This is my first time writing a research paper (yes I have found a way to get out of it every year in high school) and i really need this paper to get an A so that i will get an A in the class. Please any feedback would be fantastic, its due in 3.5 hours to anything would be great!
Here it is:
Time travel is an idea that has had human being at the edge of their seats since its inception. The very idea of being able to travel through time, and go to the future, the past, and experience life from its very roots, to its potential ends, is the dream of many people. The idea of time and time travel has eluded and intrigued people since the beginning of rational thought.
Time travelling is a dream for many, yet many people do not understand that we are all time-travellers. Technically speaking everybody on earth is "travelling" through time. Everyone hour, every minute that ticks forward, we are being pushed through the dimension we know of as time. It is hard to understand time, when it seems so different. Even human's perception of time changes depending on how our brain processes it. For example if a person is entertained for being mentally stimulated, time seems to fly by and go in a heartbeat. On the other hand if somebody is bored, time seems to go on much slower. In actuality time is not being sped up or slowed down, but our perception of time is.
Many individuals see time as something that cannot be altered, slowed, or sped up. On the other hand, scientist are starting to view time as something different than an untouchable force, but rather more like a dimension which we can manipulate. Trying to imagine time as a fourth dimension, the dimension above our is very difficult to comprehend. It is like if a sentient being lived in a two-dimensional world, and in this world he was told to imagine a third dimension. This two-dimensional being would be living within the confines of the third dimension, but would never understand what a third dimension would be. The being would never be able to comprehend. The situation is the same with people. We live in the third dimension within the confines of the fourth dimension, time. It is almost impossible to imagine the fourth dimension similarly how a two dimensional being could not comprehend the third dimension. Once the idea that time as a dimension is accepted, one can start imagining the manipulation of this dimension.
One way scientist has figured out about manipulating time is through the speed of light. The speed of light is directly connected to time. Scientists have figured out that the faster you move, the slower time moves for you. Going by these terms, if a person were to run their whole lives compared to a person that walks, the person's time who is always running would be moving slower, thus making him age slower. Of course there are many other factors that contribute to aging, but this example is just comparing the speed. Things start to get very interesting the closer you get to the speed of light. According to physics, the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower and slower time gets, to the point to where is almost stops. For example if there was a satellite, that travelled around the earth at almost the speed of light, and we put people to live there for a year, thirty years later, if we brought the astronauts down from the satellite, everyone and everything on earth would be thirty years older, but the astronauts would have barely aged.
One of the biggest problems of using light to travel through time is that to get to the speed of light, an infinite power source would be needed. Humans have no way of generating infinite power, so many scientist have wondered if maybe there is already a source of power which is already in space which we can harness. The answer to this question lies in the black holes which are scattered throughout our universe; specifically the supermassive black holes which lie in the center of most galaxies.
The theory behind traveling through time by harnessing the strength of black lies in the idea that time is distorted by gravity and speed. To understand how gravity distorts time, one must imagine space and time as a fabric, which goes through our entire universe. Every object which contains mass in the universe influences this fabric the same way a marble would on a piece of fabric. People also influence it, but since humans are so small, we only influence it a little bit, and are thus negligible. Larger bodies however, such as stars, and galaxies, create a much bigger impact and create very large dips in the space-time fabric. The more gravitational force is exerted upon an object, the slower time moves for that object relative to an object outside of that gravitational field.
Applying this knowledge, black holes are objects which are known to be some of the most dense and gravitationally intense objects in our universe which also rotate at near the speed of light. Adding on to the previous idea that the more gravity an object is subjected to, the slower its time moves, scientist believe that we can potentially move forward in time by harnessing the immense gravity and speed of black holes. If humans were somehow able to send a rocket to orbit a black hole, without entering its event horizon, our time would eventually slow down relative to other humans on earth. Scientists have calculated that the rate at which time would slow down right outside the event horizon of a black hole would be by a factor of one-half. This means if the humans were to orbit the black hole for ten years, than twenty years would pass on earth. This would mean the people would come back to earth only having aged ten years, while the whole planet would have gone 10 years further into the future. Effectively the humans on the spaceship would have achieved time travel.
This form of time travel, unlike the wormhole theory does not allow for time travel backwards into the past. This form of time travel does not give the time traveler any freedom as they can only alter the pace at which they experience time. While the wormhole theory allows a person to go to any place in space and time, the black-hole theory only allows the people on the ship to alter their own time relative to the people who are experiencing time regularly on earth. The people on the ship are basically travelling through 10 years into the future. Even though the people who were on earth and the people in the spaceship technically waited the same amount of time, the people in space had their time slowed down so much, that they technically only aged half as much. This theory of time travel scientists agree is the most realistic and possible to achieve, although it still would not be possible for a very, very long time.
The next big idea for time travel is by using wormholes. To understand how wormholes work, one must imagine the universe as a gigantic plane, or fabric. On a day to day basis, people travel on this plane like every other object in the universe. We simply move along the surface of the plane from one point to another, from point A to point B. A wormhole manipulates the idea that the universe is like a fabric, and thus can be manipulated. In order to move from point A to point B faster than a straight line, would be to fold the fabric, or plane over to put both points right next to each other. Of course the energy required to bend the very fabric of the universe would be unimaginably immense and therefore nearly impossible to do; but according to physics, it is possible.
Through this idea, of space being foldable, and malleable, scientist also suspect that the points we wish to travel to can also be manipulated. If a person is located on point A in the year 2013, why can't the point B he wants to travel to be in the year 200 A.D.? If you see time as a dimension which we discussed earlier, than it is easy to see that time can also be manipulated as a dimension and can therefore be used to move through to go to a desired time.
The problem with this theory of time travel is that going to the past using wormholes can create a "time paradox". A time paradox is a paradox which a time traveler would create if he went to the past and changed the necessary conditions for him to even travel to the past from the future in the first place. One example of a time paradox is called the "grandfather paradox". This paradox occurs if a said person were to travel to the past, and then kill his own grandfather, thus stopping himself from being born in the first place, which then in turn makes it impossible to even go back to the past, and so on and so forth. Although paradoxes seem like huge roadblocks in the theory of time travel through wormhole, some scientist believe they have found a solution.
Some scientist believes that we are not the only universe of our kind. These scientists believe that we are part of a multiverse of universes. If you connect the time travel by wormhole and the theory of the multiverse, you achieve a solution to the paradoxes time travel can create. If by going in the past you also just to a parallel universe, you will not cease to exist because you are not killing yourself, you are killing the you which exists in a parallel universe. Therefore you will cease to exist in that timeline and in that universe, but in your current universe you will still exist. Of course according to this theory time travel through wormholes would theoretically be possible, but then there exists a whole multitude of new variables within the very theory of the multiverse itself.
The final theory of time travel which scientist have discovered is through the use of cosmic strings. Cosmic strings are invisible strings which go throughout our universe. These strings can range anywhere from being small, to infinite; and they originated from the leftovers of the big bang. They are thought to be narrower than the width of an atomic nucleus, yet exert immense gravitational force. If one of these strings was just one meter long, it would exert more gravitational force than the earth; therefore a one of these strings with infinite length would create enough force to effect space-time itself. In order to use these cosmic strings to travel through time, we would have to find a way to make two of these strings pass by each other, thus bending the fabric of space-time into a wedge shape. Light would still go alone the fabric of space-time moving from point A to point B at regular time, but we could use this fold to use a shortcut to arrive to point B faster than the speed of light. If we then return from point B back to point A before the light can return, than we would have successfully outrun light and travelled back into the past.
This time machine, although makes sense theoretically, still has flaws and obstacles which would make it difficult to use as a form of travel. One of the biggest flaws of this form of time travel is that is two masses with such immense energy pass by each other quickly, there is also a chance for a black hole to be created. If a black hole is born, than our time travel becomes impossible as simply moving through the twists will result in the passengers getting sucked down and killed by the black hole. The only way to bypass the self-destruction of the time machine is to further increase our knowledge of quantum gravity, which we do not yet fully understand.
The many theories of time travel seem possible enough if we have the required resources (which we probably will not be able to acquire for hundreds of years), but the biggest issue is that all of them have the same fundamental issues. All black holes have a chance to self-destruct when it is created thus making it either impossible to keep them open long enough to use as a form of travel, or making them shut as we are travelling through them thus killing the traveler. Science does not yet have the necessary understanding of quantum mechanics in order to bypass these problems.
Time travel is a fantasy which people have dreamt about ever since man has first started thinking. It is a concept which people wish they could achieve, yea believe is only possible is dreams or stories. The theories of time travel which have been studied by some of the worlds' leading minds have actually shown that this dream, this fantasy is not just something which we will watch in movies and read in books. It shows that time travel is a concept which sometime in the future could actually become a reality. Will time travel bring us even farther to the future and help us erase the most painful moments in history, or will it be used by the few in power to control the world. Things which seemed like a simple are coming into fruition faster than anyone can imagine. The future is now.
Here it is:
Time travel is an idea that has had human being at the edge of their seats since its inception. The very idea of being able to travel through time, and go to the future, the past, and experience life from its very roots, to its potential ends, is the dream of many people. The idea of time and time travel has eluded and intrigued people since the beginning of rational thought.
Time travelling is a dream for many, yet many people do not understand that we are all time-travellers. Technically speaking everybody on earth is "travelling" through time. Everyone hour, every minute that ticks forward, we are being pushed through the dimension we know of as time. It is hard to understand time, when it seems so different. Even human's perception of time changes depending on how our brain processes it. For example if a person is entertained for being mentally stimulated, time seems to fly by and go in a heartbeat. On the other hand if somebody is bored, time seems to go on much slower. In actuality time is not being sped up or slowed down, but our perception of time is.
Many individuals see time as something that cannot be altered, slowed, or sped up. On the other hand, scientist are starting to view time as something different than an untouchable force, but rather more like a dimension which we can manipulate. Trying to imagine time as a fourth dimension, the dimension above our is very difficult to comprehend. It is like if a sentient being lived in a two-dimensional world, and in this world he was told to imagine a third dimension. This two-dimensional being would be living within the confines of the third dimension, but would never understand what a third dimension would be. The being would never be able to comprehend. The situation is the same with people. We live in the third dimension within the confines of the fourth dimension, time. It is almost impossible to imagine the fourth dimension similarly how a two dimensional being could not comprehend the third dimension. Once the idea that time as a dimension is accepted, one can start imagining the manipulation of this dimension.
One way scientist has figured out about manipulating time is through the speed of light. The speed of light is directly connected to time. Scientists have figured out that the faster you move, the slower time moves for you. Going by these terms, if a person were to run their whole lives compared to a person that walks, the person's time who is always running would be moving slower, thus making him age slower. Of course there are many other factors that contribute to aging, but this example is just comparing the speed. Things start to get very interesting the closer you get to the speed of light. According to physics, the closer you get to the speed of light, the slower and slower time gets, to the point to where is almost stops. For example if there was a satellite, that travelled around the earth at almost the speed of light, and we put people to live there for a year, thirty years later, if we brought the astronauts down from the satellite, everyone and everything on earth would be thirty years older, but the astronauts would have barely aged.
One of the biggest problems of using light to travel through time is that to get to the speed of light, an infinite power source would be needed. Humans have no way of generating infinite power, so many scientist have wondered if maybe there is already a source of power which is already in space which we can harness. The answer to this question lies in the black holes which are scattered throughout our universe; specifically the supermassive black holes which lie in the center of most galaxies.
The theory behind traveling through time by harnessing the strength of black lies in the idea that time is distorted by gravity and speed. To understand how gravity distorts time, one must imagine space and time as a fabric, which goes through our entire universe. Every object which contains mass in the universe influences this fabric the same way a marble would on a piece of fabric. People also influence it, but since humans are so small, we only influence it a little bit, and are thus negligible. Larger bodies however, such as stars, and galaxies, create a much bigger impact and create very large dips in the space-time fabric. The more gravitational force is exerted upon an object, the slower time moves for that object relative to an object outside of that gravitational field.
Applying this knowledge, black holes are objects which are known to be some of the most dense and gravitationally intense objects in our universe which also rotate at near the speed of light. Adding on to the previous idea that the more gravity an object is subjected to, the slower its time moves, scientist believe that we can potentially move forward in time by harnessing the immense gravity and speed of black holes. If humans were somehow able to send a rocket to orbit a black hole, without entering its event horizon, our time would eventually slow down relative to other humans on earth. Scientists have calculated that the rate at which time would slow down right outside the event horizon of a black hole would be by a factor of one-half. This means if the humans were to orbit the black hole for ten years, than twenty years would pass on earth. This would mean the people would come back to earth only having aged ten years, while the whole planet would have gone 10 years further into the future. Effectively the humans on the spaceship would have achieved time travel.
This form of time travel, unlike the wormhole theory does not allow for time travel backwards into the past. This form of time travel does not give the time traveler any freedom as they can only alter the pace at which they experience time. While the wormhole theory allows a person to go to any place in space and time, the black-hole theory only allows the people on the ship to alter their own time relative to the people who are experiencing time regularly on earth. The people on the ship are basically travelling through 10 years into the future. Even though the people who were on earth and the people in the spaceship technically waited the same amount of time, the people in space had their time slowed down so much, that they technically only aged half as much. This theory of time travel scientists agree is the most realistic and possible to achieve, although it still would not be possible for a very, very long time.
The next big idea for time travel is by using wormholes. To understand how wormholes work, one must imagine the universe as a gigantic plane, or fabric. On a day to day basis, people travel on this plane like every other object in the universe. We simply move along the surface of the plane from one point to another, from point A to point B. A wormhole manipulates the idea that the universe is like a fabric, and thus can be manipulated. In order to move from point A to point B faster than a straight line, would be to fold the fabric, or plane over to put both points right next to each other. Of course the energy required to bend the very fabric of the universe would be unimaginably immense and therefore nearly impossible to do; but according to physics, it is possible.
Through this idea, of space being foldable, and malleable, scientist also suspect that the points we wish to travel to can also be manipulated. If a person is located on point A in the year 2013, why can't the point B he wants to travel to be in the year 200 A.D.? If you see time as a dimension which we discussed earlier, than it is easy to see that time can also be manipulated as a dimension and can therefore be used to move through to go to a desired time.
The problem with this theory of time travel is that going to the past using wormholes can create a "time paradox". A time paradox is a paradox which a time traveler would create if he went to the past and changed the necessary conditions for him to even travel to the past from the future in the first place. One example of a time paradox is called the "grandfather paradox". This paradox occurs if a said person were to travel to the past, and then kill his own grandfather, thus stopping himself from being born in the first place, which then in turn makes it impossible to even go back to the past, and so on and so forth. Although paradoxes seem like huge roadblocks in the theory of time travel through wormhole, some scientist believe they have found a solution.
Some scientist believes that we are not the only universe of our kind. These scientists believe that we are part of a multiverse of universes. If you connect the time travel by wormhole and the theory of the multiverse, you achieve a solution to the paradoxes time travel can create. If by going in the past you also just to a parallel universe, you will not cease to exist because you are not killing yourself, you are killing the you which exists in a parallel universe. Therefore you will cease to exist in that timeline and in that universe, but in your current universe you will still exist. Of course according to this theory time travel through wormholes would theoretically be possible, but then there exists a whole multitude of new variables within the very theory of the multiverse itself.
The final theory of time travel which scientist have discovered is through the use of cosmic strings. Cosmic strings are invisible strings which go throughout our universe. These strings can range anywhere from being small, to infinite; and they originated from the leftovers of the big bang. They are thought to be narrower than the width of an atomic nucleus, yet exert immense gravitational force. If one of these strings was just one meter long, it would exert more gravitational force than the earth; therefore a one of these strings with infinite length would create enough force to effect space-time itself. In order to use these cosmic strings to travel through time, we would have to find a way to make two of these strings pass by each other, thus bending the fabric of space-time into a wedge shape. Light would still go alone the fabric of space-time moving from point A to point B at regular time, but we could use this fold to use a shortcut to arrive to point B faster than the speed of light. If we then return from point B back to point A before the light can return, than we would have successfully outrun light and travelled back into the past.
This time machine, although makes sense theoretically, still has flaws and obstacles which would make it difficult to use as a form of travel. One of the biggest flaws of this form of time travel is that is two masses with such immense energy pass by each other quickly, there is also a chance for a black hole to be created. If a black hole is born, than our time travel becomes impossible as simply moving through the twists will result in the passengers getting sucked down and killed by the black hole. The only way to bypass the self-destruction of the time machine is to further increase our knowledge of quantum gravity, which we do not yet fully understand.
The many theories of time travel seem possible enough if we have the required resources (which we probably will not be able to acquire for hundreds of years), but the biggest issue is that all of them have the same fundamental issues. All black holes have a chance to self-destruct when it is created thus making it either impossible to keep them open long enough to use as a form of travel, or making them shut as we are travelling through them thus killing the traveler. Science does not yet have the necessary understanding of quantum mechanics in order to bypass these problems.
Time travel is a fantasy which people have dreamt about ever since man has first started thinking. It is a concept which people wish they could achieve, yea believe is only possible is dreams or stories. The theories of time travel which have been studied by some of the worlds' leading minds have actually shown that this dream, this fantasy is not just something which we will watch in movies and read in books. It shows that time travel is a concept which sometime in the future could actually become a reality. Will time travel bring us even farther to the future and help us erase the most painful moments in history, or will it be used by the few in power to control the world. Things which seemed like a simple are coming into fruition faster than anyone can imagine. The future is now.
