• Question: If you could make a time machine what would it look like?

    Asked by alexandermca to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia, Peta on 21 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 18 Nov 2011:

      The most plausible way to time travel is to make a wormhole – a tunnel through space and time. You would need one end to be where you are and the other end in the past.

      If possible, making a wormhole would require phenomenal amounts of mass and energy. So your time machine would probably be fuelled by lots of neutron stars or a humongous black hole, and it would the need to somehow convert that to energy and arrange it in a precise way to produce the wormhole.

      Wormholes are also very unstable, and would quickly collapse. Not only would you need to get through it very quickly before it crushed you, but you’d probably be trapped in the past as well.

      Needless to say, such a device would be difficult to manufacture.

    • Photo: Hayley Smith

      Hayley Smith answered on 18 Nov 2011:

      I can’t honestly say I’d ever thought about this – it’s an interesting question!

      I guess it would have to be pretty powerful to rip apart space-time and achieve in the past (or the future?) – so made out of a tough material and have to be pretty tough and hardwearing – Diamond ranks top of the Mohs scale for hardness, so I’d maybe go with that – it would maybe impress the past and future folk too?!

      I’m pretty sure a blue police box, as in Dr Who, is probably not the best aerodynamic design, so maybe something more rocket shaped? But the polic box is pretty inconspicous in certain eras but would look well out of place in others, so maybe it needs the ability to blend in well to whatver surroundings…

      Many factors to consider!

      What would yours look like?

    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 21 Nov 2011:

      I agree with Daniel and Hayley’s very good answers… for me…

      My time machine is my bed… I get into it and i travel forward in time between 7 and 10 hours. 😉

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