• Question: Is time travel possible?

    Asked by 07squibbk to Alastair, Emma, Hywel, Keith, Vicki on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Alastair Sloan

      Alastair Sloan answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Probably not as we think of it. Not only are their too many paradoxes preventing time travel. It may be possible from a theoretical physics point of view.

    • Photo: Keith Brain

      Keith Brain answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      We can look at the stars and look back at the past (because is can take miilions of years for the light emitted in other galaxies to reach us), but I can’t think of a way of travelling back in time. You can travel forward in time by using something called “time dilation”. If you travel fast enough, then time ticks by at a different rate than it does for the people left behind. This means that if you jump in a spaceship, travel in a big circle at very close to the speed of light, then return to earth a year later (as time appears to pass to you) then when you return to earth, hundreds or thousands of years will have passed. So, traveling into the future I’d possible – but you can’t get back!

    • Photo: Vicki Stevenson

      Vicki Stevenson answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      Hi, it’s not possible yet, but I wouldn’t rule it out – a couple of centuries ago the idea of getting to the moon would have been definite science fiction and now that’s been achieved!
      Some people think that a time machine will need a receiver and a transmitter, so it won’t be possible for people to travel further back in time than the machine gets invented – which could be why we’ve never met a time traveller yet.

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