Summary: The idea of the time machine became scientifically popular due to the novel 'The Time Machine' published by English writer H.G. Wells in 1895. Before that, there were many stories about time travel, but Wells was the first to describe in his novel a machine built specifically for this purpose.

We have all seen since childhood many films about human time travel, where one can return to the past and even travel to the future using a hypothetical machine that moves between eras.

The idea of the time machine became scientifically popular due to the novel 'The Time Machine' published by English writer H.G. Wells in 1895. Before that, there were many stories about time travel, but Wells was the first to describe in his novel a machine built specifically for this purpose.

And away from fictional novels and films, many wonder whether time travel will become possible one day, and what scientists say about it.

What does science say about time travel?

Sir Isaac Newton believed in the 1680s that time passes at a constant rate throughout the universe, regardless of external forces or location. For two centuries, the scientific community adopted Newton's theory. But in 1905, everything changed when German scientist Albert Einstein revealed his ideas on special relativity. Einstein's pioneering calculations in defining the universe introduced some concepts related to time, most importantly that time is flexible and depends on speed, slowing down or speeding up according to the speed of the object or person.

Einstein calculated the speed of light at 300 million meters per second, describing it as the 'speed limit' and a universal constant, whether one is sitting on a chair or traveling in a spaceship. Einstein's later ideas on time dilation indicate that gravity also slows time, meaning time passes faster where gravity is weaker, such as in the vast empty space between massive celestial bodies like the Sun, Jupiter, and Earth.

In short, after a century, all these theories now form the basic building blocks of astrophysics, and amidst all this complex mathematics, Einstein proved the possibility of time travel.

The Subatomic Time Machine

After Einstein theoretically proved the possibility of time travel, scientists now say that this type of travel is not only possible, but has actually occurred, though it does not resemble typical science fiction films. On the subatomic level, the Large Hadron Collider—the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, operated by CERN, located in a circular tunnel 27 kilometers in circumference and about 100 meters underground on the French-Swiss border—regularly sends subatomic particles into the future.

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The particle accelerator has the ability to push protons at speeds approaching 99.9 percent of the speed of light. At this speed, relative time moves about 6,900 times slower compared to time for stationary human observers. So we have actually been sending atoms into the future for the past decade.

Theoretically, scientists point out that it is relatively easy for humans to time travel into the future. Some say that if we wanted to visit Earth in the year 3000, all we would have to do is board a spacecraft and travel at 99.9 percent of the speed of light. But of course, there is a huge gap between theory and reality.

Have scientists tried to build a time machine?

No one has ever built a machine capable of time travel as seen in science fiction films, and there is no scientific evidence that anyone has traveled to the past or future using such a machine to date.

Some theories suggest that hypothetical objects like wormholes or special distortions in the fabric of spacetime could enable that. However, no one has discovered a way to build or use such a machine. A true time machine would require manipulating the fabric of spacetime—the four-dimensional fabric that combines space and time—and we currently do not possess any technology capable of doing that.

What are the existing difficulties?

There are enormous engineering obstacles currently preventing the construction of a time machine. We are not even close to having a spacecraft capable of traveling at the speed of light. The fastest spacecraft ever built is the Parker Solar Probe, launched in 2018 on a mission to study the Sun's outer corona, and its speed does not exceed 0.00067 percent of the speed of light.

A time machine might require enormous amounts of energy or forms of matter that have never been observed in usable quantities. Then there is the issue of acceleration. To ensure that the hypothetical traveler is not destroyed by immense acceleration forces, the vehicle would need to accelerate gradually and steadily. While constant acceleration at 1g (as we feel on Earth) over a long period would eventually bring the vehicle to near-light speed, it would also increase the travel time and reduce the extent of possible time travel.

In conclusion, building a vehicle with these specifications would require a lot of time, resources, and money, and there is no experimental evidence that a practical time machine could see the light in the near future. While time travel to the future through relativistic effects is real and has been measured in experiments, travel to the past remains a theoretical possibility with no evidence that it can actually be achieved.