Chapter Ten - Wormholes and Time Travel

Wormholes and time travel are very interesting to the majority of students in our class. Who wouldn't want to travel back in time and do something differently? Hawking, in order to explain the idea of time travel, uses a railroad. The train is time. It moves forward on a straight path into the future. However, what if there were twists or branches that the train could take to return to a previous train station, being that of a point in time. Is that possible?

The first indication that time travel might be possible came in 1949 with research by Kurt  Gödel. He discovered a new space-time allowed by general relativity. Gödel was a mathematician who earned
his fame by proving that it is impossible to prove all true statements. He called this the incompleteness theorem.
His space-time had the interesting idea that the whole universe was rotating with respect to directions that those 
little spinning tops and gyroscopes point in. 

Spinning Gyroscope

This idea allowed for the possibility that someone could take off in a rocket ship and return to earth before he ever set out. Although his theory seems plausible at first, scientists can prove that the universe does not rotate. Along with this information, the universe was originally formed without an existing curvature. Therefore, the only way time travel could be possible is if the universe had somehow formed curvatures throughout its existence.

Another problematic area is that in order to time travel, a body of mass must move faster than the speed of light. According to relativity, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. There is one exception, however. Because all observers run on a different measure of time, the theory of relativity states that if an object were to perform a task at point B and arrive to point A, the observers at point B would say that the event took place at point A.

If one day, we are able to break the speed-of-light barrier, which we have come close to, time travel would become very much possible. However, in order to break the speed-of-light barrier, we would need to find a way to provide enough power to the object. Maybe one day, we'll be able to relive that awesome trip to the amusement park or retake that test we failed!