• Question: I you watch Doctor Who, do you think that time travelling and time loops etc.. will ever be possible? also are there actually parallel worllds ?

    Asked by emmaandizzy to Gioia, Iain, Jo, Leo, Mariam on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by icedancer, worldwidedave.
    • Photo: Joanna Watson

      Joanna Watson answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      Oooo crikey – that sounds like a physics question to me. I don’t really know very much about physics, I’ve always preferred biology. I hope one of the other scientists knows more about it.

    • Photo: Mariam Orme

      Mariam Orme answered on 20 Jun 2010:

      I’m afraid I can’t comment because I know nothing about this kind of thing! I like the idea of there being parallel worlds though… the thought that there might be lots of different me’s, all getting to make different decisions, is sort of comforting.

    • Photo: Leo Garcia

      Leo Garcia answered on 21 Jun 2010:

      I think we can say, almost for certain, that time travel into the past isn’t possible – because we have never seen anyone come back in time! If time travel in this way were possible, we would already know about it.

      In terms of travel into the future though, this could be achieved by travelling at near the speed of light for a long time and then turning round and coming home, using Einstein’s principle of time dilation. Here, the time that had passed at home (on earth, say) would be much greater than that which had passed for you, in your ‘frame of reference’. The time difference would depend on how fast you were travelling, and how long for. Hence, this would be a kind of time travel into the future – albeit an enormously expensive and dangerous one.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel#Via_faster-than-light_travel

      In terms of time loops, it seems very unlikely – and one has never been observed in real life. I think I saw on Doctor Who Confidential that one could come about through a ‘puncture’ in space-time. Not sure how this could happen, though – and for the moment I think it will just remain as a useful plot device!

      For parallel worlds, that is an interesting physics theory, which is often referred to as the ‘multiverse’:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse

      It comes, primarily, out of a way of interpreting quantum mechanics equations:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

      Although it is, for the moment, untestable and unfalsifiable – which is never a good thing for a theory to be!

Comments