Do you think time travel is possible?

This week’s question concerns renewed debate among scientists regarding the possibility of time travel. Some physicists say wormholes — hypothetical tunnels connecting two regions of space-time – could bridge two universes or two parts of one universe, enabling time travel. Others disagree, saying time travel is impossible with what we know today about space and time. Do you think time travel is possible?

Vote here.

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I slipped in my bathroom and hit my head. When I awoke, I drew a picture of the Flux Capacitor. Now, if I could just get my hands on some plutonium and a Delorean….

1.21 Gigawatts!?! What the hell was I thinking?

When we get to the place we are trying to get to what has past or what will be? If you leave the present time you must affect the past and future. When you get to the past how can you effectively change the past? If you get to the future how can you effectively change the future? Are we going to steer the Titanic? If you tell the crew we are going to hit an iceberg will they just laugh at you? Same for the future, “we read the history books are you a nut?” Nice thoughts about time travel, but who cares. Speaking of time travel, the end may be nearer than you think.

Since telportation has made some advances, (and supposedly somewhat worked in a lab environment) once we solve this feat without flaws then time travel which may utilize some of the same principals, for particle disassembly and reassembly at another time and location, may be possible but not for many years. Anything is possible, it just takes time, money and the right people to pull it off.

Time travel ? Possible ? Well of course and really quite simple. It is however only possible in one direction and rather slow.
Come on humans, grow up and think.

Obviously time travel is possible in the forward direction (into the future). Einstein’s special relativity makes that possible. The curious theoretical manipulation of wormholes (a theoretical manipulation of a theoretical structure) does allow for the theoretical possibility of bi-directional time travel. So I guess the real question is: “do you believe there can be a stable space-time wormhole?” If its possible, then there are a lot of new territory out there. Perhaps a temporal equivalent to the Pauli Exclusion Principle??

I thought this was put to bed a while ago. Obviously it is possible. Simply put yourself in a different frame of reference.

Time has dimensions, so it is a “relative value perception” that can be controlled. We presume so many “times” that this has to do with the move. For that one who wants to get himself in a time travel mode there is no move at all. How else can be well known in which direction will be move back or forth, especially to the rest of the material level universe that it is not well known and homogeneous in knowledge as well. I mean the relativity of mass / energy is not adequate to create a time traveling procedure, that’s why we are trap in that sequence of operations looking all the time for acceleration indications.., we need to redefine the operation meaning structure of π, time works periodically, but time travelling not that way.

Thank you.

Obviously time travel is possible. We do it every day. We go from point A to point B in a certain amount of time. Our time is linear. Everytime we jog our memory and think about things that happened, we travel into the past. And anytime we speculate about our future we travel there. Whether it is a reality or not is a matter of question. The whole deal being that it is possible. What we need to research is the impossibility factor that causes it not to happen, once we get rid of that, things happen…

If time travel (in both directions) were possible we would have already met someone from the future who just couldn’t keep a secret. If you don’t believe that you probably believe that we didn’t actually go to the moon and giant conspiracies are possible.

Someone needs to invent the ‘Flux Capacitor’ in order to make time travel possible.

Time travel is not possible. Paraphrasing Dr. Enrico Fermi, nuclear physicist on his ‘Fermi Paradox’ “If time travel were possible, how come we haven’t seen visitors from the future?”

Secondly, the third law of thermodynamics prohibits is. The 3 laws basically say, “You can’t get something for nothng; you can’t break even;” and now the 3rd: “Don’t Even Try.” AKA The Law of Entrophy.

And thirdly, most likely different physical constants than ours would govern other universes. Our bodies probably couldn’t exist there.

It may be theoretically possible to construct a worm hole for time/space travel but the negative energy requirements can be expected to make it a practical impossibility in any place people could travel to and survive. Even if created so such a device is not expected to take us any place interesting such as our past or our future. What good, apart from the research possiblities, would it be to show up on the other side of the universe. That we would be in Earth past or future would be irrelevant

If it was possible we would see someone from the future so far.

Time travel might be possible if it did not violate rules of physics and logic.

If traveling back in time you could not kill your parents before you were born. If anything, you could just observe, not change things.

Traveling ahead in time does not violate rules in my mind, but I don’t think you could ever come back since changing things in the present would change History.

I like Hawking’s statement … “I wouldn’t take a bet against the existence of time machines. My opponent might have seen the future and knows the answer.” I say it is as possible as any of the claims of string theory.

Time Travel is Possible,
when you put your mne to it.

With what we know now? No. What we don’t know is what will be discovered in the future. Like noted in other comments there is a real paradox if we travel back in time and change what happens. We also have not knowingly seen anyone in our time that has traveled back from the future. A lot of people that should have known better have said in the past that something was impossible that has come to pass.

I must concur with many others as to the possibility of moving through time and/or space via a worm hole. But,there are many things around today which were totally impossible just 100 years ago and we see most of them as normal to us. Of course, there is always someone who comes along and screws up a discussion with a simply logical question. How do you build a “stable wormhole” with two ends located at desired points half a universe apart? How do you place the other end where you want it to be? If you try to use a “stable wormhole” to go through time, how do you place it in the time you want and how can you be sure it will stay where you put it? I am, of course, not including the possibility that you could construct an opening on one end and simply project the wormhole to another location and/or time. The main trouble here is knowing when and where the other end will emerge and what will be waiting on you.

We can’t physically travel through time, because that would take something we don’t have. That is, control over the universe. I believe the the universe doesn’t fold but is shaped like a bicycle wheel and we are traveling along the outside. The only way to advance forward or to be sent backwards is to go to the middle. Only God sits in the middle. God can have us see things in the past and in the future but through him is the only way. Therefore, traveling through time is not like a discovery yet found, needing more computations to be exposed. Time, however, is getting shorter, as told be the bible.

Viewing the apparent reversal of direction of the spokes on the accelerated spin of a wheel one can glean an insight as to the simplicities of time travel. Here is something to chew on: At an acceleration rate of 20 g’s it takes approximately 1748 seconds to achieve light speed. That’s 29 minutes 8 seconds (as viewed by the outside observer). On board, of course, less time will have passed upon reaching the speed of light. When the difference in each of the elapsed times is calculated so as to discern the “rate” at which the difference is occurring there will be nodal markers for the relative differentiations of frame position as well as rate migrations to and of it’s reversals in direction as compared against the back drop of the out side observers frame of reference.

“Theoretically” a wormhole could be used to travel into the future and back to the present, but you could not travel into the past.

Time travel - No Way! The temporal nature of all things is to be in one place at one time. You cannot be in more than one place at one time. The so-called slowing of time for fast moving objects is merely a mathematical contrivance to account for the energy budget envolved in observing sub-atomic particles and associated electromagnetic emmission by using other electromagnetic observing tools. The process does violate the most basic scientific investigation tenet: Do not disturb the observed. However, those with unbridled imaginations extrapolate the flawed observation to deduce, if time can be slowed, then it would be possible to speed time up and hence travel in time. While you are doing your time traveling, how are the energy budget books getting cooked?

For what we currently know, we can’t do time travel, but then again we don’t currently “know” we can have wormholes and do vast distance space travel. In future we may easily know we can do both, and time travel may in fact be easier. UFOlogists keep thinking UFOs may be from vast distances away, why don’t they ever think they might be from earth in the future?

First of all time doesn’t exist. Einstein himself said that “The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” What we call Time is a series of dimensionless NOW points and ALL exists at any NOW point in the same manner as a movie exists as a reel of film all at once but has to be unfurled frame by frame to be apprehended by a mind. In order for one to function in an agreed upon reality, perception must be disentangled from infinite event superposition by synaptic firing which is why those with non-standard synaptic unpacking have trouble discerning between normative reality and their personal perception. (We all have that problem but pretend to agree with each other in order to appear normal.)

That being said, John Wheeler showed that a positron is merely an electron moving backwards in time so if time travel by particle/antiparticles is possible, only a single unit of each subatomic particle is necessary, each particle is just very busy.

You need to define the question better. We are always traveling through time. Your question is “can we go backward in time”. The answer is probably no. We need to look at what we know. We know we can slow time down and in reverse speed it up, but nothing we know today suggests that you can reverse time. Everything exists in the present and the present moves toward the future. The Worm Hole idea has never been proven, yet you are speculating that if worm holes did exist then maybe they could lead to time travel… Too much what “Ifs”. I think it is funny that you ask questions asking for opinions on things that should be scientifically answered based on experiment and fact. What difference does it make that everyone believes in something when the facts show they are wrong. Believing in something doesn’t make it right.

The only reason that time exists is so that everything doesn’t happen at once. It has been a dismal failure!