Travel to Future?

Most recent answer: 06/16/2011

Q:
can we travel to future? and if we can how?
- gaurab (age 16)
nuwakot, nepal
A:
You always travel to the future, without trying. perhaps you are asking if there's a way to somehow travel farther into the future than allowed by a normal lifespan. In principle, there is. If you were to travel away in a rocket ship, accelerating away from the earth to a high speed (relative to the earth), and then accelerate back, when you  returned the earth would have aged more than you.  You'd experience earth events farther into the earth future than the rest of us. This happens to a very small extent to astronauts in low-earth orbits.

Mike W.

(published on 06/16/2011)