Many of you must have seen the movie Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. There is a scene in the movie wherein Harry, Ron and Hermione travels into their own past to mend few things back to normal. This particular scene made me think that is it possible to do time travel? Is it possible for a human being to visit his past or future? Until I saw a documentary on National Geography which discusses the possibility of time travel courtesy Sir Albert Einstein and his theory of relativity.
Whenever we have to define a location of particular place we do it by defining its three coordinated Length(X)Breadth(Y)and height (Z).But whenever an event has be to defined in space there comes fourth coordinate Time(T).
E.g. To set a meeting with a friend I need to inform him the location of place for meeting(X, Y, Z) and time of meeting (T) without giving time it is impossible for me to meet that friend. Thus time is an inseparable part of space.
In order to understand time travel we must understand the concept of Relative Motion.
Image you are travelling in a car at the speed of 100Kms/hour and a car approaches you from opposite direction at the same speed i.e. 100Kms/hour, at the time of your crossing the speed of the other car will appear to you as 200Km/hour. Similarly if your same car is overtaking another car at speed of 70 Km/hour then your speed will appear to him as 30 Km/hour. This phenomenon is called as relative motion and every object in Universe obeys it except LIGHT.
Light travels at an amazing speed of 3lac Kilometers per second. So if you are travelling in a space craft at speed of lets say 4lac Km/Sec still the light will appear to travel at 3lac Km/Sec and not ONE lacKm/Sec(which it should be as per relative motion law).So the question arises Why does this happens? And what is its Implication?
It is very simple we all know that
Speed=Distance/Time.
So if speed is not changing it means DISTANCE and TIME changes. To put it literal the theory says when an object travels at a speed of light DISTANCE bends and so does TIME.
To explain it further lets consider you are sitting in a space craft which takes off from earth on 1st January 2000 A.D. at speed of light. The space craft continues its journey in space at a speed of light for next one year (one year according to pilot of spacecraft) and returns back to earth. To our surprise the time on earth will be few hundred years ahead like let’s say 1st January 2800 A.D.Thus you have visited your own future, similarly you can also visit your past This is due to the fact that travelling at speeds in multiple to speed of light different time is experienced at different places.
This amazing theory was put forth by Sir Elbert Einstein. This theory opens new horizon of time travel in future. We can also create different time tunnels in space to travel faster than light. So in future if we are successful in developing a technology to travel at speed close to light then we can unfold many mysteries of our past and reveal secrets of our future.
SO DON’T BE SURPRISED IF YOUR GREAT GREAT GREAT GRANDSON FROM FUTURE KNOCKS AT YOUR DOOR ONE DAY;)
