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Astrophysicist believes he's cracked the code for time travel (www.earth.com)

submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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After years of research, Professor Mallett claims to have finally developed the revolutionary equation for time travel.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

@inkican Going back in time would require more energy than is available in the universe, for going faster than the speed of light, which is impossible. That's the basis in the theory (should be called 'law' by now) of relativity.
Backwards time travel would obviously interfere with causality in creating an alternative past, which would lead to a different present. So it's a good thing that it's physically impossible, despite what a desperate astrophysicist believes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

How do we know how much energy time travel would take?

[–] FooBarrington 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The idea is that you can go backwards in time by going faster than light. The speed of light is actually the speed of information itself - so if you could go faster than that, you'd be going backwards in time.

However, Einstein showed that nothing can accelerate to the speed of light. You'd need infinite energy to actually reach the speed of light, and infinite energy is assumed to not be possible.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I wonder if there is a meaningful difference between your example, and the technology with which the JWST uses to view light in the past. Rather, if the later is something we can use for time travel ;)

[–] FooBarrington 1 points 5 months ago

The JWST looks at light which has been travelling for a long time. The only special thing about it, compared to other telescopes (or even your eyes), is the range of frequencies it's looking at - the longer light travels, the lower the frequency becomes (due to the expansion of the universe).

So it's the same basic phenomenon - information has a max speed, so you're always interacting with the past state of any object.