Howstuffworks "How Time Travel Will Work" http://science.howstuffworks.com/time-travel.htm/...

www.yatra.com/ghar_gaadi_offer Ads by Google

Search HowStuffWorks and the web

Video | RSS | Random

Home Adventure Animals Auto Communication Computer Electronics Entertainment Food Geography Health History Home & Garden Money People Science

Awards and Organizations Earth Science Engineering Everyday Science Life Science Military Physical Science Space Supernatural Science

Home > Science > Physical Science > Physics > Physics Concepts

How Time Travel Will Work

by Kevin Bonsor

Browse the article How Time Travel Will Work

Introduction to How Time Travel Will Work

There may be no other concept that captures the imagination more than the idea of time travel -- the
ability to travel to any point in the past or future. What could be cooler? You could jump into your time
machine to go back and see major events in history and talk to the people who were there! Who would
you travel back to see? Julius Caesar? Leonardo da Vinci? Elvis? You could go back and meet yourself
at an earlier age, go forward and see how you look in the future... It's these possibilities that have made
time travel the subject of so many science fiction books and movies.

It turns out that, in some sense, we are all time travelers. As you sit at your desk, doing nothing more than
clicking your mouse, time is traveling around you. The future is constantly being transformed into the past
with the present only lasting for a fleeting moment. Everything that you are doing right now is quickly
moving into the past, which means we continue to move through time.
© Photographer: Nicemonkey | Agency: Dreamstime.com
Ideas of time travel have existed for centuries, but when Albert Einstein released his theory of special The dream to travel through time
relativity, he laid the foundation for the theoretical possibility of time travel. As we all know, no one has has existed for centuries.
successfully demonstrated time travel, but no one has been able to rule it out either.

In this edition of How Stuff Will Work, we will learn about the concept of time and the different theories surrounding the viability of time travel.

2057: Time Travel

Time travel is a topic that has fascinated people for years. Learn more about
the idea of time travel in this video from HowStuffWorks. (September, 2007)

More Science Videos

More Discovery Videos

Understanding Time

Astronomer Carl Sagan had it right when he said that time is "resistant to simple definition." Lots
of us think we know what time is, but it is hard to define. You can not literally see or touch time, Back to the Future
but you can see its effects. The evidence that we are moving through time is found in everything

1 of 5 Sunday 01 August 2010 12:42 PM

Howstuffworks "How Time Travel Will Work" http://science.howstuffworks.com/time-travel.htm/...

-- our bodies age, buildings weather and crumble, trees grow. Most of us feel the pressure of time
as we are pushed to meet deadlines and make appointments. Our lives are often dictated by The spacetime
what time we need to be somewhere. continuum was
frequently
Ask most people to define time and they are likely to look at their watch or a clock. We see time mentioned in
as the ticking of the hands on these devices. We know that there are 60 seconds in a minute, 60 the movie
minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day and 365 days in a year. These are the basic numbers of "Back to the
time that we all learned in grade school. Future." Doc Noel Vasquez/Getty Images
Brown and The DeLorean Time
Time is also defined as being the fourth dimension of our universe. The other three dimensions
Marty travel Machine
are of space, including up-down, left-right and backward-forward. Time cannot exist without
from 1985 to
space, and likewise, space cannot exist without time. This interconnected relationship of time and 1955 in a DeLorean that has been
space is called the spacetime continuum, which means that any event that occurs in the converted into a time machine.
universe has to involve both space and time.
What Marty and the Doc soon realize is
According to Einstein's theory of special relativity, time slows
that interactions with Marty's parents in
Up Next as an object approaches the speed of light. This leads many
1955 threaten to unravel the fabric of the
scientists to believe that traveling faster than the speed of
spacetime continuum. Check out more
How Time Works light could open up the possibility of time travel to the past as information about DeLorean DMC-12
How Special well as to the future. The problem is that the speed of light is
Relativity Works believed to be the highest speed at which something can
Science Channel: travel, so it is unlikely that we will be able to travel into the past. As an object nears the speed of light, its
Time Travel Quiz relativistic mass increases until, at the speed of light, it becomes infinite. Accelerating an infinite mass any
faster than that is impossible, or at least it seems to be right now.

But time travel in the other direction is not as difficult, and the future may one day be a possible destination...

Black Holes

While writers have produced some great ideas for time machines over the years, a real-life time machine has yet to be built. Most theories of time
travel don't rely on machines at all. Instead, time travel will likely be done by way of natural phenomena that will transport us instantly from one point
in time to another. These space phenomena, which we are not even sure exist, include:

Rotating black holes

Wormholes
Cosmic strings

When stars that are more than four times the mass of our sun reach the end of their life and have burned
up all of their fuel, they collapse under the pressure of their own weight. This implosion creates "black
holes," which have gravitational fields so strong that even light cannot escape. Anything that comes in
contact with a black hole's event horizon will be sucked in. The event horizon is the boundary of a black
hole at which nothing can escape.

You can think of the shape of a black hole as similar to an ice cream cone. It is large on top and tapers into
a point, called a singularity. At the singularity, the laws of physics cease to exist and all matter is crushed
beyond recognition. This kind of non-rotating black hole is called a Schwarzschild black hole, named after
the German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild. Photo courtesy NASA

Another type of black hole, called a Kerr hole, is also theoretically possible. Kerr holes are rotating black holes that could be used as portals for
time travel or travel to parallel universes. In 1963, New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr proposed the first realistic theory for a rotating black hole.
In his theory, dying stars would collapse into a rotating ring of neutrons that would produce sufficient centrifugal force to prevent the formation of a
singularity. Since the black hole would not have a singularity, Kerr believed it would be safe to enter it without being crushed by the infinite
gravitational force at its center.

If Kerr holes do exist, it might be possible to pass through them and exit out of a "white" hole. A white hole would have the reverse action of a
black hole. So, instead of pulling everything into its gravitational force, it would use some sort of exotic matter with negative energy to push
everything out and away from it. These white holes would be our way to enter other times or other worlds.

Given the little we know about black holes, Kerr holes may possibly exist. However, physicist Kip Thorne of the California Institute of Technology
believes that the laws of physics prevent such a formation. He says there is no such way to enter and exit a black hole, and that anything
attempting to enter a black hole will be sucked in and destroyed before it even reaches the singularity.

We'll take a look at some other space phenomena in the following sections.

Wormholes

2 of 5 Sunday 01 August 2010 12:42 PM

Howstuffworks "How Time Travel Will Work" http://science.howstuffworks.com/time-travel.htm/...

Thorne believes there could be another type of tunnel-like structure existing in

the universe that could be used for a time travel portal. Wormholes, also called
Einstein-Rosen Bridges, are considered to have the most potential for time
travel if they do exist. Not only could they allow us to travel through time, they
could allow us to travel many light-years from Earth in only a fraction of the
amount of time that it would take us with conventional space travel methods.

Wormholes are considered possible based on Einstein's theory of relativity, which

states that any mass curves spacetime. To understand this curvature, think
about two people holding a bed sheet up and stretching that sheet tight. If one
person were to place a baseball on the bed sheet, the weight of the baseball
would roll to the middle of the sheet and cause the sheet to curve at that point.
Now, if a marble were placed on the edge of the same bed sheet it would travel
toward the baseball because of the curve.

In this example, space is depicted as a two-dimensional plane rather than the

four dimensions that actually make up spacetime. Imagine that this sheet is
folded over, leaving a space between the top and bottom. Placing the baseball
on the top side will cause a curvature to form. If an equal mass were placed on
the bottom part of the sheet at a point that corresponds with the location of the
baseball on the top, the second mass would eventually meet with the baseball.
This is similar to how wormholes might form.
Imagining space as a curved, two-dimensional plane,
wormholes like this could be formed by two masses applying
enough force on spacetime to create a tunnel connecting
distant points in the universe.

In space, masses that place pressure on different parts of the universe could eventually come together to form
Up Next a tunnel -- this is a wormhole. We could then travel from Earth to another galaxy and back relatively quickly
(within a lifetime). For instance, let's picture a scenario in which we would want to travel to Sirius, a star that's
How Black Holes seen in the Canis Major constellation just below Orion. Sirius is about 9 light-years from Earth, which is about 54
Work trillion miles (90 trillion km). Obviously, this distance would be far too great for space travelers to traverse and
How Stars Work return in time to tell us about what they saw there. So far, the farthest people have traveled into space is to the
Science Channel: moon, which is only about 248,548 miles (about 400,000 km) away from Earth. If we could find a wormhole that
Time Travel connected us to the space around Sirius, then we could cut the time considerably by avoiding the trillions of
Interactive miles that we would have to cross with traditional space travel.

So how does all of this relate to time travel? We'll find out in the next section.

Cosmic Strings

Yet another theory for how we might travel back and forth through time uses the idea of
cosmic strings, proposed by Princeton physicist J. Richard Gott in 1991. These are -- as Heroes
their name suggests -- string-like objects that some scientists believe were formed in the early
universe. These strings may line the entire length of the universe and are under immense The popular
NBC
pressure -- millions upon millions of tons.
television
These cosmic strings, which are thinner than an atom, would generate an enormous amount show
of gravitational pull on any objects that pass near them. Objects attached to a cosmic string "Heroes"
could travel at incredible speeds, and because their gravitational force distorts spacetime, features
they could be used for time travel. By pulling two cosmic strings close together, or one string characters
close to a black hole, it might be possible to warp spacetime enough to create closed that have
super-human
time-like curves. NBC Photo: Chris Haston
abilities. One
Hiro Nakamura, from the show
of the
A spacecraft could be turned into a time machine by using the gravity produced by the two Heroes, has the ability to
characters,
cosmic strings, or the string and black hole, to propel itself into the past. To do this, it would travel through time.
Hiro
loop around the cosmic strings. However, there is still much speculation as to whether these Nakamura, can travel back and forth through
strings exist, and if they do, in what form. Gott himself said that in order to travel back in time time.
even one year, it would take a loop of string that contained half the mass-energy of an entire
galaxy. And, as with any time machine, you couldn't go back farther than the point at which In the second season, Hiro travels all the way
the time machine was created. back to feudal Japan. This creates a separate
storyline that the show will follow throughout
the season. Check out more information about
the television show "Heroes."
Time Travel Physics

As we discussed earlier, the theory of relativity states that as the velocity of an object nears the speed of light, time slows down. Scientists have
discovered that even at the speeds of the space shuttle, astronauts can travel a few nanoseconds into the future. To understand this, picture two
people, person A and person B. Person A stays on Earth, while person B takes off in a spacecraft. At takeoff, their watches are in perfect sync. The
closer person B's spacecraft travels to the speed of light, the slower time will pass for person B (relative to person A). If person B travels for just a
few hours at 50 percent the speed of light and returns to Earth, it will be obvious to both people that person A has aged much faster than person
B. This difference in aging is because time passed much faster for person A than person B, who was traveling closer to the speed of light. Many
years might have passed for person A, while person B experienced a time lapse of just a few hours. Find out more about this twin paradox in How
Special Relativity Works.

3 of 5 Sunday 01 August 2010 12:42 PM

Howstuffworks "How Time Travel Will Work" http://science.howstuffworks.com/time-travel.htm/...

Wormholes could allow you to travel into the past and the future.

If wormholes could be discovered, it might allow us to travel to the past as well as the future. Here's how it would work: Let's say the mouth of the
wormhole is portable. Then person B in the example above, who traveled at 50 percent of light speed into space for a few hours, could carry one
wormhole mouth into space, while the mouth at the opposite end of the wormhole would stay with person A on Earth. The two people would
continue to see one another as person B traveled into space. When person B returned to Earth a few hours later, a few years may have passed for
person A. Now, when person A looks through the wormhole that traveled into space, that person will see him or herself at a younger age, the age
he or she was when person B launched into space. The cool thing about it is that the older person A would be able to step into the past by
entering the wormhole, while the younger person B could step into the future.

Problems with Time Travel

If we are ever able to develop a workable theory for time travel, we would open up the ability to
create very complicated problems called paradoxes. A paradox is defined as something that Austin Powers
contradicts itself. Here are two common examples:
The "Austin Powers" series of movies show
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you could travel back to a time before you were some of the things that can go wrong with
born. The mere fact that you could exist in a time before you were born creates a paradox. time travel. In the sequel to "Austin
If you were born in 1960, how could you exist in 1955? Powers," Dr. Evil travels back in time in
order to steal Austin's mojo.
Possibly the most famous paradox is the grandfather paradox. What would happen if a
time traveler went back and killed one of his or her ancestors before the traveler was born?
If the person killed his or her grandfather, then how could that person be alive to go back
and kill his or her grandfather? If we could change the past, it would create an infinite
number of paradoxes.

Another theory regarding time travel brings up the idea of parallel universes, or alternative
histories. Let's say that you do travel back to meet your grandfather when he was a boy. In the
theory of parallel universes, you may have traveled to another universe, one that is similar to
ours, but has a different succession of events. For instance, if you were to travel back in time and
kill one of your ancestors, you've only killed that person in one universe, which is no longer the
universe that you exist in. And if you then try to travel back to your own time, you may end up in
another parallel universe and never be able to get back to the universe you started in.
Image courtesy Amazon
The idea here is that every action causes the creation of a new universe, and that there are an
The Austin Powers movies featured time
infinite number of universes that exist. When you killed your ancestor, you created a new
travel.
universe, a universe that was identical to your own up until the time you changed the original
succession of events. Austin must also travel back in time in order
to recover his mojo and stop Dr. Evil from
Confused yet? Welcome to the world of time travel. Just imagine how complicated the ticket prices
taking over the world. The film shows how
will be.
a paradox is created in which multiple
For more information on time travel and related topics, check out the links on the next page! versions of Austin exist at the same time.
They essentially create an infinite cycle of
Lots More Information the same event occurring repeatedly.
Related HowStuffWorks Articles
How Time Works
How Special Relativity Works
How Black Holes Work
If you spun a carousel fast enough, could you get the edge of the carousel going nearly the speed of light so that time stood still for
people on the carousel?
HowStuffWorks Space!
How Stuff WILL Work!

More Great Links!

Discovery.com: Top 5 Sci-fi Time Travel Methods

4 of 5 Sunday 01 August 2010 12:42 PM

Howstuffworks "How Time Travel Will Work" http://science.howstuffworks.com/time-travel.htm/...

NOVA: Time Travel

Time Travel: There's No Time Like Yesterday by Bryan J. Méndez
White Holes and Wormholes
Parallel Universes
Modern Relativity

Home | Adventure | Animals | Auto | Communication | Computer | Electronics | Entertainment | Food | Geography | Health | History | Home & Garden | Money | People | Science

Company Info | Advertise With Us | Newsletter | Careers | Privacy | Contact Us | Help | Visitor Agreement | RSS | HSW Tools
HowStuffWorks | HSW Brazil | HSW China
Copyright © 1998-2010 HowStuffWorks, Inc.

Video Center | Maps | Consumer Guide Auto | Consumer Guide Products | Make HSW your homepage

Discovery Communications, LLC | Discovery Channel | TLC | TLC Home | TLC Family | TLC Style | TLC Weddings | Animal Planet | Discovery Health
Science Channel | Planet Green | Discovery Kids | Petfinder | TreeHugger | Military Channel | Investigation Discovery | HD Theater | FitTV | Turbo | Discovery Education

ATTENTION! We recently updated our privacy policy. The changes are effective as of Thursday, October 30, 2008.
To see the new policy, click [here]. Questions? See the policy for the contact information.

5 of 5 Sunday 01 August 2010 12:42 PM