Is Time Travel Possible?: Mind Blow (Special Edition)

John tier claims to be a time traveler from the year 2036, and his time machine kind of looks like a certain DeLorean whose parts you can actually buy. Vauce Kevin here; this is Mind Blow: Time Travel Edition. This is a real time machine, sort of. Dr. Ronald Malet's time machine is a spiral of incredibly powerful lasers, and he wishes to send a particle down it on a spacetime-altering ride into the past. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked out yet, and no visitors from the future have arrived.

Isaac Newton thought time was like an arrow flying in a straight line. Albert Einstein, however, thought of it like a river flowing around stars, speeding up and slowing down. In fact, he theorized the rate at which time passes depends on how fast you're going. So someone orbiting the Earth with the speed of light would actually alter time-space, and when they return to Earth, they will be in the future. His theory was right; satellites orbiting the Earth actually have to alter their clocks to synchronize with Earth time because of this scientific fact.

Check out this clock example. Hold it still, and the clock ticks at a normal pace. Move the clock, and the ticks take longer. Therefore, if you were in a ship aboard the green orb, your spacetime would be different from the time of the guy holding the clock. Unfortunately, we can't go nearly fast enough in spaceships to make a noticeable time change, but we could hop a ride on the black hole express, spitting us at incredible speeds. Like this coffee spins this bean, we’d surely end up in a different time, but no one seems to have a black hole handy.

So instead, Steven Hawking has worms—uh, wormholes to be exact. These are tunnels connecting massive distances by bending spacetime, like two holes on a piece of paper being folded together. Wormholes exist in a teeny tiny place called quantum foam, and we have no idea how to enlarge them enough for a human to pass through, let alone a TARDIS.

The grandfather paradox arises when you travel into the past and kill your grandfather, thereby never being born and never being able to travel into the past to kill your grandfather. David Deutsch believes parallel universes exist, so you could go back in time to an alternate world without affecting the one you came from. In which case, you could go back and shoot a dinosaur in the face, and your grandpa will be fine.

Finally, to check out an iconic time traveling show, watch the new season premiere of Doctor Who, Saturday, April 23rd at 9/8 Central on BBC America. I'm going to leave you with a riddle: I'm the beginning of the end and the end of time and space. I'm essential to creation, and I surround every place. What am I? Leave your answer in the comments below.

We're going to do the Genius of the Week a little differently this time. What would you do if you had a time machine? Send us a video response with the tag "If I had a time machine," and the person with the best answer will be our Genius of the Week. You can check out everyone's stories at TimeMachineTales.com. So good luck, and as always, thanks for watching.