SUMMARY - STEPHAN HAWKING’S TIME TRAVEL THEORY

Stephan Hawking is asking the question: “Is time travel possible?”. He is tabling

about how the universe can be explored, wondering if portals to the past can be found or,

the other way around, finding a way to go to the future quicker - whilst taking advantage of

the laws of nature.

Considered scientific heresy, Stephan Hawking hid the fact that this was a topic

that he was obsessed with. In this documentary, he is talking about how we need to see

time as physicists - as a 4th dimension. As stated, all physical objects exist in 3

dimensions - width, height, length. The 4th dimension is the length in time. Time is

compared to the rocks and solar system that last longer than human lives. Traveling in

time is traveling through the 4th dimension. Traveling in a straight line with a car is one

dimension, adding curves adds a second, going up or down hills adds a third.

Traveling in time needs to have a path found, leading to indulging in science

fiction. Physicists have been thinking about time tunnels from a different perspective,

wondering if the tunnels could be built within the actual law of nature, which they think is

possible - they are named wormholes.

The holes are all around us, occurring in nooks and crannies between time.

Nothing is flat or solid, as we find holes and wrinkles in it - same being applied to time.

Showing that in the 3 dimensions is easy, but in the 4th dimension, we need to get to the

quantum foam to see wormholes - tiny shortcuts between space and time, which form and

reform. The tunnels are however too small for humans to pass through.

Scientists believe it is possible however to capture a wormhole, enlarge it billions

of times, making it big enough for a human or spaceship to enter it. Given enough power, a

gigantic one could be done in space, if possible - as stated, one end near the Earth and
another end to another distant planet, leading a ship to come out still near the Earth, but in

the past.

An experiment to see if time traveling is possible was conducted by Stephan

Hawking, deciding to throw a party expecting future time travelers. The coordinates - exact

time and space were shared, hoping that the time travel will be possible in the future -

however no one showed up, the experiment failing. Why did it not work? The problem

might be paradoxes as causes happen before effects and never the other way around -

else chaos would stay in.

Something would always happen where the paradox is not possible. The

wormhole in the paradox can’t exist because of the feedback, the phenomenon of sound

being amplified. This theory applies to the wormhole as well, but radiation would replace

sound - expanding leads to radiation, leading to the destruction of the wormhole. That was

the real reason for no one being present at the party - wormholes are not able to go to the

past, as Hawking sees it.

The idea of travel to the future was proposed by Albert Einstein years ago, as

there are zones where time speeds up and where time slows down as well - in space. The

gospel positioning system - GPS - 31 satellites orbiting around the planet, making satellite

navigation possible. Time runs faster there than it does on Earth - the satellites have a

clock that is very accurate, but they do each gain a 3rd of a billionth of a second every day,

needing to be changed back, else all gps’s on the planet will go off by 6 miles. The time in

space runs faster than the one on earth than in space because of the mass of the earth -

the heavier the object, the more it drags on time. Being closer to a heavy object makes

time next to it slower.

Being next to a black hole which is a natural time machine might be possible, but

very hard to do, as a spaceship needs to be on the correct pathway, into the orbit of the

black hole. It is, however, impractical, very dangerous. Another way to travel in time is
using a train that goes around the Earth, close to the speed of light. The train offers a one-

way ticket to the future, circling the planet 7 times a second. Time in the train would be

slowed down so that the speed of the train could be just under the speed of light, as the

laws of physics forbid it. The speed of light is named the cosmic speed limit - nothing can

travel faster than 300000km/s.

TIME TRAVEL ESSAY - THE POSSIBILITY OF IT’S EXISTENCE AND USE

Time travel, a beautiful dream. Is it however possible? Is it effective in any way?

What are the economically related factors that come in place when talking about the

possibility of time travel?

Let's start off with the economical factor, based on the already explained time travel

train theory explained in the documentary (Stephan Hawking - “Into the Universe - Time

Travel”) - the idea that if a train could travel around the world at a speed close to the speed

of light, time travel to the future would be possible.

Thinking about it, time travel would be really expensive. According to a

source(“Going to the moon”), a 10 day trip to the moon costs about 55 million US dollars.

The price for a ticket on the time travel train might be double, even triple that amount,

offering just a one-way ticket to an unknown future. According to another site (Millsap

Adam : “Biden’s High-Speed Rail to Nowhere”), it would cost 500 million US dollars PER

mile to build just the railway. The train itself might get closer to the price of an actual

rocket, which, according to a trusted Wikipedia article( “Space Launch Market

Competition”), the cost of new rockets can reach 2 billion US dollars. All of these costs

added up would lead to incredible build-up, as going around the entire earth with a railway

would be way too expensive, probably driving countries participating unto debt.

Furthermore, the railway would need to be protected by different laws as well as physically
protected and made sure to be structurally sound, else the train right go off the rails and

crash at an incredible speed into whatever it finds.

The only noticeable advantage here would be that it would provide people with a job

as the train conductor, but also as early testers of the experiment, also as technicians and

physicists that take care of the train and railway possibilities. The existence of the time

travel train would also provide passive income, as it would likely gain more interest as time

passes.

This next segment is a theory me and one of my classmates Gonzalo have figured

out, so I am unable to back it up with evidence. I think it’s quite interesting, as it makes a

lot of sense in the long-run. Time travel might be possible, but it is not effective or useful.

Sure, the idea of time travel is interesting, but the only reason it might be useful is for

sharing beliefs and truths of the past.

Think of it this way - an American and a flooded South-America. The person travelling to

the future has the knowledge of how America looked like in the past, but that doesn't alter

the future in any way because the rest of America have already made decisions that lead

to that natural disaster. We know that time travel to the past is not possible because of the

paradoxes that would be formed, so the person couldn't possibly inform the government of

the natural disaster occurring in order for it to not happen - the person would need to live in

an alternate universe for that to be possible, else from one minute to another the whole

future, as that person knows it, would be changed. It's impossible. That idea purely does

against the laws of physics.

In the article created on the website of the American Museum of Natural History

( “Einstein: Time is Relative”), we can see the relativity of time - a concept and law present

in physics. In basic words, time passing can only be determined by a frame of reference,

which is very true in this case. We report for example 100 years outside the train. They

would feel like 100 years, but inside the train it would feel like a week. An easier example
is that a sleeping person goes 8 hours to the near future faster than one that is awake that

whole 8 hours, just because sleep is taken as a reference. Both of the 100 year cases

would come to the same point, it would literally be just a matter of transportation to the

point.

This means that time travel really doesn't bring any sort of good, helpful addition to

the table as it wouldn't affect the events that will happen other than historical or

ideologically religious motives.

In conclusion, I believe that time travel might be possible to a certain extent, but the

costs and actual benefits of it are overpowered my the reality of the existent laws that have

been placed in physics, laws that cannot be altered.

SOURCES:

Hawking, Stephan. “Into the Universe - Time Travel .” Dailymotion, Dailymotion, 21 June

2018, https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6mei0y.

“Going to the Moon.” Google, Google, 2018, https://www.google.com/amp/s/futurism.com/

ticket moon-journey/amp.

Millsap, Adam. “Biden's High-Speed Rail to Nowhere.” Google, Google, 15 Apr. 2021,

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/adammillsap/2021/04/15/

bidens-high-speed-rail-to-nowhere/amp/.

“Space Launch Market Competition.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 9 Dec. 2021,

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Space_launch_market_competition#:~:text=By%20early%202016%2C%20the%20

US,billion%20for%20the%20main%20engine%22.

“Einstein: Time Is Relative.” American Museum of Natural History, American Museum of

Natural History, https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/time/a-matter-of-time.