New article: Using a mathematical model, a UBC instructor to investigate possibility of time travel read more at here http://www.spinonews.com/index.php/science/item/3370-using-a-mathematical-model-a-ubc-instructor-to-investigate-possibility-of-time-travel

A University of British Columbia researcher has come up with a mathematical model for a viable time machine.

Ben Tippett, a mathematics and physics instructor at UBC's Okanagan campus, recently published a study about the feasibility of time travel. Using math and physics, he has created a formula that describes a method for time travel.

Tippett, says, people think of time travel as something as fiction, and we tend to think it's not possible because we don't actually do it. But, mathematically, it is possible.

In 1915 Albert Einstein announced his theory of general relativity, stating that gravitational fields are caused by distortions in the fabric of space and time.

 

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Tippett says, the division of space into three dimensions, with time in a separate dimension by itself is incorrect. The four dimensions should be imagined simultaneously, where different directions are connected, as a space-time continuum. Using Einstein's theory, he says the curvature of space-time accounts for the curved orbits of the planets.

In flat or uncurved space-time, planets and stars would move in straight lines. In the vicinity of a massive star, space-time geometry becomes curved and the straight trajectories of nearby planets will follow the curvature and bend around the star.

For his research, Tippett created a mathematical model of a Traversable Acausal Retrograde Domain in Space-time (TARDIS), a bubble of space-time geometry which carries its contents backward and forwards through space and time as it tours a large circular path. The bubble moves through space-time at speeds greater than the speed of light at times, allowing it to move backward in time.

Tippett says, studying space-time is both fascinating and problematic, and it's also a fun way to use math and physics.

More information: [IOP science]