Time Periods to Go To

Is Time Travel Possible?

The killjoys in the adult world might tell you that there is no point thinking about time periods to go to because time travel can’t happen.

What do you think those stick-in-the-mud adults would have said 100 years ago if you had told them that in 2019 there would be 236 million people taking to the air from the UK each year (Wikipedia Article) in planes weighing up to 632 tons? (How Things Work Article)

Those people would have told you not to be so ridiculous because it couldn’t happen. They were wrong, as adults often are! Thankfully not everyone is so unimaginative. Dr. Marc Rayman, an eminent scientist at NASA, is amongst those who believe that time travel will be possible.

The scientists seem convinced that travel into the future is more likely than travel into the past which is just as well when you consider that nearly two thirds of our survey respondents this week would sooner go forwards in time rather than backwards.

CLICK TO SEE A FULL LIST OF SURVEYS

Going Back to the Dinosaurs

Those of you who chose to go backwards in time would prefer to go a long, long way back to the dinosaur era - over 60 million years ago. If dinosaurs are your thing and you would like to know why they were so big or how many different types there were then Factmonster Dinosaurs is the place to go.

The Least Favourite Era

So, what’s the problem with the Stone Age? Why, we wondered did it come bottom of our poll with only just over 5% voting for it. A quick chat around the folks at Education Quizzes revealed that we were all equally unimpressed with the period. We all remembered that it was a time when men were making tools and weapons out of stone and eating mammoths but none of us could quite remember how you kill a mammoth with a tool made of stone.

In an effort to bring a little more interest to the Stone Age period here are three fascinating facts that we found on the SoftSchools website

1. Animals such as dogs were first domesticated.
2. Then, as now, they had problems with climate change. In fact, they had to contend with 4 glacial cycles that affected the entire earth. Maybe things now aren’t as bad as we thought!
3. There were only about 1 million people living during the Palaeolithic Age (that’s the fancy name for this period) compared with 7.5 billion now. When you work it out that means that for every person living then, there are 7,500 people now.

The Favourite Era

Finally, a word for all you optimistic souls who decided that 100 years in the future is the place to be. Futurologists Ian Pearson and Patrick Tucker gave their views to the BBC and here are some of their thought provoking predictions for 100 years hence:

1. There is a 6 out of 10 chance that marriage will be replaced by an annual contract
2. There is a 7 out of 10 chance that nanorobots will flow around our body fixing cells
3. There is a 8 out of 10 chance that we will be able to control the weather
4. There is a 9 out of 10 chance that some humans will be immortal
5. There is a 10 out of 10 chance that we will be able to communicate by thoughts

Life for the great majority of humans has continuously got better for over 60 million years and there is every reason to believe that the trend will continue. Children instinctively know that things get better over time and if adults tell you otherwise then treat them with a dollop of scepticism.

Survey Statistics

Here are the statistics when we asked the question 'If you could time travel, when would you go to?'

Adults are Living in the Past

• 64% of children would choose to go to the future but only 54% of adults would
• Only 10% of children would choose to go back 100 years but 17% of adults would

Children the World over think the same way

• Overseas children like the dinosaur era slightly more than UK children do
• UK children slightly favour a huge leap into the future (1,000 years)

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