Despite how fictional time travel may sound, each person is actually moving, or traveling, through time. However, this does not mean that people can move backward by years, decades, or centuries.
Everyone Is Time Traveling Every Second
How, then, do people travel through time? According to Mashable, the answer is quite simple and straightforward. Everyone travels through time, toward the future, at a one-second-per-second rate. It is something that everyone is doing right now, according to NASA Science Space Place.
Mashable notes, however, how the US Space Agency holds that it is possible to move through time at a different pace than the one-second-per-second rate.
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Einstein's Theory of Relativity
Over a hundred years ago, prominent scientist Albert Einstein devised a theory on how time operates. He dubbed this relativity. Space Place notes that according to Einstein's theory, both space and time are connected to each other. He also held that there is a speed limit that the universe adheres to, for nothing can overtake light in terms of speed.
This premise means that if one travels faster, time passes slower for this person. There were some research efforts to test this assumption.
According to Space Place, there was an experiment conducted that made use of two clocks that were adjusted to the precisely same time. One of these clocks remained on earth as the other was stationed in a plane that flew in the same direction as earth's rotation.
Once the plane finished flying around the world, researchers looked into the similarities and differences of both clocks. They found that the clock that was stationed on the airplane was slightly behind compared to the clock that stayed on land.
This means that the airplane clock traveled through time slower than the rate of one second per second.
According to Live Science, Einstein also found that speedier travel through space meant slower travel through time. While nothing can overtake light in terms of travel speed, it is possible to get close.
If a spacecraft travels at 99% light speed, one may witness time travel worth one light year that took place in a little past a year's time.
Time Dilation
One particular consequence of relativity that adds mystery to things is the concept of time dilation. Because of this, astronauts that are riding the craft may take seven weeks to travel. However, they would have reached ten months into the future.
Live Science notes that there are other things that result in time dilation. For one, fields of gravitation also lead to similar results. Live Science reports how this may be unnoticeable, yet time passes quickly in higher areas where gravity is less strong. In such a context, time moves at a rate of forty-five microseconds each day.
Satellites need to make up for time dilation. Thus, GPS features tend to be booted with an element of time travel. Both the smartphone user and the satellite are moving through the future at varying paces.
Time Travel Can Be Witnessed Using Telescopes
Other than that, individuals can also use telescopes to witness time travel take place at a far distance. The light that comes from far galaxies takes much time to reach earth. Hence, when individuals observe the sky through a telescope, they are actually looking at galaxies and stars that lived several million years before.
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