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Travelling through time

A.Mistrean
Lyceum,,B.P.Hasdeu
Before 1905 there wasn't much to say
about time. In the 17th century
Newton defined time as something
that continues, no matter what,
without any link with reality and
according to its own nature.
Everybody believed that time had its
influence on the environment, but if
you believed that the environment had
its influence on time, you really had to
be mad! That changed in 1905 with
Einstein's special relativity theory, in
which he showed that time can be
influenced. But this doesn't mean time
can be changed in such a way that
you can travel to the future or the
past. That's what it's all about on this
pages: Is it possible to travel through
time, and if possible, under which
circumstances?
It will become very clear that the
speed of light has got a major
influence on the possibility of time
travelling. An object should move
faster than light speed to travel
through time. Therefore we use the
tunnel effect, an effect in the quantum
mechanics. That means that a ray of
light or a bundle of electrons that is
sent through a certain barrier arrives
sooner at the other side of the barrier
than if there wasn't a barrier.
If time travelling is possible
according to the relativity theory,
there will be a lot of other problems.
I'm not talking about the technical
problems, 'cause that's not what this
is about, but I mean the paradoxes.
For these problems there is no such
thing as a logical explanation, no
matter how long you'll search. There
are 2 sorts of physics: Newton's
physics and Einstein's physics. When
you use formulas from Newton and
formulas from Einstein's physics to
calculate a certain physical value,
you'll become not the same value. In
'normal' situations these differences
are extremely small. But in 'extreme'

situations these differences will


become very big. For example:
someone who's in a train that moves
with an incredible high speed (like 10
000 km/second) and who measures
the distance between the sleepers of
the train, will measure a smaller
distance than someone who stands
still beside the railway. According to
the physics of Newton and our
intuition we'd say the distance would
remain the same. In 'normal'
situations that's correct: measuring in
a train that moves at hundreds,
thousands or even ten thousands
kilometers/hour would make the
difference in distance immeasurably
small. Newton's laws would certainly
do in these situations. But when the
speed of the train approaches the
speed of light, the difference will
become noticeable ('extreme'
situations), and we would need
Einstein's physics. According to the
latest experiments, Einstein's formulas
seem to be the right ones. Einstein's
special theory of relativity was finished
in 1905. It's based on the constant
speed of light and the fact that speed
isn't absolute; when a helicopter lifts
off you can also assume it's the
chopper that stands still and the earth
that moves. This theory describes the
relation between observation of a
certain phenomenon by observers that
move with a constant speed related to
each other.
The general theory of relativity was
finished in 1912, but Einstein couldn't
interpret his mathematical reasoning
physically. He redeveloped the theory,
not only based on mathematics but
also on physics, and he ended up with
the same result as 3 years earlier.
Then he published it. This theory
describes on one hand the relation
between the observations of the
observers that move with an
accelerating speed related to each
other. On the other hand it's about the
influence of gravity on observations
and the relation between observations
that are done from places where
gravity differs.

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