The Next Marty Mcfly

         

Screenshot from Back to the Future

          Time travel. Plausible or not? This has been a question asked by many sci-fi enthusiasts, wanting to know if there is any way man will ever master time. Is it just some fancy idea or could there be a scientific method to actually explain and demonstrate time travel? It’s exciting to think that there could possibly be a way for you to go back and change that embarrassing memory your friends always taunt you with. Or go into the future and see how you actually end up in life. The things we could do if only we could travel through time!

          But wait! What is time? How does it actually work? And for the sake of everything holy, can anyone even describe what time looks like? Go ahead, think! Think – and prepare for the onset of a brain freeze. It’s alright, don’t overexert yourself. NO ONE has been able to explain time conclusively… Yet. It’s about time the next Einstein is born, right? Let’s just wait for him/her…

That said, we don’t have to stop guessing just because we don’t the answer, right? Funnily enough, when one starts to talk about time, we cannot go far without experiencing a little gravity, being blinded by light and moving into a whole new space.

          Yes. Gravity, light and space (or more specifically, space-time) are very heavily-related to the topic. But before we go any further, let’s take a look at a paradox.

Credit: Here

          This paradox is not merely a fun puzzle you can use to amaze, confuse and possibly torment your friends. It’s something called cause and effect paradox, whereby if you erase the cause, there will not be an effect that could possibly alter the cause by time-travelling. It’s sort of like a ripple effect, by changing one small thing, you might actually cause something major elsewhere to change. 

Let’s discuss the ‘How’s.

Theory 1: Did you know that really weird things start to happen when particles approach the speed of light? And one of those weird things might actually enable us to travel into the future. When you travel at the speed of light and everything else is moving at their normal speed, you are actually bringing time to a standstill for yourself.  Explanations for this is kind of…. er, complicated, so let’s just leave it at that. Problem with this is, a) you can only travel to the future by this method, unless you travel faster than light (which is impossible), and b) forget faster than light, you can’t even bloody catch up to it without some very serious physical damage. Still dreaming of racing with photons?

Theory 2: Black holes. Ah, the wonderful gravitational monsters that swallows even light without mercy. Stephen Hawking says black holes can actually help you approach the speed of light and time travel through the method described in Theory 1. Neil Degrasse Tyson says you might actually travel through time if you get vacuumed into these cosmic monsters. Like you go in in Year 2014 and come out in Year 23786597, in another universe altogether. So this method is not suggested for those of you planning a short trip only.

Theory 3: The last is the wormhole theory. Albert Einstein described space-time as ONE thing that is closely inter-related. For example, if say you had a time machine and you had to give it the coordinates of your destination, you will have to include a time coordinate and also a space coordinate so that you get to where you want to. And this space-time fabric is pictured exactly like that; a fabric. Now, take a piece of fabric stretched out in mid-air and put a ball in the center. Can you see how the fabric warps around the mass? That’s exactly how every object with mass and gravity warps space-time. Now, if we can find an object so large that it warps the opposite ends of the fabric close together, one might be able to step from one place to another, located far, far away in a short time.

          Problem with this theory? What I just described, if you read it closely enough, describes how you travel from one place to another that is located on the opposite sides of space. Not time, but place. It's almost time travel because moving this distance in humanly possible speed would take millions of years. So to achieve it in seconds using a wormhole should be good enough to qualify as time travel, right? Would a similar theory work with time, though?

There are more theories, of course, so you can read them if you want. HERE, go! Knock yourself out….

Credit: Here

          Well, looks like time travel might be slightly harder than sitting in a car, punching in a date and whizzing off into the future, right? No, don’t give up hope just yet. I bet you would like to hear that we already have our own method of travelling through time.

Photography.

I’m not kidding.

Nope, still not kidding.

          Photography is capturing light as you see it at one moment, so that you could look at it again in the future. That light in that picture has travelled through time for your viewing pleasure and you are looking into the past, literally. In fact, you’re looking into the past every time you look at the moon, the sun and stars far, far away. I am being perfectly serious. Light takes time to travel through space, so everything you see is what that thing was and not what the thing is. Sometimes, you even see ghosts of dead stars because they are located so far away and their light takes so long to reach us.

Cassiopeia A exploded 333 years ago. We still see its remnants today.

          So, moral of the story? Start paying attention to the wonders around you! Don’t just think that time is the reading you take with your watch. Don’t take technology (*coughcameracough*) for granted and start looking closer. And finally, let’s get the ball rolling, alright? Who knows where the next great thinker might be born? So if you read this post and got interested in explaining the mythical, magical workings of time and eventually become the person who actually nails it, please do tell me so I can be proud of myself for it, okay?

What other ways of time travel have you heard of - scientific or not - that you find interesting? Please do share! :D