Why Do Wormholes Have To Do Time Travel
Kyle A. Rodrigues
Ms. Scanlon
Physical Science
28 March 2013
Time Travel and How Black Holes make it Possible “Man… can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension or even turn about and travel the other way” (Wells). In this quote, H.G. Wells asked one of the most commonly asked questions in time travel, why can people not move about in time as they wish? Black Holes present the opportunity to move forward in time although not in the same way as the “time machine” of popular science fiction. Time travel via black hole is completely uncontrollable, extremely dangerous, and won’t even be able to take you very far into the future. Another way of traveling through time is through wormholes, …show more content…
which are tiny crevices, wrinkles, or voids in the fourth dimension, time. The final form of time travel that has some scientific credibility, is to travel at an accelerated pace through time, by traveling close to the speed of light. Therefore, black holes, wormholes, and traveling near the speed of light are all theoretically viable ways of traveling through time. According to Albert Einstein time is like a river speeding up and slowing down. Einstein realized that gravity drags on time, slowing it down; and the greater the gravitational pull of the object, the greater the effect upon time. Because of their gigantic mass, black holes slow down time more than anything else in the universe, making them natural time machines. However, going into orbit around a black hole would be incredibly dangerous, and in order to avoid the gravitational pull of the black hole, the spaceship would have to have the exactly right trajectory and speed. Even if you had a spaceship and calculations capable of entering into orbit around the Sun, you would first have to get there, and the nearest black hole, V4641 Sagittarii, is 1600 light years away. After you passed a seemingly unconquerable distance and entered into a death-defying orbit, time would still only pass at twice its speed on Earth. Black Holes are the evolutionary endpoints of stars at least 10 times larger than the Sun, by the end of the formation of a black hole; the solar system that once orbited around the star will be destroyed. Another way of traveling through time is through Einstein-Rosen bridges or wormholes, which are tiny crevices, wrinkles, or voids in the fourth dimension, time.
Wormholes are theoretical tunnels through space and time that exist in the quantum foam and are just a billionth-trillionth-trillionth of a centimeter across. They link two different places and two different times. Some scientists believe it could be possible to capture one and enlarge it trillions of times in order to allow a person to go through it. Theoretically, these wormholes would connect either distant regions of a universe, or they could connect our universe with another universe. However, in order to keep the throat of the wormhole from collapsing in on itself, you would need large amounts of negative energy; of which we have only been able to produce very small amounts with the Casimir effect. Despite the fact that wormholes look very promising to Science Fiction enthusiasts, the fact remains that it is unclear whether or not wormholes even exist, and even if they did we would need to be able to enlarge the wormhole and be able to produce large amounts of exotic mass to stabilize
it. The final form of time travel that has some scientific credibility, is to travel at an accelerated pace through time, by traveling close to the speed of light. If you were to travel at 99.99% of the speed of light for one week in your spacecraft, about a century would go by on Earth. We have proof that travelling near the speed of light would slow down time because of the particles in the Large Hadron Collider. The particles in the Hadron Collider, which travel at about 77% of the speed of light; some of which normally last only a fraction of a second before deteriorating, will last up to 30 times longer in the Hadron Collider. Time is thought to slow down near the speed of light in order to make sure that nothing passes the speed of light. For example, when two particles smash together in the Hadron Collider the particles’ collision speed should be nearly twice the speed of light. However, the speed of the particles is still measured to be just under the speed of light at the time of their collision. In conclusion, it is possible to travel through time without violating Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. By going into orbit around a black hole, the black hole’s gravitational pull would slow down time; however black holes are so far away and it is so dangerous to try to orbit one that it makes the idea of using it for time travel highly improbable and foolhardy. Einstein-Rosen Bridges are theoretical solutions to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that would provide us with a shortcut to travel through space and time. Unfortunately the throat of a wormhole is inherently unstable and in order to allow someone to travel through it would require vast amounts of negative energy. Studies at the Large Hadron Collider show that the closer your speed gets to the speed of light the more time slows. Despite the fact that these forms of time travel don’t violate the laws of physics, does not mean that humans will ever be able to engage in them. In order to develop the technology that will be needed for time travel we would first have to figure out a way of conserving our natural resources and avoiding killing each other off first.
Works Cited
"Time Travel for Beginners." 302 Found. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. <http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/John_Gribbin/timetrav.htm>. Bogart, Shirley, Brendan Lynch, and H. G. Wells. The Time Machine. New York, NY: Baronet, 1992. Print. Melton, Knocke Melanie. From Blue Moons to Black Holes: A Basic Guide to Astronomy, Outer Space, and Space Exploration. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005. Print.
"Anatomy of A Black Hole." NCSA Web Archive Bounce Page. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. <http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/BlackHoleAnat.html>. Hawking, Stephen. "Time Travel." Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. Discovery Channel. DSC, 9 Apr. 2010. Television.
Jessa, Tega. "Where Is the Nearest Black Hole." Universe Today RSS. N.p., 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 24 Mar. 2013.
Holman, Richard F., William A. Hissock, and Matt Visser. "What Exactly Is a 'wormhole '?" FOLLOW-UP: What Exactly Is a 'wormhole '? Have Wormholes Been Proven to Exist or Are They Still Theoretical?: Scientific American. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.
Ms. Scanlon
Physical Science
28 March 2013
Time Travel and How Black Holes make it Possible “Man… can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension or even turn about and travel the other way” (Wells). In this quote, H.G. Wells asked one of the most commonly asked questions in time travel, why can people not move about in time as they wish? Black Holes present the opportunity to move forward in time although not in the same way as the “time machine” of popular science fiction. Time travel via black hole is completely uncontrollable, extremely dangerous, and won’t even be able to take you very far into the future. Another way of traveling through time is through wormholes, …show more content…
which are tiny crevices, wrinkles, or voids in the fourth dimension, time. The final form of time travel that has some scientific credibility, is to travel at an accelerated pace through time, by traveling close to the speed of light. Therefore, black holes, wormholes, and traveling near the speed of light are all theoretically viable ways of traveling through time. According to Albert Einstein time is like a river speeding up and slowing down. Einstein realized that gravity drags on time, slowing it down; and the greater the gravitational pull of the object, the greater the effect upon time. Because of their gigantic mass, black holes slow down time more than anything else in the universe, making them natural time machines. However, going into orbit around a black hole would be incredibly dangerous, and in order to avoid the gravitational pull of the black hole, the spaceship would have to have the exactly right trajectory and speed. Even if you had a spaceship and calculations capable of entering into orbit around the Sun, you would first have to get there, and the nearest black hole, V4641 Sagittarii, is 1600 light years away. After you passed a seemingly unconquerable distance and entered into a death-defying orbit, time would still only pass at twice its speed on Earth. Black Holes are the evolutionary endpoints of stars at least 10 times larger than the Sun, by the end of the formation of a black hole; the solar system that once orbited around the star will be destroyed. Another way of traveling through time is through Einstein-Rosen bridges or wormholes, which are tiny crevices, wrinkles, or voids in the fourth dimension, time.
Wormholes are theoretical tunnels through space and time that exist in the quantum foam and are just a billionth-trillionth-trillionth of a centimeter across. They link two different places and two different times. Some scientists believe it could be possible to capture one and enlarge it trillions of times in order to allow a person to go through it. Theoretically, these wormholes would connect either distant regions of a universe, or they could connect our universe with another universe. However, in order to keep the throat of the wormhole from collapsing in on itself, you would need large amounts of negative energy; of which we have only been able to produce very small amounts with the Casimir effect. Despite the fact that wormholes look very promising to Science Fiction enthusiasts, the fact remains that it is unclear whether or not wormholes even exist, and even if they did we would need to be able to enlarge the wormhole and be able to produce large amounts of exotic mass to stabilize
it. The final form of time travel that has some scientific credibility, is to travel at an accelerated pace through time, by traveling close to the speed of light. If you were to travel at 99.99% of the speed of light for one week in your spacecraft, about a century would go by on Earth. We have proof that travelling near the speed of light would slow down time because of the particles in the Large Hadron Collider. The particles in the Hadron Collider, which travel at about 77% of the speed of light; some of which normally last only a fraction of a second before deteriorating, will last up to 30 times longer in the Hadron Collider. Time is thought to slow down near the speed of light in order to make sure that nothing passes the speed of light. For example, when two particles smash together in the Hadron Collider the particles’ collision speed should be nearly twice the speed of light. However, the speed of the particles is still measured to be just under the speed of light at the time of their collision. In conclusion, it is possible to travel through time without violating Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. By going into orbit around a black hole, the black hole’s gravitational pull would slow down time; however black holes are so far away and it is so dangerous to try to orbit one that it makes the idea of using it for time travel highly improbable and foolhardy. Einstein-Rosen Bridges are theoretical solutions to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity that would provide us with a shortcut to travel through space and time. Unfortunately the throat of a wormhole is inherently unstable and in order to allow someone to travel through it would require vast amounts of negative energy. Studies at the Large Hadron Collider show that the closer your speed gets to the speed of light the more time slows. Despite the fact that these forms of time travel don’t violate the laws of physics, does not mean that humans will ever be able to engage in them. In order to develop the technology that will be needed for time travel we would first have to figure out a way of conserving our natural resources and avoiding killing each other off first.
Works Cited
"Time Travel for Beginners." 302 Found. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. <http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/John_Gribbin/timetrav.htm>. Bogart, Shirley, Brendan Lynch, and H. G. Wells. The Time Machine. New York, NY: Baronet, 1992. Print. Melton, Knocke Melanie. From Blue Moons to Black Holes: A Basic Guide to Astronomy, Outer Space, and Space Exploration. Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2005. Print.
"Anatomy of A Black Hole." NCSA Web Archive Bounce Page. Web. 29 Mar. 2012. <http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/BlackHoleAnat.html>. Hawking, Stephen. "Time Travel." Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. Discovery Channel. DSC, 9 Apr. 2010. Television.
Jessa, Tega. "Where Is the Nearest Black Hole." Universe Today RSS. N.p., 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 24 Mar. 2013.
Holman, Richard F., William A. Hissock, and Matt Visser. "What Exactly Is a 'wormhole '?" FOLLOW-UP: What Exactly Is a 'wormhole '? Have Wormholes Been Proven to Exist or Are They Still Theoretical?: Scientific American. Web. 27 Mar. 2013.