Essay about time-travel

Michael Kffmeier
January 19, 2011

1
1.1

Introduction
Brief History

The possibility of time travels bothered people for many years, either in form of fictional stories or for scientific reasons. Remarkably, thoughts of travelling into the future
has got an even larger history than travelling backwards in time.[1] There have already
been found fictional-stories about future travellers more than 2000 years old. In contrast to that time travels to the past is a more modern idea. This phenomenon might be
due to the fact, that you already know or at least would be able to know, what happened
in the past by asking older people or read old documents. In opposite to that, you do
not get any information about the future, since you do not have the possibility to ask
someone about it. Curiously, from modern state of physics it seems to be less complicated to travel into the future than travelling into the past.

1.2

What is time actually?

Admittedly, there is still another big question to think about. The question what time
actually is? I do not want to go too deep in this field, but at least it should be mentioned, that the dominant idea of time changed during the years enormously. The last
big revolution refered to the conception of time happened about 100 years ago with
Einsteins relativity theory, especially Minkowskis concept of spacetime.[2] This coupling of space and time allows a wide spectrum of ideas and consequences, which may
appear against ones own intuition respectively ones idea of an absolute time. In the
theory of special and general relativity, respectively curved spacetime, expressions like
moving or travelling in time are meant to be analogical to change of position in
space. But always consider, that space and time are connected.[1] Hopefully, further
explanations like the twin paradox being concerned later in the essay will illuminate
this issue a little bit. I just want to stress to be sensitive to ones own idea(s) of time. By
the way, one has to be careful not to mix up time reversal with time travel. Time travel
only focus on a change of position in spacetime in respect to a fixed time direction,
whereas time reversal actually means a change of the arrow of time. A comparison of
Omids essay dealing with directions of time and my one might clarify the differences
of the concepts even more.

Time travel

As mentioned above there are two possibilites of time travels, either into the future
(forwards in time) or into the past (backwards in time). So, lets travel in this
chronological order: First in the future and then back again.

2.1

Travel into the future

At the beginning, I want to stress that we are moving into the future all of the time
since our age increases permanently. But of course this is just the normal way life
works. Effectively, we are more interested about moving faster than our friends into
the further future. There are several possibilities to succeed.
One possibilitiy is given due to special relativity and its belonging time dilation as the
twin paradox illustrates.[3] The twins Ann and Betty are living on earth with identical
simultaneously going clocks each. When Betty travels in a spaceship in outer space
and back with a speed close to the speed of light, whereas Ann stays on earth, she will
recognize after travelling that her clock shows less time than Anns since departure.
Consider Bettys speed is 80 % of the speed of light and Betty is coming back to earth
after 20 years of earth time, that means t 0 = 20 years on Anns clock. Then, Bettys
clock just shows 12 years and she only experienced, respectively aged by t = 12 years,
due to the effect of time dilation
t 0 = p

t
1 v2 /c2

12yr
=p
= 20yr
1 (240000ms1 )2 /(300000ms1 )2

The argument, that Betty could say according to special relativity, that Ann is moving
in respect to her does not work in this case since Betty changes the inertial system when
changing the direction of movement to towards the earth.[4]
By the way, remark that the question what the twins do at one moment cannot be answered. It depends on their reference frame to answer the question. I stressed this
point, since it should make clear again, that the idea of an absolut time is meaningless
according to Einsteins theory.
Another option is offered by using time dilation because of general relativity. In this
case you have to move close enough to an object, where the gravitational time dilation
is larger than the factor on Earth. The stronger the gravitational field compared to a
reference point outside is, the slower the time occurs to float compared with outside.
(As an highly theoretical illustration, remember the student, who used this effect by
spending an hour in the field of a black hole to accelerate his professors retirement.)
Both methods does not show any bigger theoretical problems. Nonetheless, the practical realisation is quite difficult since you have to reach really high velocities, i.e.
energy, either to use the relative effect or to reach a much more massive object to benefit from general relativitys features. In case of the black hole it is questionable if you
could escape at all. But, at least time travel into the future is permitted by the laws of
physics.

2.2

Time travel into the past

Imagine, we traveled in the future and want to come back to tell our friends about it.
How could it be possible to travel backwards? As I mentionend above this issue is
more difficult- not only for physical reasons, which I will discuss later. At least there
are different concepts and ideas to travel backwards.
2

2.2.1

Tachyons

One proposal assumes the existence of particles moving faster than light, so called
tachyons refered to the greek word for speed. One might say, I do not care about
your essay anymore since I know that nothing can have a higher speed than light.
Admittedly, this statement is not completely right. According to the theory of special
relativity no particle can cross the barrier of the speed of light, but it does not require
that there is no faster speed.[3] Apparently, Einsteins theory allows the existence of
tachyons. Assumingly they existed, it would be possible to send messages in the past.
The reason why, can be illustrated with the example of the twins. Imagine Betty leaves
the earth at 10 oclock with 0.8c and Ann sends a message with tachyons with the
speed of 4c at 12 oclock earth time. At half past 12 of earth time, Betty receives the
message. Certainly, Betty receives the signal at 11:30 am of her time due to the time
dilation. From Bettys point of view, she moved 0.8 c 1.5h = 1.2 lighthours from
earth. Sending a non-delayed answer with 4c means that in her reference system the
signal needs 3/8 h, respectively 22.5 min to reach Ann. That would be 11:52:30 am
on Bettys clock. Due to Anns time dilation from Bettys frame of a factor of 0.6, that
would be 11:07:30 am on Anns clock. Deductively, Ann receives the answer before
she sent the question.[3]
Of course, this calculation is based on the assumption of tachyons, which have never
been detected so far, but even though they would exist, it does not mean proper time
travel. We could just communicate with the past, but it would still be impossible to
travel into the past since we are not made of tachyons and cannot cross the speed of
light barrier. Obviously, there is no possibility to time travel with our body in the past.
But attention, this conclusion is only predicted by special relativity. I did not consider
general relativity so far.
2.2.2

Using curvature

Indeed, the issue changes, if your concepts are based on the principle of general relativity. According to the idea of curved space time, it is possible that your worldline is
curved to a loop so that you get a connection to your past. This phenomenon is illustrated In figure 1. One can see, following the worldline, you are coming back to your
initial position afer one turn without moving in space. You just have to rest on your
position and the curved worldline will lead you back into the past.
Another proposal is the idea of wormholes or so called Einstein-Rosen bridge in
reference to Einstein and Rosen who considered this case in 1935 first.[5] As illustrated
in figure 2, a wormhole offers an alternative connection between two positions.
If one use this shortcut, one can travel faster than the light using the longer path.
This can be realised if one end of the hole, one mouth, is accelerated with speed close
to the speed of light compared to the other end (mouth), stopped and accelerated back
again. Actually similar to the moements of the twins. Due to time dilation, the accelerated holes time is behind the time of the stationary one for an outstanding observer.
Admittedly, if one moves through the accelerated mouth with nearly the speed of light
and leave on the other side, one will remark a time at the other mouth close to the time
of the accelerated mouth at entrance. But before entering the holes, he could realise,
that the time of the stationary end was already at a further point. A really illustrating example is given by Kip Thorne. He describes a wormhole connecting him sitting
in the living room and his wife Carolee sitting in a spaceship. She is leaving the earth
with nearly the speed of light and is coming back after 12 hours of her time. During the

Figure 1: timelike curved spacetime[11]

Figure 2: illustration of a wormhole[12]

travel both hold hands through the wormhole and Kip can see her returning 12 hours
later through the wormhole. Certainly, if he watches out of the window he sees her returning after ten years of his time in the living room. So, ten years later he is moving to
her spaceship and realises that she really just aged for 12 hours during his last 10 years
in his frame, exactly as the twin paradox predicts. Then he sees her holding hand with
a man and looks through the wormhole where he can see him nearly 10 years ago at
the time of her departure. When moving through the hole he traveled ten years back in
time, whereas if moved through the wormhole at the time of departure he would have
traveled 10 years in the future to see himself as an older man.[6]
A wormhole could be a Schwarzschild-type of black hole, but then one has got to handle the problem of travelling faster than light again to traverse the hole. In respect to
that a big problem to use such a hole is based on the difficulty of keeping the hole
staying staticly open instead of collapsing. That is only possible by introducing physical features like antigravity. This antigravity would be allowed by exotic matter which
could lead with a tiny probability to negative energy in the quantum field. This negative energy would allow negative mass and consequently antigravity. Another reason
for antigravity is the fact, that pressure produces gravity, too. In some seldom quantum
states it is possible that the ordinary only low positive gravitation creating pressure is
so high and in addition negative to produce antigravity competitive to mass gravity.[3]
It is noticeable, that even a perfect wormhole permits time travel only to the point,
when it appeared the first time. Seemingly, no time travelers appeared so far and we
never saw a wormhole till now, consequently we cannot reach our epoch through a
wormhole anymore. That means it is impossible to visit me during writing this essay
anymore.
The introduction of infinite cosmic strings, whose existence is not experimentally proven,
would allow time travel, too. This proposal of Richard J. Gott claims the existence of
such strings, who would affect the light and due to that curve the timespace. Theoretically, it would be possible that world-lines are forming a loop when two infinitely long
parallel cosmic strings fly apart at high speed.[8]
Other possibilities to time travel backwards might be given by rotating black holes,
Kerr holes. The name is related to the mathematician Roy Kerr, who solved the problem first. If a particle falls into a Schwarzschild-means non-rotating- hole, it will hit
the central singularity and a solution is that it reaches an anti-world where time runs
backwards. In contrast to that case, solutions of a particle in a Kerr hole offer an infinite universe-amount of worlds and anti-worlds avoiding singularity. Moreover, within
the Kerr type of black hole, one may find a region, where time loops are possible. But
this solution is probably only of theoretical nature, since such a gateway is highly instable.[3]
A further approach to allow time travel due to rotation is the Tipler model. It describes
an infinitely long rotating cylinder of matter, which moves with enormous speed. You
might find time travel regions close to the surface. Nevertheless, because of the infinity
of the cylinder and the enormous speed, which claims a huge density of the material
leads this model to be another rather implausible idea.[7]

Problems, consequences and conclusions of time travel

As already said in the beginning, the two distinct types of time travel are quite different
in their difficulty to realise them. From an only theory based state one could affirm,
that travelling to the future is much easier than travelling into the past. Nevertheless,
to do a huge time travel into the future with a rocket, one need so much energy and
robust, respectively stabile materials, that there will probably no prospering business
develop in the near future. Possibly, even if it was relatively cheap and feasible, only a
few would risk a travel thanks to the ambiguity of being able to come back.
Under the assumption that time travel backwards in time will be possible at some day,
there would be still some exciting questions to handle with. What happens if I am in
the past? Quite popular and demonstrative is the grandfather paradoxon. It deals with
the followingphenomenon. If I am travelling backwards in time to my grandfather and
killed him, before he beget one of my parents, I would not have been born. But then I
could not have killed him, right? One can see, that time travels may lead to big complexities according to causality. That means, that there must be still some additional
rules in respect to time travel.
One approach is the Novikov self-consistency principle, named after the russian physicist Igor Novikov which claims that it is simply impossible to change the past. In case
of my grandfather, that would mean, that I cannot kill him since that would lead to
inconsistency. Nevertheless, there are still many solutions possible, as far as it does not
lead to inconsistency. A supporter of this concept, I already mentioned above is Kip S.
Thorne.[1]
Another physicist, David Deutsch, contradicts this theory. To show the problems with
even consistent stories, he considers, what happens, if a researcher publishes a theory,
which she got from a time traveler of the future. The problem is: Who produced the
theory? Neither the researcher nor the time traveller did. That dilemma forces him
to suppose Everetts many-worlds interpretation as being correct. Consequently, from
this point of view the time traveler cannot meet the researcher in the past of the same
universe. He could still tell her, but then in a parallel one. On the other side, allowing
this structure, the grandfather problem is easily solved, since I could kill my grandfather in a parallel universe without any consequences to me in another one.[3]
In contrast to Deutsch, Hawking claims the many-world theory as being imcompatible
with time-travel. He compares it with Feynmans theory of expressing quantum theory
as a sum over histories. That would certainly kick out the theory of parallel universes
since every history in Feynmans theory has got an own spacetime. That does not rule
out time travel, but at least, one is sticked to ones own universe and cannot change to
another one. All in all, he is convinced of what he calls chronology protection hypothesis. That means, that nature will always offer too high difficulties to practicate time
travels even though they seem to be possible theoretically, at least at the moment.[3],[5]
Taking everything into account, I guess that as long time travel is not completely ruled
out, there will be further research about that topic. Moreover it is still a great and exciting topic for fictional literature to focus on. Probably, still then when time travel
would have been ruled out. But fortunately it is not, so that there is enough space and
of course time for speculations and theories even on scientific level.

References
[1] URL:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel (19.01.2011).
[2] Hermann Minkowski, Raum und Zeit, 80. Versammlung Deutscher Naturforscher (Kln, 1908). Published in Physikalische Zeitschrift 10 104111 (1909)
and Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung 18 75-88 (1909).
[3] Davies, Paul (1996). About Time. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-684-81822-1.
[4] Miller, Arthur I. (1981). Albert Einsteins special theory of relativity. Emergence (1905) and early interpretation (19051911). Reading: AddisonWesley.
pp. 257264. ISBN 0-201-04679-2.
[5] Hawking, Stephen (1988). A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books. ISBN 0-55338016-8.
[6] Thorne, Kip S. (1994). Black Holes and Time Warps. W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-39331276-3.
[7] Gardner, Martin (1987). Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments,
W.H. Freeman Company; ISBN 0-7167-1925-8
[8] Gott, J. Richard (2002). Time Travel in Einsteins Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time, Houghton Mifflin Books, ISBN 0-618-25735-7
[9] Friedman, John; Michael Morris, Igor Novikov, Fernando Echeverria, Gunnar
Klinkhammer, Kip Thorne, Ulvi Yurtsever (1990). Cauchy problem in spacetimes
with closed timelike curves. Physical Review D 42: 1915.
[10] Vaidman, Lev. Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Retrieved
2006-10-28.
[11] URL:http://www.pitt.edu/ jdnorton/teaching/HPS_0410/chapters/relativistic_cosmology/index.html
(19.01.2011).
[12] RL:http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTEvJh9f2H7P6RviaPPdQSQAIuVyt0U_K
(19.01.2011).