MadSci Network: Physics
Query:

Re: time travel

Date: Thu Mar 26 05:42:22 1998
Posted By: David Barlow, Private individual, Grad education in Physics/Astrophysics and Comp. Support
Area of science: Physics
ID: 888121819.Ph
Message:

Hi 

First off, my apologies for taking so long in answering. For a variety of 
reasons my access to the net has been broken for 4 weeks. I won't bore you 
with details as it is a long and complicated story.

I am not sure that anyone has proven time travel is possible . A number of 
people have suggested how time travel may be accomplished but they are 
only very theoretical ideas at best with no real way of testing the 
theory. One of the more well known ideas is by Kip S. Thorne, which he 
discusses in his book "Black Holes and TimeWarps, Einsteins Outrageous 
Legacy". The basics are that you can stretch "wormholes" apart and travel 
through them instantaneously. If one end of the wormhole is taken a large 
distance away, to another star say, then due to an effect called time 
dilation you get an effective method of time travel. A word of warning 
though, we don't even know that wormholes do exist, if they do they are less 
than a millionth of a billionth, billionth, billionth's of a meter in 
size, or 0.000000000000000000000000000000001 meters. We don't know how to make them bigger, if they exist, we certainly don't know how to get them to 
other stars. 

One thing to be careful of is that a number of people, claiming to be 
scientists, claim to have invented time travel. If they have a working 
time machine then they have been unable to show it working to anyone. 
Basically it is wishful thinking. 

In general most respectable physicists do not believe that time travel is 
possible at all. If it was possible then all sorts of strange things would 
occur. As these strange effects are never seen it can be assumed time 
travel is not possible. As a wise man said "time is nature's way of making 
sure everything does not happen at once". 

IF you wish to discuss this further, and why time travel is not allowed 
please mail me.

Yours.

Dave Barlow.




Current Queue | Current Queue for Physics | Physics archives

Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Physics.



MadSci Home | Information | Search | Random Knowledge Generator | MadSci Archives | Mad Library | MAD Labs | MAD FAQs | Ask a ? | Join Us! | Help Support MadSci


MadSci Network, webadmin@www.madsci.org
© 1995-1998. All rights reserved.