Are We Already Traveling Through Space?

by | Last updated on January 24, 2024

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In total,

we all move at the total speed of light, c, through spacetime

, with the speed spread between space and time. We can’t go faster than light through space. And we neither can go faster nor slower than light through spacetime. It’s the constant speed of everything in the fabric of spacetime.

Is traveling back in time possible?


Time travel is possible based on the laws of physics

, according to new calculations from researchers at the University of Queensland. But time-travelers wouldn’t be able to alter the past in a measurable way, they say — the future would stay the same. Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

How long is 1 hour in space?

One hour on Earth is

0.0026 seconds

in space.

Will humans ever leave the Milky Way?

So,

to leave our Galaxy, we would have to travel about 500 light-years vertically, or about 25,000 light-years away from the galactic centre

. We’d need to go much further to escape the ‘halo’ of diffuse gas, old stars and globular clusters that surrounds the Milky Way’s stellar disk.

Does the future exist?


The past and future do not exist

and are only concepts used to describe the real, isolated, and changing present. This conventional model presents a number of difficult philosophical problems, and seems difficult to reconcile with currently accepted scientific theories such as the theory of relativity.

How can we see back in time in space?


Large telescopes

can look so deep into the Universe that they can also look back billions of years in time. From 2018, the successor of the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, will be able to see the period just after the Big Bang, when the first stars and galaxies formed.

Can you travel into the future?

While

it’s not possible (yet) to travel to the future fast than the rate at which we’re doing it now

, it is possible to speed up the passage of time. But, it only happens in small increments of time. And, it has only happened (so far) to very few people who have traveled off Earth’s surface.

Has a time machine been invented?

In fact,

a time machine has already been built

. Scientists, however, are still working on how to make it as efficient as possible, like in the Back to the Future movies.

Can a wormhole exist?

Einstein’s theory of general relativity mathematically predicts the existence of wormholes, but

none have been discovered to date

. A negative mass wormhole might be spotted by the way its gravity affects light that passes by.

Who is the first time traveler?

Did you know that Russian Cosmonaut

Сергей Авдеев (“Sergei Avdeyev”)

is considered Earth’s first significant time traveler? During his active years as a cosmonaut (1992-1999), he set a record for cumulative time in space.

Will you age slower in space?

Scientists have recently observed for the first time that, on an epigenetic level,

astronauts age more slowly during long-term simulated space travel than they would have if their feet had been planted on Planet Earth.

Is anyone lost in space?


A total of 18 people have lost their lives either while in space or in preparation for a space mission, in four separate incidents

. Given the risks involved in space flight, this number is surprisingly low. The two worst disasters both involved NASA’s space shuttle.

How cold is space?

Hot things move quickly, cold things very slowly. If atoms come to a complete stop, they are at absolute zero. Space is just above that,

at an average temperature of 2.7 Kelvin (about minus 455 degrees Fahrenheit)

.

Will Voyager 1 ever stop?

How long can Voyager 1 and 2 continue to function?

Voyager 1 is expected to keep its current suite of science instruments on through 2021

. Voyager 2 is expected to keep its current suite of science instruments on through 2020. The radioisotope thermoelectric generator on each spacecraft puts out 4 watts less each year.

What happens when the Sun dies?

Once all the helium disappears, the forces of gravity will take over, and

the sun will shrink into a white dwarf

. All the outer material will dissipate, leaving behind a planetary nebula. “When a star dies, it ejects a mass of gas and dust — known as its envelope — into space.

Can the earth survive Andromeda collision?

Excluding planetary engineering, by the time the two galaxies collide,

the surface of the Earth will have already become far too hot for liquid water to exist, ending all terrestrial life

; that is currently estimated to occur in about 3.75 billion years due to gradually increasing luminosity of the Sun (it will have …

Is time an illusion?

According to theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli,

time is an illusion

: our naive perception of its flow doesn’t correspond to physical reality. Indeed, as Rovelli argues in The Order of Time, much more is illusory, including Isaac Newton’s picture of a universally ticking clock.

Will we ever travel the speed of light?

Based on our current understanding of physics and the limits of the natural world, the answer, sadly, is

no

. According to Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity, summarized by the famous equation E=mc

2

, the speed of light (c) is something like a cosmic speed limit that cannot be surpassed.

Can time be defined?

Physicists define time as

the progression of events from the past to the present into the future

. Basically, if a system is unchanging, it is timeless. Time can be considered to be the fourth dimension of reality, used to describe events in three-dimensional space.

How far in space can we see?

So the furthest out we can see is about

46.5 billion light years

away, which is crazy, but it also means you can look back into the past and try to figure out how the universe formed, which again, is what cosmologists do.

How do scientists know that the universe is expanding?


The Hubble tension

comes from attempts to measure or predict the universe’s current rate of expansion, which is called the Hubble constant. Using it, astronomers can estimate the age of the universe since the big bang.

How can the James Webb see the past?

The Webb is primarily an

infrared telescope

, so it sees light that’s in a longer wavelength than what our eyes can see. This seems nerdy and technical, but it’s actually what allows Webb to look further back in time than the Hubble. Infrared light is often very old light, due to a phenomenon call redshifting.

Is it possible to go back in time and change the past?


Time travellers cannot change the past

: they cannot make it different from the way it was—but they can participate in it: they can be amongst the people who did make the past the way it was.

Is time travel possible Stephen Hawking?


Time travel is probably impossible

. Even if it were possible, Hawking and others have argued that you could never travel back before the moment your time machine was built.

Can you build a time machine?


To create a time machine would require negative energy

, and quantum mechanics appears to allow only extremely small regions of negative energy. And the forces needed to create an ordinary-sized region with time loops appear to be extremely large.

Amira Khan
Author
Amira Khan
Amira Khan is a philosopher and scholar of religion with a Ph.D. in philosophy and theology. Amira's expertise includes the history of philosophy and religion, ethics, and the philosophy of science. She is passionate about helping readers navigate complex philosophical and religious concepts in a clear and accessible way.