The American University in Cairo

Project Scientific Thinking

About Time Traveler

Dr. Alaa Ibrahim Mohamed Moghnem Soliman 995680001

I. Introduction

: • No idea from science fiction has captured the human imagination as much as time travel.

• The magnificent question is what can you do with a time machine? - You can do many things. In fact, you can travel to the twenty second century to bring back a cure for cancer, get information about the natural catastrophes during the 21 st century and know the winner of the next FIFA world cup!

• Today the subject of time travel is no longer science fiction. It has already jumped to the pages of physics journals. It is now explored by physical laws. • Time travel was considered as inconceivable in Isaac Newton's universe. The real scientific ideas of time travel came in Einstein's universe, especially in his special theory of relativity.

• And as H.G.Wells in his masterpiece said : "Man ... can go up against gravitation in a balloon, and why should he not hope that ultimately he may be able to stop or accelerate his drift along the Time-Dimension, or even turn about and travel the other way."

II. What is time travel?

• Time travel is “the concept of moving backward or forward to different points in time, in a manner analogous to moving through space. Additionally, some interpretations of time travel suggest the possibility of travel between parallel realities or universe”, according to the free encyclopedia.

• Einstein's theory introduces a new definition called "space time", which is "a union of space and time originally emerging from special relativity. Can be viewed as the "fabric" out of which the universe is fashioned; it constitutes the dynamical arena within which the events of the universe take place"

• Albert Einstein dealt with time travel in his special theory of relativity. It permits a type of time dilation which is very similar to time travel. It said that time appears to pass more slowly to the bodies which moving fast. For instance, a moving clock appears to run slow. When a clock will approach light speed, its hands appears to nearly stop moving.

• According to Neil Johnson, Physics lecturer at Oxford University, "Scientists of the future may well pursue a new form of futuristic technology based on quantum effects. Such applications could include quantum teleportation, by which a quantum particle can be teleported from one point in space to another; and quantum computation, where calculations can be carried out which would take many years on a conventional computer.

III. Possibility of Time Travel :

•

Truth or Fiction

?

In 1895, a young man from England called H.G.Wells published a story which is considered one of the biggest steps of science fiction. This story was “The Time Machine” - The story talked about a scientist who invented a time machine, depending on the fact that time is a fourth dimension and one can move back and forth in this fourth dimension. The scientist proved his arguments with using his time machine to travel to the future. This story highlighted the wonderful dream: Can we travel through time?

• Although many scientists believe that time travel is impossible, there is quite a big percentage of them that believe that it is possible and it is only a matter of “time” until we could actually build a time machine. Professor Paul Davies the famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist says “Scientists have no doubt whatever that it is possible to build a time machine to visit the future.” • From Newton's day, a question came into minds: Is the future preordained? Is there only one future or an infinite number of futures?

• This other side can be the past or the future. Another possibility is that it can be another universe. But Einstein's theory of relativity doesn't answer the question "what happened during the moment of the Big Band at the birth of the Universe when space-time itself was infinitesimally small? That takes us back into the world of quantum physics“ • We have to put in regard the amount of energy, the shape of the machine and, moreover, the biological condition of the “astronaut” of the time machine

VI. Achievements towards a real Time Machine:

•

Till now many people think that the time machine is just a piece of fiction…well, maybe these people will have to think again because a man from Russia has already invented one!

•

Chernobrov’s Time Machine:

- Vadim Chernobrov was interested in mysterious events which he wrote many books about. He worked as an employee for the "spacecraft department" in Moscow Aviation Institute. He built his first modification of the Time Machine secretly in military factory, under the guise of an electromagnetic trap for musk-rats, called Lovondatr and claimed success in 3% time deceleration.

Chernobrov’s Time Machine:

• But is this machine that can make one travel to the future? In fact, all what it can do is making time passing a bit slower. For instance, according to the tests done by Vadim Chernobrov, “for every 3,600 seconds outside of the system that only 3,560 seconds would pass inside - 40 seconds slower.” So what Chernobrov actually did was that he invented a machine that can slow time by approximately 40 seconds. Yes, the number isn’t satisfying but that’s just a start.

Who knows what will the next step be?

VII. Conclusion

• Someone can argue that maybe the time traveler went to the future and not the past. Some people can also argue that we have been visited by “future time travelers” but we just didn’t realize them.

• Archaeologists believe that building the pyramids can’t be the work of the Egyptians themselves and some of them argue that they got help from a mysterious source

• Time is still a very mysterious phenomenon yet to be discovered. H. G. Wells inspired us with the idea of time traveling. Einstein’s theories made us believe in it. Chernobrove’s machine gave us fresh hope of it.

But who is next? And what does the future hide for us? A question that only

TIME

can answer it.

Works Cited

• Gott, J. Richard. Time Travel in Einstein’s world. 4. London: Orion House, 2003.

References:

- http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/time_travel.html

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/time/sagan.html

- http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/exploration/timetravel/