Special Relativity, General Relativity, Time Machines, Space Travel

Time and space are intricately linked at the most fundamental level. So much in fact that in the theory of Relativity, time is treated on a equal basis with the other three spatial dimensions. Many people believe that time travel is impossible. This could not be further from the truth. Every day when we drive to work, go jogging, skydive or even just sitting at our desk, we are traveling ever forward through time. But surly this is not true time travel. The clock on my wrist tells me I haven't traveled any differently that the rest of the world.

In fact if the theory of Special Relativity is correct, you have. If you are driving in your car or even walking down the street, your internal clock is running slightly slower than the rest of the worlds clocks. This amount is unpreceivable at these slow speed but as your velocity approaches the speed of light your internal clock can slow down significantly. When traveling a .99999c (??) ever second to you is 100 year to an observer on Earth. This IS real time travel since you move in to the future at a different rate than the rest of the world. I would classify this as 'weak' time travel since the progression is continuous and always in the forward direction.

It has been reasoned that other life in the universe could not visit Earth because it would take too long. The extraterrestrial travelers would die of old age before they got here. This is simply not true. A Space traveler could travel many light years and only age a few seconds if (s)he was traveling very close to the speed of light. It would only take a long time according to our own time reference. The finite velocity of light is not barrier to space travel.

Gravitational fields also cause the local rate of time progression to change. In fact with controlled gravitational field, all kinds of 'weak' time travel become possible. In stronger gravitational field quite spectacular accelerations and even invisibility become possible.

Gravity is also capable of producing 'strong' time travel. This is the time travel most portrayed in science fiction films. It is usually portrayed incorrectly. Time Paradoxes are a popular theme and probably the reason why the general public feels time travel is impossible.

'Strong time travel' is a discontinuos movement in time-space. Things that would qualify as strong time travel are instantaneously jumping forward or backwards in time, teleportation, and shifting sideways in time. What most people don't realize is that it is very unlikely that when traveling forward or backwards in time that one would encounter ones own future or past. Its like trying to find a needle in a hay stack, or to be more precise, trying to find a specific point in an infinite dimensional Hilbert space. A black hole is a rip in time-space caused by gravity. Rotating black holes are theoretically able connect any time-space-universe to any other time-space universe. If it were possible to produce a black hole using artificial gravitational fields produced by electromagnetic methods, it would be possible to build a time machine here on Earth.

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