• Question: my friend thinks that black holes have the possibility of time travel do you agree or disagree

    Asked by atomizer(alex) to James, Freya, Daniel on 15 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Daniel Hewson

      Daniel Hewson answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      According to Stephen Hawking they do, only not by much and only into to the future because they slow time down. Also you would be pulled apart by gravitational forces before you got near enough to the black hole. So, if you could find a way to overcome this and orbit a black hole at the right speed and distance to could live twice as long. That is, you could live twice as long in a spaceship orbiting a black hole. You’d have to kit the spaceship out with everything you’d need to live for that long. And I doubt you’d get wifi out there!

    • Photo: Freya Wilson

      Freya Wilson answered on 15 Jun 2015:

      In theory, yes. If you look at the equations it all points to the possibility of time travel in it’s most fundamental sense. But there is an awful lot of questions to answer first- if you go near a black hole that is big enough for us to access easily then you would most certainly die a really epic and unpleasant death. We have no way of controlling black holes- we could make tiny tiny ones in somewhere like CERN in Switzerland, but we can’t hold them in one place or examine them in any way.

      This article explains things a bit better than I can, I would definitely have a look-

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269288/STEPHEN-HAWKING-How-build-time-machine.html

    • Photo: James Gilbert

      James Gilbert answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      Black holes certainly do weird stuff to time – the ‘heavier’ (or more massive) an object is, the more is bends the space around it, and as a result it also slows time down. Black holes are extremely massive, so the closer you get to one, the slower time moves. They also bend physical space, which doesn’t sound very comfortable to me :/

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