We go along in our daily lives, from place to place. Different events occur at different times and as time passes we age. We might age a second, minute, hour, year or longer before we even notice that we have aged. To us it seems that time is moving in a straight line. By straight line I mean that it moves from the day of our birth to the day of our death. It never doubles back and repeats. This is how most of us perceive time, but are we correct?

Lets think of time in a completely different way. Imagine that there are little compartments containing our bodies. Now imagine that there is a compartment for every second of our life. In each of these compartments we exist at the correct age for that compartment. In other words for the first year of our life there are 31,536,000 compartments. This is calculated by 60 seconds per minute X 60 minutes X 24 hours X 365 days for the year. Now imagine that you are at the correct age for each compartment. If you were in compartment #60 you would be 1 minute old. Lets that this a step further we will call these compartments dimensions, for indeed that is what they really are. In these dimensions you consciousness moves forward into each new dimension and body and you think you are moving forward in time but your body really isn't. If this were the case, than time travel might be possible. One would have to be able to travel to the right dimension and them his consciousness could move forward with everyone else's. That would be time travel to the past. Now if these dimensions do exist than there is no reason not to believe that we could also travel to the future because these dimensions already exist.

Is there such a thing as a rouge black hole that travels through space? We now know that there are rogue objects do. If a black hole got near enough to a populated planet would it begin to alter their time by slowing down time? I believe that no has yet discovered this sort of black hole but I also believe that it would be very hard to discover unless it was near enough to something to extract material from it making the hole's event horizon visible due to the material in it. But maybe such a thing will be discovered in the future. And what about the black hole in the center of our Galaxy. Maybe it is altering our time and we don't even know it. The point I am really trying to make is that if another race exists somewhere time may not be the same on their home world as it is on ours.

Simulated False Color Picture With Black Hole
Picture Source: NASA

Einstein stated that time slows down the faster we go and if we could reach the speed of light, which he said was impossible, it would stop completely. Surpassing the speed of light would make time run backward. The reason Einstein believed that speed of light travel was impossible was he had calculated that the energy required would be so immense that it would take more than the energy available in the whole universe to achieve it. So Einstein believed that we could slow down time but that was it. If you traveled in a space ship at near light speed on a five year journey and returned to earth, everyone you knew would have died of old age, since many more years would have passed on earth.

With time travel you get Paradoxes. Here is an example of one:

Mr X travels back into time and kill someone. That person was the one that introduced his great great great great grandfather to his great great great great grandmother. They never meet and Mr. X is never born. But this might not be able to happen. It may be that we can not alter the past and every attempt we make will be met with failure.

Stephen Hawkings, a famous physicist, believes that time travel is impossible. He cites the fact that no time travelers from the future have been discovered visiting us. He also believes it is impossible because in virtual time travel experiments the universe gets destroyed every time that time travel is attempted. When asked about this, another famous physicist, Carl Segan, in an interview on NOVA stated " ...But no one actually knows that this is the case, and it cannot be known until we have a full theory of quantum gravity, which we do not seem to be on the verge of yet."

Nikola Tesla was a brilliant scientist who worked for a while for Thomas Edison until they had a falling out. He is best known for Alternating Current and the AC motor. After some experiments that remain secret to this day, he came to believe that rotating magnetic fields that were highly charged could affect time. It is said that Telsa told a reporter that he had been struck by a tremendous electrical charge and almost died but his assistant saved him by turning off the power and said that at that moment he found himself in a place where he could view the past, present and future all at the same time. It is also said that he stated he was paralyzed within the electrical field.

Is there a method available for time travel? Some people think there is, and it is called a worm hole. A worm hole is like a tunnel in space. It connects two points. It may be that worm holes might connect dimensions as well. You might be able to get into a worm hole in the present and take it to a past or future dimension

Lets get back to Einstein's theory, that the faster we go the slower time passes for us. Scientists wonder how they could accurately test the validity of this theory. In 1975 a scientist synchronized two atomic clocks. She then put one on a plane and the plane flew for several hours. When it landed she got the clock from the plane and compared the time to the clock that had remained on the ground. It was minute but the clock on the plane had moved more slowly. This wasn't the only proof that Einstein was correct. Particles accelerated to almost the speed of light decayed slower than particles in the lab.

H.G. Wells presented the concept of time travel to the world in his books. Everyone enjoyed them but no one took them seriously. If he could only see the work that is going on now in ernest. Lets hope that the secret is never discovered. Can you imagine a terrorist being able to go into the past and kill the president when he was a child? Even in government hands it would be a more terrifying weapon that the H bomb. Can you see the government going back into time to alter some other nations leadership, and in so doing alters events all over the world that ultimately prove harmful to the human race.