Is a time machine possible?
Vacuums might be the key to time travel.
Amos Ori, a professor at Israel's Technion, has published a paper in Physical Review outlining a model of a theoretical time machine. Conceivably, these ideas could one day help humans travel back in time.
The concept revolves around controlling the curvature of space and time. Einstein's theory of relatively states that the space/time continuum can be flat, but it can also be curved by gravitational fields. Ori is investigating whether the laws of gravity will permit curving space and time in such a way as to make travel possible.
A tree from Einstein
(Credit: Technion)"The machine is spacetime itself," he stated in a prepared statement. "Today, if we were to create a time machine, an area with a warp like this in space that would enable time lines to close on themselves, it might enable future generations to return to visit our time.
"Such a journey requires a significant curvature of spacetime, in a very special form," he continued.
Other physicists have dismissed the idea of a time machine, nothing that such a machine would have to be made of a material with negative density. It is not clear if the material with negative density exists in any kind of quantities. In Ori's model, positive density material could travel back in time in a vacuum.
In layman's terms, that means that you wouldn't go back and forth through time to rescue women in pink dresses in a fancy chair like Rod Taylor in The Time Machine. You'd be in sort of a tube. But once you get there, you could square off against your nemesis in childhood form, like Popeye and Bluto do.
Ori, though, states that his model is only one step toward time travel, and it may never be possible.
Incidentally, Einstein planted a tree at the Technion (see photo) more than 50 years ago, and it is still thriving. And it never needs water. Hmmm.

If this were possible, wouldn't it have happened already? I mean wouldn't someone have already returned "to visit our time"?
Everyone is dead in the future, due to global warming :P
Life & time is like a larger scale model of the movie ground hog day.. except everyone is oblivious of the underlying story that they are simply replaying time over and over again.. the ones who make the right decisions end up stepping out of the loop and can truely rest in peace. The others are simply started back over again from birth to relive their exact lives from the point of conception to the point of death until they get it right.
It would take a great deal more gravity than the earth has.
It would have to be a way to harness gravity in a contained macro chasm preventing the excess gravitational forces from spilling out and destroying the world we live in... the feat of containing such gravitational forces would be in of itself a amazing feat it would probably take an equal and opposite gravitational force to contain the macro chasm.
- by imsctuallyreallysmart April 7, 2009 9:06 AM PDT
- Actually we could have been visited from somebody from the future, ther is no way in knowing. It's not like somebody is going to some out and say Hey I'm from The Future. First off, who would listin to him, secondnly, how we he ever prove it.
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(8 Comments)Thus creating a new question, if he traveled back in time how does he get back, does the machine come with him or is it a portal of some kind that opens and you walk through it?
And how would this differ with religious people seeing as no book of any religion mentions time travel?
There are many doubts and questions that must be answered of course if Time Travel were to ever be possible.