Five ways to travel through time

In order to read this post, you will need:
1. A pair of eyes or your own lover slave boy to do the reading for you.
2. A brain (or an intelligence quotient higher than Paris Hilton's).
3. A basic understanding of physics. And,
4. An internal voice that sounds like a cross between Bill Cosby and a flashy car salesman. 
    

Let the science begin.

~xXx~

So,

you're the douchbag, asshole, buttface that cheated on your girl and now you want her back. Or maybe you wish you hadn't taken those drugs at that last concert *ahem*. Wish you could oh, say, turn back time and do it all over again?

Well here's a simple solution for you. Why not make your own time machine?

It's inconvenient, nonexistent and a quick fix for all your solutions! But first, you'll need a basic understanding of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. [Cue Doctor Who theme music]

So give it to me straight, doc. What is time?

In a nutshell, time can be defined as the rate of change in the universe.

Like it or not, we're all experiencing change. Lives end, stars die and burritos fall apart. But just like how a river flows at different speeds in different parts, time flows at a different rate in different places. Basically, time is relative.

Or they leave the country.

Well yes but how do you change it?

It all goes back to that not-so-romantic relationship between time and space.

See, you me and Dupree, we're all dancing around the three spatial dimensions of width, height and length. Time joins the party as the most crucial fourth dimension. Time can't exist without space and space can't exist without time. Together, they form the Space-time continuum. [In other words, they're the Bella and Edward Beeping Cullen of science].

The funny thing is, time travel isn't complete science fiction hogwash - Global positioning satellites pull this off every day, accruing an extra third-of-a-billionth of a second daily (Their atomic clocks despite being the most accurate kind there is, still need to be readjusted consistently so that our cars wont tell us to drive off bridges and onto people's front lawns).

The reason for time being faster in orbit is because satellites are further away from the mass of the earth. Down here with us slower, lowly living life forms however, the mass of our planet drags on time and slows it down in small, barely there measures. We call this effect gravitational time dilation.

Now is this awesome or is it awesome?

Okay, so you won't be able to notice the tiny changes in the flow of time, so how about something heavier? Heavier than the Earth. As heavy as, say, the mass of hundreds of millions of suns condensed in one singularity?

Would this work? No.

Which brings me to method numero uno (finally).

#1. Jump into a black hole

That's right. A black hole. But first you'll have to find one first. Oh yeah, and avoid getting crushed. Lucky for us there's the Kerr Ring.

Not this ring

This ring

In 1963, New Zealand mathematician Roy Kerr proposed the first realistic theory for a rotating black hole. The concept goes like this: if dying stars managed to collapse into a rotating ring of neutron stars, their centrifugal force would prevent them (and you) from turning into a big, nasty blended singularity.

Theoretically, you would be able to enter one unscathed (pants not guaranteed) and exit on the other side, in another time. (Remember gravitational time dilation?)

Of course, if you're too chicken to jump in one, you could always do the cowardly thing and circle it. Pfft.

#2. Circling a black hole

Meet Sagittarius A. - A black hole at the center of the Milky Way (We have our very own black hole!)

It's there. Really. Keep looking. Oh wait, it's a black hole.
There's no light. Damn.

It has a mass of four million suns existing as a singularly dense point. That's a lot of weight for a little lady.

Scientists say that if you managed to time it perfectly and aim your angle of projection just right, you'd be able to circle the black hole without falling in. At this point, you will be experiencing time at half the earth rate.

So, say someone from NASA is guiding your mission on earth while you sit on the ultimate merry-go-round of awesomeness. Whilst ten years have passed on earth, you will have returned to earth to discover that you've only aged five years. See the awesomeness now?

#3. Go fast. Really, really fast.

Mass, as it turns out, isn't the only thing which affects time. Speed does as well.

A phenomenon called time dilation is the key here. Time passes more slowly the closer you approach the unbreakable cosmic speed limit also known as the speed of light. Here, I'm going to use a pretty cool analogy.

Imagine, if you will, that we had a train built across the circumference of the earth, and that it started moving, generating speed as it built momentum. Now imagine that there was no limiting factor and it just kept getting faster and faster, going round and round the earth at ass-crazy speeds.

And now we know why

Theoretically, the train would keep on accelerating until it reached 99.9999% the speed of light, since Einstein's theory of relativity states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light - an impressive billion kilometers per hour.

At this point, something really weird starts happening.

As you travel at this speed, only 1 year would pass on-board for every 223 years. Meaning, you could step into this fictional train, spend a year eating stale peanuts and getting the back of your chair kicked to step off one year later into a completely different world.

223 years in the future to be exact.

#4 Find your own cosmic string and hold on tight

Approximately 13.7 billion years ago, when the universe was but a wee teenager, it started spewing tons and tons or energy which would later be converted into various subatomic particles that would in time (Oh, say, thousands of years later) combine and form atoms, the building blocks of matter.

Not those blocks

That is, if you believe in the big bang theory. (Anyone got a better one?)

Anyhoo, when the universe was inflating after the big bang, the field that caused this inflation started to "crystallize".

It's a bit tricky to describe this, but try to imagine a pond during winter. If you look at the surface of the pond, you'll see plates of ice grow until they collide with their neighbors and when that happens, you get these patterns on the ice that looks like lines. Cosmologists theorize that the same could be applied for space matter when the universe was still cooling down.

Okay, no, seriously.

Much better.

It was physicist J. Richard Gott, who introduced the idea of cosmic string back in 1991.  These strings may weave through an entire universe, thinner than an atom but under immense pressure. That would mean they pack quite a gravitational punch on anything that passes near them.

Hang onto one long enough and you'll be able to travel at incredible speeds, benefiting from time dilation.

Or sure, you could use a spaceship...pfft.

~xXx~

Okay, so maybe none of these methods can be put to full use just yet (Or in the next 50 years). But fret not! There's always method #5 to the rescue.

#5. Just close your eyes and shut up

Sit back, relax, and stop thinking too much.

In what feels like a few minutes, you'll discover that twelve hours have passed. Have a great day, everyone.

Final picture

This picture reminds me of me and my ex.

[Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_string, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_travel, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269288/STEPHEN-HAWKING-How-build-time-machine.html, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_black_hole, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagittarius_A*, http://www.google.com.my/search?q=sagittarius+A&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Vvh&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=yTPXTt3bOoiHrAfJ1YnODQ&ved=0CEAQsAQ&biw=1280&bih=885]