The Fourth Dimension - Time Travel

Time Travel – Reality or Fantasy?

Growing up, I bet the idea of moving through time sparked curiosity, and fascination through your body. We’ve seen it in an array of different movies, and other forms of entertainment. From Back To The Future, to Project Almanac; pop-culture seems to be enthralled by the idea of time travel. Read this article to dive deeper into the conspiracy of the shifting through reality.

What is Time?

Is time an illusion? Is it just an idea made up by humans to put a value on life? Or is something much more complex – like another dimension? Scientifically speaking, Einstein classified time to be relative; its rate depending on the individual experiencing it. To put this into perspective, imagine you were sent off to space, on a space-ship which travels almost as fast as light. While you spent 20 years in space travelling at that insanely-high speed, thousands of years would’ve passed on Earth. Hence, theoretically this is considered travelling forward in time. Although, as of yet, we haven’t figured out how to approach the speed of light; it seems like a barrier, a limit past which nothing in the universe could exceed; negative mass is required.

Is Time Travel Really Possible?

Unfortunately, the technology we possess right now isn’t able to carry out grand-level time travel like in the movies, however there may come a point in human history where this work of imagination blossoms into something very vivid.

As we’ve discussed already, travelling forward in time may be a scientific possibility at some point, however leaping to the past is another story, as it seems more unlikely. There hasn’t been any real scientific evidence to prove, or disprove time travel to a large extent, hence we cannot say anything for certain yet.

With advancements in technology expanding every-day, going forward in time may not be a dream to the future generations. Cryonics; freezing your body in time, till the world has standardized to a point where you could live forever. This may seem far-fetched, but comparing our current world to the 1800s, it seems like technology has experience rapid growth, and the ideas that we cannot even fathom at the moment may be every-day mechanics in the future.

Some theories have related worm-holes, and black-holes to this concept, acting like a portal; entering from one place and leaving from a completely different region of space. However, worm-holes at this instance do not fit ants - let alone humans.

Theories and Paradoxes:

Let’s just assume that somehow the human race figured out how to travel through the fourth dimension – then what? Will the butterfly effect come into play, will a single change will alter the entire timeline? Or will there be a sustenance of the universe’s integrity by an unknown force maintaining balance, and forbidding a reconstruction of past events?

To magnify this concept, we need to look into some ideologies that tackle the entire logic of time travel.

Grand-Fathers Paradox:

This paradox suggests if you go back in time to kill your grandfather, your existence would be void; hence, there wouldn’t be anyone to go back into the past to kill your grand-father in the first place. This contradicts the entire philosophy that the pop-culture sci-fi is built upon.

This is in-contrast to the idea of parallel universes; that the events of you killing your grand-father took place in a parallel universe, leaving your initial universe in-tact, and unbothered.

Chronology Protection Conjecture:

Stephen Hawking boiled up a hypothesis which states that the laws of the universe only give permit to time-travel on a microscopic level - that the layers of rules that the universe is bound by will not allow a machine capable of transporting through the fourth dimension to come into existence.

In addition to that, Stephen Hawking held a party for time-travelers - although the invite was to be sent after the party… not a single individual joined the event. Hawking concluded this to be experimental proof against the existence of the possibility of time travel. However, since Einstein’s intellect opposes this view; his working supporting the idea of a closed time curve, where you would return to a point in time you’ve been to before…scientists and researchers continue to debate on this topic.

Can We Expect Time-Travel In Our Life-Time:

Life is a miraculous opportunity provided to us, which is limited in its essence. We should take in every moment, and make the best out of what’s given to us. Whatever time is – an illusion, a state of mind – it’s running out. Many people put a-lot of stress on how different the world would be if we could go back in time and alter events, yet they don’t see how their current actions could impact the future…the littlest of differentiation could change the outlook of humanity.

Being realistic, it doesn’t seem likely that full-blown time-travel will be accessible to us in our lives…perhaps somewhere down the line humans might figure out the mechanics of the concept – it’s a long shot. Despite that, there are many towering discoveries and inventions coming to life every day around the globe. With people like Elon Musk carrying out research, and leading the scientific world, the standards of the future are set sky-high, and we can’t be more thrilled to see what the forthcoming years hold.