Hey there and welcome to Life Noggin.
Have you ever wondered why we don’t have time machines already?
Surely with all the technological wonder of today, someone would have figured out a way
for me to go back in time and ask my animator why he didn’t give me bigger muscles.
Is time travel even possible?
Let’s see if we can go back in time and convince everyone we’re all named Calvin
Klien… we just need to get a DeLorean first.
Can we time travel?
Sure, we’re always doing it!
I mean you travel in time whether you’re just sitting there, walking the dog, or even
taking a well-deserved nap!
But I know, I know, that’s not what we’re really asking.
We want to know if we can travel in time faster or slower than we typically do, or if we could
potentially even travel /backwards/ in time.
The answer to at least part of that is a big ol’ yes!
We can relatively change the speed at which we travel through time.
Popularized in 1905 by the great Albert Einstein, the theory of special relativity determined
that time does not pass at the same rate for everyone.
Through a phenomenon called time dilation, an observer moving relatively fast would measure
time passing more /slowly/ than a relatively stationary observer would.
This means that in a relative sense, time passes more slowly for Usain Bolt while he’s
running a race than when you’re chilling at home, watching a brand new episode of Life
Noggin.
This is also why an astronaut sent into space would age slightly /slower/ than their twin
sister down on Earth.
It’s not just simply speed though; more gravity also makes time slow down as well.
This was determined from Einstein’s theory of general relativity when he realized that
massive objects cause a distortion in space-time.
Clocks closer to a massive object, like the Earth, would seem to tick more slowly than
clocks further away.
That’s why your feet are probably a super tiny bit younger than your head is.
That is, unless you’re doing handstands all day.
Keep it up over there, Young Ears!
But what about traveling backwards in time?
While it might not be the best to completely rule it out as a possibility, quite a few
scientists believe that it could never really happen.
Stephen Hawking is one of the brilliant scientists that has thought we can’t travel back in
time and he threw an interesting party to give validity to that point.
He threw a big party, but only publicised it /after/ the party was over.
In theory, if people could travel back in time, then they could have heard about his
party in the future and traveled back to attend the experiment in time travel… but nobody
showed up.
While this obviously doesn’t prove that time travel to the past isn’t possible,
it was quite an interesting experiment.
I don’t know about you, but I would have traveled back in time if I could to hang out
with /the/ Stephen Hawking!
That said, there are some that believe time travel to the past might be possible utilizing
some super awesome things, like wormholes for instance!
Not to mention, there might be a way to travel back in time using certain laws of physics
or sciences that we’ve yet to find!
Maybe this weird thing holds the answer?
I still don’t know what it does!
So what do you think?
Is time travel to the past possible?
Let me know in the comments below!
Make sure you
come back every Monday for a brand new video.
As always, I’m Blocko and this has been Life Noggin.
Don’t forget to keep on thinking!