Time travel could be possible … in the future

It may take more than a nuclear-powered De Lorean or a spinning police box, but time travel could actually be a possibility for future generations, according to an eminent professor of physics. Prof Amos Ori has set out a theoretical model of a time machine which would allow people to travel back in time to explore the past.

…Doctor Who?

The way the machine would work rests on Einstein’s theory of general relativity, a theory of gravity that shows how time can be warped by the gravitational pull of objects. Bend time enough and you can create a loop and the possibility of temporal travel.

Prof Ori’s theory, set out in the prestigious science journal Physical Review, rests on a set of mathematical equations describing hypothetical conditions that, if established, could lead to the formation of a time machine, technically known as “closed time-like curves.” In the blends of space and time, or spacetime, in his equations, time would be able to curve back on itself, so that a person travelling around the loop might be able to go further back in time with each lap.

In the blends of space and time, or spacetime, in his equations, time would be able to curve back on itself, so that a person travelling around the loop might be able to go further back in time with each lap. In the past, one of the major challenges has been the alleged need for an exotic material with strange properties – what physicists call negative density – to create these time loops.

“This is no longer an issue,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “You can construct a time machine without exotic matter,” he said. It is now possible to use any material, even dust, so long as there is enough of it to bend spacetime into a loop. Even though Prof Ori, of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, believes his new work strengthens the possibility of a real Tardis, he would not speculate on when a time machine would be built, or even if it would ever be possible.