Time travel possible but only to the future: English physicist

Time travel may not just be a science-fiction fable, if a physicist is to be believed. However, it would only be a one way road into the future and you won't be able to come back.

According to a report by The Telegraph, Professor Brian Cox, a particle physicist from the University of Manchester, who spoke at the British Science Festival, confirmed that a time machine could be built. He even claimed that time travel has already been done, on a small scale.

He elaborated that humans would be able to travel to the future if technology for accelerating larger objects is developed. But it would never be possible to travel back in time.

"You can go into the future; you've got almost total freedom of movement in the future," said Cox.

"If you go fast, your clock runs slow relative to people who are still. As you approach the speed of light, your clock runs so slow you could come back 10,000 years in the future," he added.

He said that Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity supported this and that time slows down closer to the speed of light.

"In General Relativity, you can do it in principle," said Cox.

However, to go back in time, you'd require a "wormhole," a shortcut in the concept of space and time, which is doubtful.

"It's to do with building these things called wormholes; shortcuts through space and time. But most physicists doubt it. Hawking came up with the 'chronology protection conjecture' - physics we don't yet understand that means wormholes are not stable," he stated.