Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity (and, by extension, the General  Theory) very explicitly permits a kind of time dilation that would  ordinarily be called time travel. The theory holds that, relative to a  stationary observer, time appears to pass more slowly for faster-moving  bodies: for example, a moving clock will appear to run slow; as a clock  approaches the speed of light its hands will appear to nearly stop  moving. However, this effect allows "time travel" only toward the  future: never backward. It is not typical of science fiction, and there  is little doubt surrounding its existence; "time travel" will hereafter  refer to travel with some degree of freedom into the past or future. 
Many in the scientific community believe that time travel is highly  unlikely. This belief is largely due to Occam's Razor. Any theory which  would allow time travel would require that issues of causality be  resolved. What happens if you try to go back in time and kill your  grandfather. Also, in the absence of any experimental evidence that time  travel exists, it is theoretically simpler to assume that it does not  happen. Indeed, Stephen Hawking once suggested that the absence of  tourists from the future constitutes a strong argument against the  existence of time travel - a variant of the Fermi paradox, with time  travelers instead of alien visitors. However, assuming that time travel  cannot happen is also interesting to physicists because it opens up the  question of why and what physical laws exist to prevent time travel from  occurring.
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Monday, January 3, 2011
time travel
Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space, either sending objects (or in some cases just information)  backwards in time to some moment before the present, or sending objects  forward from the present to the future without the need to experience  the intervening period (at least not at the normal rate).
Although time travel has been a common plot device in fiction since the 19th century, and one-way travel into the future is arguably possible given the phenomenon of time dilation based on velocity in the theory of special relativity (exemplified by the twin paradox), as well as gravitational time dilation in the theory of general relativity, it is currently unknown whether the laws of physics would allow backwards time travel.
Although time travel has been a common plot device in fiction since the 19th century, and one-way travel into the future is arguably possible given the phenomenon of time dilation based on velocity in the theory of special relativity (exemplified by the twin paradox), as well as gravitational time dilation in the theory of general relativity, it is currently unknown whether the laws of physics would allow backwards time travel.
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