• Question: will it ever be possible to time travel

    Asked by anon-193173 to Jamal, iainstaniland, Morwenna, Heidi, Emma, Carl on 5 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by anon-193415, anon-193397, anon-193530.
    • Photo: Jamal Kinsella

      Jamal Kinsella answered on 5 Nov 2018:

      Thank you for your question Josh! I’ll do my best to respond.

      I’m not a physicist so the mechanics of time travel aren’t exactly my specialty, but I am aware that travelling in time in a way like in sci-fi (e.g. Doctor Who’s TARDIS) is sadly quite unlikely due to the constraints of laws of physics. However, there are a number of ways a human can experience a form of time travel that look a little different!

      If you travel at a speed very close to the speed of light, your experience of two years of ‘your time’ would be equivalent to a century of ‘Earth time’. This means you could end up younger than your children biologically, because they will have aged quicker than you have!

      For example, when humans are unconscious (e.g. sleeping, comatose, or even cryogenically frozen!) we no longer experience our perception of time, so we are essentially travelling into the future!

      Also, if we are, in the future, able to upload human brains into a computer, then we may be able to ‘store’ ourselves online and download ourselves in the future!

      Sadly, travelling back in time is much harder though!

    • Photo: Iain Staniland

      Iain Staniland answered on 5 Nov 2018:

      Jamal has given a great answer. I loved the films “back to the future” and “terminator” the whole idea of time travel is fascinating.
      I love the questions it raises, say you could go back in time and accidentally did something to change history, like stopping yourself from being born!
      If you could stop something bad happening, maybe stopping a world war or an accident happening, but what if that made things worse!
      plenty to think about……….

    • Photo: Emma Crawford

      Emma Crawford answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      I’m not sure, physics was never really my strong point! It tends to boggle my mind! However if I could have a time turner like Hermione did in Harry Potter, that would be pretty cool!

    • Photo: Heidi Gardner

      Heidi Gardner answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      The other answers already posted on this question are great, and as physics has never been my strong point I don’t think I can help anymore, but I did find this article that you might be interested in: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/11/14/how-traveling-back-in-time-could-really-physically-be-possible/#6e29de1b12db

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