Mostly physics

Spent the day in DPCU because other schools were coming to hear the physics professor talk about time travel. We had to tell them where to go. (We - Rog, Potkonyak, Ez, Dene, me. Dene wouldn't let me tell Davo about it. Coleman opted to go to drama.)

Interesting physics talk this morning, on time travel and the theory behind it.
According to the special theory of relativity, the speed of light is the only constant, it is constant from all points of view and is the fastest that anything in this universe can travel at.
Hence, due to this, time is relative to the speed of light, 3x10^8m/s.
Gravity occurs due to mass. It is theorised that small particles called gravitons (similar to photons) are the cause.
Time is also affected by gravity. The more gravity, the slower time moves.
Hence, time is thought to move faster out in the vacuum than it does on earth. In fact, time moves faster higher in the air than closer to the ground.
A black hole is an area of space where a lot of mass has been compressed into such a small area of space. The gravity is very great, so that effectively, time doesn't move. In fact, nothing moves, not even light. So the theory is, that as you travel towards the entrance of the black hole, time slows, to the point where by the time you are at the entrance (event horizon, I think it's called?), you will have watched all of eternity (of the external universe) pass by.
A line to the effect of 'a million years to man is but a breath to God' comes to mind.

Travelling forward in time is fine. But travelling backwards poses a few problems. Paradox of deaths. Paradox of the replication of matter. Hawking (is that his name?) theorises that there is something that prevents you from these paradoxes. Others theorise that there's really a multiverse (due to the element of uncertainty - normal ppl call it 'chance' - in quantum mechanics at the atomic level), so that if one travels backwards in time and decides to kill their mother, they are actually killing the mother of a parallel universe, not the one in their timeline. So when they return, their own universe is not changed. Of course, that raises the question of how they actually return to their own universe out of the millions of multiverses that exist. And that would make time... 2D? Because the theory is that you can move backwards and forwards on the line, but if you can cross universes as well, then it isn't just 1D anymore...
Ugh, this is confusing me...

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^ A 2D representation of a black hole if viewed on the plane of time



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^ A 2D representation of a wormhole

(I suck at ASCII art so you're just going to have to imagine the wormhole like a link between the two surfaces of a curved sheet, eg. of paper)