What is time? What does it mean to you? And is it possible to move from one point to another in time? People ask about all of these questions, and scientists have many theories regarding the same and everything related to time.
One of the famous scientists, the physicist Albert Einstein, showed that time is an illusion and it depends on speed through space. However, his theory about special relativity says that time slows down or speeds up depending on how fast you move relative to something else.
Approaching the speed of light, a person inside a spaceship would age much slower than his twin at home. Also, under Einstein's theory of general relativity, gravity can bend time.
What if Time Machines Exist?
Sometimes we wonder what would happen if time machines do exist, and to travel through time means it involves bending space-time, so the timelines turn back on themselves to form a loop, technically known as a "closed time-like curve."
On the other hand, time-traveling suggests that time machines could exist without exotic matter, and the work begins with a hole wrapped up within a sphere. Inside the vacuum, space-time could bend upon itself using focused gravitational fields to form a closed time-like curve.
And to the traveler, going back in time would race around inside the hole, so it means going further back into the past with each lap. But, this theory has several obstacles. The gravitational fields required to make such a closed time-like curve would have to be very strong, and manipulating them would have to be very precise, which is a tremendously difficult task.
"The Past is Obdurate." Stephen King
What could happen if you went back in time and did something in the past that endangered the future? Many pieces of research say that paradoxes couldn't exist. And if you change something in the past, the timeline would essentially self-correct.
This idea makes us go back to Einstein's theory of general relativity. Einstein said that it's possible, but changing the past would endanger the future. However, researchers say that paradoxes wouldn't necessarily exist because events would adjust themselves.
Let's say that there's a plague that we need to prevent from happening, and we found patient zero. The process is to prevent the plague from spreading to stop it. But in doing so, one of us could catch the virus and become patient zero. Therefore, no matter what you do, the event would still find a way to happen.
The Bottom Line
Time travel is contradictory because of paradoxes that make things impossible. And many scientists argue about its possibility. However, the most famous of the temporal paradoxes is the grandfather paradox. Another paradox exists, the Bootstrap paradox, which is also the ontological paradox.
It is a type of closed-loop paradox much like the pedestrian paradox, where cause and effect happen in a loop until the point of origin is no longer distinct. The bootstrap paradox is consistent and it defies the natural laws of physics. It's like the law of causality, and we can't use it to predict the event from the future. Yet, it could be an event from the past.
I think it's possible and achievable to travel through time, and I believe that the universe has limits that we may not be able to exceed. Sometimes, we think that it's a dream which may never come true, but everything is possible.
Science always has a way to make things happen, and it improves over time. Even though we think time travel is a mystery, maybe someone can unravel it one day. Also, remember that some things are better if they remain a mystery because many people will turn it to their interests.
You would also like to read about a Mathematical Model For a Viable Time Machine.
Read this article to know about the Metaphysics of Time Travel.
Written By - Susan Ismail
Edited By - Bhanu Jain
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