{"id":324,"date":"2011-07-26T10:36:28","date_gmt":"2011-07-26T14:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dadequate\/?p=324"},"modified":"2011-07-26T10:36:28","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T14:36:28","slug":"time-travel-is-impossible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/2011\/07\/time-travel-is-impossible.html","title":{"rendered":"Time Travel Is Impossible?"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’ve always dreamed<\/strong> of using your neighborhood mad scientist’s DeLorean to go back in time, meet your nerdy dad, and make sure he falls in love with Lea Thompson…you’re out of luck. Physicists at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have proved that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light — not even using black-market Libyan plutonium and a flux capacitor — and therefore time travel is impossible<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Einstein claimed that the speed of light was the traffic law of the universe or in simple language, nothing can travel faster than light,” the university said on its website.<\/p>\n

“Professor Du [Shengwang]’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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Du measured the speed of a single photon — which had never been done before — and proved Einstein’s theory that protons have to adhere to a universal speed limit. Therefore, the university said, “an effect cannot occur before its cause.”<\/p>\n

This matches up with another, less technical proof: If time travel were possible, wouldn’t someone from the future have showed up to tell us about it?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’ve always dreamed of using your neighborhood mad scientist’s DeLorean to go back in time, meet your nerdy dad, and make sure he falls in love with Lea Thompson…you’re out of luck. Physicists at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have proved that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,202],"tags":[213,209,211,212,210],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-linked","category-nostalgia","tag-albert-einstein","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-du-shengwang","tag-hong-kong-university-of-science-and-technology","tag-lea-thompson"],"yoast_head":"\nTime Travel Is Impossible? - Dadequate<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/2011\/07\/time-travel-is-impossible.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Time Travel Is Impossible? - Dadequate\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you’ve always dreamed of using your neighborhood mad scientist’s DeLorean to go back in time, meet your nerdy dad, and make sure he falls in love with Lea Thompson…you’re out of luck. Physicists at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have proved that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/2011\/07\/time-travel-is-impossible.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dadequate\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-07-26T14:36:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jason Boyett\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Time Travel Is Impossible? - Dadequate","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/2011\/07\/time-travel-is-impossible.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Time Travel Is Impossible? - Dadequate","og_description":"If you’ve always dreamed of using your neighborhood mad scientist’s DeLorean to go back in time, meet your nerdy dad, and make sure he falls in love with Lea Thompson…you’re out of luck. Physicists at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology have proved that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/2011\/07\/time-travel-is-impossible.html","og_site_name":"Dadequate","article_published_time":"2011-07-26T14:36:28+00:00","author":"Jason Boyett","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/2011\/07\/time-travel-is-impossible.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/2011\/07\/time-travel-is-impossible.html","name":"Time Travel Is Impossible? - Dadequate","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-07-26T14:36:28+00:00","dateModified":"2011-07-26T14:36:28+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/#\/schema\/person\/f69eb4f788db541ff47d2f5d01cad5e7"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/2011\/07\/time-travel-is-impossible.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/2011\/07\/time-travel-is-impossible.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/2011\/07\/time-travel-is-impossible.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Time Travel Is Impossible?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/","name":"Dadequate","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Jason Boyett","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/#\/schema\/person\/f69eb4f788db541ff47d2f5d01cad5e7","name":"Jason Boyett","description":"Jason Boyett is a writer, speaker, and the author of several books, including O Me of Little Faith (Zondervan), and the Pocket Guide series (Jossey-Bass). His work has appeared in Salon, Paste, The Daily Beast, Relevant, and a variety of other publications. He has also appeared on the History Channel and National Geographic Channel. Jason lives in Texas with his wife and two kids. Follow him at twitter and jasonboyett.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/author\/jboyett"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dadequate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}