Time Travel via. Massive Orbit
The previous page focused on theoretical ideas that aimed to achieve
velocities near the speed of light in order to produce significant
time dilation and thus significant time travel. The same case can be
made for ideas that use the fact that gravitational fields also
cause time dilation.
The best method to travel in time using gravity involves a ship
similar to the previous one. This ship however would not need to
achieve a velocity near the speed of light. This ship would travel
towards a massive object, such as a star, and would orbit the star
for a period time and then return to Earth. The time spent orbiting
the star would be dilated relative to Earth, and thus the passengers
of this ship would have traveled forwards in time. Careful
calculations would have to be preformed in order to assure that the
ship only orbits the star, or else the ship would be destroyed in a
fiery mess. The ship would be equipped with shields in order to
protect it and the people within from the heat and radiation of the
star. If instead, the ship were to travel near a black hole the same
effect could be achieved. The ship could simply sit idle right
outside of the event horizon of the black hole and after enough time
had passed could return back to Earth.
Clearly, this kind of shielding technology does not yet exist, and a
source of power capable of getting a spaceship to a nearby star has
also not been developed yet. But, theoretically, this would also be
a time machine. Time travel using gravitational time dilation is
equally as possible as relative velocity time travel.
Next: References
Previous: Time Travel via. Maximized Velocity
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