What If You Met a Time Traveler?

[Music] if time travel is possible why haven't we met a single time traveler yet and if we did meet one how would we know they weren't faking it what would their time machine look like and how would it operate would there be a set of rules for time travelers to follow and what would happen if they decided to break them this is what if and here's what would happen if you met a time traveler in 1998 a gentleman by the name of John Titor arrived from the future or so he said in his timeline as he claimed General Electric had managed to invent time travel in the Year 2034 he even showed and described his time-traveling device in great detail and then Tito vanished as abruptly as he appeared did he finish his mission or was he real at all how could we know if we were able to prove that someone has traveled from a different time it would be very cool for science although it might overwrite Albert Einstein's theory of relativity Einstein approached time as a fourth dimension space is a three dimensional spectrum that provides us with length width and height time offers direction together they form a space-time continuum and it can be affected by gravity according to Einstein's theory of relativity gravity is a curve in space-time and technically because space and time are one gravity could bend time as well as space but you'd need something really really big to notice any changes in the movement of time if you somehow managed to get yourself close to a black hole like Sagittarius a you'd be experiencing time at half speed compared to people on earth this is because Sagittarius a packs a mass of four million Suns into an indefinitely dense point creating a very strong gravitational field around it another way to travel in time is to move really fast the closer you get to the speed of light the slower time passes for you if you were a passenger on a train that somehow could travel at 99% of the speed of light for every year you spent on the train 223 years would have passed back at the station that would make you a time traveler into the future but what about traveling back in time just like John Titor said he did Teitur claims that this little machine is what made time travel possible in any direction the C 204 as he called it allowed him to manipulate gravity with the help of two micro singularities that were packed inside it also had gravity sensors to lock the machine and time traveler in a fixed place in space Tito had this machine installed in a car pretty much like the good old time-traveling DeLorean did but it would only take him as far as 60 years from his time how would you know that Tito was actually traveling in time and not just making it up proving that someone really is a time traveler might be even harder than time travel itself time travelers could make predictions about the future show their futuristic technology or even undergo some genetic testing to support their story maybe the best way to prove time travel is real would be to take you with them on their next adventure of course there are easier ways to prove the possibility of time travel in 2009 the world-famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking threw a party not just any party but one to which only future time travelers were invited Hawking didn't send off invitations until after the party he believed that if travelers from the future arrived before the invitation was released that would prove that time travel will become possible one day he sat there waiting for hours but nobody showed up that doesn't mean time travel is impossible there is a chance that time travelers from the future will learn to use wormholes or bridges in space-time we haven't seen one of those yet but the theory of general relativity predicts that they exist the biggest problem with wormholes is that they're microscopic and collapse too quickly for a human traveler to go through but maybe the reason nobody attended Hawking's party is that time traveling might not be that precise maybe the guests from the future did arrive but they were too late for the party or maybe going back in time is strictly prohibited for time travelers because if they do they might change their timeline completely perhaps they're just trying to avoid the risk of spreading any diseases from the far future onto us or maybe the information about time traveling is so highly classified that only a few people would be trusted with it maybe travelling back into time isn't possible after all maybe time can only move forward and never backwards maybe John Titor was one big lie we have a few more years until 2034 to find out in a way we already have time travelers in our lifetime astronauts on the International Space Station are moving at eight kilometers per second this makes them age slower although the difference is measured in hundreds of a second but if you're listening you're invited to a reception for Time Traveller's hosted by Stephen Hawking the party will take place at the University of Cambridge United Kingdom on June 28th 2009 no RSVP required and hey if you have a chance to jump in a spaceship and enjoy the time-traveling effects of a black hole do it just make sure not to fall into that gravitational monster but that's a story for another what if [Music]

Channel: What If

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Keywords: what if, what happens if, scifi, science documentary, what if scenario, time traveler, what if you met a time traveler, is time traveling real, how to travel in time, time travel machine, first time traveler, john titor, who is john titor, time travel real stories, theory of relativity, time travel paradox, time traveler predictions, john titor time travel machine, time, physics, back to the future, einstein, doctor who, time dilation, pbs, space time, brian cox

Id: ipMwrcvukpU

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 19 2019