When I consider the question whether time travel is possible, I have to smile a little. The very idea nearly gives me goose bumps, and my imagination practically runs away with itself into a whole new realm of hope for the future and the kinds of exciting worlds of reality we could explore. My inner child gets turned on like a light switch, and I’m carried off into that feeling once again that I had when I was young and full of curiosity for the unknown. Many others I know feel similarly (albeit secretly), but when the question arises as to whether we may be able to achieve time travel, I almost always hear the same kind of remarks: something is said about the impossibility of it, except near black holes and such, and that for a human being to be able to ‘travel’ in time is simply not worthy of bringing to the debate table – it just can’t happen. Then the deflating balloon feeling shows up, and I pocket the idea for a rainy day. It was fun while it lasted.
I’m no physicist, but I have a rudimentary understanding of time having to do with the speed of light. I know that gravity is also a factor, and that, as an object approaches the speed of light, it’s mass increases too, and therefore would require more and more energy to propel the object to the point where we don’t have the ability to propel it any faster, etc., etc. If you ARE a physicist, and you are reading this, please remember that I did say my understanding is rudimentary, but I think this is relatively close to a layman’s explanation. One thing I do know for sure is that most of our modern theories about space and time are largely extracted from Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and that our model for the possibility of time travel based upon Einstein’s understanding of how time and space relate to one another.
You gotta’ love Einstein. Who doesn’t? Not only was he famous for new theories and the contributions he made to progress, he is also celebrated for his quotes. One of my all-time favorite Einstein quotes is, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” One of the main qualities that set Einstein apart from his contemporaries is that he refused to accept how the universe had been explained to him; he wanted to find out for himself what it was all about, and so he put his imagination to work and came up with all those wonderful ideas. I think that if Einstein were alive today, he’d tell us not to just accept what is spoon fed to us in school, but to discover for ourselves what is possible – even if it meant challenging or ‘disproving’ his own ideas. I really believe that.
Right now, as far as we know (unless there’s some secret government project going on underground), human time travel is not within our grasp. However, since Einstein, we’ve discovered some pretty cool stuff – stuff that even Einstein wouldn’t believe was possible. Do a Google or Wikipedia search on ‘quantum physics’, and you’re mind will be blown away. Let me ask you, is it possible for the same object to exist in two different places at once? No? Well, that very phenomenon has been observed on the quantum level (subatomic.) How about electricity? Do you know what it IS? If you answered ‘no’, don’t feel stupid. NO ONE knows, really, what electricity is, yet we use it every single day. We depend upon it to such an extent that we take it for granted. Did you know that scientists have come to the conclusion that, by the simple act of observing an experiment, we change the outcome? How about gravity? No one really knows what that is, either. We just know it’s a ‘force’ of some kind, and that it’s connected to the mass of an object. It’s anyone’s guess what it really is, but I’m willing to bet, with a little imagination, we can understand the answer to that question and so much more.
Go ahead. Use your imagination. Is it really that gravity is a hinderance to time travel? What if we could create ‘anti-gravity’? Sound silly? Well, scientists have been looking at that possibility for a long time. What if we could use gravity to push us away from an object instead of pull us towards it? Then how fast could we go? What if time travel is not something we do in some kind of craft, but happens within a sort of particle field that allows us to bend the rules a little? The point I’m making is that it’s not a just a question of IF time travel is possible, but to what extent will we apply our imagination to push the envelope of reality just a little bit farther.
Of course, if time travel were possible, the ramifications could potentially be enormous. The most obvious question is, “If I went back in time and changed even one thing, would I perhaps change everything?” The so-called ‘butterfly effect’ is certainly a consideration. All sorts of paradoxes may arise if, say, one were to go back in time and meet themselves, or if they accidentally killed their grandfather or something. Entire parallel universes may arise to correct imbalances in continuity. Even worse, we could destroy the earth as we know it simply by moving through the vortex of time. Who really knows? Whether or not time travel should be allowed is, without a doubt, a central question if we were ever to come close to realizing the idea.
It was once believed that if we were to travel faster than thirty miles per hour or so, our bodies wouldn’t be able to withstand the pressure. Now, we’re going at least six times faster than the speed of sound, and we keep getting faster. The potential dangers of time travel shouldn’t hinder our exploration into its possibility. However, great care should doubtless be used, and the any side effects which may result from such travel should certainly be factored into our endeavors.
There are many more difficulties we could predict for the future of time travel, but it is what we cannot foresee which will probably be the most challenging of all. Nevertheless, the inquiry into time travel persists, and our culture, so it seems, still has a belief that one day – one day – we may just discover that secret of the universe which will allow us finally to live out our dream of bending time. Just like the dream we had for thousands and thousands of years that we would one day be able fly, it wasn’t until very recently in our history that human flight actually became a reality. We are tenacious as a species, and we hold on to our dreams until they are fulfilled.
