{"id":140705,"date":"2022-06-16T23:23:20","date_gmt":"2022-06-17T04:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/can-we-time-travel-a-theoretical-physicist-provides-some-answers"},"modified":"2022-06-16T23:23:20","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T04:23:20","slug":"can-we-time-travel-a-theoretical-physicist-provides-some-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/06\/can-we-time-travel-a-theoretical-physicist-provides-some-answers","title":{"rendered":"Can we time travel? A theoretical physicist provides some answers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/can-we-time-travel-a-theoretical-physicist-provides-some-answers2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Time travel makes regular appearances in popular culture, with innumerable time travel storylines in movies, television and literature. But it is a surprisingly old idea: one can argue that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.greekmythology.com\/Plays\/Sophocles\/Oedipus_Rex\/oedipus_rex.html\">the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles over 2,500 years ago, is the first time travel story<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But is <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/time+travel\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">time travel<\/a> in fact possible? Given the popularity of the concept, this is a legitimate question. As a <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/theoretical+physicist\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">theoretical physicist<\/a>, I find that there are several possible answers to this question, not all of which are contradictory.<\/p>\n<p>The simplest answer is that time travel cannot be possible because if it was, we would already be doing it. One can argue that it is forbidden by the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/laws+of+physics\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">laws of physics<\/a>, like the <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/tags\/second+law+of+thermodynamics\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">second law of thermodynamics<\/a> or relativity. There are also technical challenges: it might be possible but would involve vast amounts of energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Time travel makes regular appearances in popular culture, with innumerable time travel storylines in movies, television and literature. But it is a surprisingly old idea: one can argue that the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles over 2,500 years ago, is the first time travel story. But is time travel in fact possible? Given [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":359,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,219,1515],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-physics","category-time-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}