28 November 2022
Multi-award-winning author Colin Stuart’s talk on time travel captivated his audience in a Goddard Room that was full almost to bursting on Tuesday 22 November. Aptly, one of the first things astronomy expert Colin said was how obsessed we all are with time. For the next 40 minutes - not to mention the many questions that resulted from the talk - he was proved right.
Colin began by asking the audience – which included staff and student guests from Tonbridge School and Oasis Academy in Coulsdon - whether they had come to his talk of their own free will. Despite opinion to the contrary, it transpired that the predestination paradox of time travel – which Colin used several fascinating examples to illustrate – means there is no such thing as free will and everyone was in front of him because they were always going to be at his talk in that room at that time. Colin moved on to apply physics and maths to explain how humans have already travelled into the future by orbiting the earth in space (admittedly so far by just a fraction of a second) and how it is theoretically possible to travel back in time through wormholes, though a wormhole has yet to be discovered.
Woldingham’s Science Department is always keen to stress that its STEM Live talks are for everyone, and Colin’s “Ultimate guide to time travel” demonstrated this wonderfully.
Linda L, Lower Sixth
The talk was mind-blowing. I had never considered how our understanding of space and time has evolved so much and how our perception of time can be affected by travelling through space. It was fascinating to learn how Einstein's theory of relativity has changed our understanding of spacetime and linked the concept of free will to time and astronomy. I would never have thought that time travel could actually happen, rather than being something that only exists in the realm of sci-fi. As it turns out, it's not as far-fetched as one might think. If we can find a way to travel faster than the speed of light, then time travel may well be possible. Who knows, maybe one day we'll be able to visit our past or our future and live in a universe where there are millions of duplications of us. The possibilities are truly endless.