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TIME MACHINES: Ambitious or Unrealistic

TIME MACHINES: Ambitious or Unrealistic
Time machines are hypothetical devices that aim to facilitate time travel i.e. travelling between two points in time. Theoretically, we have all moved forward a year in the past one year, but it is for us to explore whether it would be possible for us to travel in time at a speed faster or slower than one minute per minute?
Isaac Newton gave us the first concrete picture of time, he believed that time was like an arrow which once fired kept moving in the same direction at the same speed.  Later, Einstein in his theory of special relativity proposed that time is like a river that slows up or speeds down relative to different objects, although this effect becomes noticeable only when the speed of the object is close to the speed of light. Physicists now believe that the river of time may have whirlpools and may even fork into two separate rivers, this opens up the possibility of time travel. This can be better explained by picturing space-time as a four-dimensional fabric, when any object having mass is placed on a fabric it wrinkles and bends, similarly it may be possible to rip this fabric apart with unimaginable amounts of energy.
One of the first proposed theories of time travel was travelling in circles inside a black hole. Stephen Hawkin wrote that travellers would go around and around in a black hole experiencing just half the time of other people far away from it. This idea proved to be impractical because a black hole is known to rip and stretch anything that enters it so the machine will fall apart. The next theory was that of time travel through a wormhole (a kind of tunnel connecting otherwise very distant parts of the universe) which serves as a bridge between two points in space, this would also take you to another point in time, it would still be impossible to go back further in time than the point at which the wormhole was created.  Scientists are yet to observe or create a wormhole, further Kip Thorne states that any wormhole allowing time travel would collapse as soon as it is created.
The possibility of time travel is further negated by Hawkins’ chronology protection conjecture which states that laws of physics prevent time travel in all but microscopic scales.  Apart from disobeying the laws of physics time travel would also cause some unique problems like the grandfather paradox (going back in time and killing your own grandfather before your father was conceived thus erasing your existence).  The absence of time travellers from the future also proves that even in the future time travel has not been achieved.
Therefore, it is safe to say that under present circumstances time travel seems impossible, especially in ways that humans could survive it.


Sushmita Mishra
Department-Biotechnology
1st Year



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