December 23, 2024

Dylan Nguyen

11th Grade

Fountain Valley High School

What if your future self traveled back into the past and told you everything that would happen? Would everything still stay the same? Or could your future self even tell you what would happen, or could the knowledge itself change everything? For decades, the concept of time travel has fascinated scientists and people alike, inspiring countless works of Sci-Fi movies. From paradoxes that defy logic to breakthrough theories in physics, the question of whether time travel is possible challenges our understanding of the universe and our place in it. We get one step closer to our own Back to the Future with every new discovery. But the question is, how close are we? 

Now take this example, and imagine the ball as a supermassive blackhole and the trampoline surface as the relationship between space and time. The more a gravitational force works on you, the more time slows down relative to an observer in a weaker gravitational field. This effect has been observed and proved through atomic clocks placed at different altitudes on Earth, where the clocks closer to the center of the Earth tick slower. 

So what does this mean for time travel? Based on these theories, time travel forward would technically be possible. It wouldn’t be the same “instant” time travel shown in the movies, but it would be time travel nonetheless. Unfortunately, time travel backward would be very unlikely. Ignoring the potential paradoxes that going to the past creates, there are layers of theory that either make time travel outright impossible or extremely difficult. One popular theory is one of a wormhole. A wormhole is a hypothetical tunnel from one point in space to another. In theory, if one side of the wormhole is in the past, and the other side is in the future, this could mean that backward time travel would be possible. However, wormholes are extremely unstable and very likely to collapse as soon as something comes close, and the amount of energy required to stabilize a wormhole is far beyond what humanity is currently capable of producing. On paper, this concept is mathematically plausible, but since no experiment can be conducted, backward time travel will only remain as a theory. 

As technology advances, we get closer to understanding the true nature of time travel. Each discovery in physics brings us closer to our favorite science fiction movies. Forward time travel opens up a new portal of possibilities where we can explore distant eras, however backward time travel remains a mystery, limited by paradoxes, theoretical challenges, and our technology. Time travel challenges our understanding of physics and our universe. The question isn’t whether time travel is possible, but rather how it will push our understandings of time, beyond just a clock on our walls. As we continue to push the boundaries of our universe, one thing is certain: time travel will remain a source of boundless curiosity and an inspiration for future generations.