Physicists in Hong Kong have declared that based off of a recent study, time travel will never be possible.
According to Discovery News, physicists at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology claim that “nothing can travel faster than the speed of light” which something would need to do in order to time travel.
“Professor Du’s study demonstrates that a single photon, the fundamental quanta of light, also obeys the traffic law of the universe just like classical EM (electromagnetic) waves,” said the Universities statement about the study. “Einstein claimed that the speed of light was the traffic law of the universe or in simple language, nothing can travel faster than light.”
According to the report, time travel research began 10 years ago when scientists discovered faster-than-light optical pulses. These pulses have now been deemed false proof and were discovered to only have been a visual effect.
“Our findings will also likely have potential applications by giving scientists a better picture on the transmission of quantum information,” said the University.
The Universities study was first published in the journal, Physical Review Letters.
In 2010, theoretical physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies contradicted the studies findings telling Discovery News that time travel is definitely practical.
“The short answer is that time travel into the future is not only possible, it’s been done, and we’ve known about it for over a century,” said Davies. “The reason that the public doesn’t seem to know about it is because the amount of time travel involved in so pitifully small that it doesn’t make for a ‘Doctor Who’ style adventure.”
Davies claims that the theory of time dilation, the idea that time moves slower as it approaches the speed of light, is what makes him believe of its attainability. But the physicist did claim that traveling into the past would be near impossible.
“Going back in to the past is a whole different kettle of fish,” said Davies. “There’s nothing in Einstein’s theory, which is the bees theory that we have about the nature of time, which precludes it.”
