Is Time Travel Possible

By Jeffrey Kam

There is nothing else that can get your imagination going more than the idea of time travel. Time travel is the ability to travel to any point in the past of future. What would be cooler? You could just jump into your time machine and go visit history making people, or interact in major historical events. Whoa would you travel back to see? Julius Caesar? William Shakespeare? Elvis? You could even go back and visit yourself at an earlier age, or go forward and see how you are in the future. These are the reasons why the subject of time travel has made the idea of so many science fiction books and movies.

Throughout history, man has pondered on the question, is time travel possible? As we all know, no one has successfully demonstrated time travel, but no one can rule it out either. Experiments of slowed clocks and younger particles have taken place, though. In 19 75, Carol Allie of the University of Maryland got two atomic clocks that are extremely accurate, and set them to the same exact time. She placed on an airplane that flew it around for a few hours and she left the other one on earth. After that, she compared the time with the one on the ground and found that time had moved a fraction of a second more slowly for the clock on board the plane. In another experiment, scientists used particle accelerators and sent particles flying faster than the speed of light. They found that the accelerated particles decayed faster than the particles that were moving at normal speed. So why does all of this mean time travel is possible? Well the same particles that make the clocks tick slower on planes, should also work at extreme speeds. But how will we ever get to these speeds? There is no reason to think that in the next few hundred years we wont be able to reach these speeds.

Albert Einstein’s theory says that approaching the speed of light would slow down time, traveling at the speed of light would make it stand still and traveling faster than the speed of light would reverse time. But Einstein also showed that traveling at of faster than the speed of light is impossible because mass at these speeds becomes infinite. Does that mean traveling back in time is impossible? Many physicists have said so.

Finally, there is the crazy and most controversial issue of the time travel paradox. For example, what happens if a person goes back in time and kills his grandmother before the traveler’s mother is born. Does that mean the time traveler suddenly no longer exists and he wouldn’t be able to go back in time to kill his grandmother because he no longer exists? Some physicists say that time protects itself from things like that by preventing time travel to the past. Some say that the time traveler would just enter a parallel universe that goes along its own separate road in space. And some even say that you won’t be able to kill you grandmother because time prevents it from happening. For example, every time you tried to kill your grandmother, something would happen, such as you can’t find your gun. And every other time you tried to kill her, something else would come up.

There have been countless reports of time travel experiences. Such as the most recent one, where a man claims he is a time traveler from the year 2256 after winning in the stock market many times. While the stock market crashed last year, this man named Andrew Carlssin made 126 HIGH RISK trades and came out the winner every time. His explanation is that he came in his time craft from 2256. He’s in jail right now. He wont reveal the location of his time craft thinking it will “fall into the wrong hands.” He says he would tell the location of Osama BinLaden and give a cure for aids if they just let him go. Unfortunately, no one believes him. Yet the SEC source admits, "No one can find any record of any Andrew Carlssin existing anywhere before December 2002." Well, I believe Andrew Carlssin. Do you?

In conclusion, time travel will one day be possible. Sadly, it won’t be in our lifetime. Time travel is the most questioned science subject. It has been the top subject of science fiction movies and books. This brings us to the conclusion of this research paper: Time Travel is possible.