Faster Than Light Travel

This is science, NOT fiction

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, listeners of the Internet. I cannot thank you enough
for stopping by for another episode of the time Travel
on Travel podcast, a show dedicated to the mind boggling
world of time travel science, the fiction, the reality. The

(00:25):
reality is there are ways to time travel, and if
time travel is possible, it has already happened some time
to day. We're going to look at the possibilities of

(00:48):
time travel using faster than light travel. This is based
on very smart people, though. Albert Einstein's theories of special
and general relativity fundamentally shape our understanding of space time.

(01:15):
Special relativity establishes that the speed of light in a
vacuum is constant and forms an upper limit for any
signal or object. As objects approach the speed, their mass
increases and time dilation occurs, that is, time slows down

(01:42):
relative to observers in different frames of reference. General relativity
extends this by describing gravity as the curvature of space
time itself, further complicating the idea of FTL travel. In essence,

(02:07):
traveling faster than light would mean breaking these principles, which
could violate causality. One of these central concerns with FTL
travel is the potential violation of causality, the principle that

(02:30):
cause precedes effect. If information or objects could travel back
in time, it could lead to paradoxes where a future
event alters the past, creating logical contradictions. One famous example

(02:55):
is the grandfather paradox, where a time traveler kills their
own grandfather before their parent is conceived, preventing the traveler
from existing. This leads to the bootstrap paradox, where an
event is its own cause, creating a logical loop without

(03:21):
clear origin or end. Time dilation is a phenomena described
in special relativity where time passes more slowly for an
observer in motion relative to a stationary observer. If one

(03:44):
were able to travel close to the speed of light,
time for the traveler would slow significantly relative to someone
at rest At FTL speeds, This dilation could become even
more extreme, potentially allowing the traveler to move backward in

(04:07):
time or jump across time frames. This introduces potential paradoxes
in which the traveler interacts with different stages of reality
than the ones they departed from, warping space time. Maybe

(04:30):
Another viable option for time travel that is supported by science,
a warp drive, is a theoretical model based on a
solution to Einstein's field equations proposed by physicist Miguel Alcubier
in nineteen ninety four. The concept involves contracting space time

(04:53):
in front of a space ship and expanding it behind,
creating a warp. This spacecraft itself doesn't move within this bubble. Instead,
the bubble moves through space. Theoretically, bypassing the light speed limit,

(05:17):
the ship could effectively move faster than light, but within
the bubble, no object locally exceeds the speed of light,
preserving the laws of relativity. To make a Alcubier drive viable,
a form of exotic matter with negative energy density is required.

(05:42):
This exotic matter would provide the necessary push to stretch
and compress space time in the desired manner. However, such
exotic matter has not been observed, and the required quantities
are at astronomical, potentially exceeding the mass energy of the

(06:05):
entire observable universe. This makes the theoretical practicality of the
al Kubier drive highly questionable with current physics. While the
primary idea behind the al Kubier drive is to travel

(06:26):
faster than light, it could also have implications for time travel.
As a result of the distorted space time, travelers might
experience extreme time dilation relative to external observers. This could
create scenarios where after traveling at FTL speeds, traveler has

(06:51):
experienced far less time than those left behind, effectively traveling
into the future. One of wormholes as a time travel mechanism,
a wormhole or Einstein rosenbridge is a theoretical passage through

(07:17):
space time that could create a shortcut between two distant
points in space and time. According to general relativity, these
bridges connect two regions of space time, potentially allowing for
instantaneous travel across vast distances. In theory, if one end

(07:43):
of the wormhole is manipulated or moved at FTL speeds,
it could lead to time travel effects, with the traveler
stepping out into a different time period than when they entered.
For a worm whole to be traversible, that is able
to allow a physical object or person to pass through it,

(08:07):
conditions are required that prevent it from collapsing due to
gravitational forces. Scientists propose the need for more exotic matter
to stabilize the wormhole, preventing it from closing. Current speculation
suggests that manipulating quantum fields or creating a balance between

(08:31):
the gravity of both ends could allow such a passage.
If wormholes existed, their properties would make them an attractive
means for time travel, with the potential to visit the
past or future instantly. The concept of closed timelike curves

(08:55):
arises when considering wormholes in the context of time travel.
Though a CTC allows for a path that loops back
in time, creating a scenario where an object could interact
with its past self. This creates classic paradoxes, like the

(09:17):
possibility of influencing or altering events that have already happened,
leading to questions about whether time itself would correct these anomalies,
which means that any event a time traveler attempts to
change will be prevented by natural processes. Quantum entanglement describes

(09:42):
a phenomenon where two particles become linked in such a
way that the state of one particle instantaneously affects the
state of another, regardless of distance. This has led some
theorists to speculate about the possibility of using entanglement for

(10:02):
ft L communication or information transfer. While this wouldn't allow
for traditional time travel, it challenges our understanding of causality
and could theoretically enable instantaneous interactions over vast distances, hinting

(10:22):
at f t L principles. Unfortunately, that's all the time
we have for today, but come back again next week
for another episode. I can't thank you enough for joining us,
and until next time,