• Question: Is time travel actually possible? If so, where would you go, what would you do and why?

    Asked by saintjimmy to Christine, Edd, Jess, Nicolas, Zara on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by samueleason, gogoleonrangers, johnfraser, clockwork18.
    • Photo: Zara Gladman

      Zara Gladman answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I have no idea if it is possible so I did a quick google: http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=is+time+travel+possible Some people say that time travel is ‘arguably possible’ – but I guess nobody really knows!

      If I could time travel I would go back to the 1960s and see The Beatles at the Cavern club in Liverpool, because I’m obsessed with them! AND if I was brave enough, I’d go back to the Jurassic Age and do a dinosaur safari 🙂

    • Photo: Edward Codling

      Edward Codling answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Time travel like in Doctor Who isn’t really possible. However, a certain type of time travel IS possible according to Einstein’s theory of relativity. This is why the theory was so incredible at the time he came up with it – people didn’t realise the implications until a while later. However, the theory of relativity does seem to be true and it explains a lot of phenomena we couldn’t explain before.

      The basic idea is that time slows down the faster you move, until time would be standing still if you were moving at the speed of light (and nothing can go faster than this). Hence if you send some astronauts out on a space mission where they are travelling at (say) 1/10th of the speed of light then time for them would move more slowly. Suppose they spend 20 years on their spaceship before coming back to earth. They would have aged 20 years but the people on Earth would have aged hundreds of years in the same time – because time is moving quicker for them. So for the people on earth it looks like the astronauts have gone back in time – but from the astronauts point of view nothing odd has happened to them – everyone else just seems to have aged much more quickly!

      It is very confusing so don’t worry if you don’t understand – I certainly don’t understand the full theory!

      If Doctor Who style time travel was possible I’d like to go back and see how life on earth first started. And then I’d like to go into the future 20,000 years to see where the human race has got to – hopefully we’ll be in a much better position than now!

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