Time travel: possible or fantasy?
The subject of time travel is mostly known from Hollywood films. However, research is also concerned with the topic. Read here how realistic time travel is.
Time travel is not the same as time travel
At least since Marty McFly traveled back to the future in the Delorian, the leap through time has not only become a dream for science fiction fans. There are two types of time travel:
- Traveling into the future is not only physically possible, it has even existed. But less spectacular than Hollywood wants to make us believe. Because, as Einstein has shown , time goes faster, the faster we move. In 1971, researchers let atomic clocks fly around the world at the speed of light. The result: the time passed more slowly than on comparable stationary clocks. So the clocks had traveled into the future, if only for a fraction of a second.
- According to the current state of research, journeys into the past are physically excluded. Theories that want to prove trips into the past could never prevail in the professional world.
The Gödel University
Nobody came closer to the journey into the past than the mathematician Kurt Gödel.
- For Albert Einstein's 70th birthday, Gödel Einstein gave his very own solution to the theory of relativity. Because he proved that although Einstein's theory did not prove the journey into the past, it did not exclude it per se.
- Godel's theoretical model requires a so-called "rotating universe". In this universe, astronauts can travel in both directions according to the theory of relativity on the timeline.
- In itself, Godel's theory is probably correct. The only catch: So far, no "rotating universe" has been found.
- So time travel back in time is probably pure science fiction for now.
