Is time travel possible?

Yes, the math says it's possible. Backward, not forward, IIRC.

Michael Crichton's "Timeline" offered one suggestion about how it might work - although, to be fair, that process had the effective result of traveling in time but rather was actually about traveling across the multiverse.

 

That's the classified ad from the movie 'Safety Not Guaranteed.'

 

It is possible to move back in time, but one can't move forward in time in the fashion commonly thought.
Moving back in time you can follow an actual linear progression of quantum moments that occured in space-time. you can follow a timeline.
Our astronauts already move backward in time when the return to earth. It's mere fractions of seconds, but they are moving back in time.
Moving forward, you would move into one of an infinite number of realities.

 

Experiments have shown that time itself is subject to the laws of gravity. This must mean that time has some sort of mass which in turn may help explain the theory of the Arrow of Time and why time seems to only move in one direction - forward. Our time and reality are "falling" in one direction like a raindrop falling from the sky.

I'm driving to New Jersey today.

 

What you are refering to is gravitational time dilation. My example of astronauts is an example of that phenomenon.
Time moves slower based on proximity to gravity.
However, astronauts are not moving forward in time as they move away from the gravity source as they are moving back in time as they return to the gravity source.
Movement is really unidirectional because of the quantum nature of space-time.
There is an infinite number of quantum possibilities branching off from each quantum moment. There is no 'future' to move to as we can conceive it. There are infinite futures.
As a result moving forward in time would be following one of an infinite number of possibilties.
However, moving backwards in time is possible because it involves tracing a single line of quantum moments to return to the traveler's actual past.

There is the possibility of the traveler moving along a different branch of quantum moments into a different past, but that would not consitutate what we commonly think of as time travel.

 

The theoretical will never turn into reality — in my lifetime or 100 generations of my lifetime. We don't and won't have the technology to travel in time, even though I believe time is circular, not linear, and it's just our short lifetimes that make us believe it's linear.

If I could go back in time? I don't know. There are many things I'd do differently, but I've got a pretty damn good life now, with a beautiful wife and daughter that maybe I wouldn't have if I had made different choices. I'll take what I have, and I'm the better for it.

 

I sure hope it's possible because I really want to see a game at Ebbetts Field.

 

I'd like to go to the Polo Grounds. I want to see one guy hit a 475-foot drive for an out while another guy hits a 260-foot popup down the line for a homer.

 

EIGHTY-EIGHT MILES PER HOOOOOOUUUUURRRRR!!!!!

It would be cool if time travel was possible. I'd go back to see the 1985 World Series to prove to my kids that the Royals weren't always shitty.

 

I'm not saying I believe time travel is immanent or even possible in any conventionally understood manner, but 100 generations is long time for our understanding of space-time to evolve and for technology to evolve.
If you take a generation to mean 22 years, that means 100 generations ago it was 187 BC.
Take a moment and consider how our understanding of the universe and space-time have evolved since 187 BC. Think about how technology has evolved.
Many, many things you would have thought laughably impossible in 187 BC are now common-place.

Why do you think time is circular?

 

Actually, generations skew longer than I thought, but only by a little.
The average age for an American first-time mother is about 25. The average age for an American first-time father is about 27. So the average age for an American first-time parent is 26, not 22.
Which means 100 generations is about 2,600 years.
That means 100 generations ago it was 587 BCE. To put that in context, it was the year the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem.
And 100 generations from now it will be 4,613 CE. Hard to say what we will know, understand or be able to do in 4,613 CE.