Throughout generations, the concept of traveling through time has sparked the curiosity of many people. Time traveling, essentially, is the concept of movement between certain points in time, analogous to movement, between different points in space. Typically performed with the use of a hypothetical device known as a time machine. This has been a concept that many deem to be only fiction; however, as the technology of our world continues to advance, it could become a reality in the future.
The idea of time traveling first began when Albert Einstein came up with his theory of relativity. This theory says that time and space are linked together. Einstein also said our universe has a speed limit which means that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Essentially, this means that the faster you travel, the slower you experience time. His calculations also suggest that an object in our universe can travel through space and time in a circular direction; this means that the object will eventually end up at a point on its journey where it has been before. This is a closed time-like curve.
Although some form of traveling to the past is possible, it does not mean we can change what already happened. One common theory for explaining this would be the Grandfather Paradox. This paradox uses the following example: Say a time-traveler goes back to the past and kills a younger version of his or her grandfather. The grandfather then wouldn't have any children, erasing the time-traveler's parents and, of course, the time-traveler, too. But then who would kill his grandfather? Scientists explain that if this were to be true this would mean that something would always get in the way of the attempt to kill the grandfather. This is because you could travel back in time, but you couldn't change how events unfolded significantly enough to alter the future.
Although traveling to the past seems pointless, scientists have discovered that traveling into the future is a more viable possibility. As previously stated, Einstein's theory of relativity says that the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time. Scientists have been able to measure this with ultra-precise atomic clocks in jet airplanes, and the precision offered by the GPS needs to take this into account. This could potentially mean that astronauts are already time travelers of a sort as they go into space and live on the International Space Station for months at a time. At a speed of about 5 miles (8 kilometers) a second, astronauts on the space station are moving faster than we are on Earth.
Scientists have come up with a few theories of things that could potentially make time travel possible. The first theory was to use an infinite cylinder, where one would take the matter that is 10 times the sun's mass, then roll it into a very long but very dense cylinder. After spinning the cylinder a few billion revolutions per minute, a spaceship nearby could get itself on a "closed, time-like curve and potentially travel through time.
Another famous theory for time traveling would be using black holes. Stephen Hawkings introduced this idea by explaining that if you move a ship rapidly around a black hole or were to artificially create that condition with a huge, rotating structure. This would cause the ship and its crew to be traveling through time. For example, if they circled the black hole for five years then ten years would pass elsewhere. When they got home, everyone on Earth would have aged five years more than they had.
Another common theory for this would be the use of cosmic strings, which are narrow tubes of energy stretched across the entire length of the ever-expanding universe. They are predicted to contain huge amounts of mass and therefore could warp the space-time around them. These strings are infinite so the approach of two such strings parallel to each other would bend space-time to the point where traveling through time could be possible, in theory.
Time travel is still something scientists and physicists are unsure of whether it's possible or not. If time-traveling were real and it would most likely be very different than we think of it today. With constant changes and developments in technology and our knowledge of space, there is a possibility of the discovery of time travel. However, we should know that it could be years until we get there and there is still a lot about our universe that we do not know.
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