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Can we time travel? A theoretical physicist provides some answers

Emeritus professor, Physics, Carleton University

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Time travel makes regular appearances in popular culture, with innumerable time travel storylines in movies, television and literature. But it is a surprisingly old idea: one can argue that the Greek tragedy Oedipus Rex , written by Sophocles over 2,500 years ago, is the first time travel story .

But is time travel in fact possible? Given the popularity of the concept, this is a legitimate question. As a theoretical physicist, I find that there are several possible answers to this question, not all of which are contradictory.

The simplest answer is that time travel cannot be possible because if it was, we would already be doing it. One can argue that it is forbidden by the laws of physics, like the second law of thermodynamics or relativity . There are also technical challenges: it might be possible but would involve vast amounts of energy.

There is also the matter of time-travel paradoxes; we can — hypothetically — resolve these if free will is an illusion, if many worlds exist or if the past can only be witnessed but not experienced. Perhaps time travel is impossible simply because time must flow in a linear manner and we have no control over it, or perhaps time is an illusion and time travel is irrelevant.

Laws of physics

Since Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity — which describes the nature of time, space and gravity — is our most profound theory of time, we would like to think that time travel is forbidden by relativity. Unfortunately, one of his colleagues from the Institute for Advanced Study, Kurt Gödel, invented a universe in which time travel was not just possible, but the past and future were inextricably tangled.

We can actually design time machines , but most of these (in principle) successful proposals require negative energy , or negative mass, which does not seem to exist in our universe. If you drop a tennis ball of negative mass, it will fall upwards. This argument is rather unsatisfactory, since it explains why we cannot time travel in practice only by involving another idea — that of negative energy or mass — that we do not really understand.

Mathematical physicist Frank Tipler conceptualized a time machine that does not involve negative mass, but requires more energy than exists in the universe .

Time travel also violates the second law of thermodynamics , which states that entropy or randomness must always increase. Time can only move in one direction — in other words, you cannot unscramble an egg. More specifically, by travelling into the past we are going from now (a high entropy state) into the past, which must have lower entropy.

This argument originated with the English cosmologist Arthur Eddington , and is at best incomplete. Perhaps it stops you travelling into the past, but it says nothing about time travel into the future. In practice, it is just as hard for me to travel to next Thursday as it is to travel to last Thursday.

Resolving paradoxes

There is no doubt that if we could time travel freely, we run into the paradoxes. The best known is the “ grandfather paradox ”: one could hypothetically use a time machine to travel to the past and murder their grandfather before their father’s conception, thereby eliminating the possibility of their own birth. Logically, you cannot both exist and not exist.

Read more: Time travel could be possible, but only with parallel timelines

Kurt Vonnegut’s anti-war novel Slaughterhouse-Five , published in 1969, describes how to evade the grandfather paradox. If free will simply does not exist, it is not possible to kill one’s grandfather in the past, since he was not killed in the past. The novel’s protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, can only travel to other points on his world line (the timeline he exists in), but not to any other point in space-time, so he could not even contemplate killing his grandfather.

The universe in Slaughterhouse-Five is consistent with everything we know. The second law of thermodynamics works perfectly well within it and there is no conflict with relativity. But it is inconsistent with some things we believe in, like free will — you can observe the past, like watching a movie, but you cannot interfere with the actions of people in it.

Could we allow for actual modifications of the past, so that we could go back and murder our grandfather — or Hitler ? There are several multiverse theories that suppose that there are many timelines for different universes. This is also an old idea: in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol , Ebeneezer Scrooge experiences two alternative timelines, one of which leads to a shameful death and the other to happiness.

Time is a river

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote that:

“ Time is like a river made up of the events which happen , and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.”

We can imagine that time does flow past every point in the universe, like a river around a rock. But it is difficult to make the idea precise. A flow is a rate of change — the flow of a river is the amount of water that passes a specific length in a given time. Hence if time is a flow, it is at the rate of one second per second, which is not a very useful insight.

Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking suggested that a “ chronology protection conjecture ” must exist, an as-yet-unknown physical principle that forbids time travel. Hawking’s concept originates from the idea that we cannot know what goes on inside a black hole, because we cannot get information out of it. But this argument is redundant: we cannot time travel because we cannot time travel!

Researchers are investigating a more fundamental theory, where time and space “emerge” from something else. This is referred to as quantum gravity , but unfortunately it does not exist yet.

So is time travel possible? Probably not, but we don’t know for sure!

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Is time travel possible? An astrophysicist explains

Will it ever be possible for time travel to occur? – Alana C., age 12, Queens, New York

Have you ever dreamed of traveling through time, like characters do in science fiction movies? For centuries, the concept of time travel has captivated people’s imaginations. Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time, just like you move between different places. In movies, you might have seen characters using special machines, magical devices or even hopping into a futuristic car to travel backward or forward in time.

But is this just a fun idea for movies, or could it really happen?

The question of whether time is reversible remains one of the biggest unresolved questions in science. If the universe follows the  laws of thermodynamics , it may not be possible. The second law of thermodynamics states that things in the universe can either remain the same or become more disordered over time.

It’s a bit like saying you can’t unscramble eggs once they’ve been cooked. According to this law, the universe can never go back exactly to how it was before. Time can only go forward, like a one-way street.

Time is relative

However, physicist Albert Einstein’s  theory of special relativity  suggests that time passes at different rates for different people. Someone speeding along on a spaceship moving close to the  speed of light  – 671 million miles per hour! – will experience time slower than a person on Earth.

Related: The speed of light, explained

People have yet to build spaceships that can move at speeds anywhere near as fast as light, but astronauts who visit the International Space Station orbit around the Earth at speeds close to 17,500 mph. Astronaut Scott Kelly has spent 520 days at the International Space Station, and as a result has aged a little more slowly than his twin brother – and fellow astronaut – Mark Kelly. Scott used to be 6 minutes younger than his twin brother. Now, because Scott was traveling so much faster than Mark and for so many days, he is  6 minutes and 5 milliseconds younger .

Some scientists are exploring other ideas that could theoretically allow time travel. One concept involves  wormholes , or hypothetical tunnels in space that could create shortcuts for journeys across the universe. If someone could build a wormhole and then figure out a way to move one end at close to the speed of light – like the hypothetical spaceship mentioned above – the moving end would age more slowly than the stationary end. Someone who entered the moving end and exited the wormhole through the stationary end would come out in their past.

However, wormholes remain theoretical : Scientists have yet to spot one. It also looks like it would be  incredibly challenging  to send humans through a wormhole space tunnel.

Time travel paradoxes and failed dinner parties

There are also paradoxes associated with time travel. The famous “ grandfather paradox ” is a hypothetical problem that could arise if someone traveled back in time and accidentally prevented their grandparents from meeting. This would create a paradox where you were never born, which raises the question: How could you have traveled back in time in the first place? It’s a mind-boggling puzzle that adds to the mystery of time travel.

Famously, physicist Stephen Hawking tested the possibility of time travel by  throwing a dinner party  where invitations noting the date, time and coordinates were not sent out until after it had happened. His hope was that his invitation would be read by someone living in the future, who had capabilities to travel back in time. But no one showed up.

As he  pointed out : “The best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.”

Telescopes are time machines

Interestingly, astrophysicists armed with powerful telescopes possess a unique form of time travel. As they peer into the vast expanse of the cosmos, they gaze into the past universe. Light from all galaxies and stars takes time to travel, and these beams of light carry information from the distant past. When astrophysicists observe a star or a galaxy through a telescope, they are not seeing it as it is in the present, but as it existed when the light began its journey to Earth millions to billions of years ago.

NASA’s newest space telescope, the  James Webb Space Telescope , is peering at galaxies that were formed at the very beginning of the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago.

While we aren’t likely to have time machines like the ones in movies anytime soon, scientists are actively researching and exploring new ideas. But for now, we’ll have to enjoy the idea of time travel in our favorite books, movies and dreams.

This article first appeared on the Conversation. You can read the original here .

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Is Time Travel Even Possible? An Astrophysicist Explains The Science Behind The Science Fiction

If traveling into the past is possible, one way to do it might be sending people through tunnels in space..

Have you ever dreamed of traveling through time, like characters do in science fiction movies? For centuries, the concept of time travel has captivated people’s imaginations. Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time, just like you move between different places. In movies, you might have seen characters using special machines, magical devices or even hopping into a futuristic car to travel backward or forward in time.

But is this just a fun idea for movies, or could it really happen?

The question of whether time is reversible remains one of the biggest unresolved questions in science. If the universe follows the  laws of thermodynamics , it may not be possible. The second law of thermodynamics states that things in the universe can either remain the same or become more disordered over time.

It’s a bit like saying you can’t unscramble eggs once they’ve been cooked. According to this law, the universe can never go back exactly to how it was before. Time can only go forward, like a one-way street.

Time is relative

However, physicist Albert Einstein’s  theory of special relativity  suggests that time passes at different rates for different people. Someone speeding along on a spaceship moving close to the  speed of light  – 671 million miles per hour! – will experience time slower than a person on Earth.

People have yet to build spaceships that can move at speeds anywhere near as fast as light, but astronauts who visit the International Space Station orbit around the Earth at speeds close to 17,500 mph. Astronaut Scott Kelly has spent 520 days at the International Space Station, and as a result has aged a little more slowly than his twin brother – and fellow astronaut – Mark Kelly. Scott used to be 6 minutes younger than his twin brother. Now, because Scott was traveling so much faster than Mark and for so many days, he is  6 minutes and 5 milliseconds younger .

Time isn’t the same everywhere.

Some scientists are exploring other ideas that could theoretically allow time travel. One concept involves  wormholes , or hypothetical tunnels in space that could create shortcuts for journeys across the universe. If someone could build a wormhole and then figure out a way to move one end at close to the speed of light – like the hypothetical spaceship mentioned above – the moving end would age more slowly than the stationary end. Someone who entered the moving end and exited the wormhole through the stationary end would come out in their past.

However, wormholes remain theoretical: Scientists have yet to spot one. It also looks like it would be  incredibly challenging  to send humans through a wormhole space tunnel.

Paradoxes and failed dinner parties

There are also paradoxes associated with time travel. The famous “ grandfather paradox ” is a hypothetical problem that could arise if someone traveled back in time and accidentally prevented their grandparents from meeting. This would create a paradox where you were never born, which raises the question: How could you have traveled back in time in the first place? It’s a mind-boggling puzzle that adds to the mystery of time travel.

Famously, physicist Stephen Hawking tested the possibility of time travel by  throwing a dinner party  where invitations noting the date, time and coordinates were not sent out until after it had happened. His hope was that his invitation would be read by someone living in the future, who had capabilities to travel back in time. But no one showed up.

As he  pointed out : “The best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.”

Telescopes are time machines

Interestingly, astrophysicists armed with powerful telescopes possess a unique form of time travel. As they peer into the vast expanse of the cosmos, they gaze into the past universe. Light from all galaxies and stars takes time to travel, and these beams of light carry information from the distant past. When astrophysicists observe a star or a galaxy through a telescope, they are not seeing it as it is in the present, but as it existed when the light began its journey to Earth millions to billions of years ago.

NASA’s newest space telescope, the  James Webb Space Telescope , is peering at galaxies that were formed at the very beginning of the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago.

While we aren’t likely to have time machines like the ones in movies anytime soon, scientists are actively researching and exploring new ideas. But for now, we’ll have to enjoy the idea of time travel in our favorite books, movies and dreams.

Adi Foord is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. This article is republished from  The Conversation  under a  Creative Commons license . Read the  original article .

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Is time travel possible? Why one scientist says we 'cannot ignore the possibility.'

A common theme in science-fiction media , time travel is captivating. It’s defined by the late philosopher David Lewis in his essay “The Paradoxes of Time Travel” as “[involving] a discrepancy between time and space time. Any traveler departs and then arrives at his destination; the time elapsed from departure to arrival … is the duration of the journey.”

Time travel is usually understood by most as going back to a bygone era or jumping forward to a point far in the future . But how much of the idea is based in reality? Is it possible to travel through time? 

Is time travel possible?

According to NASA, time travel is possible , just not in the way you might expect. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity says time and motion are relative to each other, and nothing can go faster than the speed of light , which is 186,000 miles per second. Time travel happens through what’s called “time dilation.”

Time dilation , according to Live Science, is how one’s perception of time is different to another's, depending on their motion or where they are. Hence, time being relative. 

Learn more: Best travel insurance

Dr. Ana Alonso-Serrano, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany, explained the possibility of time travel and how researchers test theories. 

Space and time are not absolute values, Alonso-Serrano said. And what makes this all more complex is that you are able to carve space-time .

“In the moment that you carve the space-time, you can play with that curvature to make the time come in a circle and make a time machine,” Alonso-Serrano told USA TODAY. 

She explained how, theoretically, time travel is possible. The mathematics behind creating curvature of space-time are solid, but trying to re-create the strict physical conditions needed to prove these theories can be challenging. 

“The tricky point of that is if you can find a physical, realistic, way to do it,” she said. 

Alonso-Serrano said wormholes and warp drives are tools that are used to create this curvature. The matter needed to achieve curving space-time via a wormhole is exotic matter , which hasn’t been done successfully. Researchers don’t even know if this type of matter exists, she said.

“It's something that we work on because it's theoretically possible, and because it's a very nice way to test our theory, to look for possible paradoxes,” Alonso-Serrano added.

“I could not say that nothing is possible, but I cannot ignore the possibility,” she said. 

She also mentioned the anecdote of  Stephen Hawking’s Champagne party for time travelers . Hawking had a GPS-specific location for the party. He didn’t send out invites until the party had already happened, so only people who could travel to the past would be able to attend. No one showed up, and Hawking referred to this event as "experimental evidence" that time travel wasn't possible.

What did Albert Einstein invent?: Discoveries that changed the world

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USA TODAY is exploring the questions you and others ask every day. From "How to watch the Marvel movies in order" to "Why is Pluto not a planet?" to "What to do if your dog eats weed?" – we're striving to find answers to the most common questions you ask every day. Head to our Just Curious section to see what else we can answer for you. 

Is time travel even possible? An astrophysicist explains the science behind the science fiction

Published: Nov 13, 2023

By: Magazine Editor

Written by Adi Foord , assistant professor of physics , UMBC

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected] .

Will it ever be possible for time travel to occur? – Alana C., age 12, Queens, New York

Have you ever dreamed of traveling through time, like characters do in science fiction movies? For centuries, the concept of time travel has captivated people’s imaginations. Time travel is the concept of moving between different points in time, just like you move between different places. In movies, you might have seen characters using special machines, magical devices or even hopping into a futuristic car to travel backward or forward in time.

But is this just a fun idea for movies, or could it really happen?

The question of whether time is reversible remains one of the biggest unresolved questions in science. If the universe follows the laws of thermodynamics , it may not be possible. The second law of thermodynamics states that things in the universe can either remain the same or become more disordered over time.

It’s a bit like saying you can’t unscramble eggs once they’ve been cooked. According to this law, the universe can never go back exactly to how it was before. Time can only go forward, like a one-way street.

Time is relative

However, physicist Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity suggests that time passes at different rates for different people. Someone speeding along on a spaceship moving close to the speed of light – 671 million miles per hour! – will experience time slower than a person on Earth.

People have yet to build spaceships that can move at speeds anywhere near as fast as light, but astronauts who visit the International Space Station orbit around the Earth at speeds close to 17,500 mph. Astronaut Scott Kelly has spent 520 days at the International Space Station, and as a result has aged a little more slowly than his twin brother – and fellow astronaut – Mark Kelly. Scott used to be 6 minutes younger than his twin brother. Now, because Scott was traveling so much faster than Mark and for so many days, he is 6 minutes and 5 milliseconds younger .

Some scientists are exploring other ideas that could theoretically allow time travel. One concept involves wormholes , or hypothetical tunnels in space that could create shortcuts for journeys across the universe. If someone could build a wormhole and then figure out a way to move one end at close to the speed of light – like the hypothetical spaceship mentioned above – the moving end would age more slowly than the stationary end. Someone who entered the moving end and exited the wormhole through the stationary end would come out in their past.

However, wormholes remain theoretical: Scientists have yet to spot one. It also looks like it would be incredibly challenging to send humans through a wormhole space tunnel.

Paradoxes and failed dinner parties

There are also paradoxes associated with time travel. The famous “ grandfather paradox ” is a hypothetical problem that could arise if someone traveled back in time and accidentally prevented their grandparents from meeting. This would create a paradox where you were never born, which raises the question: How could you have traveled back in time in the first place? It’s a mind-boggling puzzle that adds to the mystery of time travel.

Famously, physicist Stephen Hawking tested the possibility of time travel by throwing a dinner party where invitations noting the date, time and coordinates were not sent out until after it had happened. His hope was that his invitation would be read by someone living in the future, who had capabilities to travel back in time. But no one showed up.

As he pointed out : “The best evidence we have that time travel is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.”

Telescopes are time machines

Interestingly, astrophysicists armed with powerful telescopes possess a unique form of time travel. As they peer into the vast expanse of the cosmos, they gaze into the past universe. Light from all galaxies and stars takes time to travel, and these beams of light carry information from the distant past. When astrophysicists observe a star or a galaxy through a telescope, they are not seeing it as it is in the present, but as it existed when the light began its journey to Earth millions to billions of years ago. https://www.youtube.com/embed/QeRtcJi3V38?wmode=transparent&start=0 Telescopes are a kind of time machine – they let you peer into the past.

NASA’s newest space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope , is peering at galaxies that were formed at the very beginning of the Big Bang, about 13.7 billion years ago.

While we aren’t likely to have time machines like the ones in movies anytime soon, scientists are actively researching and exploring new ideas. But for now, we’ll have to enjoy the idea of time travel in our favorite books, movies and dreams.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article and see more than 250 UMBC articles available in The Conversation.

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Time Travel Proof: The Mounting Evidence Of A Broken Timeline

Time traveling tourists & other things.

Evidence of time travel is not something to be ignored — these periodic blips of stories, pictures, and artifacts are nothing less than blatant signs that our universe is in peril. The space-time continuum is breaking apart!

Eight years ago, I shared the first batch of this evidence. A handful of photographs and video clips that many believed were proof that time travel not only existed, but that individuals from the future had already visited us. Some, it was claimed, had even journeyed back to ancient times.

But they left footprints. They dropped artifacts. They were mistakenly caught on camera. Others deliberately shared knowledge of their strange voyages.

Others, if their stories are to be believed, were not quite so deliberate — they were like you or me. Ordinary people caught in time slips, temporarily whisked away to other eras, or perhaps even other universes.

Who were these alleged time travelers? These are some of their stories…

• The 1917 Photograph

The Mummy’s Modern Boots

• Project Pegasus & Nikola Tesla’s Jump Room
• A Watch Found In A Chinese Tomb
• Time Traveler Bridge Photo
• Charlie Chaplin Time Traveler
• An 1800s CD Case
• The Time Slip Hotel
• A Mysterious Near-Miss

Time Traveler In 1917 Photograph

It’s an odd thing when something, or someone, doesn’t quite fit in. At first, you may not notice. But upon closer inspection, the anomaly becomes clear.

So is the case with this seemingly ordinary photograph taken in 1917 Canada, found in a 1974 book titled The Great History of Cape Scott . It shows a group of people sitting upon the rocks of a beach, but among the crowd is a man who appears suspiciously out of place.

Many believe his clothes do not match those of the other beach-goers. Wearing a tee shirt, shorts, and with a hair style that seems quite modern in comparison, the mysterious individual hits all the check boxes for a person displaced in time.

In the photo, others even appear to look at him, perhaps in confusion.

This particular time traveler is colloquially known as the “surfer dude.”

Out-of-place artifacts are a curious phenomenon. When they’re discovered, they may very well shake the foundations of what we previously thought to be true about human history and ancient civilizations. Many of these artifacts, while unusual, are still somewhat explainable, such as the Antikythera mechanism.

Others, however, raise incredible questions.

For some time now, many have wondered about the existence of the so-called “Adidas Mummy,” the preserved body of a 30 to 40-year-old woman discovered in the Altai mountains region of Mongolia in 2016. She had been buried there for about 1,100 years.

Those studying her found that she had likely died of a “blow to the head.” However, her feet drew the most attention.

She wore what looked uncannily like modern day shoes, perhaps resembling a pair of snowboarding boots, as the Daily Mail mused in 2017 . They were made of felt, with splashes of bright red, and “knee length” with leather soles.

Their unique design, likened to Adidas, led many to question if perhaps the ancient Mongolian woman was in fact a time traveler. Perhaps, even if the shoes themselves were not from current times, they were made, or possibly inspired, by someone from the future utilizing the same style.

Among her other belongings was what archaeologists described as a “beauty kit,” including a mirror, a comb, and a knife. However, scientists brushed off any claims that she was a time traveler, though they did say the style of the boots was “very modern.”

Nikola Tesla’s Jump Room

For years, Andrew Basiago has told the story of Project Pegasus, the alleged covert time travel initiative that was funded and maintained by the United States government throughout the 1960s and 70s. But perhaps the most interesting detail of his peculiar story is the existence of the so-called Jump Room.

It was in this room that Basiago claimed participants such as himself performed their secretive time travel experiments.

Built using designs by the late Nikola Tesla, recovered from his New York apartment shortly after his death, the room housed what some would call a teleportation machine. It consisted of a “shimmering curtain” made of “radiant energy,” a special, and allegedly as-yet-undisclosed, form of energy that is “latent and pervasive” throughout the cosmos. It is, if this story is to be believed, what makes time travel possible.

The curtain stood between two elliptical booms, and by passing through it, would-be travelers could journey across vast distances — and time itself. Basiago claims to have visited Gettysburg using the jump room, and that the experiments even took him as far as the planet Mars.

Beyond that, there are few other details about the mysterious Jump Room, and no physical proof remains. Did it really exist?

Evidence Of Time Travel In A Chinese Tomb?

A story from 2008, originally published by none other than the Daily Mail , claimed that Chinese archeologists found a watch in a 400-year-old Si Qing tomb in Shangsi County, China. This story then went extremely viral, after I shared my original article on it (“Are These Images Proof Of Real Time Travel,” published March 22, 2012). The images, which are still scattered around out there (source unknown), show a group of archeologists examining a stone block within a room, as well as the singular image of someone holding up a tiny piece of metal in the shape of a watch.

Allegedly, the timepiece was “frozen” at 10:06, with the word “Swiss” engraved on its back. However, the object looked much more like a sculpted piece of stone than an actual functioning watch, not to mention the fact that its circumference appeared smaller than that of a finger.

If I were charitable, I could say that perhaps 400 years ago some people carved this to look like a watch someone had seen, perhaps one worn by a visiting time traveler. That, or I’m incorrect and it is an actual watch and the time traveler was just very tiny. Maybe we all do shrink in the future, like the Shrinking Man Project suggests we should. You never know! Moving on!

Time Traveler Visits A Bridge?

A strange photo, once available at the Virtual Museum Of Canada (which has since been decommissioned), appeared to show a group of people attending the reopening of the South Fork Bridge in 1941. The bridge was located in Gold Bridge in British Columbia, Canada, and quite a few people showed up for it. But like the 1917 Canadian surfer dude mentioned earlier, someone in this photo seemingly doesn’t belong.

Who was this oddly out-of-place individual, wearing what looks like modern clothing all the way back in the 1940s? Who knows? The photo went absolutely viral some time around 2010, with the man in question becoming dubbed the “Time Traveling Hipster.”

What’s fun about this one is that, time traveler or not, it’s a real photo. The man certainly stands out from his cohorts – he’s wearing sunglasses, possibly a hoodie or light jacket, and what appears to be a branded t-shirt. He’s also holding a relatively small camera. Was he simply ahead of his time? Or out of it? We can’t be sure, but but the story of this photograph is one to remember. Next!

Lights! Camera! Action!

Next up we have two, count them two, short videos which many claim show time travelers unwittingly caught in the act of…talking on the phone!

Indeed, smartphones are the bane of any would-be time traveling tourist, as they seem like the most obvious thing to be spotted in photos, videos, and even paintings .

The above video, uploaded October 27, 2010, currently has over 4.3 million views, and contains a clip from a special feature found on the DVD edition of the Charlie Chaplin film The Circus. It’s of the movie’s premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in 1928.

But what’s so special about it? What’s worth 4.3 million views on YouTube? Well, you see that woman in the dark coat walking behind zebra? What’s she holding up to their ear? Is it a cellphone? Or was she just scratching her head, like the rest of us?

Meanwhile, from over in 1938 Massachusetts, we have the following video that some also suggest proves the existence of smartphones long before their time (or have at least mused about the possibility). A crowd of people exit a DuPont factory, and one woman is seen holding something to her ear.

Smartphones, brushes, other handheld rectangular objects of a dubious nature. Our universe is one filled with mystery, and some questions may forever remain unanswered. Onward!

A Compact Disc Case In The 1800s?

A painting from the 1800s appears to show a man holding what some have described as a fancy CD box. You can see another man depicted to be lifting up what looks like a square plastic “sleeve” that you’d place individual CDs into. The earliest form of plastic didn’t exist until the mid-1800s, and Compact Discs wouldn’t arrive on the scene until the 1980s.

Of course, it’s possibly this is just an ordinary box made for ordinary 1800s-era items.

Safety Not Guaranteed?

In 1997, an unusual classified ad appeared in Backwoods Home Magazine:

“WANTED: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 322, Oakview, CA 93022. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.”

As you can imagine, some people found that odd, and it naturally wound up on the Internet. In 2012, they even made a film based on it called, well, Safety Not Guaranteed .

The Time Slip Hotel: Proof That Even Buildings Time Travel?

It’s not unusual to, on occasion, find yourself at what you might describe as a “strange” place, especially if you happen to be in a country you’ve never visited before. Two couples who vacationed to Spain in the late 1970s know this all too well. In fact, their story has become something of a time slip legend.

In 1979, they were on their way to Spain, leaving England and venturing through France. While near Montelimar, they decided to stop and search for a hotel. Their original choices were packed, but eventually they did find one — an odd place, an old two-story building with the simple word “HOTEL” above the entrance.

They got a room, and stayed for the night, despite everything seeming particularly old-fashioned. The bed was hard, the place didn’t have a telephone, and there was no glass in the windows. Likely out of bemusement, they took a number of photographs.

When they went down to the dining room the next morning, they had a chance to see the hotel’s other customers. They too looked strangely out of place, dressed in outmoded clothing, two in old uniforms. Strangest of all was the bill for their stay — 19 francs, far less than they had anticipated.

All in all, it was a somewhat strange experience, but not unpleasant. They’d found a place to rest for the night, and continued on their way to Spain, where they presumably had a decent time. It wasn’t until they returned to France and looked for the hotel again that they knew something was truly amiss.

The hotel didn’t exist.

This wasn’t a matter of the hotel simply shutting down, or their being unable to find it again. It simply was not there. They even asked around in Montelimar, and no one had ever heard of it.

When they returned to England, the mystery deepened: Their photographs of the hotel were gone. Not only was there no proof that the hotel existed, but there was no proof that they’d ever been there at all.

Their odd tale was later featured on an episode of the television series Strange But True .

Is One Man’s Near Miss Proof of Time Travel?

In 2019, a very curious video from Turkey showed a man nearly meeting his fate, only to be saved in the strangest way by a mysterious passerby.

According to Demirören News Agency , the event happened in late February in the Turkish city of Adana. Serdar Binici was standing outside of his store when another man, who happened to be walking by, tapped his left shoulder.

Binici, for reasons even he claims to not understand, instinctively looked over to his right, and in that moment a truck drove by, and its rear metal door swung open toward his head. Binici was able to move out of the way just in time.

The story was featured by news outlets in Turkey, and was eventually shared on Reddit .

During a follow-up interview, Binici questioned how and why the events played out as they did. Why did he look over his opposite shoulder, and not the one he’d been tapped on? Why did the stranger tap his shoulder at all? Binici supposes the stranger may not, himself, know why any of this happened. Perhaps, he thinks, it was all some kind of divine intervention.

However, the peculiarity of this video has led many to speculate that the passing stranger wasn’t just some random person, but actually a time traveler — possibly one on a mission from the future, striving to put right what once went wrong. Could this incident be yet more proof of real time travel?

Somewhere In Time

Even if these stories and strange photographs are not evidence of anything, these tales are part of our shared paranormal folklore, and have become online urban legends. Some, like the tale of Rudolph Fentz, date back decades. And while others are easily disproved, they stand as fun little anecdotes that do make you wonder, what if?

At the end of the day, it’s all just a bunch of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey…stuff. Best not to take it too seriously. Still, if you’re looking for more on possible time travelers, consider checking out the following:

• Rudolph Fentz , an accidental time traveler from a series of short stories
• John Titor , the alleged time traveler from 2036
• The HDR , an alleged time traveling device powered by crystals
• A Wormhole Under A Kitchen Sink?

Rob Schwarz

Related articles.

4 Weird “Clues” That Parallel Universes Exist

Top 5 Minecraft Science Experiments

Lucid Dreaming and the World Within Your Mind

[Trailer] Explore the Lost Continent of Mu In Expedition Agartha

Is Time Travel Possible?

We all travel in time! We travel one year in time between birthdays, for example. And we are all traveling in time at approximately the same speed: 1 second per second.

We typically experience time at one second per second. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's space telescopes also give us a way to look back in time. Telescopes help us see stars and galaxies that are very far away . It takes a long time for the light from faraway galaxies to reach us. So, when we look into the sky with a telescope, we are seeing what those stars and galaxies looked like a very long time ago.

However, when we think of the phrase "time travel," we are usually thinking of traveling faster than 1 second per second. That kind of time travel sounds like something you'd only see in movies or science fiction books. Could it be real? Science says yes!

This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows galaxies that are very far away as they existed a very long time ago. Credit: NASA, ESA and R. Thompson (Univ. Arizona)

How do we know that time travel is possible?

More than 100 years ago, a famous scientist named Albert Einstein came up with an idea about how time works. He called it relativity. This theory says that time and space are linked together. Einstein also said our universe has a speed limit: nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (186,000 miles per second).

Einstein's theory of relativity says that space and time are linked together. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

What does this mean for time travel? Well, according to this theory, the faster you travel, the slower you experience time. Scientists have done some experiments to show that this is true.

For example, there was an experiment that used two clocks set to the exact same time. One clock stayed on Earth, while the other flew in an airplane (going in the same direction Earth rotates).

After the airplane flew around the world, scientists compared the two clocks. The clock on the fast-moving airplane was slightly behind the clock on the ground. So, the clock on the airplane was traveling slightly slower in time than 1 second per second.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Can we use time travel in everyday life?

We can't use a time machine to travel hundreds of years into the past or future. That kind of time travel only happens in books and movies. But the math of time travel does affect the things we use every day.

For example, we use GPS satellites to help us figure out how to get to new places. (Check out our video about how GPS satellites work .) NASA scientists also use a high-accuracy version of GPS to keep track of where satellites are in space. But did you know that GPS relies on time-travel calculations to help you get around town?

GPS satellites orbit around Earth very quickly at about 8,700 miles (14,000 kilometers) per hour. This slows down GPS satellite clocks by a small fraction of a second (similar to the airplane example above).

GPS satellites orbit around Earth at about 8,700 miles (14,000 kilometers) per hour. Credit: GPS.gov

However, the satellites are also orbiting Earth about 12,550 miles (20,200 km) above the surface. This actually speeds up GPS satellite clocks by a slighter larger fraction of a second.

Here's how: Einstein's theory also says that gravity curves space and time, causing the passage of time to slow down. High up where the satellites orbit, Earth's gravity is much weaker. This causes the clocks on GPS satellites to run faster than clocks on the ground.

The combined result is that the clocks on GPS satellites experience time at a rate slightly faster than 1 second per second. Luckily, scientists can use math to correct these differences in time.

If scientists didn't correct the GPS clocks, there would be big problems. GPS satellites wouldn't be able to correctly calculate their position or yours. The errors would add up to a few miles each day, which is a big deal. GPS maps might think your home is nowhere near where it actually is!

In Summary:

Yes, time travel is indeed a real thing. But it's not quite what you've probably seen in the movies. Under certain conditions, it is possible to experience time passing at a different rate than 1 second per second. And there are important reasons why we need to understand this real-world form of time travel.

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Welcome to Time Travel

"An object time travels if and only if the difference between its departure and arrival times as measured in the surrounding world does not equal the duration of the journey undergone by the object."

--- The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This subreddit is about time travel.

Specifically, it is about the philosophical, scientific, technical and metaphysical aspects of time travel, with a sprinkling of media references to help things along.

Join us here to discuss the topics that will one day allow us to explore the four-dimensional continuum - or at least get older trying.

Please note that this is a non-fiction subreddit.

POSTING GUIDELINES

Here's a summary of the types of post that are appropriate and not appropriate for this subreddit:

● THEORY posts. These involve discussion of a particular theory of time travel. This may be philosophical, scientific, technical or metaphysical.

● DISCUSSION posts. These posts involve raising a topic for discussion, maybe in the form of question or speculative scenario. "What ifs" and "What would you dos" are appropriate. here.

● MEDIA posts. This may consist of discussion of or links to fictional or documentary material that's relevant to the subreddit, such as films, books, TV series, exhibitions.

● META posts. For posts which are about the subreddit itself or broader issues relating to the topic.

● ARTICLE posts. These are any links to articles about time travel found elsewhere on the web.

● CHALLENGE posts. Challenge posts are to discuss and clarify various challenges related to time travel. Discussions of tomorrow's newspaper, Dinosaur video, Time Machine schematics, and future predictions all fit this tag.

● No fictional or AMA-style posts. You are very unlikely to be a time traveler. And if you are, we are only interested in reading highly detailed posts about the technical and theoretical aspects involved. Please send a mod message if you wish to do an AMA post. Claims without proof will be ignored and removed. This is not a creative writing sub. Links to claims and hoaxes elsewhere on the internet are fine.

This last point includes broken clock posts. A broken clock (one not telling time properly) is not a sign of time travel, and making such a claim falls subject to the roleplay/fiction and/or claims (which require evidence, more than just your clock). Clock posts showing the results of time dilation experiments are allowed.

If you wish to have more relaxed rules and freely make claims, visit /r/timetravelhub .

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claim / theory / question Who here actually believes in time travel ( self.timetravel )

submitted 24 days ago * by Partimenerd

Not here to challenge beliefs or anything, I just want to know who here actually thinks time travel happens, or has presumably had time travel related experiences.

Edit: time travel to the past or further into the future.

Edit 2: please actually read the before edit, that's what I'm referring to.

• 392 comments

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Post a comment!

[–] TouristNo7974 41 points 42 points 43 points 24 days ago   (117 children)

They said we can't fly. We now do.

They said travelling over 25 mph would kill. We now travel at multiple that daily.

They said we won't get to the moon. We did.

They say the sound barrier can't be broken. It is daily.

They said we can't run a mile in less than 4 minutes. We now do.

They said we can't run 100 metres in less than 10 seconds We now do.

They said the planet Mars cannot be reached. We've got robots there now.

They said the atom can't be split. It has been.

They said rubics cube was impossible. Now it's solved in seconds.

They said the earth was flat....

They said the sun was a God

They said the sun revolved around the earth...

They said man once walked on all fours...

Who are we to say what we will achieve tomorrow, next week, next year or one day.

[–] Unlucky-Zombie-8891 15 points 16 points 17 points 23 days ago   (8 children)

who said rubicks cubes cant be solved? nobody ever said that. they were designed to be solved.

[–] bloodypurg3 18 points 19 points 20 points 24 days ago   (52 children)

I’m sorry did you say we went to the moon

[–] TouristNo7974 14 points 15 points 16 points 24 days ago   (28 children)

So they say...... Lol

[–] orang3ch1ck3n 5 points 6 points 7 points 23 days ago   (4 children)

The Chinese satellites that literally took photos of the U.S. Apollo equipment and rover/tracks left over from the 60s would suggest we in fact landed on the moon.

Not to mention the mountains of other evidence. 

[–] Fresh_Sector3917 1 point 2 points 3 points 20 days ago   (0 children)

If the US had lied about us going to the moon, the Soviets and China would have spent unlimited funds to prove that we didn’t.

[–] Salmon_Chase1865 2 points 3 points 4 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

[–] vonnostrum2022 2 points 3 points 4 points 23 days ago   (2 children)

And wait…the earth isn’t flat?

[–] Brainvillage 1 point 2 points 3 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

You right now: https://youtu.be/-f_DPrSEOEo?si=zo-eeE7F6LH5W5qr

[–] ArtzyDude 2 points 3 points 4 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

They said “Where’s the Beef?” And now we have plant-based meat.

Yeah, I believe. Anything is possible with what little we know.

[–] garry4321 5 points 6 points 7 points 24 days ago   (12 children)

Citing times people were wrong doesn’t provide any evidence for something to be possible. They also said you can’t eat your own head and survive. Tell me how those other times make that more likely Sherlock.

The fact is there is demonstrable physical limits we have found innate in the universe that point to backwards time travel being impossible due to causality and the speed of light. Paradoxes would break reality itself.

[–] ObjectiveTinnitus be excellent to each other 3 points 4 points 5 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Stop using logic lol

[–] TouristNo7974 2 points 3 points 4 points 23 days ago   (7 children)

I'll thought out and technically inaccurate answer.

How do you know what scientific research will achieve? (are you from the future?)

I'm not called Sherlock, Mr Holmes.

No one ever said anything about eating their head.

If time is defined by some one seeing something in the present (i.e. It's happening now) then your argument suggests an event is happening to everyone at the same time. But light moves at light speed, so we see the sun, for example, as it was in the past.

If you follow that fact then moving faster than light must put us ahead of the present and therefore waiting for 'now' to catch up. So if we are waiting for 'now' to catch up we must be in ahead of time and in the future.

If an event has happened to you and not yet me, then by definition you are in my past. But if I travel closer to the event than you, I will be in your past as the event has happened for me but not you.

Use sound as an example. A canon fires in the distance but the further away you are the longer the sound takes to reach you.

I'm sure you will disagree but I hope you acknowledge my opinion is based on fact and relativity.

Friendly Reddit user.

[–] garry4321 2 points 3 points 4 points 23 days ago   (5 children)

You have a very bad misunderstanding of the basic facts of causality and WHY there is a limit to lightspeed.

Its like saying If you COULD get infinitely more energy into a particle than there exists in the entire universe, THEN its possible.... Which is exactly what faster than lightspeed particles would require.

Every single physical property we have ever found not only points to exactly the fact that backwards time travel is incompatible with reality, but basic logic and paradoxes also point to it. So you go back in time, then you just what , instantly stop and start moving forwards in time again? Where are you while you move back in time? Do you just hop out of time into some backward time travel area and hit the breaks and pop back into reality. Nothing about backwards time travel is based in any reality of it being even remotely possibly, you have to "what if it was possible" so many known impossibilities, and gloss over so many known truths, that its nothing but a fun idea, nothing more.

The only way for time to go backwards is if EVERYTHING in the universe goes backwards Its like a cassette tape. Moving one object from the future back into the past breaks the whole tape and is illogical and impossible for thousands of different reasons.

[–] Altruistic_Log5830 1 point 2 points 3 points 23 days ago   (1 child)

You’re a good writer

[–] wangcomputers95 lottery of may 2034: 23,34,7,5,69,33 24 points 25 points 26 points 24 days ago *   (10 children)

I will give you my honest opinion.

I don't believe we can travel through the time like "back to the future " or something like that, I mean we can't use machines to do the travel, but by the other hand I think we are living in a loop and we can change the destiny because we already lived our lives.

¿How? Well I'm going to explain, sometimes I feel many Deja Vu through my life, for example: I am a drive instructor and I didn't know my students until I started the classes with them but I already know them because I used to had many dream months and years ago where I met them.

It's like it would be a movie and I watching the movie many times but I'm not aware of this until I remember my dreams at the moment.

I don't believe we need to use machines to travel through the time but I would love if we could use machines because we could have control in our choices.

[–] joeditstuff 4 points 5 points 6 points 23 days ago   (2 children)

I get profetic dreams too. Never thought about the possibility of it being a loop. What I've always thought was interesting was it never gave me any useful information. Most the time, I'm dropped into a situation without context.

I have managed to have a different outcome once. Years before I ever thought about joining the military, it knew anything about what happens during basic training, I found myself getting ready to run (crawl) the night infantry course (nic at night). During the dream I investigated the mortar pit... They shut the entire range down and smoked the sh't out of me while chewing me out. When I found myself there years later...I stayed away from the mortar pit..no issues

[–] WinkDoubleguns 3 points 4 points 5 points 23 days ago   (2 children)

I have dreams that come true or thoughts that end up true, in addition to how you describe. I have often felt like we live in a loop as well. I also think the universe is all interconnected so when we are more in tune with it we pick up the “signals” sent through the inter connected web. I do think eventually there will be time travel but idk how or when

[–] kniky_Possibly 2 points 3 points 4 points 22 days ago   (1 child)

What about the dreams that don't and thoughts that end up false? This is a classic survivor paradox.

[–] Tempus__Fuggit 12 monkeys 10 points 11 points 12 points 24 days ago   (11 children)

I believe it's possible, but it requires us figuring out how. We're not there yet. My current frontrunner is reincarnation-as-time-travel.

[–] DaemonBlackfyre_21 4 8 15 16 23 42 12 points 13 points 14 points 24 days ago *   (28 children)

Probably not...but,

If the UFOs are real, and if whatever makes them float actually manipulates gravity that means they can also manipulate time and that would be a much more interesting use for the tech than the point A to point B travel that we perhaps wrongly assume UFOs are for.

Instead of invading extraterrestrial space brothers I think it's way more likely that our history has been contaminated by people from the future coming back in these machines to collect scientific samples, to record true history, and maybe to sightsee for entertainment.

[–] TR3BPilot 3 points 4 points 5 points 24 days ago   (5 children)

As long as they weren't invisible, it might be interesting to look at old photos taken of major catastrophes to see if there is a larger percentage of people there who look a little out of place. Like 9/11, for instance. If future people are sightseeing stuff like that, they might be spotted in some of the photos, although they would likely try to blend in as much as possible.

The movie Grand Tour/Disaster in Time (1991) with Jeff Daniels uses this as a premise.

[–] Live_in_a_Simulation 5 points 6 points 7 points 24 days ago   (2 children)

What does not work is that if those people are actually on the scene during those events, even if not interacting, they would disturb the whole history. Their presence will move particles of the atmosphere, prevent someone from moving or something... it's a domino effect. Even if it takes 10 years to make someone be late for work because the time traveler's presence prevented a fly from going in a straight line 10 years earlier, it's enough to change the face of the world.

I don't know if it make sense.

[–] fuckdonaldtrump7 2 points 3 points 4 points 24 days ago   (12 children)

From my understanding space travel nearing the speed of light would only move time forward relative to that person. There is no way to reverse time unless they went beyond the speed of light but even then we don't exactly understand what happens as it is generally thought to be impossible. Perhaps they could travel faster than photons and access past time but again all very theoretical.

[–] Shane8512 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

Unless humans evolve into 5th-dimensional beings and time becomes just an obstacle, they can move back and forth over like in SPOILER...........................

Interstellar.

[–] devonthed00d 2 points 3 points 4 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

That’s probably why 2020 was so screwed up. All those nerds raided Area 51 that one time and messed with the continuum transfunctioner.

[–] Amazing_Library_5045 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (2 children)

If the arrow of time only march forward, it could be time travellers from the past. We've all seen the ancient astronaut drawing... What if it's them.

[–] tacosteve100 4 points 5 points 6 points 24 days ago   (1 child)

If it was possible some jerk would come here daily to ruin our day everyday

[–] TriforceUnleashed 8 points 9 points 10 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

You said the same thing tomorrow.

[–] SomberGuitar 3 points 4 points 5 points 24 days ago   (3 children)

From a scientific point of view, I believe in time travel. A space shuttle clock becomes out of sync with our stationary earth clock. GPS satellite clocks are constantly corrected. Science says, we can only time travel forward in time, not backwards. Ride in a really fast space shuttle for a year and 100 years have passed on earth. I don’t think the quantum eraser experiment is an example of backwards time travel, but a misread experiment.

To dip your toe in time science, Look up Einsteins train thought experiment which shows how time is the perception of light. Then look up Einsteins light clock experiment to see what happens to time when a clock starts moving.

[–] TR3BPilot 4 points 5 points 6 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

Yeah, but because time is personal and subjective, time never changes for the people doing the traveling. It's always NOW. There's no objective way to look at time, to compare one passage of time with another.

[–] Quick_Answer2477 1 point 2 points 3 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

You're absolutely right, but right isn't what these chumps are looking for.

[–] soulself 2 points 3 points 4 points 24 days ago   (2 children)

I think it may be possible to see the future or the past, but not interact with it.

Think past life regressions or premonitions.

[–] Lower_Yam3030 2 points 3 points 4 points 24 days ago   (4 children)

If time travel was real then we would have the technology now. Or for 100 years ago. Or 100 years ago. Once it is available it will be spread and available for all/any time in the history.

[–] Outrageous_Egg8781 2 points 3 points 4 points 23 days ago   (3 children)

Exactly! That why I believe it already exists. It doesn't matter how much further in the future it will be invented, it exists today also.

[–] R3P4Jesus 2 points 3 points 4 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

I always thought CERN and or LHC's had something to do with time travel. Anyone ever see the newer The Flash series?

[–] Complex_Distance_724 2 points 3 points 4 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

I don't care about beliefs. I care if it can be done repeatedly and reliably.

If you can do it, show me.

If you can not do it, I don't care what you believe.

[–] Creepy-Selection2423 2 points 3 points 4 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Technically, yes. NASA has done experiments where astronauts have carried atomic clocks into orbit, and then compared the readings of those clocks with identical clocks on the ground. A time difference between the clocks was recorded, meaning that technically, time was experienced slightly differently by the astronauts in orbit, than by those on the ground. So in this sense, yes you can say that time travel occurred - but only in milliseconds.

[–] [deleted] 24 days ago   (1 child)

[–] Queen-Butterfly 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

Sounds cool in theory

[–] ArtoriasBeeIG 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (2 children)

Well yes, we are travelling through time right now. We just have no control over the direction its going in!

We can go forward in time at a greater speed too, and this is real but it only works for very small things like light particles.  They can travel so fast that they end up in the future.

Going backwards is a lot trickier though; it also throws up a lot of paradoxes! 

[–] L4westby 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (4 children)

Okay here is what I just commented in one of the ufo subreddits currently talking about time travelers. I can only give you my word that this is all true:

“Okay I AM NOT FUCKING LYING HERE:

I saw a group of UFOs but here’s the thing.. My friend and I were having great conversation on my balcony. My friend is a bit on the spectrum and conversation with him is usually awkward, BUT this time it was flowing like I’ve never seen. Topic shifted to aliens and I said “what if aliens are just us from the future, coming back in time to ensure we evolve the proper way..” and RIGHT when I said that I saw a plane flying toward us. I pointed at it and made a joke saying “oh look a ufo” and as soon as those words were spoken it split into several oval shaped semi transparent pods. Maybe like 10-15 of them and they formed a perfect diamond formation with another diamond inside. Literally PERFECT geometric shapes from these noiseless pods that had previously been grouped together and appeared as an airplane.

I was left baffled just repeating the words to him “what the fuck was that?!” Over and over

It’s like..it’s like they knew that we were talking about them. Our conversation was more energetic. I think they must have been modifying consciousness somehow to convey this message.

I’m blown away that this is a “prevalent theory” now”

[–] L4westby 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

That was in response to seeing this

[–] cjs239823 1 point 2 points 3 points 23 days ago   (1 child)

I have had almost an EXACT situation! So I'm with my boyfriend and we go outside to the front walkway and I see this light flying our way and jokingly say "oh look it's a UFO"...and then it stops above our heads and starts to fly upwards and disappears and THEN we see TWO lights come down as if the light split and they are flying back down our way and I'm yelling for my mom to come see and they stop and fly super fast upwards again til they're gone. So I call grandma bc she loves UFO shit and as I'm talking to her I look at the sky and see a "star" flash and vanish as if it knew I was talking about it....I was scared for weeks. We were definitely like "what the fuck was that" too lol!

[–] HelloImTheAntiChrist 1 point 2 points 3 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

You should know that....to some extent....we create our own reality

[–] SoundingAlarm234 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

I’m more on the dimensional theory and it’s probable that I moved from one to another cause this place is beyond fucked 😬

[–] 01sport 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (4 children)

Time is a pressure of the eather. You can go forward but never back. Magnetic seed experiments have been done to see a change in growth, most do not understand that it is a time variable that is the change.

[–] Mordkillius 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

Forward yes. Backwards not at all

[–] JumpTheCreek 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

Maybe like Slaughterhouse Five. I’d see where you might get “unstuck” in your own timeline.

[–] AdSalt9219 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

If time travel from our future to our present was possible, it would probably be extremely illegal on their end.  Go back in time and accidentally infect everyone with a disease they've never seen?  When the Europeans showed up in the new world their diseases killed almost 90% of the native population.  Kill off your ancestors and you are doomed.

[–] fluxandfucks 1 point 2 points 3 points 24 days ago   (1 child)

Yes. Not physical though.

[–] teamstephencarbone 1 point 2 points 3 points 23 days ago   (1 child)

I believe it CAN happen, and so when thinking about it, it may already have or is happening right now and we just don’t know it yet? Just depends on perspective. I’ll never say never. It’s fun to think about. Also scary tho, because who knows of the unintentional ramifications of manipulating space/time, unless it was already predestined to do so. And especially when stupid people like us humans are involved lol. This concept is very likely all just fantasy to try to make sense of our lives and we’re a bunch of nerds haha. But, at the end of the day, as Doc Brown says regardless of all of this conjecture : Your future is whatever you make it. So make it a good one 🤍

[–] doctor_jane_disco 1 point 2 points 3 points 23 days ago   (2 children)

I believe that it's theoretically possible, maybe involving worm holes or gravity wells, but the knowledge and technology needed to do it does not currently exist and most likely won't for a very long time.

I love scifi time travel stories though, so it's fun to think about the possibilities!

[–] JLGoodwin1990 see you yesterday 1 point 2 points 3 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I do. I don't personally have any concrete evidence of my own, nothing to go on except a gut feeling. That, and to paraphrase a line from the film Prometheus: "It's what I choose to believe"

And to be completely honest with you, the belief is one of the only things that helps me keep my hold on both my sanity and hope. Maybe a bit extreme, but just my own personal feelings.

[–] ProcedureNo3306 1 point 2 points 3 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I believe it is possible because I believe in the multiverse, there some really interesting cases out there . I think a lot of the U. F. O. Cases are time traveling humans from the future,that's my thoughts,y'all can say whatever,but I believe in it yes.

[–] CompetitiveMuffin690 1 point 2 points 3 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Not sure, an old teacher once says that maybe all those ghost stories are really time travelers

[–] Solomon-Drowne 1 point 2 points 3 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Sheeeyit I time-traveled once. On god, went backwards 10 minutes. Followed by the mother of all Near Death Experience, out-of-body, flaming wheel of dharma type deal. Came back fully ego obliterated.

Learned a lot. Hard to recommend tho.

[–] darthwader1981 2 points 3 points 4 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

[–] TR3BPilot 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

I think there is some kind of "permeability" in time, as I see time as more of a probability of change between two measurements rather than a dimension. So time in one spot might not change / progress as much as in another spot. This allows for a lot of interesting "paranormal" things to happen.

[–] hattrickjmr 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

Probably can’t time travel but can speed time up from a human’s perspective by going really fast.

[–] sofahkingsick 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

I believe. Have absolutely no proof but i mean thats par for human history.

[–] AnnoDomini-277353 and I'm not your assistant 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

It is not a certain, but a plausible thing in my opinion.

[–] [deleted] 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

Imo I don’t think going back in time is possible but at the same time I feel it may be possible.

I have some spiritual reasons why which I won’t bring up as they don’t align with the sub and honestly they wouldn’t the main reasons anyway.

From physics and space research or as everything is expanding faster than the speed of light which means we can’t even see the expansion. You have no target point to go back to. We don’t know where we’re at in space. We have no idea where earth was 1 years ago. Would need some kind of target or anchor point made that could be located to go back. Just the mathematics involved to hit a safe spot on firm ground on an object you don’t know where it was at, then being 75% water covered surface. Trees, buildings, earth itself. Just mind boggling to me to guesstimate that.

Far as people spotted in pictures from history that people claim at time travelers I believe were actually realm walkers dropped in to witness or change a certain event or time line. In real time. In reality they looked like everyone else, that’s why no one noticed. But the camera can see through it. Just like the eclipse. Or portal that appeared you couldn’t see by eye but the camera could.

Future travel, no idea as we can’t predict where the earth would be location wise in a year.

Now a ship and a portal. That could be doable and safe.

Just my random thoughts on it.

[–] Next-Abies-2182 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

yeah its real

good lick with it though it requires an innate understanding of time space and butterflies

[–] 19_Deschain19 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

I Don't believe time travel is possible. Mostly because if you travel back in time to 1955 the earth is no longer in the space it is now so you basically be in vacuum of space. Same for the future someone would have to also teleport to where the earth will be at the time they are traveling to

[–] Icy_Profession1612 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

Having practiced every day all my life i say yes but no matter how much i try no...but yes if only i could flap my arms faster!

[–] Ancient-Gardener 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (2 children)

If there is time travel, why haven't they fixed all our mistakes?

[–] S_double-D 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

I romanticize the idea of time travel, but lately I’m questioning if time is really even a thing. I wonder if it’s just a tool to figure things out, kinda like how math is a tool. If time doesn’t exist then there is nothing but the present. Nothing to go forward to, nothing to go back to. But I’m probably wrong. I usually am.

[–] sp0rkah0lic donnie darko [ 🍰 ] 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

Well it really depends on what you consider to be "time travel."

Leaving a voice mail could be considered a low tech form of time travel, as your voice/message is traveling into the future however many minutes or hours until it is played. Any kind of audio or video recording could be seen this way, as a moment in the past one can returned to and observed over and over again, at will.

So recording is an act of sending data into the future, and viewing the recording is a form of travel to the past.

However, this fails most people's definition because A) it is information/perception only, you aren't bodily going anywhere, and B) you can only observe the past, not interact with it or change anything.

By this definition, I don't think it's possible.

[–] Total_Ad3274 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (1 child)

I believe in time travel and I know it exists time travel obviously exists and is real

[–] LtFarns 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

One may only move forward through time, quicker or slower than others relative to their rate of speed but never backwards. One may observe the past from a distance but to interact with it, impossible.

[–] DaddyCallaway [ 🍰 ] 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

I am a firm believer that we, as “Homosapiens,” don’t know shit. We have no fucking clue and pretend like we do. A bunch of monkeys in science labs alternating out dimension….. (cern joke)

Time travel is probably more than possible, or already achieved. In one way or another.

Possible that earths current residents are capable? Maybe.

Do I think other species from different places/worlds/dimensions/spaces have achieved this? Absolutely.

[–] Lopsided-Ad-1858 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (2 children)

But Earth and the Sun are moving also. From the time I started writing those few words, I have moved so very far from where I was. The Sun is traveling 84000km per hour / 140km per second through the Milky Way. In order for me to travel back one hour in time to see my former self, I would also have to travel 84,000km.

[–] Durtly 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

The fallacy is inherent in the name. "Time Travel ".

Time is an ongoing change in state. It's not a place, it has no spatial dimension. You can't travel in it, you can't change your location in time because time is not a place.

The only way something like the popular conception of time travel could be achieved is if Simulation Theory is correct. But under simulation theory, literally anything is possible.

[–] Miss_Understood204 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

Truth is stranger than fiction these days. I like to keep am open mind.

[–] garry4321 0 points 1 point 2 points 24 days ago   (0 children)

If it does exist, have fun being in the middle of space until the earth runs into you

[–] Serious-Librarian-77 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Time travel is not possible. If it were, one person would own nearly every Bitcoin, or guys like Edwin Castro wouldn't have won the 2 billion dollar lottery, some anonymous person would have won it the drawing before.

[–] mightybadtaste [ 🍰 ] 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I’m not sure about physical time travel, but what about communication with the future or other dimensions/multiverse like through a worm hole or quantum computer I think AI might be capable of that soon or is. Just a thought no science but I would think this is probably the most likely and energy efficient.

[–] New_Stage_3807 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

We would already know if there was

[–] Salmon_Chase1865 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I want to believe it’s possible. When I was a kid someone told me that when you sleep your spirit gets up and goes through the next day and so if you wake up and have Deja vu that’s why. Because your spirit already did that day.

[–] grandpheonix13 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

[–] littledogbro 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

think of it this way, you can see some wave lengths of light ? but not all with out some help , infra red, and other bands, now think of particles in that way also, ergo matter-density, and make a good guess that with the right tech you could see and or make use of it ? now gravity effects space and time and light , what about the others magnetic and who all knows what waves and or spectrums are there that we have yet to discover and make use of ? so yes time travel is possible, we just do not know how yet, and i will leave it like this, most-everyone knows about and or driving cars, put gas and go, but very few know how to take one apart and back together again to repair it, we just need to discover how too and oh yesss go back and buy some good stock before it takes off...

[–] 877_Cash_Nowww 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

If you move fast enough away from earth and back the people in earth will have experienced a greater length of time than you. Or at least I think I read that and the math proved it or something.

[–] ObjectiveTinnitus be excellent to each other 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

are you running for president?

[–] dim_dazzle 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I mean, we are time travelling at this very second, depending on perspective

[–] sardoodledom_autism 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I believe we can travel forward in time by manipulating relativistic speeds and consuming a shitload of energy

I stumbled onto this sub after long discussions about people who have moved forward in time and been discovered as being out of place.

That being said I don’t think it’s possible to move backwards in time

[–] BlechPanther 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I am a believer in the block theory of time travel. I also believe that perception and reality are separate in the sense that humans can only perceive time linearly. I don’t think that is necessarily how time functions in reality however.

[–] Fantiks33 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Forward time travel is absolutely possible, but backwards it gets tricky from paradoxes to different timelines, as well as needing massive antigravity energy to even do it

[–] FeelingBodybuilder73 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Time travel is possible and has happened to multiple people including astronauts travelling at high speeds.

Travelling into the future depends on speed. Faster you go the slower time ticks for you! The result is traveling into the future!

Traveling into the past however is probably impossible. It could be possible if you could travel faster than light. At light speed time stops, theoretically time may reverse if traveling faster than LS.

Unfortunately it’s impossible according to Einstein but many things are considered impossible until proven possible!

[–] residentofmoon 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

. I believe in time travel

[–] Exotic_Variety7936 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I do. I have seen it and have had some weird times with other beings.

[–] [deleted] 23 days ago   (1 child)

[–] OOBExperience 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

If you haven’t heard of the block universe theory (and you’re on this sub which means that you probably have) read about it. It’s very compelling https://medium.com/predict/block-universe-theory-flow-of-the-time-6f13eafcbd1c

[–] jcilomliwfgadtm 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Think higher dimensions. Time is a line.

[–] nineteenthly 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

My perspective on it is: forward time travel at various speeds is clearly possible. Backward time travel, oddly, never seems to get completely ruled out and very feasibly can be done, but possibly just information rather than matter, and in a way which prevents paradoxes. However, because information could be used to construct a physical object, this is very similar to actual physical travel back in time.

[–] too-late-for-fear 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I'm sincerely agnostic to it; we just don't know enough about the nature of our collective existence to even answer what we are, let alone what time is in relation to us to know if we can "travel through it" in a different way than we already do, if we do at all.

[–] Lucy_Little_Spoon 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I watched a comedy horror the other day that used a lite form of string theory to explain how time travel could theoretically work.

So, if you were to somehow travel to the past, and caused yourself to not be born, like made sure your parents never met, you wouldn't disappear, but nobody would know who you are.

It was weirdly logically consistent for a movie that used time travel as a plot device and didn't delve too deeply.

Anyway, I believe that time travel can't really exist, but maybe a heightened form of time dilation perhaps.

[–] shitty_advice_BDD 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I'm going to keep this simple. Time travel backwards will never happen. However time travel forwards will be within the next 500 years.

The only backwards time travel is through telescopes.

[–] Deckard57 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Apparently I'll believe in time travel in 6 years time.

[–] Drunken_Sailor_70 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Into the future is certainly possible. Into the past might be possible, but the energy required to do it is probably going to be the limiting factor. Kinda of like near light speed/faster than light travel.

[–] robot_jeans 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Traveling to our past is impossible as the past as a physical form never existed. Only our present and the present for our ancestors existed. Now, notice I said our past. This still leaves open the option of multiverses and traveling to their present, which could theoretically be similar to the memories and records we have of our past.

[–] AngryQuadricorn 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I absolutely believe and can confidently say with 100% certainty that time travel exists…….

….it just exists moving forward one second at a time.

[–] fleegle2000 palm springs 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Time travel into the future via time dilation falls out of Einstein's equations and has been demonstrated to a very small degree in artificial satellites.

Practically speaking, it's too difficult with today's technology. You either need a very fast spaceship travelling close to the speed of light or you need to get very close to a black hole and come back alive. Since there are no black holes in our solar system, the former is more likely to occur sooner, but there are no technologies on the horizon that will get us to relativistic speeds with any known power source.

Travel to the past is probably impossible, but nobody knows. You would probably need to travel faster than light to travel into the past. It isn't strictly ruled out by relativity, we just don't know how to accelerate anything past the light speed barrier. Some recent research has challenged some of the assumptions about why we can't travel faster than light, but it's all theoretical at this point. A recent video by Sabine Hosfelder covered this new research if you want to seek it out.

[–] FortniteFiona 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Time dilation is time travel. There’s nothing really to believe in. It’s more than possible.

[–] JimiCobain27 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Without a shadow of a doubt.

[–] R_Steelman61 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Nope. Impossible but fun to use as a plot device.

[–] Dextrofunk 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I don't think it's impossible. I believe there are alien civilizations out there somewhere in the universe. They could be millions, or hundreds of millions of years more advanced than us. I'm talking post industrial revolution. People who write off fantastical ideas are giving humans far too much credit. Science has proven itself wrong repeatedly since it existed, yet people still take what we have today as the end all of knowledge. Humans are a lot further than we were a hundred years ago, but that is absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. We don't know shit.

[–] IAMONEIAMALL 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

[–] Additional_Tip_4472 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Time is a very weird thing. It can already be slowed down if you watch the planet from a distance and then come back.

I believe time is a force way bigger than what we can manage, like swimming in a very strong current. We would need an astronomical force to be able to travel faster or slower.

It's not inconceivable but very far from being possible right now.

[–] cjs239823 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

When I was 19 my boyfriend and I experienced a "drug induced psychosis" at the exact same time.SO much happened this night...we saw our present and future selves....scariest night of my life....the future us is us NOW and things from that night are aligning up to shit happening now! A movie that I use to love, aligning up to my life NOW!! THINGS THAT WERE SAID YEARS AGO ALIGNING UP TO MY LIFE TODAY!! Dreams I've had, aligning up to today....I have a bad feeling about it....like war could break out at any second or I could be killed or something for knowing something I shouldn't. This has been the weirdest two years of my life....my boyfriend and I think that I see in the timeline I saw that night....which isn't good and has made life very hard and "off".....everybody is "off". Everything is "off"....situations I'm in are "off"....

[–] Feeling_Direction172 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Time travel to the future is already theoretically possible. Time dilation is a thing.

This phenomenon has been experimentally confirmed with particles in particle accelerators, such as muons, which are observed to live longer (from our frame of reference) when traveling at high speeds. Similarly, atomic clocks on fast-moving jets show different times compared to clocks on the ground, which is a direct demonstration of time dilation.

Thing is, you can't travel back again. I mean, every moment we are traveling forward through time, we are just moving forward at the same relative momentum as everything else traveling at the same speed as us.

[–] Tiny_Engine_1106 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Time travel is NOT possible in TRUE Sense!!!

Let me explain

• Every object or atom's flow is bound by time i.e., at a particular time if a object is at some place, from future in its respective past it should be there & from past it should come to same place in its respective future.
• All the object and atom should follow (1) in its true flow of time. Now if I'm to appear in the past, all the object and atom's that were there should be intact at the same place where it was in its true time. Where will I fit in that time. What will happen to the atom's/space(air)/matter/object that was at that place at its true time, considering environment not to be a vacuum.
• Considering (2), if I'm to be in the past or future at a particular time its like a mass/entity is being created(arrive) or destroyed(exit) which negates the Law of conservation of energy state.

[–] nizat01 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I almost wholeheartedly, believe that time travel has happened because of the Mandela effect.

[–] 01sport 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

🤣🤣 ok. I'm all alone. 🤣

[–] quantumMechanicForev 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I am traveling through time at a rate of one second per second 🤯

[–] siren-skalore 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I want to believe it could be possible, I find it incredibly interesting and love to read accounts of self proclaimed time travelers but always with a big dose of skepticism. I have yet to come across any that I feel could be legit.

[–] moon_buzz 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

i love it theoretically, but here's a few problems i just can't mentally get past

the earth moves, so if a time traveler popped up in that same geolocation, they'd be dead in space instantly

energy / matter cannot be created nor destroyed, so something cannot just pop in or out of existance

given #2, the moment a time machine comes into existence then thousands of time travelers might come pouring out of it

just too many causality paradoxes

[–] FirstVanilla 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I believe the in the 5th dimension theory, where once someone can travel back in time, you travel to an alternate timeline where time travel was always possible.

[–] ezfast 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

If you can conceive it, you can achieve it. - Jim Kelly, UPS founder.

[–] No-Gazelle-4994 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

My repeatedly stated problem with time travel is that the Earth, Sun, Galaxy, and space itself is in constant motion so even if you do travel in time you'll end up in empty space unless you have a TARDIS.

[–] Significant-Fill5645 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Who are they?

[–] byondodd 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

As far as a human? No. Other types of things or unknown entities? Yes.

[–] RevRaven 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

You are travelling through time right now.

[–] DiscoSteve86 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Time is an illusion of this lower vibrational dimension. So yes, time travel could be possible but it’s more likely that you are tuning in to different frequencies like a radio station rather than traveling through time. Everything is here and now. Time doesn’t exist. This is my current understanding.

[–] Ambitious-Score11 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I think in theory it’s possible. I honestly think tho it’s maybe thousands of years away. The physics and technology it’ll require we couldn’t even begin to comprehend.

[–] dogdaddyblue 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Time travel to the future is possible and scientifically proven. Time travel to the past is most likely impossible.

[–] Outrageous_Egg8781 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago *   (0 children)

I do because I believe I experimented it when I was younger. For me it was similar to the Moberly–Jourdain incident. And I once saw an youtube clip that also shared a similar incident hapenning in more recent years. My best guess at the moment is that something like portals exist and you can accidentally find yourself in a different time period. Because of where it happened to me (very remote mountain area) I tend to believe I myself as an old woman have opened that portal sometime in the far away future, to visit the places where I spent my childhood.

[–] edwardothegreatest 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

We're doing it right now. No wait. Now. No wait. Now...

[–] druwi 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I believe we will achieve time travel, and our descendants from that future are the aliens visiting us.

[–] crazyscottish 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I’m currently traveling through time right now.

One second…. At a time. Day by day. Week by week. Year. By. Year.

[–] xDolphinMeatx 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago *   (0 children)

"beliefs"

well ok then. I guess the math, physics and special relativity are all thoroughly irrelevant then,... if you have a "belief".

"Time travel" is happening continuously all around you. Your own head is not experiencing time in the same way your feet are. The guy on the 9th floor is not experiencing the passage of time in the same way the guy on the first floor is. etc etc etc. Can you decide to go back to the year 1900? no. There is nothing in physics that allows for that at all.

Time travel to the "future" is just an engineering problem. You need to accellerate toward the speed of light and the passage of time will slow for you relative to other objects around you (time dilation) or get close enough to a black hole and manage not to die (gravitational time dilation)

[–] [deleted] 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

All you have to do is reverse your entropy.

See: Tenet.

[–] Zexks 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I don’t think it’s actually possible to go back in time. I think it’s possible to travel to a place where you can witness events of the past but you’ll never be able to interact or alter them. The collapse has already happened it’s just a matter of propagation after that.

[–] Sablesweetheart 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I believe in time travel.

[–] Bullshidder 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Traveling to the future is possible and has been proven. Going back in time is a different hurdle

[–] HumbleMarsupial4071 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

There particles that actually travel backward in time.... from the future.

[–] ricperry1 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I believe that if you travel at a significant percentage of the speed of light then you can measurably travel into the future. But I don’t think you can travel into the past.

[–] Slight-Muffin5654 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Look up Andrew Basiago and the 8 Modalities of Time Travel.

[–] Exciting-Car-3516 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

If you get on a plane travelling westward. You’ll leave say at 1pm and get there at 4pm but it took 6 hours to get there. Isn’t that time travel to you?

[–] nmacaroni 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

time travel only affects the traveler, so who cares.

[–] Pnmamouf1 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Is time linear 🤷🏻‍♂️

[–] Taliesin_Chris 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Ask me yesterday.

[–] Finding-Necessary 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I would think several other milestones would have to be achieved before talking of time trave like immortality, teleportation, and ending world hunger just to name a few. I think it’s possible because ANYTHING the human mind can think of it can accomplish over time!!

[–] VirtualCarnality 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Since our version of time cam only be measured on earth do to gravitational time dilation. On every planet, moon, floating rock in space time moves at a different rate.

It's hard to say that time travel is not possible because it can not be accurately measured to begin with.

[–] distractionsgalore 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I do. Mad Mike Marcum.

[–] bsfurr 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Here’s the thing about time travel, but no one is considering

We live in Euclidean space, which is the space we occupy within the universe. It’s the space between planets, whatever you get it.

Now, Evidence suggests that galaxies are flying through Euclidean space at crazy speeds, as a byproduct of the big bang

If you were to travel back in time, I don’t see how you can get around Euclidean physics. Meaning you would have to calculate the exact point in Euclidean space for the time period in which you are traveling to. And if you are off by a tenth of a second, you will miss your mark by several hundred thousands of miles

I don’t envision time travel like, jumping from two moving trains. That would suggest that anything outside of space-time could be considered relative to our Euclidean space. You would instead be jumping onto a moving train from a standstill.

I don’t know, man, it’s just some weird shit I like to think about

[–] ancientcheeseballs 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Time travelers saved trump

[–] OpestDei 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago *   (0 children)

I don’t believe in time travel but I believe in holographic universe. However somewhere down the line my theory contradicts itself because its presence is real and everywhere. The only way to spot it or tap through the hologram is to have a radar that is a requisite in teleportation technology. In other words if you can see through the veil you more than likely have teleportation. And if you have teleportation you’re in the beginning of time traveling research.

[–] The24HourPlan 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

General relativity

[–] sudo-rm-rf-Israel 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I think that time is non-linear so finding a way to cut across the pizza to another time is simply a matter of figuring out how to do it.

[–] Sister__midnight 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Nope, we'd have time tourists. Also who's to say humanity doesn't go extinct before we invent it and that is why we don't have people coming back.

Also you'd have to account for galactic and solar drift as the galaxy moves through space, and the sun moves through the galaxy. So if you "go back" you technically be returning to an empty void unless it was only like a fraction of a second... In which case you might end up slamming into the inside of the planet.

[–] BrianForCongress 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Closest will be time dilation from space travel

[–] Fosferus 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

One of the principles of matter is two particles can't occupy the same space. I don't think its too big of a stretch to say the reverse is true. One particle can't occupy two places at once. If you traveled back in time every atom in your body would exist somewhere else at the same time. I think that would be pretty catastrophic.

[–] entechad 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (2 children)

I do. I spend a lot of time traveling.

[–] pmaurant 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

You sometimes I think that the aliens are time travelers from earths future.

[–] lseeitaII 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago *   (0 children)

I know for sure it’s not impossible. Having said that, if it’s already happening without the public’s knowledge, time continuum ripple effect is sure to be occurring unnoticeably. Better kept secret safe in the hands of those who are responsible with the actions they take, and care for humanity as a whole, not for selfish gain. I am intrigued in the idea, conveyed in the movie tomorrowland with George Clooney. Our future outcome can change and determined by what we do today.

[–] Melodic-Future-4719 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

I think there is, after all we can confirm ufos

[–] 5TP1090G_FC 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Just look at the philadelphia experiment, or maybe, other gov programs/ projects that have stolen money from the people of the country of the USA. Why are the taxes still going up, up. Did the use win the cold war or is the usa just a slave country. It's easy to see through the fog, understanding the Illusion is half the battle. Be safe everyone

[–] BowlMaster83 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago   (0 children)

Forward travel is possible! We may find new ways to adjust the rate of forward travel but I don’t think we will ever be able to stop or reverse time.

[–] HelloImTheAntiChrist 0 points 1 point 2 points 23 days ago *   (0 children)

Believe? I try not to believe anything. Beliefs are for religious people & those who are not Scientifically literate.

We have some evidence to support that time travel is possible. Most of it comes from leak US government documents regarding ET's and their space craft

[–] ChuckNorristko 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

They say one of the trump men got all of Nickola Tesla’s stuff when he passed and there is a book about it. Just type trump time travel book and it should pop up

[–] OGMansaMusa 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

If it does exist it appears to be a forward-only option. So, either the reverse is impossible, or humanity destroyed itself before the process could be uncovered.

[–] UtahIrish 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

I believe it is possible.

[–] sligowind 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

I am traveling through time right now.

[–] hangbellybroad 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

well, I am sitting in my chair watching tv and as I sit here I am traveling through time at the speed of light, so I guess I do

[–] Nyarlathotep451 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

I’m keeping an open mind regarding time storms and time slips.

[–] Accomplished_Work901 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

If Nicola Tesla believed it to be possible, I'm inclined to believe the expert.

[–] Nack_Jiklas [ 🍰 ] 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (1 child)

So you're saying Einstein is full of shit? You can't undo that which has already happened

[–] douggold11 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

Never say never but yeah never

[–] Onslaught1066 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

I used to, but my future self came back and told me it’s a load of BS.

[–] Odd_Tiger_2278 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

Come on. You are traveling through time right now.

[–] NatPortmanTaintStank 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

I want to see a movie where a guy decides to make a time machine after his wife's fatal accident but finds out after he finishes that he can only go back to the point where he conceived the idea.....creating a time loop in the worst way possible.

Reliving the grief and desperation of the period of time in between his wife's death and the completion of his time machine forever.

[–] WellOkayMaybe 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago *   (0 children)

If time travel does exist, it likely needs a destination portal /reference point base station to be built first.

Which means time travel is only limited to after the tech for that portal is invented, and that sets a hard limit for future people to go backwards.

So, they would only be able to go back and forth in the period after time travel is invented.

That's the only logical way time travel could exist in the future, or we would already be living in time loops.

[–] Kimura304 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

I no longer believe conscious is bound by space and time. So at the very least you can project your consciousness into the past and future.

[–] ChurchofChaosTheory 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

Time travel is exceedingly difficult because in order to actually do anything in the past you have to match cosmic energy levels to your actions, otherwise the time travel negates itself and you never go in the first place.

You should see those disclosure forms

[–] greyjedimaster77 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

There’s a reason why I watched Back to the Future for the first time in October 2015. I’d do anything to go back to that year

[–] JohnnyBlefesc 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

Well technically and empirically the relativity of time — time dilation has been proven in airplanes relative to earth albeit in miniscule ways. It’s not HG Wells emotionally satisfying but it’s a start. It seems sort of locational. You go out, go fast, come back and you are just that much a Rip Van Winkle without aging as much.

[–] Valuable-Bathroom-67 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago *   (1 child)

Wouldn’t you have to change the state of all particles in the universe back to where they were in the past or something. Idk I’m no scientist but seems impossible. Unless there’s some science general relativity bs trickery. Thing is there’s a ton of stuff scientists say we don’t know about these topics. Whatever the majority of top scientists say I’ll believe it.

[–] oOoChromeoOo 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

We are all traveling through time. We just can’t change directions.

[–] -just-another_human_ 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

Time was made up to keep track of the earths rotation. You can’t unrotate everything just to believe we can go back in time.

[–] Cheetahs_never_win 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

We're traveling through time, now.

Time is relative. Make somebody go fast, and from their perspective, everything ages faster around them. I.e. they jump to the future.

This is undisputed science. GPS has to correct for this.

There's no particular math that supports the reciprocal, though.

But it's difficult to prove something doesn't exist.

In the absence of evidence, I don't "believe" in something. But I do speculate.

[–] Educational-Fun7441 0 points 1 point 2 points 22 days ago   (0 children)

We already know how to travel to the future. We have no idea how to travel to the past. I would guess it’s impossible, because if it were possible to travel back, we would have travelers visiting us currently

[–] DABDEB 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

I responded to this comment tomorrow and it got deleted?

[–] mandoaz1971 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

I can’t believe that every time I go back another twenty years someone is still asking this question…..

[–] theoretical-rantman7 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

The first time I had a Rusty Nail on the beach 35 years ago I knew time travel was possible. It was about a 16oz cup (drambuie & scotch) 🤣🤣

[–] BasisPlayful995 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

Quantum physics changes everything.

[–] GentlyUsedOtter 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

Well realistically time travel is, I won't say impossible, but inextricably difficult. You couldn't just travel back in time to where you are right now but 10,000 years ago because 10,000 years ago everything was not where it is. First of all You would have to take the Earth's spin into account, as well as its movement through around the sun, And then the sun and the solar systems movement through the galaxy, and then the galaxys movement through the universe, plus taking into account the expansion of the universe.

I think it's less of a matter of time travel and more of a matter of time and space travel. You get the calculations even slightly wrong, Best case scenario you wind up in a wall or in the middle of the ocean. Worst case scenario, You wind up floating in space for all eternity. Well actually I suppose worst case scenario you accidentally land next to a black hole and are spaghettified for the rest of eternity.

[–] myrmtr 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

I would love to go into details of this subject but doing so would jeopardize work I have been doing since 2010.

[–] tiptoethruthewind0w 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

Time travel to the future happens often by natural forces. The closer you travel to the speed of light, the slower your time goes relative to somebody standing still, so when you stop everyone around you will be significantly older. Gravitational forces also affect time in the same way. The closer you are to a large gravitational force the slower your time goes relative to somebody who's not close to a gravitational force, so when you leave that gravity field everyone else around you will be older.

That gravity one can and has been observed on earth. If you grab two atomic watches and put one in low elevation and the other one in a high elevation and after a year they would be showing a different time that is outside their standard accuracy, that's because the forces of gravity are slightly different between low elevation and high elevation.

Going backwards in time is tricky because it requires exotic physics that we have hypothesized and theorize like negative entropy, but haven't actually discovered or observed.

[–] handjobsforowls 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

I don’t know a ton about this but I’ve thought about it a lot. As humans, we defined time and view it as a linear progression. What are the chances we are correct in our understanding of how time even works?

The amount we know vs. what we don’t know is usually enough to give me a glimmer of hope that maybe stuff like this does exist and we just haven’t “unlocked” the ability to understand it.

We developed senses to experience our surroundings. Maybe we haven’t yet developed the one that perceives time on a flat plane (like distance).

Source: Just my stupid brain; zero research - don’t listen to me.

[–] BrianAnderson1970 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

I’m not saying I believe in it or not….but you will soon. Trust me

[–] Ra2843 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

Hopefully everyone does now.

[–] oxprep 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

Because historical events would be super crowded with time travelers. July 13th would be the most recent event that would be completely full of time travelers.

[–] Perfect_Rush_6262 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

We are literally traveling through time at this very moment. Since that moment has passed we are now moving through another moment. Now can time be stopped? Not that i am aware of. Can a you go back in time? Sure, in a memory unfortunately not physically. (That i am aware of).

[–] Bakkenjh 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

Anyone have any links to disclosures of top secret time travel technology?

[–] Atlanon88 0 points 1 point 2 points 21 days ago   (0 children)

Depends what you mean. We can travel forward as much as we want to with the right technology. Just not backwards, until someone figures out how to have negative energy density. But even then most things you think of as absolute or invariant are relative (space, time, etc). But causality is invariant. So I doubt time travel will ever be able to go backwards.

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Do you believe in time travel? I’m a skeptic myself — but if these people’s stories about time travel are to be believed, then I am apparently wrong. Who knows? Maybe one day I’ll have to eat my words. In all honesty, that might not be so bad — because the tradeoff for being wrong in that case would be that time travel is real . That would be pretty rad if it were true.

Technically speaking time travel does exist right now — just not in the sci fi kind of way you’re probably thinking. According to a TED-Ed video by Colin Stuart, Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev actually traveled 0.02 seconds into his own future due to time dilation during the time he spent on the International Space Station. For the curious, Krikalev has spent a total of 803 days, nine hours, and 39 minutes in space over the course of his career.

That said, though, many are convinced that time dilation isn’t the only kind of time travel that’s possible; some folks do also believe in time travel as depicted by everything from H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine to Back to the Future . It’s difficult to find stories online that are actual accounts from real people — many of them are either urban legends ( hi there, Philadelphia Experiment ) or stories that center around people that I’ve been unable to verify actually exist — but if you dig hard enough, sincere accounts can be found.

Are the stories true? Are they false? Are they examples of people who believe with all their heart that they’re true, even if they might not actually be? You be the judge. These seven tales are all excellent yarns, at any rate.

1 The Moberly–Jourdain Incident

In 1901, two Englishwomen, Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain , took a vacation to France. While they were there, they visited the Palace of Versailles (because, y’know, that’s what one does when one visits France ). And while they were at Versailles, they visited what’s known as the Petit Trianon — a little chateau on the palace grounds that Louis XVI gave to Marie Antoinette as a private space for her to hang out and do whatever it was that a teenaged queen did when she was relaxing back then.

But while they were there, they claimed, they saw some… odd occurrences. They said they spotted people wearing anachronistic clothing, heard mysterious voices, and saw buildings and other structures that were no longer present — and, indeed, hadn’t existed since the late 1700s. Finally, they said, they caught sight of Marie Antoinette herself , drawing in a sketchbook.

They claimed to have fallen into a “time slip” and been briefly transported back more than 100 years before being jolted back to the present by a tour guide.

Did they really travel back in time? Probably not; various explanations include everything from a folie a deux (basically a joint delusion) to a simple misinterpretation of what they actually saw. But for what it’s worth, in 1911 — roughly 10 years after what they said they had experienced occurred — the two women published a book about the whole thing under the names Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont simply called An Adventure. These days, it’s available as The Ghosts of Trianon ; check it out, if you like.

2 The Mystery Of John Titor

John Titor is perhaps the most famous person who claims he’s time traveled; trouble is, no one has heard from him for almost 17 years. Also, he claimed he came from the future.

The story is long and involved, but the short version is this: In a thread begun in the fall of 2000 about time travel paradoxes on the online forum the Time Travel Institute — now known as Curious Cosmos — a user responded to a comment about how a time machine could theoretically be built with the following message:

“Wow! Paul is right on the money. I was just about to give up hope on anyone knowing who Tipler or Kerr was on this worldline.

“By the way, #2 is the correct answer and the basics for time travel start at CERN in about a year and end in 2034 with the first ‘time machine’ built by GE. Too bad we can’t post pictures or I’d show it to you.”

The implication, of course, was that the user, who was going by the name TimeTravel_0, came from a point in the future during which such a machine had already been invented.

Over the course of many messages spanning from that first thread all the way through the early spring of 2001, the user, who became known as John Titor, told his story. He said that he had been sent back to 1975 in order to bring an IBM 5100 computer to his own time; he was just stopping in 2000 for a brief rest on his way back home. The computer, he said, was needed to debug “various legacy computer programs in 2036” in order to combat a known problem similar to Y2K called the Year 2038 Problem . (John didn’t refer to it as such, but he said that UNIX was going to have an issue in 2038 — which is what we thought was going to happen back when the calendar ticked over from 1999 to 2000.)

Opinions are divided on whether John Titor was real ; some folks think he was the only real example of time travel we’ve ever seen, while others think it’s one of the most enduring hoaxes we’ve ever seen. I fall on the side of hoax, but that’s just me.

3 Project Pegasus And The Chrononauts

In 2011, Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings stepped forward, claiming that they were former “chrononauts” who had worked with an alleged DARPA program called Project Pegasus. Project Pegasus, they said, had been developed in the 1970s; in 1980, they were taking a “Mars training class” at a community college in California (the college presumably functioning as a cover for the alleged program) when they were picked to go to Mars. The mode of transport? Teleportation.

It gets better, too. Basiago and Stillings also said that the then- 19-year-old Barack Obama , whom they claimed was going by the name “Barry Soetero” at the time, was also one of the students chosen to go to Mars. They said the teleportation occurred via something called a “jump room.”

The White House has denied that Obama has ever been to Mars . “Only if you count watching Marvin the Martian,” Tommy Vietor, then the spokesman for the National Security Council, told Wired’s Danger Room in 2012.

4 Victor Goddard’s Airfield Time Slip

Like Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, senior Royal Air Force commander Sir Robert Victor Goddard — widely known as Victor Goddard — claimed to have experienced a time slip.

In 1935, Goddard flew over what had been the RAF station Drem in Scotland on his way from Edinburgh to Andover, England. The Drem station was no longer in use; after demobilization efforts following WWI, it had mostly been left to its own devices. And, indeed, that’s what Goddard said he saw as he flew over it: A largely abandoned airfield.

On his return trip, though, things got… weird. He followed the same route he had on the way there, but during the flight, he got waylaid by a storm. As he struggled to regain control of his plane, however, he spotted the Drem airfield through a break in the clouds — and when he got closer to it, the bad weather suddenly dissipated. But the airfield… wasn’t abandoned this time. It was busy, with several planes on the runway and mechanics scurrying about.

Within seconds, though, the storm reappeared, and Goddard had to fight to keep his plane aloft again. He made it home just fine, and went on to live another 50 years — but the incident stuck with him; indeed, in 1975, he wrote a book called Flight Towards Reality which included discussion of the whole thing.

Here’s the really weird bit: In 1939, the Drem airfield was brought back to life. Did Goddard see a peek into the airfield's future via a time slip back in 1935? Who knows.

5 Space Barbie

I’ll be honest: I’m not totally sure what to do with thisone — but I’ll present it to you here, and then you can decide for yourself what you think about it. Here it is:

Valeria Lukyanova has made a name for herself as a “human Barbie doll” (who also has kind of scary opinions about some things ) — but a 2012 short documentary for Vice’s My Life Online series also posits that she believes she’s a time traveling space alien whose purpose on Earth is to aid us in moving “from the role of the ‘human consumer’ to the role of ‘human demi-god.’”

What I can’t quite figure out is whether this whole time traveling space alien thing is, like a piece of performance art created specifically for this Vice doc, or whether it’s what she actually thinks. I don’t believe she’s referenced it in many (or maybe even any) other interviews she’s given; the items I’ve found discussing Lukyanova and time travel specifically all point back to this video.

But, well… do with it all as you will. That’s the documentary up there; give it a watch and see what you think.

6 The Hipster Time Traveler

In the early 2010s, a photograph depicting the 1941 reopening of the South Fork Bridge in Gold Bridge, British Columbia in Canada went viral for seemingly depicting a man that looked… just a bit too modern to have been photographed in 1941. He looks, in fact, like a time traveling hipster : Graphic t-shirt, textured sweater, sunglasses, the works. The photo hadn’t been manipulated; the original can be seen here . So what the heck was going on?

Well, Snopes has plenty of reasonable explanations for the man’s appearance; each item he’s wearing, for example, could very easily have been acquired in 1941. Others have also backed up those facts. But the bottom line is that it’s never been definitively debunked, so the idea that this photograph could depict a man from our time who had traveled back to 1941 persists. What do you think?

7 Father Ernetti’s Chronovisor

According to two at least two books — Catholic priest Father Francois Brune’s 2002 book Le nouveau mystère du Vatican (in English, The Vatican’s New Mystery ) and Peter Krassa’s 2000 book Father Ernetti's Chronovisor : The Creation and Disappearance of the World's First Time Machine — Father Pellegrino Ernetti, who was a Catholic priest like Brune, invented a machine called a “chronovisor” that allowed him to view the past. Ernetti was real; however, the existence of the machine, or even whether he actually claimed to have invented it, has never been proven. Alas, he died in 1994, so we can’t ask him, either. I mean, if we were ever able to find his chronovisor, maybe we could… but at that point, wouldn’t we already have the information we need?

(I’m extremely skeptical of this story, by the way, but both Brune’s and Krassa’s books swear up, down, left, and right that it’s true, so…you be the judge.)

Although I'm fairly certain that these accounts and stories are either misinterpreted information or straight-up falsehoods, they're still entertaining to read about; after all, if you had access to a time machine, wouldn't you at least want to take it for a spin? Here's hoping that one day, science takes the idea from theory to reality. It's a big ol' universe out there.

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How I Became Obsessed With Accidental Time Travel

The web is awash with ordinary peoples’ stories of “time slips.” Their real magic is what they can tell us about our relationship to time.

By Lucie Elven

This year, I turned 30, a development that came with a breathless sense of dread at time’s passing. It wakes me up in the early mornings: Nocturnal terror breaks through the surface of sleep like a whale breaching for air. My ambition and fear kick in together until I get up, pour myself some water and look out the window at the squid-ink sky and the string of lights along my neighbors’ houses. I lie down again after finding firmer mental ground, dry land.

So when a guy that my friend was seeing evangelized about “time slips” — a genre of urban legend in which people claim that, while walking in particular places, they accidentally traveled back, and sometimes forward, in time — I was a ripe target. Curious and increasingly existential, I Googled these supposed time slips. I found a global community of believers building an archive of temporal dislocations from the present. These congregants gathered in corners of the internet to testify about how, in the right conditions, the dusting of alienation that settles over the world as we age can crystallize into collective fiction.

I was initially skeptical of the vague language that time-slip writers employed to convey experiences I already found dubious: too many uses of foggy words like “blunder” and “sporting”; detail lavished on varieties of hats encountered. But I was drawn in by their secretive tone — I sensed that sharing these anecdotes was compromising, even shameful (“People would laugh at you,” one poster wrote). Disapproval became attraction, and I returned to the message boards throughout the summer.

Here’s a classic that, like the best of these stories, was related secondhand on a paranormal blog: In a Liverpudlian street in 1996, an off-duty policeman named Frank was going to meet his wife, Carol, in a bookshop called Dillons when “suddenly, a small box van that looked like something out of the 1950s sped across his path, honking its horn as it narrowly missed him.” More disorienting still, Frank “saw that Dillons book store now had ‘Cripps’ over its entrance” and that there were stands of shoes and handbags in the window instead of new fiction. The only other person not wearing midcentury dress was a girl in a lime green sleeveless top. As Frank followed her into the old women’s wear boutique, “the interior of the building completely changed in a flash”; it was once again a bookshop.

I found a global community of believers building an archive of temporal dislocations from the present.

As with a spell of déjà vu, the experience was short-lived, and time was regained. According to the blogger’s detective-like report, Cripps “was later determined” to have been a business in the 1950s. In response to Frank’s slip, posters have told their own or related accounts they’ve heard from others: “This happened to my ex-boss, Glyn Jackson in London, England,” one begins. “Glyn’s story is Highly believable as Glyn is person who lacks imagination on such a scale that he could not put together a grade one story for English to save his life.” And on it goes.

I have never appreciated stories about the passage of time. I resent that I won’t ever get back the hours of my life that Richard Linklater stole with “Boyhood” — his two-and-three-quarter-hour film, shot over a 12-year period in which time is the force that overwhelms everything, not least the idea that our own actions drive our life stories. There’s a whole lot of unwelcome profundity there.

Time-slip anecdotes, though fashioned out of the ambient dread of living with the ticking clock, are childlike in their sense of wonder. They are light, playful and irrational, as frivolous and folky as a ghost story if it were narrated by the confused ghost instead of the people it haunts. One poster, as a girl, used to see a woman in a blue bathrobe in her room: “Her hair was long and messy, a reddish brown. I didn’t see her face because she was usually turned away. I used to mistake her for my mom.” Years later, grown up, the poster’s daughter slept in her former bedroom. “One day I realized ... I was wearing the same blue bathrobe,” the mother writes. Paranormal trappings aside, this story speaks to the feeling of whiplash brought on by time’s passing.

Slipping can be significant, as any Freudian will tell you, and these narratives are riddles whose answers might tell us about our relationship to time. I have begun considering the message boards on which they are exchanged to be narrow but important release valves, allowing posters to talk about the feelings that arise from being time-bound: depression, midlife crises, the dysmorphia of living in a human body. What ailed Miss Smith, whose car slid into a ditch after a cocktail party, and who witnessed “groups of Pictish warriors of the late seventh century, ca. 685 AD,” if not an understanding of her smallness in history’s vast expanse? Why did two academics, famous in the time-slip community for writing a book about spotting Marie Antoinette in the Versailles grounds, encounter trees that looked lifeless, “like wood worked in tapestry”? Perhaps in that instant, like the last queen of France’s Ancien Régime, they felt radically out of joint with their present moment.

If you suspend disbelief, you’ll find these threads constitute a philosophical inquiry about the place of the spirit in our physical beings. They debate the merits of subjectivity and objectivity and question the idea that time is a one-lane highway to death. These writers argue that our past and future can suffuse our present, unveiling an epic dimension of our quotidian existences in moments when we slip and, like Frank, feel eternity.

Lucie Elven is a writer whose first book of fiction, “The Weak Spot,” was published this year in the United States by Soft Skull Press and in Britain by Prototype.

Background photograph: George Marks/Getty Images

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The best images of time travellers from throughout history.

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Every now and then an image appears online which people claim shows a time traveller somewhere they shouldn't be. But are they just cases of people letting their imaginations run wild?

We've rounded up some of the best and most interesting images of time travellers throughout history. Some turned out to be plain fakes or cases of mistaken identities, but others are certainly intriguing.

Which have you seen before?

• The most famous ghost photographs ever taken
• 35 of the most famous alien, monster and unexplained photographs ever taken

The time travelling hipster

This photo was snapped in 1941 at the re-opening ceremony for the South Fork Bridge in British Columbia.

If you look carefully, on the right-hand side you can see an unusually dressed man in what appears to be modern clothing, sporting sunglasses at a time when most were wearing hats and smart jackets.

Many argue this is a time traveller, while others have countered that he's simply a man with a fashion sense ahead of his time. Snopes has shown his clothing is relevant to the time and the area, but it's still great to imagine.

World Cup celebrations

This photo comes from the 1962 World Cup and shows the celebrations as the Brazilian team lifts the trophy.

If you look closely though, you'll see in the bottom centre of the image what looks like someone with a mobile phone snapping a photo of the event.

Could this be a time traveller as well? A bit odd to think someone in the future might have a flip phone , but then they have been making a comeback recently and we know folding phones are about to be big too .

The time travelling sun seeker

This image from 1943 apparently shows British factory workers escaping to the seaside for a break during the midst of wartime. The clothes and beachwear of most people certainly fit the era, but in the centre of a frame appears to be a man dressed like Mr Bean checking his mobile phone.

Or maybe it's a time travel device? Likely a bit of a stretch or a case of overactive internet imagination, but we still enjoy the thought. Maybe there are no public beaches in the future?

Mohawk time traveller

This image from 1905 appears to show the usual happenings of the time - including workers and a banana boat delivering its goods.

However, if you look near the edge of the boat you can spy a man in a white shirt with what appears to be a Mohawk-style haircut. A very unusual haircut for the time and possible proof of a time traveller? Who can say?

Film footage captured during the recording of Charlie Chaplin's 1928 silent film "The Circus" appears to show a lady dressed all in black, wearing a hat and walking around the set talking on her mobile phone.

The footage is a little iffy as is the idea that anyone could be talking on a mobile device in the 1920s, but it's certainly got some suggesting it might be proof time travellers are among us.

The ancient astronaut sculpture

In Salamanca, Spain, there's a cathedral with multiple sculptures carved into its sides. One such sculpture appears to show the likeness of a modern-day (or perhaps futuristic) astronaut.

Considering the cathedral's construction dates back to 1513, people have taken this as proof that time travellers made their way back to that time. However, the truth is the astronaut is merely a modern addition to the artwork carried out by Jerónimo García de Quiñones during renovations in 1992.

Time travelling celebrities

There's an interesting trend of people who closely resemble folks from a bygone era. This could just be a spooky coincidence, but maybe it's proof that time travel is possible.

Perhaps these celebrities are living a double life in another century. Here, Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Leader Mahir Cayan who was born in 1946 and died in 1972 is shown to bear a striking resemblance to TV star Jimmy Fallon. Is Jimmy Fallon living a double life as a revolutionary communist? Seems hilariously unlikely.

A man and his mobile phone

Some claim that this oil painting by Pieter de Hooch, which was lovingly crafted in 1670 appears to show a young man holding his mobile phone. In an age where such a thing would probably have seen him burnt at the stake, this one is hard to believe.

A description of the image also suggests the young man is a messenger and that's a letter in his hand, not a phone, but it's still nice to let your imagination run wild once in a while. We've often wondered what it would be like to be able to travel back to simpler times to see what life was like for ourselves.

The Adidas trainers mummy

A couple of years ago, an ancient mummy was unearthed by archaeologists digging in Mongolia. At the time, it was suggested the funky-looking footwear she was wearing bore a striking resemblance to Adidas trainers. More evidence of a time traveller visiting ancient times? Investigation of the body dated it around 1,100 years old. That's one heck of a blast through the past.

However, further unearthing showed the woman was more likely to have been a Turkic seamstress which might explain the fresh kicks. She was found with an ancient clutch bag, a mirror, a comb, a knife and more. But no mobile phone.

The time surfer

Another image of an out-of-place individual that people have latched on to as proof that time travel is a reality.

This image dates back over 100 years and shows some smartly dressed Canadians sitting on the side of a hill.

On the left-hand side though, sits a young man in what appears to be a t-shirt and shorts with ruffled hair. He was quickly referred to as the surfing time traveller due to how unusual his attire is. Others have suggested people in the photo appear shocked by his appearance, even pointing out the woman on the right who seems to be gesturing in his direction. Again, this a bit of a stretch as would a time traveller really go through time dressed like that?

A visitor to wartime Reykjavík

This photograph apparently shows a scene from downtown Reykjavík in 1943.

In the heart of wartime, soldiers and sailors can be seen everywhere in the streets among civilians. The man circled though, appears to be on a mobile phone.

We've really got a theme going with these smartphone using time travellers. Who is he calling? And how? And if he is a time traveller, why is he not in Berlin trying to assassinate Hitler?

The dabbing WWII soldier

There's an apparent theme to these time traveller photos that not only includes smartphone users, but also people visiting the second world war.

In this image, a young soldier is seen dabbing, a dance move that became popular around 2014, but certainly wasn't known in wartime.

Of course, it turns out this photo isn't an image of a time traveller, but rather just an image of some actors from 2017's blockbuster Dunkirk . The fact that most of the soldiers are smiling should also be a bit of a giveaway with this one.

Greta Thunberg

In 2019, the internet discovered a photograph from 1898 which showed three children working at a gold mine in Canada's Yukon territory.

The image seemed to show a girl with an incredible likeness to the young climate activist Greta Thunberg. Does this make Thunberg a time traveller who's come through time to save the planet? Weird year for her to choose, but it's a nice idea.

A woman clutching a smartphone (1860)

The painting " The expected one " from 1860, by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller appears to show a woman walking along a rough path, about to be accosted by an adoring young man clutching a pink flower.

A close look though and you'll see she appears to have her attention firmly glued to a modern smartphone. Is this woman actually a time traveller?

Vladimir Putin

A few years back, a number of images surfaced online that seemingly showed Russian President Vladimir Putin snapped over various decades without ageing. Either proof that he's a time traveller or perhaps just immortal?

If true, he's incredibly patriotic, with each image showing him serving his country in one way or another. Though it's more likely to just be a strong likeness.

The AI time traveller

Here's a time traveller with a difference. Stelfie the Time Traveller has been using AI to travel through time. Or at least to give the illusion of doing so.

This creative individual has been using Stable Diffusion to insert the likeness of a modern man into ancient civilisations including Egypt when the pyramids were being constructed, Rome with the centurions and the land of the dinosaurs . It's fun to imagine these as being real, though if you look closely they're clearly AI-generated. As this artificial intelligence improves we'll no doubt get even better images like this. Interestingly even the character taking the selfies isn't real here, but is also made using AI.

October 21, 1999

According to current physical theory, is it possible for a human being to travel through time?

As several respondents noted, we constantly travel through time--just forward, and all at the same rate. But seriously, time travel is more than mere fantasy, as noted by Gary T. Horowitz, a professor of physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara:

"Perhaps surprisingly, this turns out to be a subtle question. It is not obviously ruled out by our current laws of nature. Recent investigations into this question have provided some evidence that the answer is no, but it has not yet been proven to be impossible."

Even the slight possibility of time travel exerts such fascination that many physicists continue to study not only whether it may be possible but also how one might do it.

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One of the leading researchers in this area is William A. Hiscock, a professor of physics at Montana State University. Here are his thoughts on the matter:

"Is it possible to travel through time? To answer this question, we must be a bit more specific about what we mean by traveling through time. Discounting the everyday progression of time, the question can be divided into two parts: Is it possible, within a short time (less than a human life span), to travel into the distant future? And is it possible to travel into the past?

"Our current understanding of fundamental physics tells us that the answer to the first question is a definite yes, and to the second, maybe.

"The mechanism for traveling into the distant future is to use the time-dilation effect of Special Relativity, which states that a moving clock appears to tick more slowly the closer it approaches the speed of light. This effect, which has been overwhelmingly supported by experimental tests, applies to all types of clocks, including biological aging.

"If one were to depart from the earth in a spaceship that could accelerate continuously at a comfortable one g (an acceleration that would produce a force equal to the gravity at the earth's surface), one would begin to approach the speed of light relative to the earth within about a year. As the ship continued to accelerate, it would come ever closer to the speed of light, and its clocks would appear to run at an ever slower rate relative to the earth. Under such circumstances, a round trip to the center of our galaxy and back to the earth--a distance of some 60,000 light-years--could be completed in only a little more than 40 years of ship time. Upon arriving back at the earth, the astronaut would be only 40 years older, while 60,000 years would have passed on the earth. (Note that there is no 'twin paradox,' because it is unambiguous that the space traveler has felt the constant acceleration for 40 years, while a hypothetical twin left behind on a spaceship circling the earth has not.)

"Such a trip would pose formidable engineering problems: the amount of energy required, even assuming a perfect conversion of mass into energy, is greater than a planetary mass. But nothing in the known laws of physics would prevent such a trip from occurring.

"Time travel into the past, which is what people usually mean by time travel, is a much more uncertain proposition. There are many solutions to Einstein's equations of General Relativity that allow a person to follow a timeline that would result in her (or him) encountering herself--or her grandmother--at an earlier time. The problem is deciding whether these solutions represent situations that could occur in the real universe, or whether they are mere mathematical oddities incompatible with known physics. No experiment or observation has ever indicated that time travel is occurring in our universe. Much work has been done by theoretical physicists in the past decade to try to determine whether, in a universe that is initially without time travel, one can build a time machine--in other words, if it is possible to manipulate matter and the geometry of space-time in such a way as to create new paths that circle back in time.

"How could one build a time machine? The simplest way currently being discussed is to take a wormhole (a tunnel connecting spatially separated regions of space-time) and give one mouth of the wormhole a substantial velocity with respect to the other. Passage through the wormhole would then allow travel to the past.

"Easily said--but where does one obtain a wormhole? Although the theoretical properties of wormholes have been extensively studied over the past decade, little is known about how to form a macroscopic wormhole, large enough for a human or a spaceship to pass through. Some speculative theories of quantum gravity tell us that space-time has a complicated, foamlike structure of wormholes on the smallest scales--10^-33 centimeter, or a billion billion times smaller than an electron. Some physicists believe it may be possible to grab one of these truly microscopic wormholes and enlarge it to usable size, but at present these ideas are all very hypothetical.

"Even if we had a wormhole, would nature allow us to convert it into a time machine? Stephen Hawking has formulated a "Chronology Protection Conjecture," which states that the laws of nature prevent the creation of a time machine. At the moment, however, this is just a conjecture, not proven.

"Theoretical physicists have studied various aspects of physics to determine whether this law or that might protect chronology and forbid the building of a time machine. In all the searching, however, only one bit of physics has been found that might prohibit using a wormhole to travel through time. In 1982, Deborah A. Konkowski of the U.S. Naval Academy and I showed that the energy in the vacuum state of a massless quantized field (such as the photon) would grow without bound as a time machine is being turned on, effectively preventing it from being used. Later studies by Hawking and Kip S. Thorne of Caltech have shown that it is unclear whether the growing energy would change the geometry of space-time rapidly enough to stop the operation of the time machine. Recent work by Tsunefumi Tanaka of Montana State University and myself, along with independent research by David Boulware of the University of Washington, has shown that the energy in the vacuum state of a field having mass (such as the electron) does not grow to unbounded levels; this finding indicates there may be a way to engineer the particle physics to allow a time machine to work.

"Perhaps the biggest surprise of the work of the past decade is that it is not obvious that the laws of physics forbid time travel. It is increasingly clear that the question may not be settled until scientists develop an adequate theory of quantum gravity."

John L. Friedman of the physics department at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee has also given this subject a great deal of consideration:

"Special relativity implies that people or clocks at rest (or not accelerating) age more quickly than partners traveling on round-trips in which one changes direction to return to one's partner. In the world's particle accelerators, this prediction is tested daily: Particles traveling in circles at nearly the speed of light decay more slowly than those at rest, and the decay time agrees with theory to the high precision of the measurements.

"Within the framework of Special Relativity, the fact that particles cannot move faster than light prevents one from returning after a high-speed trip to a time earlier than the time of departure. Once gravity is included, however, spacetime is curved, so there are solutions to the equations of General Relativity in which particles can travel in paths that take them back to earlier times. Other features of the geometries that solve the equations of General Relativity include gravitational lenses, gravitational waves and black holes; the dramatic explosion of discoveries in radio and X-ray astronomy during the past two decades has led to the observation of gravitational lenses and gravitational waves, as well as to compelling evidence for giant black holes in the centers of galaxies and stellar-sized black holes that arise from the collapse of dying stars. But there do not appear to be regions of spacetime that allow time travel, raising the fundamental question of what forbids them--or if they really are forbidden.

"A recent surprise is that one can circumvent the 'grandfather paradox,' the idea that it is logically inconsistent for particle paths to loop back to earlier times, because, for example, a granddaughter could go back in time to do away with her grandfather. For several simple physical systems, solutions to the equations of physics exist for any starting condition. In these model systems, something always intervenes to prevent inconsistency analogous to murdering one's grandfather.

"Then why do there seem to be no time machines? Two different answers are consistent with our knowledge. The first is simply that the classical theory has a much broader set of solutions than the correct theory of quantum gravity. It is not implausible that causal structure enters in a fundamental way in quantum gravity and that classical spacetimes with time loops are spurious--in other words, that they do not approximate any states of the complete theory. A second possible answer is provided by recent results that go by the name chronology protection: One supposes that quantum gravity allows microscopic structures that violate causality, and one shows that the character of macroscopic matter forbids the existence of regions with macroscopically large time loops. To create a time machine would require negative energy, and quantum mechanics appears to allow only extremely small regions of negative energy. And the forces needed to create an ordinary-sized region with time loops appear to be extremely large.

"To summarize: It is very likely that the laws of physics rule out macroscopic time machines, but possible that spacetime is filled with microscopic time loops.

A beginner's guide to time travel

Learn exactly how Einstein's theory of relativity works, and discover how there's nothing in science that says time travel is impossible.

Everyone can travel in time . You do it whether you want to or not, at a steady rate of one second per second. You may think there's no similarity to traveling in one of the three spatial dimensions at, say, one foot per second. But according to Einstein 's theory of relativity , we live in a four-dimensional continuum — space-time — in which space and time are interchangeable.

Einstein found that the faster you move through space, the slower you move through time — you age more slowly, in other words. One of the key ideas in relativity is that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light — about 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second), or one light-year per year). But you can get very close to it. If a spaceship were to fly at 99% of the speed of light, you'd see it travel a light-year of distance in just over a year of time. 

That's obvious enough, but now comes the weird part. For astronauts onboard that spaceship, the journey would take a mere seven weeks. It's a consequence of relativity called time dilation , and in effect, it means the astronauts have jumped about 10 months into the future. 

Traveling at high speed isn't the only way to produce time dilation. Einstein showed that gravitational fields produce a similar effect — even the relatively weak field here on the surface of Earth . We don't notice it, because we spend all our lives here, but more than 12,400 miles (20,000 kilometers) higher up gravity is measurably weaker— and time passes more quickly, by about 45 microseconds per day. That's more significant than you might think, because it's the altitude at which GPS satellites orbit Earth, and their clocks need to be precisely synchronized with ground-based ones for the system to work properly. 

The satellites have to compensate for time dilation effects due both to their higher altitude and their faster speed. So whenever you use the GPS feature on your smartphone or your car's satnav, there's a tiny element of time travel involved. You and the satellites are traveling into the future at very slightly different rates.

But for more dramatic effects, we need to look at much stronger gravitational fields, such as those around black holes , which can distort space-time so much that it folds back on itself. The result is a so-called wormhole, a concept that's familiar from sci-fi movies, but actually originates in Einstein's theory of relativity. In effect, a wormhole is a shortcut from one point in space-time to another. You enter one black hole, and emerge from another one somewhere else. Unfortunately, it's not as practical a means of transport as Hollywood makes it look. That's because the black hole's gravity would tear you to pieces as you approached it, but it really is possible in theory. And because we're talking about space-time, not just space, the wormhole's exit could be at an earlier time than its entrance; that means you would end up in the past rather than the future.

Trajectories in space-time that loop back into the past are given the technical name "closed timelike curves." If you search through serious academic journals, you'll find plenty of references to them — far more than you'll find to "time travel." But in effect, that's exactly what closed timelike curves are all about — time travel

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There's another way to produce a closed timelike curve that doesn't involve anything quite so exotic as a black hole or wormhole: You just need a simple rotating cylinder made of super-dense material. This so-called Tipler cylinder is the closest that real-world physics can get to an actual, genuine time machine. But it will likely never be built in the real world, so like a wormhole, it's more of an academic curiosity than a viable engineering design.

Yet as far-fetched as these things are in practical terms, there's no fundamental scientific reason — that we currently know of — that says they are impossible. That's a thought-provoking situation, because as the physicist Michio Kaku is fond of saying, "Everything not forbidden is compulsory" (borrowed from T.H. White's novel, "The Once And Future King"). He doesn't mean time travel has to happen everywhere all the time, but Kaku is suggesting that the universe is so vast it ought to happen somewhere at least occasionally. Maybe some super-advanced civilization in another galaxy knows how to build a working time machine, or perhaps closed timelike curves can even occur naturally under certain rare conditions.

This raises problems of a different kind — not in science or engineering, but in basic logic. If time travel is allowed by the laws of physics, then it's possible to envision a whole range of paradoxical scenarios . Some of these appear so illogical that it's difficult to imagine that they could ever occur. But if they can't, what's stopping them? 

Thoughts like these prompted Stephen Hawking , who was always skeptical about the idea of time travel into the past, to come up with his "chronology protection conjecture" — the notion that some as-yet-unknown law of physics prevents closed timelike curves from happening. But that conjecture is only an educated guess, and until it is supported by hard evidence, we can come to only one conclusion: Time travel is possible.

A party for time travelers 

Hawking was skeptical about the feasibility of time travel into the past, not because he had disproved it, but because he was bothered by the logical paradoxes it created. In his chronology protection conjecture, he surmised that physicists would eventually discover a flaw in the theory of closed timelike curves that made them impossible. 

In 2009, he came up with an amusing way to test this conjecture. Hawking held a champagne party (shown in his Discovery Channel program), but he only advertised it after it had happened. His reasoning was that, if time machines eventually become practical, someone in the future might read about the party and travel back to attend it. But no one did — Hawking sat through the whole evening on his own. This doesn't prove time travel is impossible, but it does suggest that it never becomes a commonplace occurrence here on Earth.

The arrow of time 

One of the distinctive things about time is that it has a direction — from past to future. A cup of hot coffee left at room temperature always cools down; it never heats up. Your cellphone loses battery charge when you use it; it never gains charge. These are examples of entropy , essentially a measure of the amount of "useless" as opposed to "useful" energy. The entropy of a closed system always increases, and it's the key factor determining the arrow of time.

It turns out that entropy is the only thing that makes a distinction between past and future. In other branches of physics, like relativity or quantum theory, time doesn't have a preferred direction. No one knows where time's arrow comes from. It may be that it only applies to large, complex systems, in which case subatomic particles may not experience the arrow of time.

Time travel paradox 

If it's possible to travel back into the past — even theoretically — it raises a number of brain-twisting paradoxes — such as the grandfather paradox — that even scientists and philosophers find extremely perplexing.

Killing Hitler

A time traveler might decide to go back and kill him in his infancy. If they succeeded, future history books wouldn't even mention Hitler — so what motivation would the time traveler have for going back in time and killing him?

Killing your grandfather

Instead of killing a young Hitler, you might, by accident, kill one of your own ancestors when they were very young. But then you would never be born, so you couldn't travel back in time to kill them, so you would be born after all, and so on … 

A closed loop

Suppose the plans for a time machine suddenly appear from thin air on your desk. You spend a few days building it, then use it to send the plans back to your earlier self. But where did those plans originate? Nowhere — they are just looping round and round in time.

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Andrew May holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Manchester University, U.K. For 30 years, he worked in the academic, government and private sectors, before becoming a science writer where he has written for Fortean Times, How It Works, All About Space, BBC Science Focus, among others. He has also written a selection of books including Cosmic Impact and Astrobiology: The Search for Life Elsewhere in the Universe, published by Icon Books.

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10 Most Compelling Pieces Of Evidence That Prove Time Travel Exists

What we don't talk about when we talk about time travel.

What we talk about when we talk about time travel: going back to kill Hitler, Back To The Future, treading on butterflies causing irreparable damage to history, Doctor Who, whether or not it's ethical to use it to cheat on the lottery, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

What we don't talk about when we talk about time travel: whether it actually exists. Or will exist. Or has existed. We don't know, this wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff kinda messes with our tenses a little.

The idea of being able to travel backwards or forwards through history has appeared in countless forms through pop culture, conversation, and daydreams for ages, but how come we don't discuss whether it'll actually ever be real? Does it just seem too beyond feasibility?

Well, we're here with good news! Not from the future, sadly, just in the grimly predictable present. A grimly predictable present that includes quantum physics, Higgs Bosons and other science-y things we don't quite understand but apparently have something to do with a conceivable way for us to travel through time. No less a genius than Stephen Hawking spent years looking for a reason that time travel couldn't exist, only to find the concept didn't contravene any laws of physics, eventually admitting "time travel may be possible, but it is not practical".

Plus, there's the fact that the history of time travel in our culture has frequently strayed into the non-fiction - so long as you're inclined to believe the possible crackpots that are discussing it - all of which adds up to some pretty compelling pieces of evidence that prove time travel is real.

Ten, in fact.

Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/