The Deception of Time and how Travel into the Future is Possible

Conventional thought teaches one to measure time with an analog or digital device ticking at a constant interval that corresponds with the earth’s rotation around its axis. However, by failing to address the reality of time, it is generally accepted that the intervals by which time ticks on earth is absolute throughout the universe. In other words, it is often accepted that time passes one second at a time uniformly throughout the universe. To clarify a bit more, it is widely believed that all regions of the universe age simultaneously; that in 10-minutes, 10-minutes would have passed everywhere in the universe. This belief is inaccurate. The universe does not age uniformly. What’s even more fascinating is that different regions on earth age at a different pace. Believe it or not, but our hands tend to age quicker than our heads.

The illusory concept of time is somewhat difficult for most to grasp and I’m going to do my best to simplify this concept and make an attempt to challenge your view on time and the possibility for time travel.

Albert Einstein had theorized long ago that time is a strange epiphenomenon of space. With his theoretical calculations he had postulated that the passage of time of any given object progresses at a different rate in relation to another object, depending on the mass (which determines the gravitational force) and velocity of said object. Then, experiments from the 1960’s and 70’s demonstrated that time does NOT move forward uniformly at the same rate throughout the universe. To put it in laymen’s terms; time moves slower in some regions of the universe and faster in other regions. For example, if two people with a stopwatch were placed at different regions of the universe where the passage of time differed, their stopwatches would display different numbers upon returning back to earth. Once beamed back, one watch would show that only a few seconds had passed while the other watch would show that several hours had passed. But, keep in mind that they were both beamed to these distant regions of space at the same moment and brought back at the same moment.

While this sounds crazy and utterly ridiculous, it is this very phenomenon that makes time travel, especially into the future, a reality.

In the early 1900’s, Albert Einstein’s work on gravitational time dilation demonstrated on paper with complex theoretical calculations that time moves slower in stronger gravitational fields in relation to weaker gravitational fields. Since the force of gravity increases as one gets closer to the center of a star or planet, time, consequentially, passes at a slower rate.

Stephen Hawking had illustrated in his book, The Universe in a Nutshell, that the several seconds it would take to smash into the surface of a black hole, if one was to be captured by its gravitational pull, millions of years would pass for the rest of the universe. Black holes are the most massive objects in the known universe and their gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape. In a hypothetical situation, if one could stand on the surface of a black hole for only one second and immediately return to earth, only one second will have passed for that individual while millions of years will have passed for everything and everyone else on earth! And, by doing so, this person will have traveled into the future!

Although this sounds to be nothing more than science fiction, it was proven in the 1960’s that time indeed moves slower at close proximity to massive objects, such as the center of the earth, sun, or black hole. This incredible study demonstrated that time passes at different rates on earth! It was mind boggling to find that people at higher altitudes, further away from the earth’s center of gravity, aged quicker because time moved faster than someone living below sea level. In the study, one atomic clock (an extremely accurate clock that can measure billionths of a second) was placed in a deep well while another atomic clock was placed at the top of the well. Scientists found that the atomic clock at the bottom of the well had fallen behind by a fraction of a second; hence time had passed at a slower pace. With other studies verifying the data, it was concluded that the closer one is to the earth’s center of gravity (at a lower elevation), the slower time moves for them. Although the differences are so minute that it won’t amount to anything noticeable within our lifetimes, it is nevertheless measurable and imperative to acknowledge as a reality.

Another study demonstrated that time can also be slowed down by moving at a very fast speed, providing strong evidence for Einstein’s theory of relativity. Utilizing two atomic clocks, scientists in 1971 sent one flying around the world in a jet at 600 mph while the other stayed stationary in the lab. Both clocks were synchronized at the start of the experiment, but once the jet had landed, the clock on board had fallen behind by a few billionths of a second. Other studies verified this phenomenon and concluded that fast moving objects can slow down time for everyone on board.

Imagine for a moment, if a rocket sent a group of people traveling around the earth near light-speed for a few hours, they would return to find that several days or weeks had passed on earth. Although they would have been on the space ship for several hours, their increased velocity, and consequentially increased mass would warp the time-space continuum and alter their progression of time in relation to the rest of the world, in effect, causing time to move slower for them while it moved faster for everyone else on earth.

What makes this concept of time travel into the future so confusing is that things don’t move in slow-motion when time is slowed down. Instead, we will always age at the same pace and one second will always be one second. Only the compared difference of two observers at different velocities or gravities can be observed. The rate at which an observer was to experience the progression of time anywhere in the universe would always feel the same for the observer, regardless of how fast or slow time was moving; a second is a second no matter where you are. The observers on the spaceship from the example above would notice their clocks ticking at the same pace they’ve always been ticking and would not feel as though time was moving very slow for them. Instead, it would seem as if everything on earth was moving very fast. Only upon arrival and comparison with time on earth would they be able to notice that time had indeed moved considerably slower for them.

Thoughts to Consider:

Although time travel into the future is real and has been demonstrated by various research organizations, we unfortunately, cannot escape the effects of time on the body. Since a person’s experiencing of time would always be the same in any time field, in other words, a person’s wrist watch would measure time at the same consistent interval regardless of how fast or slow time was progressing in relation to an outside observer, their body would age at the same pace as it would here on earth.

It’s amazing that one can never escape time’s crippling effects on the body. We can warp and manipulate our experiencing of time in relation to the environment around us by moving years into the future while only aging several days, but we cannot slow our internal aging processes. Even if we moved to a planet with a massive gravitational force in which time was moving slower than on earth, we’d die thousands of years later then our earthling peers but we’d still be alive for only about 75-100 years.