Thanks to Einstein’s theory of general relativity, some people can already travel in time. For instance, Russian cosmonaut Gennady Padalk became world’s first “time traveler” after he completed his sixth (and last) mission in space in September 2015.
He is the astronaut with the most cumulative time spent in space: 879 days, or two-and-a-half years. Princeton physicist Richard Gott noted that, when he returned, Padalk was 1/44th of a second younger because he “literally” traveled into the future.
Researchers claim that they have all the tools to build a time machine that can travel at much greater speeds that Padalka did in his orbital journeys. The speed is the time ingredient to time travel.
Time Travel Is Not Impossible
Einstein taught us that time is not immutable, so time travel is not just a sci-fi scenario. Isaac Newton believed that time had a consistent pace in every single spot of the Universe. For more than two centuries, scientists believed Newton.
In 1905, Einstein came up with a different idea. the 26-year-old physicist revealed that time is elastic, and it greatly relies on speed. It can slow down or accelerate depending on the speed of a person or object. A decade later, Einstein finalized his famous theory of general relativity.
In 1971, researchers send two atomic clocks to space and calculated the tiny differences between them and the atomic clocks on earth. The tiny differences revealed that Einstein was right.
Also, if Einstein’s theory was not correct, our GPS systems would not work. Einstein also found that light travels at 186,282 miles or 300 million meters per second. The scientist believed that that was the ultimate speed limit.
Also, Einstein’s theories suggest that time slows down based on gravity. If the gravity is weaker, time tends to fly faster.
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