is time travel possible albert einstein

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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Time travel: Is it possible?

Science says time travel is possible, but probably not in the way you're thinking.

Albert Einstein's theory

• General relativity and GPS
• Wormhole travel
• Alternate theories

Science fiction

Is time travel possible? Short answer: Yes, and you're doing it right now — hurtling into the future at the impressive rate of one second per second. 

You're pretty much always moving through time at the same speed, whether you're watching paint dry or wishing you had more hours to visit with a friend from out of town. 

But this isn't the kind of time travel that's captivated countless science fiction writers, or spurred a genre so extensive that Wikipedia lists over 400 titles in the category "Movies about Time Travel." In franchises like " Doctor Who ," " Star Trek ," and "Back to the Future" characters climb into some wild vehicle to blast into the past or spin into the future. Once the characters have traveled through time, they grapple with what happens if you change the past or present based on information from the future (which is where time travel stories intersect with the idea of parallel universes or alternate timelines). 

Related: The best sci-fi time machines ever

Although many people are fascinated by the idea of changing the past or seeing the future before it's due, no person has ever demonstrated the kind of back-and-forth time travel seen in science fiction or proposed a method of sending a person through significant periods of time that wouldn't destroy them on the way. And, as physicist Stephen Hawking pointed out in his book " Black Holes and Baby Universes" (Bantam, 1994), "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."

Science does support some amount of time-bending, though. For example, physicist Albert Einstein 's theory of special relativity proposes that time is an illusion that moves relative to an observer. An observer traveling near the speed of light will experience time, with all its aftereffects (boredom, aging, etc.) much more slowly than an observer at rest. That's why astronaut Scott Kelly aged ever so slightly less over the course of a year in orbit than his twin brother who stayed here on Earth. 

Related: Controversially, physicist argues that time is real

There are other scientific theories about time travel, including some weird physics that arise around wormholes , black holes and string theory . For the most part, though, time travel remains the domain of an ever-growing array of science fiction books, movies, television shows, comics, video games and more. 

Einstein developed his theory of special relativity in 1905. Along with his later expansion, the theory of general relativity , it has become one of the foundational tenets of modern physics. Special relativity describes the relationship between space and time for objects moving at constant speeds in a straight line. 

The short version of the theory is deceptively simple. First, all things are measured in relation to something else — that is to say, there is no "absolute" frame of reference. Second, the speed of light is constant. It stays the same no matter what, and no matter where it's measured from. And third, nothing can go faster than the speed of light.

From those simple tenets unfolds actual, real-life time travel. An observer traveling at high velocity will experience time at a slower rate than an observer who isn't speeding through space. 

While we don't accelerate humans to near-light-speed, we do send them swinging around the planet at 17,500 mph (28,160 km/h) aboard the International Space Station . Astronaut Scott Kelly was born after his twin brother, and fellow astronaut, Mark Kelly . Scott Kelly spent 520 days in orbit, while Mark logged 54 days in space. The difference in the speed at which they experienced time over the course of their lifetimes has actually widened the age gap between the two men.

"So, where[as] I used to be just 6 minutes older, now I am 6 minutes and 5 milliseconds older," Mark Kelly said in a panel discussion on July 12, 2020, Space.com previously reported . "Now I've got that over his head."

General relativity and GPS time travel

The difference that low earth orbit makes in an astronaut's life span may be negligible — better suited for jokes among siblings than actual life extension or visiting the distant future — but the dilation in time between people on Earth and GPS satellites flying through space does make a difference. 

Read more: Can we stop time?

The Global Positioning System , or GPS, helps us know exactly where we are by communicating with a network of a few dozen satellites positioned in a high Earth orbit. The satellites circle the planet from 12,500 miles (20,100 kilometers) away, moving at 8,700 mph (14,000 km/h). 

According to special relativity, the faster an object moves relative to another object, the slower that first object experiences time. For GPS satellites with atomic clocks, this effect cuts 7 microseconds, or 7 millionths of a second, off each day, according to the American Physical Society publication Physics Central .  

Read more: Could Star Trek's faster-than-light warp drive actually work?

Then, according to general relativity, clocks closer to the center of a large gravitational mass like Earth tick more slowly than those farther away. So, because the GPS satellites are much farther from the center of Earth compared to clocks on the surface, Physics Central added, that adds another 45 microseconds onto the GPS satellite clocks each day. Combined with the negative 7 microseconds from the special relativity calculation, the net result is an added 38 microseconds. 

This means that in order to maintain the accuracy needed to pinpoint your car or phone — or, since the system is run by the U.S. Department of Defense, a military drone — engineers must account for an extra 38 microseconds in each satellite's day. The atomic clocks onboard don’t tick over to the next day until they have run 38 microseconds longer than comparable clocks on Earth.

Given those numbers, it would take more than seven years for the atomic clock in a GPS satellite to un-sync itself from an Earth clock by more than a blink of an eye. (We did the math: If you estimate a blink to last at least 100,000 microseconds, as the Harvard Database of Useful Biological Numbers does, it would take thousands of days for those 38 microsecond shifts to add up.) 

This kind of time travel may seem as negligible as the Kelly brothers' age gap, but given the hyper-accuracy of modern GPS technology, it actually does matter. If it can communicate with the satellites whizzing overhead, your phone can nail down your location in space and time with incredible accuracy. 

Can wormholes take us back in time?

General relativity might also provide scenarios that could allow travelers to go back in time, according to NASA . But the physical reality of those time-travel methods is no piece of cake. 

Wormholes are theoretical "tunnels" through the fabric of space-time that could connect different moments or locations in reality to others. Also known as Einstein-Rosen bridges or white holes, as opposed to black holes, speculation about wormholes abounds. But despite taking up a lot of space (or space-time) in science fiction, no wormholes of any kind have been identified in real life. 

Related: Best time travel movies

"The whole thing is very hypothetical at this point," Stephen Hsu, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oregon, told Space.com sister site Live Science . "No one thinks we're going to find a wormhole anytime soon."

Primordial wormholes are predicted to be just 10^-34 inches (10^-33 centimeters) at the tunnel's "mouth". Previously, they were expected to be too unstable for anything to be able to travel through them. However, a study claims that this is not the case, Live Science reported . 

The theory, which suggests that wormholes could work as viable space-time shortcuts, was described by physicist Pascal Koiran. As part of the study, Koiran used the Eddington-Finkelstein metric, as opposed to the Schwarzschild metric which has been used in the majority of previous analyses.

In the past, the path of a particle could not be traced through a hypothetical wormhole. However, using the Eddington-Finkelstein metric, the physicist was able to achieve just that.

Koiran's paper was described in October 2021, in the preprint database arXiv , before being published in the Journal of Modern Physics D.

Alternate time travel theories

While Einstein's theories appear to make time travel difficult, some researchers have proposed other solutions that could allow jumps back and forth in time. These alternate theories share one major flaw: As far as scientists can tell, there's no way a person could survive the kind of gravitational pulling and pushing that each solution requires.

Infinite cylinder theory

Astronomer Frank Tipler proposed a mechanism (sometimes known as a Tipler Cylinder ) where one could take matter that is 10 times the sun's mass, then roll it into a very long, but very dense cylinder. The Anderson Institute , a time travel research organization, described the cylinder as "a black hole that has passed through a spaghetti factory."

After spinning this black hole spaghetti a few billion revolutions per minute, a spaceship nearby — following a very precise spiral around the cylinder — could travel backward in time on a "closed, time-like curve," according to the Anderson Institute. 

The major problem is that in order for the Tipler Cylinder to become reality, the cylinder would need to be infinitely long or be made of some unknown kind of matter. At least for the foreseeable future, endless interstellar pasta is beyond our reach.

Time donuts

Theoretical physicist Amos Ori at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, proposed a model for a time machine made out of curved space-time — a donut-shaped vacuum surrounded by a sphere of normal matter.

"The machine is space-time itself," Ori told Live Science . "If we were to create an area with a warp like this in space that would enable time lines to close on themselves, it might enable future generations to return to visit our time."

Amos Ori is a theoretical physicist at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel. His research interests and publications span the fields of general relativity, black holes, gravitational waves and closed time lines.

There are a few caveats to Ori's time machine. First, visitors to the past wouldn't be able to travel to times earlier than the invention and construction of the time donut. Second, and more importantly, the invention and construction of this machine would depend on our ability to manipulate gravitational fields at will — a feat that may be theoretically possible but is certainly beyond our immediate reach.

Time travel has long occupied a significant place in fiction. Since as early as the "Mahabharata," an ancient Sanskrit epic poem compiled around 400 B.C., humans have dreamed of warping time, Lisa Yaszek, a professor of science fiction studies at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, told Live Science .  

Every work of time-travel fiction creates its own version of space-time, glossing over one or more scientific hurdles and paradoxes to achieve its plot requirements. 

Some make a nod to research and physics, like " Interstellar ," a 2014 film directed by Christopher Nolan. In the movie, a character played by Matthew McConaughey spends a few hours on a planet orbiting a supermassive black hole, but because of time dilation, observers on Earth experience those hours as a matter of decades. 

Others take a more whimsical approach, like the "Doctor Who" television series. The series features the Doctor, an extraterrestrial "Time Lord" who travels in a spaceship resembling a blue British police box. "People assume," the Doctor explained in the show, "that time is a strict progression from cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff." 

Long-standing franchises like the "Star Trek" movies and television series, as well as comic universes like DC and Marvel Comics, revisit the idea of time travel over and over. 

Related: Marvel movies in order: chronological & release order

Here is an incomplete (and deeply subjective) list of some influential or notable works of time travel fiction:

Books about time travel:

• Rip Van Winkle (Cornelius S. Van Winkle, 1819) by Washington Irving
• A Christmas Carol (Chapman & Hall, 1843) by Charles Dickens
• The Time Machine (William Heinemann, 1895) by H. G. Wells
• A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Charles L. Webster and Co., 1889) by Mark Twain
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Pan Books, 1980) by Douglas Adams
• A Tale of Time City (Methuen, 1987) by Diana Wynn Jones
• The Outlander series (Delacorte Press, 1991-present) by Diana Gabaldon
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Bloomsbury/Scholastic, 1999) by J. K. Rowling
• Thief of Time (Doubleday, 2001) by Terry Pratchett
• The Time Traveler's Wife (MacAdam/Cage, 2003) by Audrey Niffenegger
• All You Need is Kill (Shueisha, 2004) by Hiroshi Sakurazaka

Movies about time travel:

• Planet of the Apes (1968)
• Superman (1978)
• Time Bandits (1981)
• The Terminator (1984)
• Back to the Future series (1985, 1989, 1990)
• Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)
• Groundhog Day (1993)
• Galaxy Quest (1999)
• The Butterfly Effect (2004)
• 13 Going on 30 (2004)
• The Lake House (2006)
• Meet the Robinsons (2007)
• Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
• Midnight in Paris (2011)
• Looper (2012)
• X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
• Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
• Interstellar (2014)
• Doctor Strange (2016)
• A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
• The Last Sharknado: It's About Time (2018)
• Avengers: Endgame (2019)
• Tenet (2020)
• Palm Springs (2020)
• Zach Snyder's Justice League (2021)
• The Tomorrow War (2021)

Television about time travel:

• Doctor Who (1963-present)
• The Twilight Zone (1959-1964) (multiple episodes)
• Star Trek (multiple series, multiple episodes)
• Samurai Jack (2001-2004)
• Lost (2004-2010)
• Phil of the Future (2004-2006)
• Steins;Gate (2011)
• Outlander (2014-2023)
• Loki (2021-present)

Games about time travel:

• Chrono Trigger (1995)
• TimeSplitters (2000-2005)
• Kingdom Hearts (2002-2019)
• Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (2003)
• God of War II (2007)
• Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack In Time (2009)
• Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (2013)
• Dishonored 2 (2016)
• Titanfall 2 (2016)
• Outer Wilds (2019)

Additional resources

Explore physicist Peter Millington's thoughts about Stephen Hawking's time travel theories at The Conversation . Check out a kid-friendly explanation of real-world time travel from NASA's Space Place . For an overview of time travel in fiction and the collective consciousness, read " Time Travel: A History " (Pantheon, 2016) by James Gleik. 

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Ailsa is a staff writer for How It Works magazine, where she writes science, technology, space, history and environment features. Based in the U.K., she graduated from the University of Stirling with a BA (Hons) journalism degree. Previously, Ailsa has written for Cardiff Times magazine, Psychology Now and numerous science bookazines. 

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What Einstein and Bill Gates Teach Us About Time Travel

Time travel has long been a staple of science fiction books and movies. But will we ever be able to build a time machine and beam ourselves backward and forward in time in real life?

In some sense, of course, we’re all time travelers: We move forward in time from one minute to the next. But going back in time, whether to avoid some mistake or perhaps to repeat it, is something far more elusive. And for those who yearn to see what the world will look like a century or a millennium from now, the slow tick of your watch as time passes just doesn’t cut it.

The theoretical underpinnings of time travel date back to 1905, when Albert Einstein wrote down his special theory of relativity that showed space and time are intimately linked, and to 1916, when Einstein’s general theory of relativity showed that space and time are malleable — that is, they respond to the presence of matter or energy by warping, bending, expanding, and contracting. By extension, this means if one can imagine space being filled with some exotic form of energy, then space and time could warp in a way so that time, as well as space, could bend back upon themselves like circles, allowing one to move forward in a straight line and still return to one’s starting point in both space and time.

Related: Waves May Let Us See the Big Bang's Earliest Moments

But even after thinking about the time travel problem for more than a century, physicists haven’t advanced the ball very far. We recognize that while Einstein’s equations do allow for round-trip time travel (at least in principle), other physics considerations probably rule out creating the exotic forms of energy that would make it possible.

The first person to write down a mathematical solution of the general relativity equations that described an exotic type of space-time that might permit time travel was mathematician Kurt Gödel, a close colleague of Einstein’s at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. He presented his result in a scientific paper that he gave Einstein as a birthday present on his 70th birthday in 1949.

But just being able to determine that general relativity allows configurations of space and time in which forward or backward time travel is possible doesn’t mean those configurations can actually be created. Since general relativity implies that the configuration of space-time is determined by the nature of the matter and energy within it, one needs to determine whether it’s possible to create the appropriate type of matter and energy in the laboratory.

Is it possible? Probably not, but we don’t know for sure.

Perhaps the easiest way to understand the problem is to examine the simplest example of a theoretical time machine: a “wormhole” — essentially a shortcut through a curved space, like a tunnel under a mountain (or for our purposes here a tunnel connecting two distant points in space). That’s why I chose this example when discussing time travel two decades ago in my book "The Physics of Star Trek."

So imagine a wormhole one of its mouths moving through space in a big circle, at, say, 95 percent of the speed of light. Now, special relativity tells us that observers in relative motion experience time differently, such that — to a ground-based observer — clocks on a fast-moving rocket ship would tick more slowly than clocks on the ground.

Thus an observer riding on the wormhole’s mouth as it zooms through space might determine from his or her clock that the round-trip took a week. But an observer at the other end of the wormhole, at rest in the background space, would look at his clock and determine that the trip took, say, three years. If the second observer then moves through the wormhole and comes out the other end, he or she will arrive to meet his or her colleague at the other end — and discover that the time is now three years before he entered the wormhole in the first place!

Are wormholes possible in real life? The answer is … we don’t know! We do know that no stable wormholes can exist if the only forms of matter and energy are the ones we’ve been able to create in laboratories: In that case, each mouth of the wormhole would collapse to form a black hole in a time shorter than it would take to traverse the wormhole. But if it were possible to create some material with very peculiar characteristics — namely a material that was gravitationally repulsive — it might be able to hold a wormhole open against gravitational collapse. And that would bring time travel a step closer to reality.

All the evidence so far suggests that it is probably impossible for us to create such a material. Yet ultimately, it is the limitation of our understanding of general relativity, especially in the domain where quantum mechanical effects might be significant, that currently prohibits us from proving the impossibility of building a time machine.

In other words, time travel is not yet ruled out in our universe.

Even so, most physicists now working would bet against the possibility of time travel, not merely because of the practical difficulties of generating the necessary conditions to allow it but also because of the implications of time travel if it becomes possible.

Related: These ER Docs Invented a Real Star Trek Tricorder

For example, if were to go back in time and change the past, we would also change the future. This situation is a common plot twist of modern science fiction (including “Star Trek” and the film series “Back to the Future”). And it leads to a host of possible paradoxes, including what would happen if you went back in time and killed your grandmother before she gave birth to your mother. If your mother was never born, of course, then you would never have been born. But in that case, how did you go back in time and kill your grandmother in the first place?

One possible resolution of this paradox would be that the only kind of time travel allowed by the laws of physics is travel in which you are doomed to repeat the same sequence of events again and again, no matter how much you’d like to alter things. Time would travel in a circle instead of a straight line. As in the movie “Groundhog Day,” you would be doomed to repeat events for all eternity.

Traveling forward in time and returning also produces problems of the sort seen in “Back to the Future.” As I have pointed out previously, the fact that Bill Gates remains the richest person in the world argues against the existence of a forward-and-back time machine. For if you could jump forward even a single day and then return to the present time, within a year you could make investments in the stock market that would turn even a small sum into an astronomically large one. Gates’s mere $80 billion fortune would seem minuscule.

Related: Doomsday Clock Insider on How Worried We Should Be

My colleague Stephen Hawking once presented another interesting argument against the possibility of time travel. He said that if it were possible, then we would forever be inundated with tourists from the future. (I countered by saying maybe they all went back to the 1960s and no one noticed!)

As much as the idea of time travel runs counter to our common sense understanding of reality, the universe is the way it is, whether we like it or not. Even if time travel appears to present difficulties for such notions as causality, the history of physics has taught us that new discoveries force us to periodically modify our understanding of cherished notions.

The bottom line? While the possibility of time travel continues to tantalize physicists and laypeople alike, the odds are against it. And if time travel were shown to possible in principle, the amount of energy required to create the conditions for time travel would likely be greater than the total energy available on Earth. At least for the foreseeable future, time travel will remain the stuff of science fiction.

Lawrence M. Krauss is Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University. His most recent book is “The Greatest Story Ever Told. So Far: Why are We Here?” (Atria Books, 2017)

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Lawrence M. Krauss is Director of the Origins Project at Arizona State University, and the author, most recently, of The Greatest Story Ever Told… So Far (Atria Books, 2017)

Einstein's equation and time travel

How is Einstein's equation (Gμν = 8πG Tμν) actually applied? And how does it support the theory of time travel.

Many physicists refer to this as Einstein’s Equations (plural) because it's actually a set of several equations. The symbol Gμν denotes the "Einstein tensor," which is a measure of how much space-time is curving. The symbol Tμν denotes the "energy momentum tensor," which measures the density and flux of the energy and momentum of matter. The energy and momentum of matter causes space-time to curve in a way that is described by Einstein’s Equations. The curvature of space-time is what causes all the effects that we associate with "gravity."

There are many textbooks that explain how to apply Einstein’s Equations equations to various situations, but they require a very advanced background in physics and mathematics. I will therefore have to summarize things in words.

Before talking about time travel, let me first explain what a "world-line" is. Suppose that an object at a particular time is sitting at some particular point in space. At another time, it will be sitting at another point. Its locations at different times trace out a path through space-time, which is called the object’s world line. This path extends forward to points farther and farther in the future (until the object ceases to exist for some reason, at which point its world-line ends). But imagine that an object’s world-line bends around in a loop, so that at it arrives at a point in space-time where it had already been? For example, there may be a point on my world line that was me at my fifth birthday party at my parents’ home in New York City. Another point (farther along my world-line) is me now, aged 61, sitting in my office at the University of Delaware. If I continue farther and farther along my world line, might I end up again at my fifth birthday party in New York City in 1958? Could my five-year old self meet my much older self at that party? That is what most people mean by "time travel." In the jargon of physics, such a world line that bent around and intersected itself is called a "closed time-like loop" or "closed time-like curve."

The question is whether world-lines that are closed time-like loops are possible in the real world. It is comparatively easy to show that if space-time were not curved world-lines would definitely not be able to bend around to form closed time-like loops. But one might hope that gravity, by curving space-time, could bend some world-lines around to make closed loops. The way people have studied this question is to assume that Einstein’s equations correctly describe how the energy and momentum of matter curves space-time. Then they look for solutions of those equations where space-time curves in such a way as to make closed time-like loops possible, and therefore time-travel possible. No one has ever found such solutions. People have on occasion found what seemed to be such solutions, but on closer inspection it was found that when realistic conditions are imposed, no time travel is possible. An example is the Gödel Universe (or Gödel metric).

One kind of solution that would allow time travel is called a "Minkowski wormhole." A Minkowski wormhole would be like a tunnel that took you from one point in space-time to what seemed like a far distant point--a point far away in space, or in the past, or in the future. But people have shown that for a Minkowski wormhole to exist, there would have to be a type of matter whose energy and momentum were unlike any kind of matter ever seen and extremely unlikely to exist in the real world.

The great majority of experts believe that time travel is not allowed by the laws of physics. But no one has proved that rigorously. If you want to learn more, you could try to find discussions of closed time-like loops and Minkowski wormholes in books or on the internet.

-Stephen Barr

• General relativity

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Scientists Explain Why Time Travel Is Possible

March 6 -- In H.G. Wells' 1895 novel, The Time Machine, a radical scientist, weary from his travels to the future and back, warns his colleagues that his story will be difficult to believe.

"I don't mind telling you the story," the Time Traveler says to his friends. "But I can't argue … Most of it will sound like lying. So be it!"

The Time Traveler's story may have sounded outrageous to his colleagues, but today physicists think Wells was onto something. In fact, according to Albert Einstein's famous equation, E = mc ² , time travel is possible, at least in one direction. Going the other way — back to the past — presents a trickier challenge.

All About Einstein

This Friday, the stories of the Time Traveler, updated to suit a 21st century world, will once again be presented in a Dream Works and Warner Bros. Picture film, starring Guy Pearce. And, once again, the concept of time travel will seem far-fetched and improbable.

But physicists warn just because the feat may seem impossible, doesn't mean it is.

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"We have a hard time perceiving how time can bend just like other dimensions, so Einstein's predictions seem strange," said J. Richard Gott, author of the book Time Travel in Einstein's Universe and a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University. "But this appears to be the world we live in."

Part of the "strange" world that Einstein explained in 1905 in his theory of relativity is that time and space are joined in our universe as a four-dimensional fabric known as space-time. Stranger yet is the concept that both space and time warp as mass or speed is increased.

Travel fast and time moves more slowly. Increase the mass around you to near collapsible levels and you get the same effect.

The phenomenon has already been proven, albeit at minute scales.

Slowed Clocks, Younger Particles

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Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel through Time

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Sean Carroll; Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel through Time . Physics Today 1 July 2002; 55 (7): 60–61. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1506756

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Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel through Time   J. Richard   Gott  III   Houghton Mifflin , New York , 2001 . $25.00 ( 291 pp.). ISBN 0-395-95563-7 Google Scholar  

Nothing in the world is easier than traveling in time. Just wait five minutes, and you will have moved that far into the future. It is even possible to get there faster; according to special relativity, observers undergoing acceleration experience the passage of less time between two events than do observers in free fall.

The true excitement arises, however, with the possibility of traveling backward in time, a staple of science fiction. It is worth asking if such a journey is consistent with the laws of physics. In the absolute space-time of Newtonian mechanics, the answer is a definitive “No.” Newtonian time marches relentlessly forward.

In special relativity, however, the notion of time is somewhat more flexible; clocks carried along different paths can measure different elapsed time intervals. Even in such circumstances, however, travelers are still moving locally more slowly than light, and consequently moving inevitably into the future.

General relativity preserves this feature—local movement at speeds below that of light—as observers move along timelike paths. The curvature of space-time, however, introduces the possibility of deforming the global geometry to allow what are called “closed timelike curves,” paths that intersect themselves in the past. It is straightforward to find solutions to Einstein’s equations that contain closed timelike curves. As a simple example, take empty Minkowski space and identify all spatial points at time t 1 with the corresponding points at time t   2 , to produce a cylindrical space-time in which particles at rest move on timelike loops.

The notion of closed timelike curves in the real world is hard to reconcile with our intuitive understanding of causality. Perhaps one can find global solutions to general relativity incorporating closed timelike curves. These, in effect, would be time machines. But it may be impossible to construct such a system in a local region of space. Theorems along these lines were proved by Frank Tipler in the 1970s. Tipler assumed that the energy density was never negative and showed that closed timelike curves could never arise in a local region without also creating a singularity. This was reassuring, as we could hope that both the singularity and the closed timelike curves were hidden behind an event horizon (although this was not part of the proof).

Interest in time travel was reinvigorated a little over a decade ago by the discovery of new space-times containing closed timelike curves: a wormhole solution discovered by Michael Morris, Kip Thorne, and Ulvi Yurtsever, and a solution with two parallel cosmic strings discovered by J. Richard Gott. The wormhole space-time requires negative energy densities, while the closed timelike curves in the cosmic string space-time do not originate in a local region. Both solutions are therefore consistent with Tipler’s results, and these models spurred research into the possibility of time travel under more general conditions.

Gott’s new book, Time Travel in Einstein’s Universe , covers all this material in a readable way and at a popular level. As in recent books by Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Bantam Doubleday, 1988), Kip S. Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps (W. W. Norton, 1994), Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe (Perseus, 1997), and Brian Greene ( The Elegant Universe , W. W. Norton, 1999), Gott personalizes the narrative by combining scientific exposition with the story of his own research. This approach can (and does) result in an idiosyncratic survey of the material. But it seems perfectly appropriate for a book aimed at general readers, who will gain more from such an honest account of the workings of science than they might from a strictly objective recitation of the facts.

After two introductory sections, Gott devotes three sizable chapters to topics loosely connected by the theme of time travel: 1) the creation of closed timelike curves in general relativity, 2) the possibility that the universe might originate in closed timelike curves, and 3) prediction of the future through application of the Copernican principle (“We are not special”) to our relationship to the universe’s current conditions.

A second theme, describing work in cosmology that Gott carried out with Li-Xin Li, is an interesting take on the problem of the universe’s initial conditions, although their scenario is hard to evaluate without better knowledge of the early universe than we have. A third section describes an attempt to estimate the likely future duration of current conditions by presuming that we are observing them at a typical moment—neither in the first nor the last 2.5% of their lifetimes. As an example, the fact that the Internet is 33 years old leads us to predict, with 95% confidence, that it will last between another 10 months and another 1320 years. Such a level of precision is of little help to investors and planners; the method does, however, serve as a reality check against the temptation to extrapolate our current situation naively forward in time.

The test of a popular-level book is whether it will excite and educate the lay reader. The ideas discussed in this book are undoubtedly exciting and should appeal to a wide audience. The educational mission is less obviously fulfilled; Gott puts an effort into careful exposition, but he spends a great deal of time on issues unlikely to be of great public interest, such as the nature of various quantum vacuum states. I worry also that the initial explanation of the nature of space-time in special and general relativity was given short shrift; if readers do not fully follow the way time works in well-established contexts, it would be hard for them to understand the more exotic space-times.

Meanwhile, the question of what role closed timelike curves might play in the real universe remains embarassingly unclear. Very likely it will remain so until we achieve a fuller understanding of quantum gravity—or are visited by tourists from the future.

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Stephen Hawking’s final book suggests time travel may one day be possible – here’s what to make of it

Research Fellow in the Particle Cosmology Group, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham

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“If one made a research grant application to work on time travel it would be dismissed immediately,” writes the physicist Stephen Hawking in his posthumous book Brief Answers to the Big Questions . He was right. But he was also right that asking whether time travel is possible is a “very serious question” that can still be approached scientifically.

Arguing that our current understanding cannot rule it out, Hawking, it seems, was cautiously optimistic. So where does this leave us? We cannot build a time machine today, but could we in the future?

Let’s start with our everyday experience. We take for granted the ability to call our friends and family wherever they are in the world to find out what they are up to right now . But this is something we can never actually know. The signals carrying their voices and images travel incomprehensibly fast, but it still takes a finite time for those signals to reach us.

Our inability to access the “now” of someone far away is at the heart of Albert Einstein’s theories of space and time .

Light speed

Einstein told us that space and time are parts of one thing – spacetime – and that we should be as willing to think about distances in time as we are distances in space. As odd as this might sound, we happily answer “about two and half hours”, when someone asks how far Birmingham is from London. What we mean is that the journey takes that long at an average speed of 50 miles per hour.

Mathematically, our statement is equivalent to saying that Birmingham is about 125 miles from London. As physicists Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw write in their book Why does E=mc²? , time and distance “can be interchanged using something that has the currency of a speed”. Einstein’s intellectual leap was to suppose that the exchange rate from a time to a distance in spacetime is universal – and it is the speed of light.

The speed of light is the fastest any signal can travel, putting a fundamental limit on how soon we can know what is going on elsewhere in the universe. This gives us “causality” – the law that effects must always come after their causes. It is a serious theoretical thorn in the side of time-travelling protagonists. For me to travel back in time and set in motion events that prevent my birth is to put the effect (me) before the cause (my birth).

Now, if the speed of light is universal (in the vacuum of empty space), we must measure it to be the same – 299,792,458 metres per second – however fast we ourselves are moving. Einstein realised that the consequence of the speed of light being absolute is that space and time itself cannot be. And it turns out that moving clocks must tick slower than stationary ones.

If I were to fly off at incredible speed in a spaceship and return to Earth , less time would pass for me than it would for everyone I left behind. Everyone I returned to would conclude that my life had run as if in slow motion – I would have aged more slowly than them – and I would conclude that theirs had run as if in fast forward. The faster I travelled, the slower my clock would tick relative to clocks on Earth. And if I made the trip at the speed of light, I would return as if I had been frozen in time.

So what if we were to travel faster than light, would time run backwards as science fiction has taught us?

Unfortunately, it takes infinite energy to accelerate a human being to the speed of light, let alone beyond it. But even if we could , time wouldn’t simply run backwards. Instead, it would no longer make sense to talk about forward and backward at all. The law of causality would be violated and the concept of cause and effect would lose its meaning.

Einstein also told us that the force of gravity is a consequence of the way mass warps space and time . The more mass we squeeze into a region of space, the more spacetime is warped and the slower nearby clocks tick. If we squeeze in enough mass, spacetime becomes so warped that even light cannot escape its gravitational pull and a black hole is formed. And if you were to approach the edge of the black hole – its event horizon – your clock would tick infinitely slowly relative to those far away from it.

So could we warp spacetime in just the right way to close it back on itself and travel back in time?

The answer is maybe, and the warping we need is a traversable wormhole . But we also need to produce regions of negative energy density to stabilise it, and the classical physics of the 19th century prevents this. The modern theory of quantum mechanics , however, might not.

According to quantum mechanics, empty space is not empty. Instead, it is filled with pairs of particles that pop in and out of existence. If we can make a region where fewer pairs are allowed to pop in and out than everywhere else, then this region will have negative energy density.

However, finding a consistent theory that combines quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of gravity remains one of the biggest challenges in theoretical physics. One candidate, string theory (more precisely M-theory ) may offer up another possibility.

M-theory requires spacetime to have 11 dimensions: the one of time and three of space that we move in and seven more, curled up invisibly small. Could we use these extra spatial dimensions to shortcut space and time? Hawking, at least, was hopeful.

Saving history

So is time travel really a possibility? Our current understanding can’t rule it out, but the answer is probably no.

Einstein’s theories fail to describe the structure of spacetime at incredibly small scales. And while the laws of nature can often be completely at odds with our everyday experience, they are always self-consistent – leaving little room for the paradoxes that abound when we mess with cause and effect in science fiction’s take on time travel.

Despite his playful optimism, Hawking recognised that the undiscovered laws of physics that will one day supersede Einstein’s may conspire to prevent large objects like you and I from hopping casually (not causally) back and forth through time. We call this legacy his “ chronology protection conjecture ”.

Whether or not the future has time machines in store, we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that when we climb a mountain or speed along in our cars, we change how time ticks.

So, this “ pretend to be a time traveller day ” (December 8), remember that you already are, just not in the way you might hope.

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Time travel is a staple of science fiction stories, but is it actually possible? It turns out nature does allow a way of bending time, an exciting possibility suggested by Albert Einstein when he discovered special relativity over one hundred years ago. Colin Stuart imagines where (or, when) this fascinating phenomenon, time dilation, may one day take us.

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Traveling Backward in Time Is Kind of Hard

We already have the means to skip ahead in time, but going backward is a different wormhole

H. G. Wells published his first novel, The Time Machine , in 1895, just a few years before Queen Victoria's six-decade reign over the U.K. ended. An even more durable dynasty was also drawing to a close: the 200-year-old Newtonian era of physics. In 1905 Albert Einstein published his special theory of relativity, which upset Isaac Newton's applecart and, to Wells's presumed delight, allowed something that had been impossible under Newton's laws: time travel into the future. In Newton's universe, time was steady everywhere and everywhen; it never sped up or slowed down. But for Einstein, time was relative.

Time travel is not only possible, it has already happened, though not exactly as Wells imagined. The biggest time traveler to date is Sergei K. Krikalev, according to J. Richard Gott, an astrophysicist at Princeton University. Over the course of his long career, which began in 1985, the Russian cosmonaut spent a little over 803 days in space. As Einstein proved, time passes more slowly for objects in motion than for those at rest, so as Krikalev hurtled along at 17,000 miles an hour onboard the Mir space station, time did not flow at the same rate for him as it did on Earth. While Krikalev was in orbit, he aged 1/48 of a second less than his fellow earthlings. From another perspective, he traveled 1/48 of a second into the future.

The time-travel effect is much easier to see with longer distances and higher speeds. If Krikalev left Earth in 2015 and made a round-trip to Betelgeuse—a star that is about 520 light-years from Earth—at 99.995 percent the speed of light, by the time he returned to Earth he would be only 10 years older. Sadly, everyone he knew would be long dead because 1,000 years would have passed on Earth; it would be the year 3015. “Time travel to the future, we know we can do,” Gott says. “It's just a matter of money and engineering!”

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Jumping a few nanoseconds—or centuries—into the future is relatively straightforward, despite practical challenges. But going backward in time is harder. Einstein's special theory of relativity forbade it. After another decade of work, Einstein unveiled his general theory of relativity, which finally lifted that restriction. How someone would actually travel back in time, however, is a vexing problem because the equations of general relativity have many solutions. Different solutions assign different qualities to the universe—and only some of the solutions create conditions that permit time travel into the past.

Whether any of those solutions describes our own universe is an open question, which raises even more profound investigations: Just how much tweaking of fundamental physics would it take to allow backward time travel? Does the universe itself somehow prevent such journeys even if Einstein's equations do not rule them out? Physicists continue to speculate, not because they imagine time travel will ever be practical but because thinking about the possibility has led to some surprising insights about the nature of the universe we inhabit, including, perhaps, how it came to be in the first place.

A new way of looking at time

With his special theory of relativity, Einstein made time malleable in a way that must have pleased Wells, who presciently believed that we inhabit a universe in which three-dimensional space and time are knit together into a four-dimensional whole. Einstein arrived at his revolutionary results by exploring the implications of two fundamental ideas. First, he argued that even though all motion is relative, the laws of physics must look the same for everyone anywhere in the universe. Second, he realized that the speed of light must be similarly unchanging from all perspectives: if everyone sees the same laws of physics operating, they must also arrive at the same result when measuring the speed of light.

To make light a universal speed limit, Einstein had to jettison two commonsense notions: that all observers would agree on the measurement of a given length and that they would also agree on the duration of time's passage. He showed that a clock in motion, whizzing past someone at rest, would tick more slowly than a stationary clock at the person's side. And the length of a ruler moving swiftly by would shorten. Yet for anyone who was traveling at the same speed as the clock and ruler, the passage of time and the length of the ruler would appear normal.

At ordinary speeds, the time-and-space-distorting effects of special relativity are negligible. But for anything moving at a hefty fraction of the speed of light, they are very real. For example, many experiments have confirmed that the decay rate of unstable particles called muons slows by an order of magnitude when they are traveling at close to the speed of light. The speeding muons, in effect, are minuscule time travelers—subatomic Krikalevs—hopping a few nanoseconds into the future.

Gödel's strange universe

Those speedy clocks and rulers and muons are all racing forward in time. Can they be thrown into reverse? The first person to use general relativity to describe a universe that permits time travel into the past was Kurt Gödel, the famed creator of the incompleteness theorems, which set limits on the scope of what mathematics can and cannot prove. He was one of the towering mathematicians of the 20th century—and one of the oddest. His many foibles included a diet of baby food and laxatives.

Gödel presented this model universe as a gift to Einstein on his 70th birthday. The universe Gödel described to his skeptical friend had two unique properties: It rotated, which provided centrifugal force that prevented gravity from crunching together all the matter in the cosmos, creating the stability Einstein demanded of any cosmic model. But it also allowed for time travel into the past, which made Einstein deeply uneasy. In Gödel's cosmos, space travelers could set out and eventually reach a point in their own past, as if the travelers had completed a circuit around the surface of a giant cylinder. Physicists call these trajectories in spacetime “closed timelike curves.”

A closed timelike curve is any path through spacetime that loops back on itself. In Gödel's rotating cosmos, such a curve would circle around the entire universe, like a latitude line on Earth's surface. Physicists have concocted a number of different types of closed timelike curves, all of which allow travel to the past, at least in theory. A journey along any of them would be disappointingly ordinary, however: Through the portholes of your spaceship, you would see stars and planets—all the usual sights of deep space. More important, time—as measured by your own clocks—would tick forward in the usual way; the hands of a clock would not start spinning backward even though you would be traveling to a location in spacetime that existed in your past.

“Einstein was already aware of the possibility of closed timelike curves back in 1914,” says Julian Barbour, an independent theoretical physicist who lives near Oxford, England. As Barbour recalls, Einstein said, “My intuition strives most vehemently against this.” The curves' existence would create all kinds of problems with causality—how can the past be changed if it has already happened? And there is the hoary grandfather paradox: What happens to a time traveler who kills his or her grandfather before the grandfather meets the grandmother? Would the demented traveler ever be born?

Fortunately for fans of causality, astronomers have found no evidence that the universe is rotating. Gödel himself apparently pored over catalogs of galaxies, looking for clues that his theory might be true. Gödel might not have devised a realistic model of the universe, but he did prove that closed timelike curves are completely consistent with the equations of general relativity. The laws of physics do not rule out traveling to the past.

An annoying possibility

Over the past few decades cosmologists have used Einstein's equations to construct a variety of closed timelike curves. Gödel conjured an entire universe that allowed them, but more recent enthusiasts have warped spacetime only within parts of our universe.

In general relativity, planets, stars, galaxies and other massive bodies warp spacetime. Warped spacetime, in turn, guides the motions of those massive bodies. As the late physicist John Wheeler put it, “Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.” In extreme cases, spacetime might bend enough to create a path from the present back to the past.

Physicists have proposed some exotic mechanisms to create such paths. In a 1991 paper, Gott showed how cosmic strings—infinitely long structures thinner than an atom that may have formed in the early universe—would allow closed timelike curves where two strings intersected. In 1983 Kip S. Thorne, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology, began to explore the possibility that a type of closed timelike curve called a wormhole—a kind of tunnel joining two different locations in spacetime—might allow for time travel into the past. “In general relativity, if you connect two different regions of space, you're also connecting two different regions of time,” says Sean M. Carroll, a colleague of Thorne's at Caltech.

The entrance into a wormhole would be spherical—a three-dimensional entrance into a four-dimensional tunnel in spacetime. As is the case with all closed timelike curves, a trip through a wormhole would be “like any other journey,” Carroll says. “It's not that you disappear and are reassembled at some other moment of time. There is no respectable theory where that kind of science-fiction time travel is possible.” For all travelers, he adds, “no matter what they do, time flows forward at one second per second. It's just that your local version of ‘forward’ might be globally out of sync with the rest of the universe.”

Although physicists can write equations that describe wormholes and other closed timelike curves, all the models have serious problems. “Just to get a wormhole in the first place, you need negative energy,” Carroll says. Negative energy is when the energy in a volume of space spontaneously fluctuates to less than zero. Without negative energy, a wormhole's spherical entrance and four-dimensional tunnel would instantaneously implode. But a wormhole held open by negative energy “seems to be hard, probably impossible,” Carroll says. “Negative energies seem to be a bad thing in physics.”

Even if negative energy kept a wormhole open, just when you would be on the verge of turning that into a time machine, “particles would be moving through the wormhole, and every particle would loop back around an infinite number of times,” Carroll says. “That leads to an infinite amount of energy.” Because energy deforms spacetime, the entire thing would collapse into a black hole—an infinitely dense point in spacetime. “We're not 100 percent sure that that happens,” Carroll says. “But it seems to be a reasonable possibility that the universe is actually preventing you from making a time machine by making a black hole instead.”

Unlike black holes, which are a natural consequence of general relativity, wormholes and closed timelike curves in general are completely artificial constructs—a way of testing the bounds of the theory. “Black holes are hard to avoid,” Carroll says. “Closed timelike curves are very hard to make.”

Even if wormholes are physically implausible, it is significant that they fit in with the general theory of relativity. “It's very curious that we can come so close to ruling out the possibility of time travel, yet we just can't do it. I also think that it's annoying,” Carroll says, exasperated that Einstein's beautiful theory might allow for something so seemingly implausible. But by contemplating that annoying possibility, physicists may gain a better understanding of the kind of universe we live in. And it may be that if the universe did not permit backward time travel, it never would have come into existence.

Did the universe create itself?

General relativity describes the universe on the largest scales. But quantum mechanics provides the operating manual for the atomic scale, and it offers another possible venue for closed timelike curves—one that gets at the origin of the universe.

“On a very small scale—10–30 centimeter—you might expect the topology of spacetime to fluctuate, and random fluctuations might give you closed timelike curves if nothing fundamental prevents them,” says John Friedman, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Could those quantum fluctuations somehow be magnified and harnessed as time machines? “There's certainly no formal proof that you can't have macroscopic closed timelike curves,” Friedman says. “But the community of people who have looked at these general questions would bet pretty heavily against it.”

There is no doubt that the creation of a loop in spacetime on either a quantum scale or a cosmic one would require some very extreme physics. And the most likely place to expect extreme physics, Gott says, is at the very beginning of the universe.

In 1998 Gott and Li-Xin Li, an astrophysicist now at Peking University in China, published a paper in which they argued that closed timelike curves were not merely possible but essential to explain the origin of the universe. “We investigated the possibility of whether the universe could be its own mother—whether a time loop at the beginning of the universe would allow the universe to create itself,” Gott says.

Gott and Li's universe “starts” with a bout of inflation—just as in standard big bang cosmology, where an all-pervasive energy field drove the universe's initial expansion. Many cosmologists now believe that inflation gave rise to countless other universes besides our own. “Inflation is very hard to stop once it gets started,” Gott says. “It makes an infinitely branching tree. We're one of the branches. But you have to ask yourself, Where did the trunk come from? Li-Xin Li and I said it could be that one of the branches just loops around and grows up to be the trunk.”

A simple two-dimensional sketch of Gott and Li's self-starting universe looks like the number “6,” with the spacetime loop at the bottom and our present-era universe as the top stem. A burst of inflation, Gott and Li theorized, allowed the universe to escape from the time loop and expand into the cosmos we inhabit today.

It is difficult to contemplate the model, but its main appeal, Gott says, is that it eliminates the need for creating a universe out of nothing. Yet Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University, Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge and James Hartle of the University of California, Santa Barbara, have proposed models in which the universe does indeed arise out of nothing. According to the laws of quantum mechanics, empty space is not really empty but is filled with “virtual” particles that spontaneously pop into and out of existence. Hawking and his colleagues theorized that the universe burst into being from the same quantum-vacuum stew. But in Gott's view, the universe is not made out of nothing; it is made out of something—itself.

A cosmic chess game

For now, there is no way to test whether any of those theories might actually explain the origin of the universe. The famed physicist Richard Feynman compared the universe to a great chess game being played by the gods. Scientists, he said, are trying to understand the game without knowing the rules. We watch as the gods move a pawn one space forward, and we learn a rule: pawns always move one space forward. But what if we never saw the opening of a game, when a pawn can move two spaces forward? We might also assume, mistakenly, that pawns always remain pawns—that they never change their identity—until we see a pawn transformed into a queen. “You would say that's against the rules,” Gott says. “You can't change your pawn into a queen. Well, yes, you can! You just never saw a game that extreme before. Time-travel research is like that. We're testing the laws of physics by looking at extreme conditions. There's nothing logically impossible about time travel to the past; it's just not the universe we're used to.” Turning a pawn into a queen could be part of the rules of relativity.

Such wildly speculative ideas may be closer to philosophy than to physics. But for now, quantum mechanics and general relativity—powerful, counterintuitive theories—are all we have to figure out the universe. “As soon as people start trying to bring quantum theory and general relativity into this, the first thing to say is that they really have no idea what they're doing,” says Tim Maudlin, a philosopher of science at New York University. “It's not really rigorous mathematics. It's one piece of mathematics that sort of looks like general relativity and another little piece of mathematics that sort of looks like quantum theory, mixed together in some not entirely coherent way. But this is what people have to do because they honestly don't know how to go forward in a way that makes sense.”

Will some future theory eliminate the possibility of time travel into the past? Or will the universe again turn out to be far stranger than we imagine? Physics has advanced tremendously since Einstein redefined our understanding of time. Time travel, which existed only in the realm of fiction for Wells, is now a proved reality, at least in one direction. Is it too hard to believe that some kind of symmetry exists in the universe, allowing us to travel backward in time? When I put the question to Gott, he replies with an anecdote:

“There's a story where Einstein was talking to a guy. The guy pulled a notebook out and scribbled something down. Einstein says, ‘What's that?’ The guy says, ‘A notebook. Whenever I have a good idea, I write it down.’ Einstein says, ‘I've never had any need for a notebook; I've only had three good ideas.’”

Gott concludes: “I think we're waiting for a new good idea.”

Time travel is possible, but it’s a one-way ticket

Chenoa van den Boogaard , Physics and Astronomy editor

The ability to travel through time, whether it is to fix a mistake in the past or gain insight into the future, has long been embraced by science fiction and debated by theoretical physicists. While the debate continues over whether travelling into the past is possible, physicists have determined that travelling to the future most certainly is. And you don’t need a wormhole or a DeLorean to do it.

Real-life time travel occurs through time dilation, a property of Einstein’s special relativity . Einstein was the first to realize that time is not constant, as previously believed, but instead slows down as you move faster through space.

As part of his theory, Einstein re-envisioned space itself. He coined the phrase “spacetime,” fusing the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time into a single term. Instead of treating space as a flat and rigid place that holds all the objects in the universe, Einstein thought of it as curved and malleable, able to form gravitational dips around masses that pull other objects in, just as a bowling ball placed in the centre of a trampoline would cause any smaller object placed on the trampoline to slide towards the centre.

A computer-generated representation of Einstein’s curved spacetime. The Earth creates a gravitational dip in the fabric of spacetime which is deepest at its core. Courtesy and © of NASA

The closer an object gets to the centre of the dip, the faster it accelerates. The centre of the Earth’s gravitational dip is located at the Earth’s core, where gravitational acceleration is strongest. According to Einstein’s theory, because time moves more slowly as you move faster through space, the closer an object is to the centre of the Earth, the slower time moves for that object.

This effect can be seen in GPS satellites, which orbit 20,200 kilometres above the Earth’s surface. These satellites have highly precise clocks onboard that gain an average of 38 microseconds per day due to time dilation. While this time gain seems insignificant, GPS satellites rely on their onboard clocks to maintain precise global positioning. Running 38 microseconds fast would result in a positioning error of nearly 10 kilometres, an error that would increase daily if the time difference were not constantly corrected.

A more dramatic example of time dilation can be seen in the movie Interstellar when Matthew McConaughey and his crew land on a planet with an extreme gravitational field caused by a nearby black hole. Because of the black hole’s intense gravitational influence, time slows dramatically for the crew on the planet, making one hour on the surface equal to seven years on Earth. This is why, when the crew returns to Earth, Matthew McConaughey’s daughter is an old woman while he appears to be the same age as when he left.

So why hasn’t humanity succeeded in making such drastic leaps forward in time? The answer to this question comes down to velocity. In order for humanity to send a traveller years into the future, we would either have to take advantage of the intense gravitational acceleration caused by black holes or send the traveller rocketing into space at close to the speed of light (about 1 billion km/h). With our current technology , jumping a few microseconds into the future is all humans can manage.

But if technology one day allows us to send a human into the future by travelling close to the speed of light, would there be any way for the traveller to use time dilation to return to the past and report her findings? “Interstellar travel reaching close to the speed of light might be possible,” says Dr. Jaymie Matthews , professor of astrophysics at the University of British Columbia, “[but] this voyage is one way into the future, not back to the past.”

If we can’t use time dilation to return to the past, does this mean that the past is forever inaccessible? Perhaps not. Einstein proposed that time travel into the past could be achieved through an Einstein-Rosen bridge, a type of wormhole. Wormholes are theoretical areas of spacetime that are warped in a way that connects two distant points in space.

A visualization of a wormhole: The fabric of spacetime curves back upon itself, forming a bridge between two distant locations. Image by Panzi , CC-BY 3.0

Einstein’s equations suggested that this bridge in space could hypothetically connect two points in time instead if it were stable enough. “At the moment, even an Einstein-Rosen bridge cannot [be used to] go back in the past because it doesn’t live long enough – it is not stable,” Matthews explains.

“Even if it was stable, it [requires] other physics, which we don’t have. Hypothetical particles and states of matter that have “exotic” physical properties that would violate known laws of physics, such as a particle having a negative mass. That is why “wormholes” are only science fiction.”

While it would be fascinating to travel back in time to see the dinosaurs or to meet Albert Einstein and show him the reality of time travel, perhaps it is best if the past remains untouched. Travelling to the past invites the possibility of making an alteration that could destroy the future. For example, in Back to the Future , Marty McFly travels to the past and inadvertently prevents his parents from meeting each other, nearly preventing his own existence. But if he had undone his own existence, how could he have travelled back in time in the first place?

Marty’s adventures are a variation of the grandfather paradox: what happens if you go back in time and kill your grandfather before your father is conceived? If you are successful, how is it possible that you’re alive to kill your grandfather in the first place?

A recent study at the University of Queensland may have the answer to this baffling paradox. In this study, the researchers prove mathematically that paradox-free time travel is possible, showing that the universe will self-correct to avoid inconsistencies. If this is true, then even if we could travel back in time, we would never be able to alter events to create a different future.

While these new findings are enlightening, there appears to be more evidence that, although time dilation can allow us to glimpse the future, we will never be able to visit the past. As the late Stephen Hawking said in his book Black Holes and Baby Universes , “The best evidence we have that time travel [into the past] is not possible, and never will be, is that we have not been invaded by hordes of tourists from the future.”

Banner image by Alex Lehner, CC BY 2.0

240 thoughts on “ Time travel is possible, but it’s a one-way ticket ”

How do I go about time travel? what do I need how do I get those required things?

Very large ring magnets and some mathematics and will to see it in reality.

How about a sphere magnet ship…

hoe about 3d time and hemi synch or portals augmented reality,power of suggestion..drugs pcp binural tones frequency amplitude .virtual computing ie.

I’m a time traveling tourist, Stephen Hawking was wrong.

Time is simply a measurement of space under the amount given its mass and the amount of light and dark in which governs its mass in a 4dimensional reality step outside of the force in which permenates its flow one would reside there would be no past present or future there be a fixed permance of a constant here and now and so ok then what is to come.

Very well explained article !!

But I think if physics says time travel can be possible then it’s definitely possible. Considering not to go back to your childhood and fix things but rather can go to the past but as invisible person to them. So that,

No actions by you would impact your future.

Regards, Kirankumar DR

Tell me more

Yes.. I wish I can do this too 🙂

We will understand it better, by and by…

I have a theory for warp speed, but nasa would have to put it to the test…check my Facebook

I am reading for this drive , i am ready , without think my life safe or not

@Ravi chandila English translation please?

Please someone help me I just want to send a message to myself in my past.,to get the love of my life, he never revealed to me his feelings now my life is ruined by the decision of my elders Please help me, it’s question of my life and death. Nazneen

Is time travel machine is their, if the time travel machine is true can it move to the past . To bring back my lost life

That’s the problem you know.. it is not there that’s why we aren’t able to travel time..and yes it it will be built then you will be able to do so…..

damn my life is also lost and broken but still no one can give a time machine for free

DO NOT change the future. That’s why people like you couldn’t go. One wrong person to ruin it for the rest of us

On the point of time reversal, it is evidently impossible. The Uncertainty Principle prohibits spacetime reversal. The Universe is unable to remember its past (as a consequence of the Uncertainty Principle), therefore the Universe cannot reorganise itself.

Can I have to go on my past with another time travel it is a possible when just tell me about one thing that can I have to go in my past one year

we dont need magnets.we need a strong gravitational force to warp spacetime allowing us to travel through with speed of sound or speed of light or faster.we need to learn how to control such force carefully or it could be lethal.gravity slows down time.but it can theoratically work both ways.if we can reverse the gravity’s natural reaction we could speed up a spacecraft faster than light(its all relative(and theoratical))

I WAS ACTUALLY JUST THINKING THE SAME THINFG BEFORE READING YOUR PIECE. VERY WELL EXPLAINED, AND IT DOES MAKE ALOT OF SENSE. WELL DONE.

oh and I forgot to add it can be the key to look into the universe and also travelling time(theoratical).speed and gravity are the key to the universe(theory not proved)

All you really need is a crystal diode with 16 sides, a large pain of glass, and a frequency transmitter near a bathtub full of ice cold water….if you reach the right frequency you can travel through time forward and reverse…

Magnetized metal(VCR Reading Head), to read time out of the Magnetosphere all around earth. The Magnetosphere kills 2 birds with one stone- it protects earth and it records human time:

Mystery solved and I will explain, I was in a coma 3 months and I experienced things, I traveled time forward and backward, it is not a one way ticket. Movies and songs are recorded on magnetic tape in a VCR tape Cartridge or Cassette tape,   Magnetic tape recording works by converting electrical signals into magnetic energy, which imprints a record of the signal onto a moving tape covered in magnetic particles.   3D life on earth(a movie), and the Magnetosphere all around earth coming from the core of earth(MAGNETIC ACTIVITY) without Atom Made Tape, is like a movie on magnetic Atom made tape in a VCR tape cartridge. Revolution and Rotation is the motor(VCR).

This is why people have those freaky Deji’vu feelings like they have lived this before, BECAUSE YOU HAVE, and how people can be psychic, and how there is Prophecy in the Bible. When a person dies, their Spirit- MIND(Thoughts, Feelings, Urges(Physical and mental personality)) breaks out of human body- a stopped heart is what releases the spirit from the human body. Then the Soul(Life) with the memory of your existence in it breaks out of spirit and goes back to your birthday with a erased memory, meanwhile your spirit goes back in time to when you were a teenager starting the mental puberty, maturity from that adult spirit you died with in last life.In that old movie Star Wars or maybe it was the Empire Strikes Back, there is a scene where Princess Laya plays like a 3D movie, that is EXACTLY how its of life on earth.

Mr Snow, I believe you as I have seen it too. As humans we have deep knowledge of things we cannot rationally explain but you have done a great job here.

I thought that Analogy would be a better and easier way to explain, or in a picture of the earth from far out in space with the atmosphere around it looks like a DVD disk and the earth being the center sticker but is in 3D.

Actually you are on to several things here. I have also had the infusion of knowledge that also had to do with comparing life to recorded movies and music. I know you were using it to explain your theory, but I do think there is something there, I always have. When you watch a movie you are seeing the past. Why can’t you somehow use a recording as a base to go back into? I agree with everything you said here, and it’s worth looking into.

Jeffrey, very interesting idea!! Could be something to that. As far as your coma experiences, I think there are things we just do not understand and are nearly impossible to explain. Perhaps time IS like a video tape, or a DVD? Magnetism is one of the forces of nature. I too have had some odd experiences that suggest that we are able to perceive things beyond our five known senses.

I think if you have had a near death experience, such as being in a coma, then you have experienced the powerful hallucinations provided by the chemical substance DMT which your body creates naturally in times of extreme trauma, but also found in most plants and used recreationally by some who are brave enough and into that kind of thing. Your theory is interesting, but completely unproven and as far as I know untested. If things were so simple, I’m sure many scientists would have already thought of such an idea and tested it.

How do I travel through time

Be alive and live life to the fullest is the best way to travel through time ! OR Befriend grey aliens../ They may hold the key to the sum of all knowledge in the universe..

Sounds good will it work

Really log vaps mil sakte hau h kya

Can you plz explain I didn’t get it

You dont first all you are not experienced in the field of the space time continum and you could you upset the already fragile and multitude of alternate realitys that have looping due irresponsible ones who somehow gotten the technology causing another altered time frame there are a disarray multiple reality which are looping in earths 4dimensonal time frame time traveling is not for a vacation or just to get a joy ride its a serious and complex reality not be joked about it is a real thing and certain individual have are upset the balance of earths original time zone note now the gaurdians of this region of milky way the galatic order of the light keepers Angelic gaurdians of the (names with held)are working over time ooh nice pun (over TIME) ha wow to restore Earth back to a original time continum

Who said I want a joy ride, my life is devastated even my kids are suffering, I want to commit suicide but can’t leave my kids back, Being captive for most of my life, if my life is changed nothing will be disturbed, only thing happens is 3 life’s will be saved. And more so over I don’t want to travel I just want to send a message to myself in my past plz on the date of 30th May 1996. My life is ruined plz help me, it was my dad,brother, sister who pushed me into the dungeon and my husband and his family took over the charge of torturing me. Nazneen

I want to go back in time and tell my 5 year old self to burn the creepy dolls that my mom bought cause there is demons in it at the same time I will kidnap and torture my dad right now go back in time and show the younger version of my dad show him what will happen to his future self if he don’t get rid of those possessed objects and keeps letting my mom buy those antiques I’m 18 now I’m single no girlfriend no friend alone nothing very depressed too and I try to remember the positive things that happened in my life which there aren’t many tho but the demons keep squeezing my memory brain and my mom keeps on making so much loud noise including her damn mouth I have attempted to burn the demonic dolls but I only burned them for a minute or two with gas cause I was worried I might accidentally set my whole neighborhood on fire but then my mom threw it all in the recycle instead of the trash so the demons just keep bothering me its driving me nuts he he.

Access to a Quantum Computer Network on the web would be a good start. A series of ChatBots and webhook sites strategically placed in not only space, but in time. A series of algorithms and I think information can be transferred backwards to ones self…

How do we know that there are no horde of tourists among ourselves?

How do we know we’re all not tourists?

We’re all time travelers. We all travel into the future daily. 1 second at a time. Lol…

Agreed! I had the same thought!

Excellent question

If is possible, I would like to go back to: January the 1st 1975 & relive the 70’s as I prefer that decade to the awful one I am facing now, Back then We had more police our streets & left our front doors open, Those days were far much more better .

https://3netra.co.in/61-2/

Please do comment on my blog post regarding time travel

how about you ask the flash to help you

I need the time travel so I’m fails so many times i love time travel i have to go fast and future so i have no idea im travel is a my dream so my dream solution plz say me i have time travel so please help me someone please…..

I think you are over reacting

When we look at the stars now it is what they looked like years ago so what if we go to the stars and look down?

You cant go to the stars. It will just take billions and billions of years to go even to the next nearest star than our Sun- proxima centuri. Sorry to say, but do you think that you will be alive all those years??

You can do that without going to the stars… our planet reflects light as well thus making it visible from other parts of the universe…. has the word “reflection” crossed your mind ? 😉

Contact me on my hangout I will help you [email protected]

bro just time travel its not that hard

Please help me to time travel, can I see myself when I go back in time like Harmaini sees herself in Harry potter?? Or can I send messages to myself I know the particular date when to send. It’s not the mistake I had done in my past but it was done by my father and brother who are safe, happy enjoying their lives,my life is totally ruined Please help me. Nazneen

I want to go back in time to save my wife .it was a bad mastake she died .that could be changed i need to go back and save her. Please help me.yours gordon sutcliffe

Would love to hear more how it’s possible, as I am really so desperate to go back in time. I lost my wife 6mons back because of COVID and I will do the impossible things to make it happen.

DMT Experience

what is that?

Dmt experience. Time travel, out of body and sometimes superhuman capabilities.

Jump into a black hole

We have to lose something(the past) to gain something(the future) in time travel.Time cannot be played with.Am I correct.

you need to have d e t e r m i n a t i o n

Time machine is possible

speeder than light LOL

speeder than light cuz if the light break it limits it will move backward in time

Don’t Just don’t disturb the past

I want to go back in time and see my dad. I miss him.

mee too raina I lost my father the day before you posted the comment 18th may, crap it hurts me so much. I would rather die to bring those moments back….

Everything is connected . Time isn’t real .

It is universe we travel to and not a time line in one universe

Ask trump….Mandela effect…. dmt 5th dimension

u need an X-WING starfighter and a lightsaber to fight the knights at past and a R2-B2 to track

The fact that no one has time travelled to the past is the proof that time travelling will NEVER exist.

Others have. Portals open most of the time. Example: Miami Fl. Magnetic Material gets bombarded by the sun. Which fractures and formed portals within that area. Ley lines can lead to the portals of travel within miami for just to start. One can laugh or wonder if. In my experience jumping for the better the word of it (Movie Jumper) can be done. You can either Teleport or Time Travel. Our sun open these portals everyday. The best time when Sun spots start to emerge. All that electrons traveling at light speed is enough to rupture our magnetic fields on Earth. You will return of course. Like water on a lake or an ocean time will corrects itself. Your inner clock is your ticket back home. With a little math,fourth dimensional thinking,a magnetic meter, the right location,history research and luck. You may get to expirence it. First clue….cold spots…it may not be a ghost.

Plz can you help me please help me you can save my life

I wish I could help you, I can sense your sufferings.

You need a bag of hyperlink modules to start, then nuclear beepbeep gatangas, when you have that come back here and I will tell you what you need next.

You need high voltage beepbeep gatangas and a large broonasic magnet of about 450 Gauss, come back here when you have these and I will tell you the rest.

you need an old fashioned police box

If you rotate the center of the earth in the opposite direction, then the whole earth can be moved back in time, on the other hand, if you move the center of the earth and change its position by separating it from the part of the earth, then you will be able to time correctly. Let’s reach the other side.

How I could time travel any time travel machines inverted

give audition in the flash series..

I think that to go back in time you’d to travel faster than the speed of light since time stops at the speed of light but if you wanted to go back to say mlk’s assassination you would need to go at least 10 times the speed of light

You don’t want to, the moment you wrote that message is a historical point in time.

When time travel is possible, you should d̵͔̮͉̣̯̳͌i̩͒̍̆͟ͅs͎̲̖͙̺ͬ̽̊͆͢r̖̹͆͂̚͘ê̛̫̪̱͇̘̩ͬg̖͉̤͚ͭͣ̊̌͜a̯̗͚̬͍̱̦͑͂͒͡ṟ̝ͦ͗͘d͋҉̪̖̥͔̟̟͚̻ ͎̬ͧ̔́i̧͚̫̻̇ͮͫ̆t̩̻͉̩̘̰̠̫̓̂̕ ̦̻̳̦̉͆̊̇̀i̴̗͍̞͙͇ͣ̈́mͦ̑ͦ̚͏͚̜̬̹̘̟̭m̱͕̻͇̮̠̰̼ͫ̌͆͡e̢͈̜̱ͩd̵̦͙͔̭̹̃̿̈̚ͅi̛̖̬͓͚̩̝̗ͯa̦͎̭̣̭̘͔͙̅̏́ṯ̴̟ͥ̀͗e̵͎̭͓̟͗ͨ̂͒l̼͕͕ͦͦ͜y̸͙̯̺̘͉ͣ,͈̻͙̭̺̘̞̑ͫ͜ ͔̗̣͒͜d̶͇͚͉̦̞̗͛̍o̞̮̻̲̜̠̒ͩ̈́̀ͅ ̲̙̦̮̺̉́͂̏̀ṋ̞͖̌͠o̬͕̯̩͓̮̫̝͛ͩ̐͛͜t̼̙̿͊͆̕ ̲͚̲̬̦̗̐̀m̢̹̜̭̠̬͗̆ͣą̲̺̻͈̹͎̈́̇̉͛ǩ̜̪̱̀e̜̳͔͉̣͓̓͗͘ ̉҉̲̞̘͈ͅc̴̦̣̝͇͈̙̋ͥ́o̫͇͇̘̻̠̹͎ͯ̀n̺̹̣̦̔̇̾͢t͚̹͚̙̞̪̗̺̄͂͜a̞̗̖̻̩͉̋͛̆͘c͙̙̎͘t̻̠̣͉̹̠̣̲̐ͧͩ̈́̕ ̶͕̗̬̿w͓̞͍̹̰͖͉ͦ͐͡i͎̞̾ͦ̃̈́̕t̜̺̖̭̍ͦ͞h͙̰̬̖͎̰͛̇ͮͫ͡ ͣͯ͏͕̻͚̹̺ā̱̙̝̦̤̼̥͡n̶͔̜ͥ͆̌̋y̷͓̻̺̺͉͇̻ͨọ̱͙̜̈́̉ͣ̔͟ņ̦̟͔̜̫̗̒ͬe̡͕̮̓͂̚ ̡͓̘͚̭̹͔̉͐͋̽t̖͍͚̝̬͈̝͌͋͘ͅẖ̗̖͚̼͔͕͆̓̾͜a͈̣͍͕͍̋ͦͩͭ͢t̖̪̤̳͎̱̏͡ ̛̻̠̼̬̓ͫl̶̞̤̣͔̗͔̂ͅö̹̞̦̖͚̫̜̱́ͯ͠o̧̯̱̪̓ͮ̋k͉͎̝̻̓ͧ̕s̤͈̪̍͟ ̤̞̳͔̝̪̟̹̔̂ͨ͜h̛̝̲̰̻͗̅̏̃u̜̙͐̇̈͝m̧̞̮̟̦̳̟̊a̸͓̺̲̼̜͊͛̐n̶̳̮̒.͇̻͚͓̳̺̜̱͋ͬ͗ͩ͢

It’s Close I can feel it

Yes it becomes a history but my life also in the past changes and the present also with it. The way I’m suffering from the pain and want to end my life I’m 100% sure at least sure no one around me is or was as hopeless and horrible as my hubby I’m devastated I really want to send a message to my past it may not start but it will definitely change. I was forced, not given any option, my father and brother gave me wrong information and had no concerns for me. It was just survival for me. I repent for not killing myself when I had time, but now if I have a chance why not. Now when I’m out of my marriage I come to know a guy then had feelings for me, was madly in love and wanted to ask for my hand, now I want to inform my self and change everything plz help me.

I too would like to go back in time. I just wish he lived a happy eternal life. I would just like to repeat to come back in 2020.

I heard from a guy in Idaho that time travel is possible. You’ll need to go online and purchase a pogo stick looking device and make sure not to forget the crystals.

I think u need a black-hole-proof spaceship, go to the centre, escape the black hole and viola! You are now in the past. If you can’t escape, then you’d travel to a time where that black hole didn’t exist.

Believe me you time travel! If not physically then you do mentally,like you through dreams.

Though they sale it online, it would not take the chance. It is as simple as beating the speed of light and having some system to send you to the time you want. Time however is not real, and were just traving universes. It will all be in the open in 2028 according to other travelers.

All you need base on how to travel to time is very simple but had to find firstly find a way to get to space through a space rocket secondly find a very perfect consifigration for traveling to tiTme then find a very fast rocket that could create a form of force reaction in space in order yo enable fast speed in space for the break through of non gravity in space and make sure that while doing all you activities is not far away from planet and not also to close to planet earth and make sure that you are with wristwatchs whose time is set disame then you can to the future

Man you can get all you need for too build a time machine in your local store man, man I sure wished I’d kept mine but it frightened the heck off me man, sometimes when I fart I find a grape in my pants

time travel is a fake, baseless and delusional idea. If you believe in that crap then tell us if we are living in the future or in the past. To travel backward the entire system has to return all along with nature and events, it won’t be for you alone except time travel only happens in the mind.

you would need to get about 1,000,000 pounds of silicon and then somehow conduct enough energy to make 500 cars run without an engine and then go to a nuqular power plant and somehow make a portal. but the whole world could go out of orbit if you do that so I wouldent sugest it.

Time machine is good and bad because,with the time machine you will know about your future which is not good.

Is time travel actually a real thing because if it is then I need it because I am trying to go back in time to fix all of my mistakes

So what if time travel is the reason that we now believe there are other realities in our own world.this could be that a Time traveler we could only go back and couldn’t come back, and on doing so if you do something to change the past in stead make a new reality.making other things are deferent and ours realty stays the same . sometimes reality gets mixed up make the mandela effect that we see today

Time in the future it is faster then now. The past is slower so you can travel . It is up to you. One way is to meditate. You can travel and see any body you want right now. You can fly faster then light. That is one way. You go to the future. To go to the past you sleep for a long time. Some time you go to the future or the past. Your heart well stop and your body gets cold. Sometimes you can control it sometimes you can’t.

but how do we know that is really true ? i mean i want to figure this out, i want to time travel, but how is it that simple ? so many people have been trying to figure this out for many years and its that simple ?

Yeah what if you get stuck in there what do you do than

You cant go there in the first place. Dont worry. With current technology, we will only end up messing some few microseconds. Highly doubtful, if we can end up getting the news of travelling hundreds of years in our lifetime.

wait what would happen if someone saw you while you where in past/future i’m curious

Time is an illusion based on perceived reality and is only relative to our limitations. Time isn’t what it seems and all things can’t be figured out

Im on a school computer looking this up and i found this article and scrolling trough it and ive not heard one statement here as good as yours bro

This is blowing my mind people, then I see the school boy on the post. Great stuff, whoever reads this is already capable of travelling through time. Think about all people who have posted on this thread, now think about who will read mine. Now think of those €opposite trolls $ who never ever bother posting on you tube thread etc. But ONE comment from one of the time travellers who wrote on this thread. So that opposite troll is me,I don’t normally post.however because of previous comments I’m posting here. And I love the DMT shit I loved that and lived that one out in real life,,,,another day.

So my point is ifOne or two threads have made me write this….then what will my post make others write , think…..then I could travel back and not write this…. then what. Love the conception of time how can u travel something that doesn’t YOU perceive to be time, like a train can only run on its train tracks, a car can only drive on a road etc It’s posibble I know it is. Sometimes when u have fun times moves swift but locked in jail it goes snail pace. U c me. I write letters to myself from past from future. Remember everything that happens in present becomes part the past. But the future is what you hold in your hands. Question is, now you know….what the f are u gonna do about it?.. 01/04 ==== 21

Hahahah only realised school boy is named BIG dick pissing myself laughing I gotta go pee. Respect certified

so not halal mode

True so were not traveling in time. It is just different universe (on what we call) different time, day, tears, etc.

You would be scared for life

you will desepear

Maybe it has happened before and we just don’t know that they’re from the future. If people in the future time traveled, the would know that it’s dangerous to mess with the past and would pretend to be part of the past.

I believe time travel is already possible, however we cannot fix past mistakes without altering future predicaments. Say we stop JFK’s assasination, that would completely change the future from that point forward to one none of us can know/guess or conclude the effects? Other time travel purposes go to the future I think that from now our world will die off before 2096 basdd on overpopulation, global warming & polution as such creating islands of plastic waste in our oceans. The best thing my opinion go back to the garden of Eden, kill that Serpent Satan before he tricks Eve into the forbidden fruit. Then let God raise, enlighten & teach us how to be humanly sustainable on his planet & I guarantee technology & smart phones? Ain’t no part of it!!

Time travel possible but one n only theory of Stephen hawking

How it is possible to jump in time …??

Many ways. The most used is creating a black hole which can be done in a few ways. 1) traveling forwards or backwords faster than the speed of light 2) been known during heavy lightning strikes. Each way is a fast movement that opens the black hole. It has been done by the Government since the 1980s though they claimed they never beet the speed of light until 2002. However, Time is a illusion and their for we are actually traveling different universe that are differnt than ours even if the difference is by 1 thing. Each universe may have (what we call) different time, days and years. And each time we change that time line we created a new one. It is belief as CERN has said they destroy 5 universe, that they can travel to them. Since 2012 it has seem we been shifting and is now belief they have possibly came together. The event is known as The Mandela Effect.

No one has the right theory in my thinking. Only a few things are wrong. It is universes with (what we call) different time, days and years we are traveling to and not time itself as it is a illusion. Their is no stop to how much we can do, or where we can go. No limit as such say.

There is no God. No magical serpent or Garden of Eden ever existed. Basing a scientific theory on archaic stories does no one any good.

You choose a hopeless eternity. I choose hope through the promise of salvation through Christ for those who believe. You see, I have child in heaven. Thankfully, have a hopeful reality that I can embrace. There is a God. Our known universe is only 14 or so billion years old… is it mathematically possible that random molecules out of the Big Bang mixed in just the right way from to form a complex cellular organism… with DNA… and result in humans and such diversity of life forms? It’s naive to accept this as a result of chance. Think about it. How is that remotely possible without a creator?

Hahaha. You make it seem as tho the big bang happened, and we just popped into existence? Naw it’s called evolution baby, we started out as microscopic organisms, seriously, when did you drop out of school? But that’s like saying a some guy writes a book to explain away natural phenomenons that they were to stupid (un-evolved) to grasp and the concept good and bad and the eternal damnation, And thus, the Bible, and boom, everyone now was made by God, hahaha. When you can prove he/she exists, and that the Bible was a autobiography, and not just some twisted piece of Fiction, that has no real basis in reality, and cannot be proved to be more that a work of Fiction. Rather than being used as the16th Century control tact, ‘be good or you’ll go to hell’. But I guess that’s what they mean when they say ignorance is bliss, (maybe if I was as ignorant as y’all believers I’d believe to). But I can’t see how a ‘GOD’ would ever ask one of its creations to kill another.. Genocide, Crusades, all the ethnic cleansing.. All In the name of God Almighty! Hahahahahhaaa. Aliens are more believable than this shit, and theirs no proof they exist either. Hahahahaha. Fug’n Bible thumpers. ‘Step out side your faith and see the world for what it really is, a complex organism, mad of gravity and dust, quite a unique specimen! And we, yes Bible bangers, this includes you, are destroying it like the bubonic plague.’. ‘The end is coming and it’s our fault’

Have you taken the time to read The Old Testament and the prophecies therein that came to be ?.

How do you explain that ?.

My last post should read GS not G

You have not had an encounter yet with God. Don’t be so certain on yuour theory of evolution. He came and shook my reality to it’s core. Made thing possibly that no one could ever explain.

What are you talking about? Ur so wrong and funny in every way.

BlissfullyInformed just told me his comment was all an April fools prank. He believes in Jesus and was just fooling.

Time travel is very much possible just as you decided to come existence in this century meaning one can decide to be in another time zone . life is all about numbers, you just have to work on numbers

I’m pretty sure ppl don’t decide to come into existence. If that were true I wouldn’t be replying to your comment.

Un like your other reply, I understand what you mean. Each timeline (or universe as some see it) can easily be traveled to at will. No different than traveling threw your time you want to visit.

Science has proven a few things from the Bible is true. God does exist. Christians are confused with time and what it says. For a example. God created the world, as science even belives it was God who created the big bang, yet the bang has happen itself creating the moon, planets and stars. Christians also fail to understand chapter 1 and 2 of gen. spoke of two different creations which can be why we see dinosaurs before humans as chapter 1 spoke of animals first and humans 2nd. Their also was different time than, as without the moon a full day is 6 hours. It would take 4 days back than to equal are 1 day. Time is lost and Christians are just confuse on that time. That does not proof their is no God. As they have already found the robes of Jesus and remains of Noah’s ark, it proves much did happen. The bible only has less than 50% of what was written.

Changing the past is impossible, because if we went back into the past, that means we were already there during the time you experienced it.

We all know how to get into time travel but how do we get out……..

You don’t need time travel – all you need is life. And what is life? Life is the evolution of the impossible into the inevitable over an infinite amount of time.

if it is shown that if something, such as a solution to a particular class of equations, were possible, then two mutually contradictory things would be true, such as a number being both even and odd. The contradiction implies that the original premise is impossible.

This is called proof by impossibility. Thus if some traveled back in time far enough to kill his grandfather, we have the contradiction and therefore it is impossible.

You could argue that he would be able to time travel, but not kill his grandfather. However almost anything a person does going back in time would cause the same contradiction, thererfore it is the traveling back in time that is impossible.

Actually, it probably is possible to travel back in time, however to do so, you would also have to travel so far in space that you cannot see anything that happened before your current time due to the speed of light, because this to could affect the future.

The reason I am here is that, i really want to go back the day when our matriculation exam was just finished. Everything around me is peaceful and happy. Currently, I am living in dire situation. People are dying outside on the streets. Smokes everywhere. Everything is in doom. Ah, yeah. I really miss my past. If you are reading this, you can judge me in anyways. I just want to live peacefully and happily.

You must live in Portland

I entirely know what you say and how you feel, Robin. I am totally convinced that future is no promise to offer a better place to live. World is becoming unnecessarily more complex and more horrible and more insecure. Therefore, travelling back in time to a point where things were still far away from such ordeals is what I aspire. But I think if it is possible to travel back in time without the possibility of carrying our lived experiences with us, it will be useless as we will be repeating the same mistakes over and over again. Now, this begs the questions “in what type of physique could we imagine ourselves back there if such time travel becomes possible? That is, becoming younger again in a physical regression (as I said this would be a torture without having learned from all these later years)? Or appearing at our desired times in our present physique and age? I believe the most ideal one would be if we appeared at our desired point in time at the same age that we were at that point of time with a good feeling of our later lived experiences.

Mam all u need to do is just run faster as much as u can or visit the black hole because in both condition time just slow it down ….

Time travel is simple. If you do happen to travel to the past you create a new time line not affecting the time line you left. In essence you going to the past is now your future. Even if you were able to return you may never know if you remained in your time-line or created a new one. So even if you changed something in your travels it would happen in the future not the past.

Sorry time traveling is not possible, there is no way you can go into the past or the future ‍♂️. You can only be in the time you are already in.

Incorrect. General relativity allows time travel into the future. You need a space ship that can travel extremely fast though, approaching the speed of light, or you need to get close to a supermassive black hole.

It is travel into the past that there is no known practical way to do, and is probably impossible.

So what happens when we Die? Where do we go? I want to go back in time so I can meet my childhood friends…

Simple question from a simple mind:

At what point, when a person says they are from the future, do we stop throwing them in the funny farm and actually start listening??

When they show actual proof. Not just some random prediction of the future.

I don’t believe that “glimpses into the future” could be possible. If it were so, we could glimpse blueprints of the future that we could bring back to the present and build before they were invented. My personal.beleif is in any time frame there is only one active time which is the present. The past no longer exists and the future hasn’t occurred yet, so there is no such thing as ‘time travel’ except for the frame we are in now.

First off time is not real we make time if you travel anywhere all you are doing is beating the Earth speed try this for a mathematical equation the Earth travels a thousand miles per hour you’re not beating human time that is your own equation the Earth travels a thousand miles per hour a space shuttle travel 17,000 mph you can beat time that you made so time is not real you are only beating the Earth speed if you go in a space shuttle and go around the earth 17,000 miles per hour the Earth only travels a thousand miles per hour plus it has all types of gravitational pull from the Moon Earth’s access on the til t you figure out the mathematical equation I cannot time travel is real if you can beat the Earth speed and we can it has nothing to do with its 12:00 it’s 1:00 that’s not real time is made up as a mathematical equation you can beat the Earth speed you can go back into the Earth’s time in a space shuttle but you’re not beating anything except the Earth’s speed think about that one time is not real at all all it is is a mathematical equation think about that one real long

What I’m trying to say is this a space shuttle travel 17,000 mph the Earth travels a thousand you beat it 16 times faster that’s all you did you’re not beating any time you’re not beating 1:00 you’re not beating 3:00 all you’re doing is beating the Earth’s time you can go in reverse around the Earth 17,000 mph okay you can go forward with the Earth’s centrifugal force 17,000 miles per hour you’re not beating anything you’re beating a mathematically equation that we we created astronauts been traveling time for instance for years and haven’t told us because of the space shuttle that does travel 17,000 mph it beats the Earth speed 16 times a boggles my mind you have the Earth access the moon gravitational pull but you can get in a space shuttle and travel 17,000 miles per hour and beat the Earth’s speed 17 times think about it

If any scientist or anybody can actually answer this question how do you set up this equation with the Earth spinning a thousand miles per hour you have the moon pulling gravity the Earth’s access on until I want to know tell me then wondering for a while this equation popped into my head about 2 years ago I’m not a math whiz or anything I just thought about it weird how the mind works I’m not into space or any space stuff at all I’m Samanthas boy friend John antos wrote this

I liked your post and the knowledge you given. I also written a post on Time Travel.

how would any of that stuff be true because e’*34+Em would stop all the forss of vissecs and how would we do it if you now what i mean??? also thanks for the scuff for my project

I would love it if I had a real life time machine here with me now which could take me to anytime I want, the past, present or future. If I had a time machine here with me now, I would go to the past in September 2004 when I was born and give myself to another family that is actually rich and not this horrible family that I have now.

that not nice

Close but not quite right scientists of the idiotic variety, yes, you don’t want people to travel back in time to mess with their own pasts, of course, but you say it’s impossible, but it’s not, and I’m always ignored with my crazed crackpot theories, so what’s the harm in telling the truth as I see it, while it could be possible to travel to the past, here in lies the problem with rewriting the future, while some believe it’s possible to travel back in time, but it’s very expensive and definitely a one-way trip to the future or to the past. Basically Doc Brown got the mechanism for time travel almost right but the energy out put needs to be quadrupled instead, allowing for the ‘physical item, being or vehicle’ to transport through time without killing the time traveler in question. Wormholes are unpredictable, until warp speed for spaceships are a thing, it is not possible for the space ships to achieve time travel, unless they want to enter a black hole, which I would not recommend. as you need warp speed to survive the emptiness of the black hole, without being ripped to shreds. Say for example, Back to the future 1, the timeline doesn’t erase it continues on without the ‘said time traveler’ in existence basically the Marty from Wimpy George’s timeline did time travel to the past and messed with his parent’s meeting so to speak, but never return to the same timeline therefore Marty A went known as a Missing Child in timeline A, while it continues on without him, however Marty A became Marty B/C, in the Successful George Timeline. So that is what I’m talking about. the timeline changes only for the time traveler themselves the ones who are left behind don’t experience a thing of timeline rewritten-ism, as it would never happen in the first place. The other thing is if you want to mess with your own childhood, to make a better life for the past self, the key thing to remember it’s not really you. It’s an alternative version of you, that you interfered with. creating a parallel timeline to it’s original, yet slightly different. Yes it would be awkward to raise yourself. but as long as you are staying in the past, nothing should happen until the age you traveled back in time, unless of course you touched your past self and suddenly de-aged and merged with your past self, is an option 1, option 2 the future self explodes spreading guts all over the place and therefore the past self, of you became a murderer of your future self, I am more inclined to believe option 1 as option 2 seems a little too out there. Basically you would have two memories one of the former timeline and one of the current different timeline. Still traveling through time is truly a one way trip and if you want to travel through time, you would need some time travel mechanism, the way you scientist talk is basically a dream version, or an OBE version (OUT-OF-BODY-EXPERIENCE) which is basically a vivid/lucid dream which is not true time travel, the true time travel is based on the BTTF Trilogy not the idiotic versions you preach about. I believe I’ve said enough.

Mystery solved and I will explain, I was in a coma 3 months and I experienced things, I traveled time forward and backward, it is not a one way ticket. Movies and songs are recorded on magnetic tape in a VCR tape Cartridge or Cassette tape, Magnetic tape recording works by converting electrical signals into magnetic energy, which imprints a record of the signal onto a moving tape covered in magnetic particles. 3D life on earth(a movie), and the Magnetosphere all around earth coming from the core of earth(MAGNETIC ACTIVITY) without Atom Made Tape, is like a movie on magnetic Atom made tape in a VCR tape cartridge. Revolution and Rotation is the motor(VCR).

This is why people have those freaky Deji’vu feelings like they have lived this before, BECAUSE YOU HAVE, and how people can be psychic, and how there is Prophecy in the Bible. When a person dies, their Spirit- MIND(Thoughts, Feelings, Urges(Physical and mental personality)) breaks out of human body- a stopped heart is what releases the spirit from the human body. Then the Soul(Life) with the memory of your existence in it breaks out of spirit and goes back to your birthday with a erased memory, meanwhile your spirit goes back in time to when you were a teenager starting the mental puberty, maturity from that adult spirit you died with in last life.In that old movie Star Wars or maybe it was the Empire Strikes Back, there is a scene where Princess Laya plays like a 3D movie, that is EXACTLY how its of life on earth.

If only wish I could undo everything what I’ve done wrong in the past, I’d be more happier

And that my friend is absolutely what you do not or would not know. Everyone focuses on what they don’t or haven’t had rather than what positives they do have around them. To change the ingredients of a past life only changes the flavour you have in this life, it does not make you happier.

No, travel to the future is not possible. Like, future is unpredictable and always have been so give up on that field

Already has been, and has been proven.

Time travel is not so possible for every one , but there are already time travelers on earth #@*

Who are these time travelers?

Depends if it is the Governments (they done it since the 80s), or if it was a Accidental travel, or a simple us creating our own machine. Either way, one can easily find storys, and other evidence with a good research. I have a website that shows the effects of change cause by time travel.

They are out their (done by the government since the 80s) but the future is open with time travel (told its open since 2028) so they travel back much.

Time travel 101-

Create a closed loop circuit around a full metal structure, hermetically seal it and bring O2, Use two tesla coils to create north and south poles. (Artificial Magneto sphere.) Make sure to pain the outside in lead to prevent any cosmic rays from penetrating the materials on the inside. (Radiation = bad). Connect a ball made of w/e with wires that alternate the current from the coils to w/e panel on the outside of the structure to make it move via inductive magnetic / electric Lorentzo (Lorentzo = ExMfield = Velocity. = Antigravity) Create Antigravity by using forces from the inside reactor. (Pressurized Mercury, and Tesla Turbine.) Then Move 10-100x faster than light depending on the charged field, Friction will be added to the electric field instead of the craft allowing the G-forces not to crush you inside. The field will take the pressures of outer space, The temperature of space will allow for super conductivity of the structure.

Eventually you will arrive in the future, if you stay in one place. but account for the movement of earth in your travel log. To see outside you will need a monitor / camera system, as any leaks through a viewing area will cause death by radiation from the cosmic rays from the field you have created.

The O2 can be used as a backup generator, through air pressure and the tesla turbine.

There are many different ways to make wormholes, but the curvature of space is really hard to calculate to send a machine far out to the end and create a link with the machine that wants to travel there. And leaving one behind to get back.

If you can imagine it, it can be done. You just need the knowledge of not dying to complete it.

U.S.S. Tourist, You’re a time traveler or just insanely smart.

You don’t need to go the speed of light. Human Time is recorded in the magnetospere as a movie is record, ed on magnet VCR Tape or a song on a record. A VCR or record does not have to go light speed to retrieve the recorded info. All of life is recorded in 3D by our Magnetosphere. My Analogy is imagine a VCR tape cartridge being the earth, imagine life on earth being the movie but in 3D with out adom made tape, imagine Rotation and Revolution of Earth being the VCR putting all in to motion- playing. That is how its done, the magnetosphere kills two birds with one stone, it protects earth and records time, human time is in a magnetic bubble that is why the Bible refers our time is different from gods time and this is how God the maker(PLANET OF UNITED SUPREME BEINGS) can flip through our time to know everything. By the way long before life on earth, he built the original 7 wonders of world(Pyramids) to Pump the Seven gasses into the atmosphere of this planet found in the goldilocks zone, so Life can live on it, and that life of all types is his technological cyborgs that grow and multiply on earth also he seeded it with plant, trees, sea creature and things that fly,. Anyway that above is how time is recorded.

Until recently, I thought my neighbor was a crackpot until he actually invented a time machine. He utilized an ordinary closet, and showed me the sophisticated (to me) instrumentation he had installed. I was very skeptical at first, until he offered a small demonstration and entered the time coordinates and energized his invention. To my amazement, when I opened the door, the clock on the wall was 30 minutes later than when we stepped into the machine. OMG!!! Destroy this thing before it destroys us!!!.

So happy to have my husband back after 6 months of separation. get any kind of relationship/marriage help you want from….Robinsonbuckler11 @gmail com………………………

I find it odd that people say time travel isn’t possible yet… If time travel is possible, it has always existed. Meaning, there is not past present it future, only our perception of time. What we know as past present and future have always been occurring simultaneously, so travel was invited the moment the universe wss formed. Dinosaurs are roaming the earth right now, and forever. A version of me is typing this and has always been typing this, within this perceived moment of “time” and time travel has always happened, whether or not we exist in that reality at the right “time” to observe time travel is the only question.

I find it odd that people say time travel isn’t possible yet… If time travel is possible, it has always existed. Meaning, there is no past present or future, only our perception of time. What we know as past present and future have always been occurring simultaneously, so travel was invited the moment the universe was formed. Dinosaurs are roaming the earth right now, and forever. A version of me is typing this has always been typing this, within this perceived moment of “time” and time travel has always happened, whether or not we exist in that reality at the right “time” to observe time travel is the only question.

Their had to be one point however, when it was created and started, and for that, there was nothing but the current time. Once it was created, than we had a pass, present and future to which we can go back to millions of years to see Adam and Eve with the dinosaurs or go millions of years in the future. However, given the events that changes, each time a new time line has been created. We also have destroyed the planet and repopulated many times in the last million years. Each event changed, or something we do different (without traveling) enters a new universe where some things may be different or the same. Today are universe are shifting a lot.

To be fair, even if it is a one way trip into the past, that doesn’t stop machines going back. We could send a machine back and order it to do anything we want and then tell it to meet us at a certain time in the future. We send it back, then go straight to the meeting point we agreed and then we’ll be able to prove if it worked or not.

I’m a girl who has read a book about seeing future through a box. So is it actually possible?

Time travel has been done on purpose by the Government since the late 1980s. From research, the mostly use kids, or future Presidents. Their are some cases where people have been struck by lightning or came across some tragically event that cause them to leave their timeline either forward or behind in time. The Mandela Effect is the current cause of how things go wrong when time travel is not done right. Click on my name to see the website.

Even as traveling to a location as a future or pass date is possible as what people here mean. However, as you said, it is numbers. Time is a illusion and we do not travel threw time, just universe that are different than ours. What we call time dates and months is what changes each universe. We are all from different universes today as they came together. The mandela effect is a fine example.

thx to eleon wont we soon be able to digitize our conscious being, then accelerate that data pass the speed of light some how then download it into some android or something…..i dunno…..just a thought

I want to go to my elementary school again. Someone help me out, I know its Idiotic but stil.. I am not good at science. As far I understood, 1) we can trace through time if we travel fast than speed of light.. I think memory os the only thing that is faster than light, Yeah I can go to Paris within 1 sec in my memory but yeah its illustion, i want in real 2) Through Blackhole – I think its Bermuda triangle

if you travel back in time you will still be your age now. That is how it worked with others. No one gets younger otherwise traveling to far back would kill you. No school would let you return to school as a adult so not possible.

Plz help me I just want to send a message to myself in my past and save my self from a beast plz help Nazneen

Would love to experience many moments in life again for the first time again!

I think that time traveling should be left alone, for the sake of humanity. There are some things we’re not ready for yet.

Well stephen hawking may be wrong. I mean, the study proved that the universe self corrects itself to prevent inaccuracies. So maybe tourists from past do visit us but we don’t remember them as the universe alters our memory. If you guys have read about Butterfly Effect, a simple mistake today may grow through years to become a giant disaster in future so if you think of it, oncoming tourists from future may cause giant inaccuracies. Imagine this, You have travelled to past. You brought two cakes for yourself, so you pay the shopkeeper 20$. The shopkeeper invests the 20$ in stocks, strikes gold there and becomes a rich businessman.His daughter goes to Cambridge and marries someone else than the person she was supposed to marry according to time. Can you imagine the magnitude of inaccuracy after 100 years? Therefore, whatever the tourists from future do, is corrected by the universe and we don’t remember it. Creepy, but food for thought.It also adds a special meaning to the word ‘Fate’.

How much wacky terbacky (i.e. weed) you be smokin’ JOE JOE?

Hmmmm…. As brilliant of a mind as Stephen Hawkins was, how is he so sure that he would even recognize hordes of tourists from the future? Almost everyone is aware of the warning of the Butterfly Effect. So I’m sure any future visitors Intelligent enough for Past-Time travel would be amply attuned to this.

Most future people coming to the pass (our time) seems careless and not intelligent. Most are taking FBI lie detector test and telling us what is happening in the future. That is a bad idea, because if you tell us (example) who is the next President, and the Government does not like the person they than can change that event to let someone else in (as seen in 2020) One should never acknowledge who he or she is or why they are their. Most traveling is to get knowing of the pass or to pick up certain things. Since are pass is changing, events are changing and are timelines are messed up, someone made a mistake. The Mandela Effect is a fine example.

Wow that’s great plz help me go to my past plz,I can’t do it by my own at least help me send a msg to myself in my past Nazneen

I think it is possible, but time traveling is really just changing universe created by different time lines. Our whole solar system is in a whole different place now and Earth is much smaller in this universe from the one I grew up end. Someone has already changed the timeline.

Roads? Where we’re going, you don’t need roads!

Youre wrong about your measurement of speed for traveling, in order for time to slow down, with inside an object compared to outside. Scientists proved that time with inside an object at an excelorated speed actually appeared to have slown down during the duration of time for the test. The speed was far less then the terminal speed of a rocket for NASA at 256,000 kms p/h.

In to the volicity of space. Generating a vacuum of space, could be no different the the actual transport of matter over frequency where in fact matter can be carried by sound. It is believed that an alien civilization harnessed this energy in the form of bolisks that where believed to carry the same properities and in consideration of harmonic resinance, the simularities could be used in order to carry large weight. In accordance with a documentry on theoretical science.

However the properties, present the fact that a working property controdicts your counter intuative theory of gravitational deceloration of matter to colide within itself to absorb all things into non existance as to the transfer of matter into energy, rather then your idiolisms of transfer between dimentional space to another destination that is not linked or the transfer between time that isnt, either.

However to reproduce the fabric of time within space in a practical measurement as I have mentioned, would put an end to all the lunacy of an unmeasureable field, which people fail to identify. Like running into a glass window. Only to not know what forcefield is present.

Time travel into the past can be achieved simply going faster than the speed of light.

The closer you get to the speed of light the slower time goes

If you reach the speed of light time stops

If you go faster than the speed of light it starts to reverse

Why does no one seem to know this?

Christopher Reeves did this in Superman 3 brah.

Any time travel, pass and future, is by going faster than the speed of light. It is said by reversing that that you can go back in time. However, I assume since the Government has done this since the 80s they have better ways (maybe tying in a date) and not having to go to a unknown date.

I want to send a message to myself in the past on a particular date plz can you help me, this means a lot lot lot to me,plz help me Nazneen

Why don’t we drop the declaratory statements that it “is or isn’t possible!” Until someone actually does so. Just say “maybe”.

People have and their are records both to the pass and future. The Government has done it since the 80s as part of the “star wars project” and are much better at it today. This explains the black holes in the sky of 2019, and the CERN destroying 5 parallel universes in 2013. We also see changes because of time travel events changing time. The Mandela Effect is a find example.

I want to send a msg to myself and my family in the past ,is it possible plz help me my life will be saved one who helps me saves me and my kids from a pack of beasts,

The worst idea ever. We all want to do this and where does it stop. A lottery win does not sound bad if you knew the actual location, time and place. After a while though, would you not want to write that hit song, become the author of the Harry Potter books, stop 9/11? The idea of giving your pass self (a time time travel was not proven) information of the future could change things in a major way. This would cause one small thing to change creating many others to change. This has already happen in simple ways of the The Berenstein Bears changing to The Berenstain Bears. This is a small event but this event “The Mandela Effect” now has over 3,000 changes.

What if you decided to give your pass self information about a lottery ticket that would be a winner, bought late at night and he was hit by a car on the way to get it. Changes the whole future. However, If detailed right, done right, with no large changes, it may not effect much, but to know your being given info from yourself in a future time (when that was not known much or provrn back than) You would either assume it is a joke or you gone crazy.

I don’t want to win a lottery, my decision about my career and studying was right but my family and their cruelty has put me into this worst condition I just want to go back complete my studies and live a life like a human not like a animal or slave,help me plz Nazneen

Can someone take me to 2013? i can pay later to all of you in bitcoins so its a win win and you dont need to do anything, just wait

LOL but still complicating on my side

You travel in your dreams where time and space colloids ..That’s y sometimes the dream which you dreamt might be a 10 mins reel time but you felt dreaming whole time like 6 to 8hrs .. Probably even traveling to parallel universe

I agree. Dreams as we know it is not a simple sleep. The part of the brain we do not use while awake, we use at night. This is the phenomenon part of the brain that can do thing we feel a human can not do. We of course use less than 30% of our brain. By the use of 100% of the brain we would use both sides and be able to do common things such as read thoughts, move things without touching them etc. The idea of using this side of the brain, would be the theory we can leave our bodies and visit different universe, see what could of happen shall we done something different, and even see future events. This may be why we notice different memories to some things as we could of held some from another reality.

It would be very weird, however, if we were trapped in that universe, or another body and fail to return to ours. Is that how people die in their sleep?

i just fell like going to late 70’s, where i can see majority of family.. i am willing to trade life for it…..

Time travel to the pass is just as common as the future. However, as both has been done it is NOT travel threw time. Time is a illusion we created. We are actually traveling threw different universe with (what we call) different time, dates, years, etc. The Mandela Effect is a find example how traveling threw different reality’s change the time lines.

As a add on to the above, Time travel is not a theory, has been proven, and has been done by the Government since the 1980s. Their is many residue in our history to even show some time travel storys to be real.

Where can one get a reverse watch, is it really possible to go back in past with its help, is it sooo easy ,plz help me ??????? Nazneen

US20060073976A1- search this patent number,this describes the process for time travelling,I really don’t think magnetic energy will work,maybe heat focused on a specific point could expand the fabric of space and make a hole in it.even then I will the hole take you to another time.it would be one thing to time travel but selecting a point in time would be impossible.you could only travel to the time you device was built?

Is there a watch which back travels in time or reverse time watch? Is it true? How to get one? But with that how can I send a message to myself in my past, plz help Nazneen

I don’t believe such a watch exist and their are plenty of smart minds with huge funds trying to travel.right now there are only theories.

Thank you very much for your response. I just want to send a message to myself in my past. Nothing much will be changed but 3 literally dying devastating lives will be saved. We are suffering for the mistakes and egoistic arrogance of others so if possible plz help me

Traveling back in time isn’t just a when problem, it’s a *where* problem. Where was the place you’re standing right now a thousand years ago, or a thousandth of a second ago? There is no useful answer to those questions, so there’s nowhere to travel back in time to.

Traveling forward in time? You’re doing it now.

when you step through a door is time lost when you come back through? lets say you return days Later how much time did you loose. what exactly is Time,.? is dialation a safe way to return ,. a Blackhole will assist you in in travel, the question is will you arrive safe,.

Traveling back in time is impossible. 2 reasons why that are never taken into account.

A) The stuff you are made of ( subatomic material) is being used by something else. It I not like you are a facsimile of the already existing material. What you are made of is exactly the same existing material. The problem is exact stuff can not exist in 2 different places in the same point in time. You will either : Decompile or fall out of phase with the universe. Both bad outcomes for the time traveler.

B) Lets look at it from logical commonsense. You have a bar of gold . You intend to send the bar back 1 second in time. Now you have 2 bars of gold . You send those 2 bars back one second . You have 4 bars …… do that 50 times . You have over 900 trillion bars of gold. All made of the exact subatomic particles. The more the bars back the more the existing mass of the universe increase. What are the consequences of changing the mass of the universe . Hence the paradox . Information can not be destroyed., It also can not be created.

At least this is the way my brain perceives going back in time.

Time is a function of change. None of the 4 forces The strong force , The weak force , Electromagnetism and Gravity can not work without time.

I will figure out time travel one day but only for the past.

I wish I could travel back to 18th of June to save my mom.

Is time travel really a one way ticket? Theoretically, if you can go one way, you should be able to go back.

Time is not one way. It’s consequences are however irreparable given certain circumstances and is not something that should be taken lightly or thought of in a manner of disregard. I’ve only very recently decided to take to your social platforms regarding space and time.

You can try finding me on Instagram. I’m not familiar with these platforms to better direct you there. My Instagram name is johnrvh

On Twitter it seems to be @_JohnRvH

If I go forward I will have to pay extra bills and taxes. I don’t think I can afford it.

You’re the first person I’ve come across in this timeline that has a sense of humor. Thankfully, going forward is not possible if that future hasn’t been created yet.

timetraval is no joke if its created the whole universe could go out of orbit.

Cauchy problem converging to non minimal terraces as t → +∞

Stephen Hawking may he rest in peace a genius but not all knowing. As far as he knows we haven’t been flocked by tourists, in the same maybe these UFO sightings are actually time travelers from the future coming to the past to view how we really lived why things really happened the way they did, etc. To limit the imagination of possible and impossible is wrong then you create fantasy. And we have learned from history that there is truth in fantasy. I.e. the different mythos of the different ancient cultures from around the world including those of the Norse. Improbable and probable should be more appropriate. It’s possible because it can be imagined improbable die to the right math or this or that not existing or matching up. I also believe that if time travel to the past were possible that the changing of something in the past would create a new timeline running current with your timeline at which will inevitably collide and will cause the collapse of the universe at which point a new universe will be born.

so i think the speed of light is only relative to deciding a point of destination -initially- as specific gravity of destination needs to be ascertained to calculate the frequency needed to run an alcubierre-white engine to bend space correctly to cross space ‘quickly’, the point of reference may well be jupiter in our solar system for the fact of the moons that orbit it, i surmise that by using a ‘dead end ‘ equation that usually puts notable mathematicians into the outer regions by trying to solve it may actually be the key as calculations end in a loop of 4-2-1 ie 3N+1; this process of calculation creates a sine wave over time/distance relative to specific gravity of chosen destination – as time is determined by gravity therefore if the speed of light to a destination can be used to ascertain the specific gravity of a ‘body’ to visit ie a star or sun due to receivable resonant frequencies emitted by the body, then the constrictions of the speed of light do not exist other than to give a constant, by using the 3N+1 method of calculation ,once the speed of light and returning resonant frequencies of a destination are determined the calculation can be extrapolated to match the distance giving the end point -in doing this the sine wave required can be ascertained and be condensed to create a wormhole and allow the alcubierre-white engine to ‘bend or distort space enough so that the bubble you are in matches the required specific gravity of the destination – the frequency of the body nearest to the destination point should be used and resonated inside the bubble to create synchronicity of frequency and cause attraction i also believe that travelling through space require the ability to see things from different perspectives and it requires the ability to navigate through a series of what may be described as “Aims Windows” where your point of view needs to change inherently with a given position at a given point in the galaxy

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12 Ways Albert Einstein Changed the World

Posted: May 18, 2024 | Last updated: May 18, 2024

Albert Einstein, the wild-haired genius with a mischievous grin, is more than just a pop culture icon. He’s arguably the most influential scientist of the 20th century, whose theories revolutionized our understanding of the universe and continues to shape our technological world today.

Forget that iconic E=mc² equation (which most of us still don’t really understand). Einstein’s legacy extends far beyond chalkboards and dusty textbooks. His groundbreaking work in fields like physics and quantum mechanics has led to advancements in everything from nuclear energy to GPS navigation.

Let’s dive into the mind of a genius and discover 12 ways Einstein’s work has impacted our world. Prepare to have your mind blown!

1. The Theory of Relativity: Our Understanding of Space and Time

Einstein’s theory of relativity was a groundbreaking shift in our understanding of space, time, and gravity. He showed that these seemingly separate concepts are intricately connected, forming a four-dimensional fabric called spacetime . This mind-bending idea revolutionized physics and opened up new possibilities for understanding the universe.

GPS navigation systems, for example, rely on Einstein’s theories to account for the effects of gravity on time, ensuring accurate location tracking. The theory of relativity also paved the way for understanding the universe’s origins, the behavior of black holes, and the potential for time travel.

2. E=mc²: The World’s Most Famous Equation

This elegant equation, derived from Einstein’s special theory of relativity, expresses the fundamental relationship between energy (E) and mass (m). It states that energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light (c) squared. While seemingly simple, its implications are profound.

E=mc² reveals the enormous energy locked within even tiny amounts of matter, a concept that underlies nuclear power and the development of devastating weapons like the atomic bomb. It’s a testament to the power of human ingenuity and a stark reminder of the ethical responsibilities scientists bear .

3. The Photoelectric Effect: The Foundation of Solar Power

Einstein’s explanation of the photoelectric effect, where light can dislodge electrons from a material’s surface, earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921. This theory revolutionized our understanding of light and energy, and laid the groundwork for modern solar power technologies.

Solar panels, now commonplace on rooftops worldwide, directly utilize the principles of the photoelectric effect to convert sunlight into electricity. Einstein’s work, in essence, helped pave the way for a more sustainable energy future.

4. Brownian Motion: Understanding the Randomness of Nature

Einstein’s work on Brownian motion , the random movement of particles suspended in a liquid or gas, confirmed the existence of atoms and molecules. This had profound implications for fields ranging from chemistry to physics and even laid the groundwork for understanding the behavior of financial markets.

This seemingly abstract concept has real-world applications. For example, it’s used to model how stock prices fluctuate, helping traders and investors make more informed decisions. It’s a testament to how Einstein’s insights into the fundamental nature of the universe have found unexpected applications in the most diverse fields.

5. Quantum Theory of Light: Lasers and More

Einstein’s quantum theory of light , which describes light as consisting of discrete packets of energy called photons, revolutionized our understanding of the nature of light. This theory laid the foundation for the development of lasers, which are now used in everything from barcode scanners to medical procedures, telecommunications, and even cutting-edge scientific research.

Lasers have become so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget their origins in theoretical physics. They’ve transformed industries, enabled new technologies, and even revolutionized how we communicate. It’s a testament to the practical applications that can emerge from seemingly abstract scientific discoveries.

6. Bose-Einstein Condensate: A New State of Matter

While not directly discovered by Einstein , Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) is a state of matter that occurs when atoms are cooled to near absolute zero. Einstein predicted its existence in 1924, but it wasn’t experimentally produced until 1995. This strange form of matter has unique properties, such as behaving like a single super-atom.

Though still in the early stages of research, BEC has the potential to revolutionize fields like quantum computing, precision measurement, and even our understanding of fundamental physics. It’s a reminder that Einstein’s theoretical predictions continue to inspire scientific breakthroughs decades later.

7. The Manhattan Project: A Race Against Time

Einstein’s famous letter to President Roosevelt in 1939, warning of Germany’s potential to develop an atomic bomb, was a catalyst for the Manhattan Project. While not directly involved in the research, Einstein’s theories and insights were crucial to the project’s success in developing the first nuclear weapons.

The development of the atomic bomb, a direct consequence of Einstein’s work, ushered in the nuclear age and changed the course of history . It’s a chilling reminder of the destructive power that science can unleash and the moral dilemmas that come with such discoveries.

8. Nuclear Energy: The Power and Peril

Einstein’s equation E=mc² revealed the immense energy locked within even tiny amounts of matter. This discovery laid the groundwork for the development of nuclear power , which now provides a significant portion of the world’s electricity.

However, this power comes with a heavy price. The same principles behind nuclear energy also led to the creation of devastating weapons like the atomic bomb. Einstein, a pacifist, grappled with the moral implications of his work and advocated for nuclear disarmament throughout his life.

9. The Expanding Universe: A Mind-Bending Concept

Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicted that the universe wasn’t static , but rather expanding. This was a revolutionary idea at the time, and it wasn’t until astronomer Edwin Hubble’s observations in the 1920s that it was confirmed.

Einstein’s theory changed our entire conception of the cosmos. It sparked the Big Bang theory, which explains the universe’s origins, and continues to drive research into its ultimate fate. The idea that the universe itself is constantly evolving is both humbling and inspiring.

10. The Global Positioning System (GPS): More Than Just Finding Your Way

While we primarily use GPS for navigation, this technology relies heavily on Einstein’s theories. Both special and general relativity are factored into the calculations that ensure accurate positioning, accounting for the effects of gravity and the relative motion of satellites.

Einstein likely never imagined his work impacting something as mundane as finding the nearest coffee shop. But this illustrates how even the most abstract scientific theories can have practical, everyday applications that we now take for granted.

11. Smoke Detectors: A Life-Saving Application

The photoelectric effect, which explains how light can dislodge electrons, has a surprising application in everyday life: smoke detectors ! These life-saving devices use this principle to detect smoke particles, triggering an alarm when smoke density reaches a certain threshold.

This simple, yet essential, invention is a testament to the practical applications of theoretical physics. Einstein’s work, in a roundabout way, has saved countless lives by enabling the development of early warning systems for fires.

12. Understanding Black Holes: A Cosmic Mystery Unraveled

Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicted the existence of black holes – regions of space where gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape. While he initially doubted their existence, scientists later confirmed them through observation, spectacularly validating his theory.

The study of black holes has revolutionized our understanding of the universe’s most extreme environments and the behavior of gravity on a massive scale. It’s a testament to the power of Einstein’s intellectual legacy, pushing the boundaries of human knowledge even decades after his death.

13 Terrifying Facts About WWII

History buffs, brace yourselves. We’re about to delve into the darker side of World War II, uncovering terrifying facts that might just reshape your understanding of this global conflict. While we often focus on heroism and triumph, the raw numbers and chilling details reveal a war of unprecedented brutality and human suffering.

12 Terrifying Realities for People Living During the Roman Era

The Roman Empire was one of the largest in history, stretching territories into Europe, Africa , and the Middle East. While Rome is at the top of the list of successful empires, it also has the distinction of being quite a terrifying era due to many of the behaviors and events that took place. It was marred by severe brutality and the forceful use of the military on its citizens.

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Scientists Found a Startling Glitch in Einstein’s Theory of Relativity

The fabric of space-time may have a wrinkle that could alter the course of physics.

• For more than a century, Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity has provided a surprisingly accurate framework for understanding the gravitational machinations of the universe.
• However, when observing data approaching the “superhorizon,” galaxies traveling so fast they approach the speed of light, inconsistencies have shown that they theory might need a cosmological extension of sorts.
• A new paper suggests that there’s a ‘cosmic glitch’ in Einstein’s theory that, once addressed, helps solve for some of the gravitational wonkiness occurring at large, universe-spanning scales.

When it comes to cosmological scales, Earth is just a speck among a vast ocean of supermassive black holes, ultra-dense neutron stars, and explosive supernovae along with other celestial phenomena we can only theorize. Despite this cosmic insignificance, one intelligent life form living on the third planet of our particular solar system amazingly discovered many of the vast secrets of the universe.

However, the theory isn’t perfect, and one area where the physics behind Einstein’s theory begins to break down is when science approaches the “superhorizon,” or the maximum distance light has traveled since the beginning of the universe. Inconsistencies with Einstein’s ideas have led some to believe there is a “cosmic glitch” in the theory, and now scientists from the University of Waterloo and the University of British Columbia have formulated an “extension” of Einstein’s formulas to account for these cosmic-sized inconsistencies. The results of those efforts, which have stretched on for at least 20 years, were published in March in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics .

“When we try to understand gravity on a cosmic scale, at the scale of galaxy clusters and beyond, we encounter apparent inconsistencies with the predictions of general relativity,” Robin Wren, University of Waterloo graduate and lead author on the study, said in a press statement . “It’s almost as if gravity itself stops perfectly matching Einstein’s theory…gravity becomes around one per cent weaker when dealing with distances in the billions of light years.”

Many have tried to challenge the astrophysical giant that is Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, which has survived more than a century of immense scrutiny and scientific exploration and emerged largely unscathed, and none have faired very well. Instead, the researchers refer to their work as a kind of “footnote” to Einstein’s original work, meaning the theory is still our best bet at understanding our universe, but that it needs slight tweaking when dealing with far-flung galaxies traveling near the speed of light.

When the researchers looked at modern data from observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the primeval radiation emitted shortly after the Big Bang, the results appeared to favor the theory of a one percent glitch when dealing with gravitational constant on large, cosmic scales. Also, including this “cosmic glitch” also came with a few other observational benefits.

“It’s not just that we found in Cosmic Microwave Background observations, it also makes most of the tensions much milder,” University of Waterloo’s Niayesh Afshordi, a co-author of the study, said in a recent interview posted on YouTube . “In particular, the rate of expansion of the universe becomes more comparable to what’s observed from local measurements [ the Hubble tension ] and structure formation, basically how many structures we have in the universe [ the S8 tension ], it becomes more consistent with Cosmic Microwave Background and other galaxy observations that we have.”

The researchers say that future observations of the CMB will help elucidate whether this glitch could help explain some of the unsolved mysteries of the universe. But if Einstein, or even the 17th century discoveries of Isaac Newton, the mind behind the previous gravitational framework (before being superseded by general relativity), are any indication, these cosmological answers will only spawn more new and exciting questions.

And the enlighten residents living on this lonesome spec in a vast cosmos will likely need to dream up new footnotes, extensions, and perhaps even new theories to explain the grand mysteries that surround us.

Darren lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes/edits about sci-fi and how our world works. You can find his previous stuff at Gizmodo and Paste if you look hard enough. 

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Black hole ‘plunge’ finally proves Einstein’s theory of gravity

Oxford team now hopes to film first footage of distant black hole, article bookmarked.

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Researchers have finally confirmed one of Albert Einstein’s key predictions about gravity after observing a “plunging region” around a black hole.

A team from Oxford University used X-ray data to gain a better understanding of black holes and observed gravity in its “strongest possible form”.

Einstein’s theory states that it is impossible for particles to safely follow circular orbits when close to a black hole. Instead they rapidly plunge towards the object at close to the speed of light – giving the plunging region its name.

“Einstein’s theory predicted that this final plunge would exist, but this is the first time we’ve been able to demonstrate it happening,” said Dr Andrew Mummery from Oxford University’s Department of Physics.

“We believe this represents an exciting new development in the study of black holes, allowing us to investigate this final area around them. Only then can we fully understand the gravitational force.”

Researchers say that there has been much debate between astrophysicists for many decades as to whether the so-called plunging region would be detectable.

The Oxford team spent the last couple of years developing models for it and, in a study just published, demonstrated its first confirmed detection found using X-ray telescopes and data from the international space station.

Later this year, a second Oxford team hopes to move closer to filming first footage of larger, more distant black holes,” said Dr Mummery.

“What’s really exciting is that there are many black holes in the galaxy, and we now have a powerful new technique for using them to study the strongest known gravitational fields.”

The findings were detailed in a study , titled ‘Continuum emission from within the plunging region of black hole discs’, published in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on Thursday.

Additional reporting from agencies.

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AI is tutoring and teaching some students, reshaping the classroom landscape

When you hear “AI” and “schools” in the same sentence, you might think ‘Wait a minute, isn’t that how kids cheat these days?’ Not exactly, say some of the nation's hardest working educators, now using new AI “ edtech ” tools to help overhaul a long-suffering public education system. 

“AI and adaptive software have completely changed how our classrooms look, our school climate, and culture. The student engagement is absolutely magnificent,” Pease Elementary School Principal Micah Arrott said over video call from her office in Odessa, Texas.

Since taking the helm in 2021, Arrott’s one of a few thousand school leaders nationwide to go all-in on “ blended learning .” Teachers now use tablets with programs like Age of Learning’s My Math Academy and My Reading Academy to provide tech-assisted one-on-one instruction tailored to every student. 

“It has really changed everything, and it’s really magical when you experience our campus now compared to three years ago,” Arrott explains. 

“This [My Math Academy] provides us a way to reach every single one of our kiddos where they are and how they learn best,” Pease Kindergarten teacher Shadiana Saenz adds. “They don't necessarily come from a background where they get what they need all the time.” 

Can AI help students recover from pandemic learning loss?

Three years ago, students were just returning to classrooms in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Arrott was still relatively new to the principal role at the pre-K through 2nd grade school, with a student body of around 550 kids. And she faced even more challenges. 

Odessa is on the westernmost borders of America’s heartland, the location of one of the most productive oil fields in the world. It’s also home to the football team that inspired the book, then movie, then TV series, Friday Night Lights . 

It’s also a region that knows the high-highs of oil booms and winning streaks, and the low-lows of busts and losses. The year 2021 was a low. 

Between a series of oil industry bankruptcies and the pandemic’s impact on the already economically challenged area, Arrott had to fight to keep the majority of her student body — primarily Hispanic and financially disadvantaged — from falling even further behind. 

The Texas Education Agency (TEA), which oversees public schools in Texas, gave Pease an “F” grade based on student achievement and test scores. Ironically, a poor grade can make it harder for schools to get desperately needed funding and support. 

At a time when everyone was struggling — not just at Pease, but in similar public schools and communities throughout the country — educators needed a ‘Hail Mary. And new AI tech tools delivered.

What are the benefits of AI in classrooms? 

“There are no classrooms where all of the students learn the exact same way and are at the same level,” Diana Hughes , Vice President of Product Innovation and AI at Age of Learning, said over a video call. “What we see in the more than 600,000 classrooms we’re in is that kids are all over the place, and few are where they’re supposed to be when we start.” 

Hughes says there are several reasons for this, and she’s been working to solve it since first starting with the company’s flagship ABCmouse platform more than a decade ago. 

“What we know from extensive research actually works, is to assess every single child to find out what they know, don't know and are ready to learn,'' she says. "Then, you go back and reteach anything that they don't understand—and then go forward. You don't move on unless every single kid in the class has mastered it. And then you do that all day, every day, for the rest of their education. And that's a bonkers thing to ask an individual teacher to do for all 30 kids in their classrooms.”

This, Hughes says, is where AI can change their futures. 

“We introduce a new concept, give them some experience with it, and then we have games that are designed to assess what they understand,” Hughes explains. “So, they're playing a game, we're getting a lot of data about whether they've understood [what they’ve been taught] or not. And if we get a sense that they don't understand, for example, by getting wrong answers, then we can apply extra feedback.” 

What sets this approach apart from “standard” classroom learning is that it only moves on to the next topic or idea when the student is ready. “The system is sort of going through this loop of teaching, assessing, assisting if needed, and then making a choice about what [the student] is ready for,'' Hughes says. "It’s completely different from the ‘one-size-fits-all approach of traditional models. This way, no one else gets left behind, and advanced students don’t get held back either.”  

The results speak for themselves. Age of Learning has a track record of success in some of the country's most at-risk and low-performing schools, including Jefferson County in Tallahassee, Florida. After 15 years of “failure,” with students often five years behind their grade level, assessment scores increased after as little as twelve hours of AI-assisted learning. 

Will AI replace teachers? 

At a very different sort of school, Austin’s $40,000 per year private Alpha High School is filled with students using app-based “AI Tutors” to score an average of 1545 (out of 1600) on their SATs. The national average is 1030 . 

“AI is a great equalizer,” MacKenzie Price, co-founder of 2hr Learning and Alpha School , says over the phone. “AI is infinitely patient; it doesn't care how fast or slow it takes you to learn a concept, which is impossible in a traditional classroom. It doesn't care if the student is Black or white or brown. It doesn't care if the student is rich or poor. And it also doesn't care if a kid is in the 10th or 99th percentile. It can raise the bar of what's possible.” 

In “Alpha School,” students spend two hours in the morning focused on personalized education supercharged by AI, with instructors taking the role of “supportive guide and counselor” rather than “traditional teacher,” Price says. Students spend the remaining hours of the school day on life skills, arts, sports, and even entrepreneurship. 

“It has made learning a lot more fun,” says 18-year-old Peyton Price, a senior at Alpha High (and MacKenzie Price’s daughter). One example Peyton shared is recently using AI to replace lyrics to the Taylor Swift song “Blank Slate” to help her study for her AP U.S. Government final.

“Nice to meet you, let's begin, explaining AP Gov, where to begin? Declaration of Independence, set the stage, for American democracy, a turning page … Natural rights, sovereignty, social contract, it's true, these are the principles that guide what we do.”

She also uses another of her mother’s latest tech tools, a new “ TikTok for studying ” called TeachTap . In the app, students learn from AI-generated versions of Albert Einstein, Harriet Tubman, Marie Curie, and hundreds of other historical figures who speak to—and interact with—them. TeachTap starts free but runs anywhere from $20 for “discounted course access ” to $250 for “unlimited AP test prep.” 

“A lot of adults and educators are like, ‘TikTok is bad, or social media is hurting you,’” Peyton explains, “but what’s working for my generation is people who ask us, ‘What are the things you find interesting, what do you enjoy,’ and then figure out how to make a version of that to help with our education.” 

Google enhances search: Google all in on AI and Gemini: How it will affect your Google searches

MacKenzie Price adds, “That’s what we’re doing here, taking all those potential negative effects of screen time and turning that into learning. We’re taking the power of AI and using it for good.”

Can AI help all the kids at public schools?

Back in Odessa, eight-year-old second grader Trip Galloway tells a similar story. Trip is an advanced student at Pease Elementary. “He’s in the second grade but already reading at ninth-grade level,” his mother Savannah said over the phone. “He learns so quickly that he was getting bored and just kind of tuning out in school. Once they started AI learning, he’s able to excel, concentrate, and work more to his ability.” 

“It’s important because it teaches us things the teacher wouldn’t normally [be able to] because the apps teach you when you need it,” Trip chimes in. “Most of my friends are a grade level under me, and it didn’t used to be any fun. Now it’s fun.”   

When I ask Trip what it would be like to return to how things used to be in his classroom, he groans and says, “It would feel boring because, with the [AI], we’re doing our things faster and more fun. It’s way better than doing worksheets all day and having the teachers teach us all day.” 

That’s a tough sentiment for veteran teachers like Carlton Conn-Oquendo to hear. She’s taught various grades and subjects at Chicago’s Hawthorne Scholastic Academy for some 42 years and knows firsthand that for all the help AI tools can give students and teachers, they won’t ever replace the single most crucial part of her job. 

“Technology is a great tool, but it can’t replace the human connection,” she says over the phone. “Most of us still remember that one teacher who really spoke to us and influenced us. You can augment all you want with technology. But it really, really makes an impact on children to have that connection.”

Jennifer Jolly is an Emmy Award-winning consumer tech columnist and on-air correspondent. The views and opinions expressed in this column are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of USA TODAY. Contact her at [email protected].