Time Travel, to the future, is possible.

Time Travel? Sure, we've heard of it. Its hard to say when 'man' first conceived of it, but back in 1733 a man by the name of Samuel Madden published a work called, "Memoirs of the Twentieth Century ". Which he claimed was a series of letters from English ambassadors in various countries to the British "Lord High Treasurer", along with a few replies from the British Foreign Office, all reportedly written in 1997 and 1998 and describing the conditions of that era. OK so if we haven't heard of that most of us have certainly seen Back to the Future, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, or that one Simpson's Episode when Homer has the toaster that transports him through time. But we know thats fictional, so we ask how can a man visit a seperate time let alone a time indeed the future. The truth is, it's easier to visit the future then it is to visit the past, and some scientists have even figured out how. Let me first define future as: the time yet to come based on the beginning of the trip. I see the loophole using the term future, because it is a time yet to come, it can never actually get here. That is why I define it based on preliminary assumptions. You can use it like this "Scientist from 2008 visited the future year of 3000, but when they got there the year 3000 was the present." I hope you see my meaning. Heres one scenario for how such a trip might be accomplished: First, we need to understand Special relativity. Its defined as: the physical theory of measurement in inertial frames of reference, and was proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein. Special Relativity brings in the idea of Time Dialation: Time dilation is the phenomenon whereby an observer finds that another's clock which is physically identical to their own is ticking at a slower rate as measured by their own clock. Basically, an object traveling at high speeds ages more slowly than a stationary object. If we could travel at near the speed of light to a distant star, slowed and turned back around, once again shot off towards Earth at near lightspeed, we could come back to a Earth aged over 1000 years. What would something like that take? Well come astrophysicist's have been working on that. The astronauts capsule would weigh, say 50 tons, and his/her multistage rocket, loaded with even the most advanced anitmatter fuel, would have to wiegh more then 4,000 times as much as the Saturn V Rocket. Now, heres how matter-antimatter fuel works. For every particle of matter, (nuetron, proton, and electron) there is an antimatter (antinuetron, antiproton, and positron). Bring a particle of matter together with a particle of antimatter and they will annihilate eachother, producing a pure energy usually in the form of gamma-ray photons. On the back of the rocket would be a large mirror-- a light sail. To launch the capsule from Earth, a giant laser positioned in the solar system would fire at this mirror, accelerating it for the first quater of its journey. The rocket would then be racing away from the Earth at 99.9992 percent the speed of light. The astronaut would then turn her rocket around and, in its engines, matter and antimatter would annihilate eachother to produce gamma rays that exit out the back, slowing the rocket to a halt after another 250 light years. Then the matter/anti-matter engines would fire again, accelerating the rocket back up to speed for the journey. Finally, the astronaut would pull out another mirror, and the laser stationed in the solar system would fire at it again, efficently slowing down the rocket for its return to Earth. With this acceleration, as the rocket picked up speed, the astronauts feet would be pressed against the floor, making him/her feel as though she was back on Earth to ensure a comfortable ride. The astronaut would age 6 years and 3 weeks while accelerating up to a speed of 99.9992 percent the speed of light, at which point should would be 250 light-years away from Earth. He/she would then age another 6 years 3 weeks slowing down and ending her journey 500 light-years away- she would thus have aged 12 years 6 weeks. She would repeat this process on the return trip aging another 12 years 6 weeks. Earth would be 1,000 years older when she return, but she would have aged fewer then 25 years. Lets look at the problems... 1. This project would require space-based lasers vastly more powerful then those available currently. 2. Also, at present we can make one antimatter atom at a time; we would have to be able to make it and store it safely in bulk. 3. We would have to develop technoology for cooling the engines to prevent melting. 4. The ship would need to be shielded from interstellar atoms and light waves it would run into. There would be many serious engineering problems. It wouldnt be easy, but it is scientifically possible for a person to indeed visit the future. "Time is of your own making; its clock ticks in your head. The moment you stop thought time too stops dead." -Angelus Silesius Thanks to - Professor J. Richard Gott from Princeton University, "Time Travel in Einstein's Universe."