can time travel save someone

April 26, 2023

Is Time Travel Possible?

The laws of physics allow time travel. So why haven’t people become chronological hoppers?

By Sarah Scoles

yuanyuan yan/Getty Images

In the movies, time travelers typically step inside a machine and—poof—disappear. They then reappear instantaneously among cowboys, knights or dinosaurs. What these films show is basically time teleportation .

Scientists don’t think this conception is likely in the real world, but they also don’t relegate time travel to the crackpot realm. In fact, the laws of physics might allow chronological hopping, but the devil is in the details.

Time traveling to the near future is easy: you’re doing it right now at a rate of one second per second, and physicists say that rate can change. According to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, time’s flow depends on how fast you’re moving. The quicker you travel, the slower seconds pass. And according to Einstein’s general theory of relativity , gravity also affects clocks: the more forceful the gravity nearby, the slower time goes.

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“Near massive bodies—near the surface of neutron stars or even at the surface of the Earth, although it’s a tiny effect—time runs slower than it does far away,” says Dave Goldberg, a cosmologist at Drexel University.

If a person were to hang out near the edge of a black hole , where gravity is prodigious, Goldberg says, only a few hours might pass for them while 1,000 years went by for someone on Earth. If the person who was near the black hole returned to this planet, they would have effectively traveled to the future. “That is a real effect,” he says. “That is completely uncontroversial.”

Going backward in time gets thorny, though (thornier than getting ripped to shreds inside a black hole). Scientists have come up with a few ways it might be possible, and they have been aware of time travel paradoxes in general relativity for decades. Fabio Costa, a physicist at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics, notes that an early solution with time travel began with a scenario written in the 1920s. That idea involved massive long cylinder that spun fast in the manner of straw rolled between your palms and that twisted spacetime along with it. The understanding that this object could act as a time machine allowing one to travel to the past only happened in the 1970s, a few decades after scientists had discovered a phenomenon called “closed timelike curves.”

“A closed timelike curve describes the trajectory of a hypothetical observer that, while always traveling forward in time from their own perspective, at some point finds themselves at the same place and time where they started, creating a loop,” Costa says. “This is possible in a region of spacetime that, warped by gravity, loops into itself.”

“Einstein read [about closed timelike curves] and was very disturbed by this idea,” he adds. The phenomenon nevertheless spurred later research.

Science began to take time travel seriously in the 1980s. In 1990, for instance, Russian physicist Igor Novikov and American physicist Kip Thorne collaborated on a research paper about closed time-like curves. “They started to study not only how one could try to build a time machine but also how it would work,” Costa says.

Just as importantly, though, they investigated the problems with time travel. What if, for instance, you tossed a billiard ball into a time machine, and it traveled to the past and then collided with its past self in a way that meant its present self could never enter the time machine? “That looks like a paradox,” Costa says.

Since the 1990s, he says, there’s been on-and-off interest in the topic yet no big breakthrough. The field isn’t very active today, in part because every proposed model of a time machine has problems. “It has some attractive features, possibly some potential, but then when one starts to sort of unravel the details, there ends up being some kind of a roadblock,” says Gaurav Khanna of the University of Rhode Island.

For instance, most time travel models require negative mass —and hence negative energy because, as Albert Einstein revealed when he discovered E = mc 2 , mass and energy are one and the same. In theory, at least, just as an electric charge can be positive or negative, so can mass—though no one’s ever found an example of negative mass. Why does time travel depend on such exotic matter? In many cases, it is needed to hold open a wormhole—a tunnel in spacetime predicted by general relativity that connects one point in the cosmos to another.

Without negative mass, gravity would cause this tunnel to collapse. “You can think of it as counteracting the positive mass or energy that wants to traverse the wormhole,” Goldberg says.

Khanna and Goldberg concur that it’s unlikely matter with negative mass even exists, although Khanna notes that some quantum phenomena show promise, for instance, for negative energy on very small scales. But that would be “nowhere close to the scale that would be needed” for a realistic time machine, he says.

These challenges explain why Khanna initially discouraged Caroline Mallary, then his graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, from doing a time travel project. Mallary and Khanna went forward anyway and came up with a theoretical time machine that didn’t require negative mass. In its simplistic form, Mallary’s idea involves two parallel cars, each made of regular matter. If you leave one parked and zoom the other with extreme acceleration, a closed timelike curve will form between them.

Easy, right? But while Mallary’s model gets rid of the need for negative matter, it adds another hurdle: it requires infinite density inside the cars for them to affect spacetime in a way that would be useful for time travel. Infinite density can be found inside a black hole, where gravity is so intense that it squishes matter into a mind-bogglingly small space called a singularity. In the model, each of the cars needs to contain such a singularity. “One of the reasons that there's not a lot of active research on this sort of thing is because of these constraints,” Mallary says.

Other researchers have created models of time travel that involve a wormhole, or a tunnel in spacetime from one point in the cosmos to another. “It's sort of a shortcut through the universe,” Goldberg says. Imagine accelerating one end of the wormhole to near the speed of light and then sending it back to where it came from. “Those two sides are no longer synced,” he says. “One is in the past; one is in the future.” Walk between them, and you’re time traveling.

You could accomplish something similar by moving one end of the wormhole near a big gravitational field—such as a black hole—while keeping the other end near a smaller gravitational force. In that way, time would slow down on the big gravity side, essentially allowing a particle or some other chunk of mass to reside in the past relative to the other side of the wormhole.

Making a wormhole requires pesky negative mass and energy, however. A wormhole created from normal mass would collapse because of gravity. “Most designs tend to have some similar sorts of issues,” Goldberg says. They’re theoretically possible, but there’s currently no feasible way to make them, kind of like a good-tasting pizza with no calories.

And maybe the problem is not just that we don’t know how to make time travel machines but also that it’s not possible to do so except on microscopic scales—a belief held by the late physicist Stephen Hawking. He proposed the chronology protection conjecture: The universe doesn’t allow time travel because it doesn’t allow alterations to the past. “It seems there is a chronology protection agency, which prevents the appearance of closed timelike curves and so makes the universe safe for historians,” Hawking wrote in a 1992 paper in Physical Review D .

Part of his reasoning involved the paradoxes time travel would create such as the aforementioned situation with a billiard ball and its more famous counterpart, the grandfather paradox : If you go back in time and kill your grandfather before he has children, you can’t be born, and therefore you can’t time travel, and therefore you couldn’t have killed your grandfather. And yet there you are.

Those complications are what interests Massachusetts Institute of Technology philosopher Agustin Rayo, however, because the paradoxes don’t just call causality and chronology into question. They also make free will seem suspect. If physics says you can go back in time, then why can’t you kill your grandfather? “What stops you?” he says. Are you not free?

Rayo suspects that time travel is consistent with free will, though. “What’s past is past,” he says. “So if, in fact, my grandfather survived long enough to have children, traveling back in time isn’t going to change that. Why will I fail if I try? I don’t know because I don’t have enough information about the past. What I do know is that I’ll fail somehow.”

If you went to kill your grandfather, in other words, you’d perhaps slip on a banana en route or miss the bus. “It's not like you would find some special force compelling you not to do it,” Costa says. “You would fail to do it for perfectly mundane reasons.”

In 2020 Costa worked with Germain Tobar, then his undergraduate student at the University of Queensland in Australia, on the math that would underlie a similar idea: that time travel is possible without paradoxes and with freedom of choice.

Goldberg agrees with them in a way. “I definitely fall into the category of [thinking that] if there is time travel, it will be constructed in such a way that it produces one self-consistent view of history,” he says. “Because that seems to be the way that all the rest of our physical laws are constructed.”

No one knows what the future of time travel to the past will hold. And so far, no time travelers have come to tell us about it.

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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Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible, Researchers Say

Matthew S. Schwartz

A dog dressed as Marty McFly from Back to the Future attends the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade in 2015. New research says time travel might be possible without the problems McFly encountered. Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

A dog dressed as Marty McFly from Back to the Future attends the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade in 2015. New research says time travel might be possible without the problems McFly encountered.

"The past is obdurate," Stephen King wrote in his book about a man who goes back in time to prevent the Kennedy assassination. "It doesn't want to be changed."

Turns out, King might have been on to something.

Countless science fiction tales have explored the paradox of what would happen if you went back in time and did something in the past that endangered the future. Perhaps one of the most famous pop culture examples is in Back to the Future , when Marty McFly goes back in time and accidentally stops his parents from meeting, putting his own existence in jeopardy.

But maybe McFly wasn't in much danger after all. According a new paper from researchers at the University of Queensland, even if time travel were possible, the paradox couldn't actually exist.

Researchers ran the numbers and determined that even if you made a change in the past, the timeline would essentially self-correct, ensuring that whatever happened to send you back in time would still happen.

"Say you traveled in time in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus," University of Queensland scientist Fabio Costa told the university's news service .

"However, if you stopped that individual from becoming infected, that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place," said Costa, who co-authored the paper with honors undergraduate student Germain Tobar.

"This is a paradox — an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe."

A variation is known as the "grandfather paradox" — in which a time traveler kills their own grandfather, in the process preventing the time traveler's birth.

The logical paradox has given researchers a headache, in part because according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, "closed timelike curves" are possible, theoretically allowing an observer to travel back in time and interact with their past self — potentially endangering their own existence.

But these researchers say that such a paradox wouldn't necessarily exist, because events would adjust themselves.

Take the coronavirus patient zero example. "You might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so, you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would," Tobar told the university's news service.

In other words, a time traveler could make changes, but the original outcome would still find a way to happen — maybe not the same way it happened in the first timeline but close enough so that the time traveler would still exist and would still be motivated to go back in time.

"No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you," Tobar said.

The paper, "Reversible dynamics with closed time-like curves and freedom of choice," was published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Classical and Quantum Gravity . The findings seem consistent with another time travel study published this summer in the peer-reviewed journal Physical Review Letters. That study found that changes made in the past won't drastically alter the future.

Bestselling science fiction author Blake Crouch, who has written extensively about time travel, said the new study seems to support what certain time travel tropes have posited all along.

"The universe is deterministic and attempts to alter Past Event X are destined to be the forces which bring Past Event X into being," Crouch told NPR via email. "So the future can affect the past. Or maybe time is just an illusion. But I guess it's cool that the math checks out."

• grandfather paradox
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How would time travel affect life as we know it?

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Key Takeaways

• If unrestricted time travel were possible, it would lead to a complete breakdown of the rational order of things.
• The ability to travel to both the past and future would upend our understanding of time.
• Stephen Hawking's "chronology protection hypothesis" suggests there might be natural laws preventing unrestricted time travel.

Science fiction has thoroughly covered the topic of time travel, starting with H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" in 1895 and continuing right up to modern movies like " Déjà Vu " starring Denzel Washington. But physicists have also explored the nature of time and the plausibility of time travel for more than century, beginning with Albert Einstein's theories of relativity. Thanks to Einstein, scientists know that time slows as moving objects approach the speed of light. Gravity also slows time. This means that, in one sense, all of us can already consider ourselves time travelers in a limited way because we experience a tiny time warp (a difference of only nanoseconds) when we, for example, take a flight on an airplane. But physicists who study time travel today search for plausible ways to create a time warp large enough to allow noticeable travel into the past or future.

In his book "How to Build a Time Machine," physicist Paul Davies writes, "The theory of relativity implies that a limited form of time travel is certainly possible, while unrestricted time travel -- to any epoch, past or future -- might just be possible, too." This astonishing statement begs an important question: If time travel did indeed become a reality, how would it affect our world as we currently experience it?

First, it's important to realize that building a time machine would likely involve enormous expense, and the sheer complexity of such an apparatus would mean only a limited group of time travelers would have access to it. But even a small group of "astronauts" traveling through time and space could conceivably have a tremendous impact on life as we know it today. The possibilities, in fact, seem almost infinite.

Let's begin by assuming that it's possible to create a complete loop in time travel -- that time travelers could travel back into the past and then return to the future (or vice versa). Although scientists view traveling to the future as a much less problematic proposition than traveling to the past, our daily lives wouldn't change much if we could only send time travelers backward or forward in time, unable to recall them to the present. If we could, in fact, complete this loop of time travel, we can conjure up an incredible array of possible effects.

Possibilities and Paradoxes of Time Travel

Time travel turned total mayhem.

Imagine sending a time traveling astronaut 100 years into the future. The time traveler could witness technological advancements that we can only dream of today, much as people at the turn of the 20th century likely couldn't imagine the items we take for granted in 2010, such as iPods or laptop computers. The time traveler could also gain insight into medical advancements, such as new medicines, treatments and surgical techniques. If the time traveler could bring this knowledge backward in time to the present, the time from which he or she came, society could effectively leap forward in terms of its technical and scientific knowledge.

The futuristic time traveler could also bring back knowledge of what lay ahead for the world. He or she could warn of natural disasters, geopolitical conflicts, epidemics and other events of worldwide importance. This knowledge could potentially change the very way we operate. For example, what if a time traveler journeyed into the future and literally saw the effects that automobiles would eventually have on our planet? What if the time traveler witnessed an environment so polluted and damaged that it's unrecognizable? How might that change our willingness to use alternative forms of transportation?

Imagine that time travel became less restricted and more available to a larger population. Perhaps travel into the future would be exploited for personal gain. A futuristic time traveler could draw on knowledge of the stock market to guide his or her investment decisions, effectively using the granddaddy of all insider information to amass a fortune. Militaries might rely on time travel to gain valuable knowledge about the enemy's positioning and resources in future battles. Terrorists could use time travel to scout out the scenes of future attacks, allowing them to carefully plan with precise knowledge of future conditions.

The potential effects seem equally limitless in terms of the less likely possibility of time travel into the past. History books would no longer be based solely on exhaustive research and interpretation of ancient materials. Time travelers could resolve historical debates and verify how things did or didn't happen in the past. Imagine how different our understanding of the world might be if we could say definitively, for example, whether Moses actually parted the Red Sea or whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing John F. Kennedy. A journey into the past could prove or disprove religious beliefs or result in face-to-face encounters with people such as Jesus, Buddha, Napoleon or Cleopatra -- or even the time traveler's former self. Perhaps time travelers could even bring back from the past things that had been lost, such as extinct species or dead and long-forgotten languages.

But here it's very important to raise the issue of self-consistent narratives and paradoxes. The concept of self-consistent narratives tells us that anything a time traveler would alter or affect in the past would have to remain consistent with the future from which he or she journeyed. Changing the past would effectively change the future, creating a causal loop. But such causal loops would only pose inherent problems if changes to the past resulted in a future different from the one the time traveler came from.

But perhaps the question of how time travel would affect life as we know it goes deeper than even a discussion of potential paradoxes and causal loops. Perhaps a discussion of specific effects of consequences on life as we know it makes little sense when faced with something that could change everything about the way in which we perceive our world.

Physicist Paul Davies gives a good example of a consistent causal loop in his book "How to Build a Time Machine." A mathematics professor uses a time machine to travel forward in time, where he discovers a new theorem. He returns back to the time he came from and gives one of his particularly gifted students the idea for that theorem. The student goes on to publish the theorem, and it turns out that it was this very student's work that the professor perused during his journey to the future. The narrative here is consistent.

On the other hand, with the grandfather paradox, a time traveler goes back in time and kills his grandfather. But if the time traveler's grandfather dies before the time traveler is born, how can he or she exist at all? And if the time traveler doesn't exist, how could he or she travel back in time to kill granddad?

As physicist Paul Davies describes it, unrestricted time travel -- meaning time travel that could form a complete loop to both the past and future -- would ultimately lead to total mayhem. In his words, "Time travel opens a view of the world that is a sort of madhouse where the rational order of things would no longer work. Under those circumstances, it's very hard to see how ordinary human life could continue."

In a world where the relationship between past, present and future is turned on its head, we would transcend the things that define our lives today. We would lose our notion of how time works, which could be so fundamentally damaging to our worldview that we would no longer care as much about the things that matter to us today: work, finances, making plans with friends and family, shopping -- you name it. These things just wouldn't be relevant in this crazy new world because we'd have a newfound preoccupation with simply making sense of a world without a set chronology -- we wouldn't know the order in which things occur.

It may be beside the point, then, to talk about resolving historical debates, saving endangered species or gaining technological, financial or military insight because those things might very likely fall by the wayside in the strange world that would follow the advent of unrestricted time travel.

As Davies makes clear, none of this fallout would occur from one-way travel. Hitching a one-way ride to the future or even the past (assuming we stick with self-consistent narratives) wouldn't cause this kind of profound reordering of the world as we currently experience it. But closing that loop of travel could be, in a word, disastrous.

Davies points out that science fiction normally focuses on the novelty aspect of time travel. But according to him, "It's not a novelty or a curiosity, it's something that strikes at the very rational basis of how we live and function. It's really hard to imagine that anything could be the same again." In his view, unrestricted time travel could change life as we know it so dramatically that we wouldn't even recognize it. Because chronology would have no meaning, we couldn't easily tell if something happened before or after, was a cause or an effect, and we would lose the ability to predict rationally the outcomes of our actions. In essence, it would be as though we had all gone insane.

These sobering potential effects of time travel have caused some scientists to wonder whether a principle exists in nature that would actually prevent unrestricted time travel, such as Stephen Hawking's "chronology protection hypothesis." This type of "theory of everything" might provide a scientific explanation as to why we could never unhinge the universe as we know it by making unrestricted time travel a reality. Scientists have yet to discover such a theory, but hearing Davies' take on the frightening effects of time travel makes one hope that they find it soon -- even if it means that we won't ever know for sure who killed JFK.

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How could time travel impact our understanding of history, what are the ethical implications of time travel, lots more information, related articles.

• What is the fourth dimension?
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• Does gravity distort space-time?
• Are there other universes like ours out there?
• Does time change speed?
• How Special Relativity Works
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More Great Links

• NOVA Online: Time Travel
• Paul Davies' Web site
• ABC Science Online. "The Big Questions: The Riddle of Time." Jan. 17, 2002. (Oct. 7, 2010) http://www.abc.net.au/science/bigquestions/s460740.htm
• Davies, Paul. "How to Build a Time Machine." Penguin Books. 2002.
• Davies, Paul. Personal interview. Oct. 13, 2010.
• PBS Nova. "Sagan on Time Travel." October 1999. (Oct. 7, 2010) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/time/sagan.html
• Pickover, Clifford. "Time: a traveler's guide." Oxford University Press. 1999.

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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.

If you liked this, you may like:

Can we time travel? A theoretical physicist provides some answers

Emeritus professor, Physics, Carleton University

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

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

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

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

Laws of physics

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

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

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

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

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

Resolving paradoxes

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

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

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

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

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

Time is a river

Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote that:

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

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

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

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

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

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Time Travel Probably Isn't Possible—Why Do We Wish It Were?

Time travel exerts an irresistible pull on our scientific and storytelling imagination.

Since H.G. Wells imagined that time was a fourth dimension —and Einstein confirmed it—the idea of time travel has captivated us. More than 50 scientific papers are published on time travel each year, and storytellers continually explore it—from Stephen King’s JFK assassination novel 11/22/63 to the steamy Outlander television series to Woody Allen’s comedy Midnight in Paris . What if we could travel back in time, we wonder, and change history? Assassinate Hitler or marry that high school sweetheart who dumped us? What if we could see what the future has in store?

These are some of the ideas that bestselling author James Gleick explores in his thought-provoking new book, Time Travel: A History. Speaking from his home in New York City, he recalls how Stephen Hawking once sent out invitations to a party that had already taken place ; why the Chinese government has branded time travel as “incorrect” and “frivolous” ; and how the idea of time travel is, ultimately, about our desire to defeat death.

Let’s cut right to the chase: What is time?

Oh, no, you didn’t! [ Laughs. ] In A.D. 400, St. Augustine said—and many people have said the same thing since, either quoting him consciously or unconsciously—“What, then, is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to one that asks, I know not.” I think that is actually not a quip, but quite profound.

The best way to understand time is to recognize that we actually are very sophisticated about it. Over the past century-plus, we’ve learned a great deal. The physicist John Archibald Wheeler said, “Time is nature’s way to keep everything from happening all at once.” If you look it up in a dictionary, you get stuff like, “The general term for the experience of duration.” But that’s just completely punting because what is duration ?

I try to steer away from aphorisms and dictionary definitions, just to say two things. First, that we have a lot of contradictory ways of talking about time. We think of time as something we waste, spend, or save, as if it’s a quantity. We also think of time as a medium we are passing through every day, a river carrying us along. All of these notions are aspects of a complicated subject that has no bumper sticker answer.

When does the idea of time travel first appear in the West? And how did it impact popular culture?

I assumed, as a person who always read sci-fi a lot when I was a kid, that time travel is an obvious idea we’re born knowing and fantasizing about. And that it must always have been part of human culture, that there must be time travel Greek myths and Chinese legends. But there aren’t! Time travel turns out to be a very new idea that essentially starts with H.G. Wells’s 1895 novel, The Time Machine . Before that nobody thought of putting the words time and travel together. The closest you can come before that is people falling asleep, like Rip Van Winkle, or fantasies like Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol .

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The beginning of my book is an attempt to answer the question, “Why? Why not before? Why suddenly at the end of the 19 th century was it possible— necessary— for people to dream up this crazy fantasy?” Even though it’s H.G. Wells who does it, people pick up his ball very quickly and run with it. You find it in American science fiction that started appearing in pulp magazines in the 1920s and 1930s, or in the great new modernist literature of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time , James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.

All these writers were suddenly making time their explicit subject, twisting time in new ways, inventing new narrative techniques to deal with time, to explore the vagaries of memory or the way our consciousness changes over time.

In 1991, Stephen Hawking wrote a paper called “Chronology Protection Conjecture , ” in which he asked: If time travel is possible, why are we not inundated with tourists from the future? He has a point, doesn’t he?

Yes! He even scheduled a party and sent out an invitation inviting time travelers to come to a party that had taken place in the past. Then he observed that none of them had shown up. [Laughs.] Hawking is one of these physicists who love playing with the idea of time travel. It’s irresistible because it’s so much fun! When he talks about the paradoxes of time travel it’s because he’s reading the same science fiction stories as the rest of us.

The paradoxes started appearing in magazines aimed mostly at young people in the 1920s. Somebody wrote in and said, “Time travel is a weird idea, because what if you go back in time and you kill your grandfather? Then your grandfather never meets your grandmother and you’re never born.” It’s an impossible loop.

Hawking, like other physicists, decided, “Time is my business. What if we take this seriously? Can we express this in physical terms?” I don’t think he succeeded but what he proposed was that the reason these paradoxes can’t happen is because the universe takes care of itself. It can’t happen because it didn’t happen. That’s the simple way of saying what the chronology protection conjecture is.

How have the Internet and other new technologies changed our perception and experience of time?

We are just beginning to see what the Internet is doing to our perception of time. We are living more and more in this networked world in which everything travels at light speed. We are multitasking and experiencing new forms of simultaneity, so the Internet appears to us as a kind of hall of mirrors. It feels as though we’re embedded in an ever expanding present.

Our sense of the past changes because in some ways the past becomes more vivid than ever. We’re looking at the past on our video screens and it’s just as vivid if the movie is about something that happened 20 years ago, as if it is a live stream. We can’t always tell the difference. On the other hand, the past that’s more distant—and isn’t available in video form—starts to seem more remote and fuzzier. Maybe we are forgetting how to visualize the past from reading histories. We’re entering a new period of time confusion, in which we suddenly find ourselves in what looks like an unending present.

In 2011, the Chinese government issued an extraordinary denunciation of the idea of time travel. What was their beef?

They thought it was corrupting and decadent. It’s a reminder that time travel is neither a simple nor innocent idea. It’s very powerful. It enables us to imagine alternative universes, and this is another line that science fiction writers have explored. What if someone was able to go back in time and kill Hitler?

Time travel is also a powerful way of allowing us to imagine what the future might bring. A lot of futurists nowadays tend to be dystopian. Time travel gives us ways of exploring how the worst tendencies of our current societies could grow even worse. That’s what George Orwell did in 1984 . I imagine the Chinese government doesn’t particularly want the equivalent of 1984 to be published in Beijing. [ Laughs. ]

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More than 50 scientific papers a year are now published on the idea of time travel. why are scientists drawn to the subject.

Scientists live in the same science fictional universe as all the rest of us. Time travel is a sexy and romantic idea that appeals to the physicist as much as it appeals to every teenager. I don’t think scientists are ever going to solve the problem of time travel for us but they still love to talk about wormholes and dark matter.

There’s a fascinating coincidence in the early history that when H.G. Wells needed to set the stage for his time machine hurtling into the future, he decided not to just jump right into his story but set the scene with a framing device—his time traveler lecturing a group of friends on the science of time—in order to justify the possibility of a time machine. His lecture introduces the idea that time is nothing more than a fourth dimension, that traveling through time is analogous to traveling through space. Since we have machines that can take us into any of the three special dimensions, including balloons and elevators, why shouldn’t we have a machine able to travel through the fourth dimension?

A decade later, Einstein burst onto the scene with his theory of relativity in which time is a fourth dimension , just like space. Soon after that, Hermann Minkowski pronounced that, henceforth, we were not going to talk about space and time as separate quantities but as a union of the two, spacetime , a four-dimensional continuum in which the future already exists and the past still exists.

I’m not claiming that Einstein read H.G. Wells 10 years before. But there was something in the air that both scientists and imaginative writers were empowered to visualize time in a new way. Today, that’s the way we visualize it. We’re comfortable talking about time as a fourth dimension.

You quote Ursula K. Le Guin , who writes, “Story is our only boat for sailing on the river of time.” Talk about storytelling and its relationship to time.

One of the things that has happened, along with our heightened awareness of time and its possibilities, is that people who invent narratives have learned very clever new techniques. Literal time travel is only one of them. You don’t actually need to send your hero into the future or into the past to write a story that plays with time in clever new ways. Narrative is also how everybody, not just writers, constructs a vision of our own relationship with time. We imagine the future. We remember the past. When we do that, we’re making up stories.

Psychologists are learning something that great storytellers have known for some time, which is that memory is not like computer retrieval. It’s an active process. Every time we remember something we are remembering it a little bit differently. We’re retelling the story to ourselves.

If time travel is impossible, why do we continue to be so fascinated with the idea?

One of the reasons is we want to go back and undo our mistakes. When you ask yourself, “If I had a time machine, what would I do?” sometimes the answer is, “I would go back to this particular day and do that thing over.” I think one of the great time travel movies is Groundhog Day , the Bill Murray movie where he wakes up every morning and has to live the same day over and over again. He gradually realizes that perhaps fate is telling him he needs to do it over, right. Regret is the time traveler’s energy bar. But that’s not the only motivation for time travel. We also have curiosity about the future and interest in our parents and our children. A lot of time travel fiction is a way of asking questions about what our parents were like, or what our children will be like.

At some point during the four years I worked on this book, I also realized that, in one way or another, every time travel story is about death. Death is either explicitly there in the foreground or lurking in the background because time is a bastard, right? Time is brutal. What does time do to us? It kills us. Time travel is our way of flirting with immortality. It’s the closest we’re going to come to it.

This interview was edited for length and clarity.

Simon Worrall curates Book Talk . Follow him on Twitter or at simonworrallauthor.com .

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is time travel possible for humans?

In books and movies, our favorite characters can use “time-turners” and treehouses to travel through time. Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy for people in real life. Let’s look at why.

First, there are two types of “time travel”: going back in time, and going forward in time.

In the film Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, characters Harry and Hermione use a time-turner to go back in time.

Traveling to the past

As far as we know, traveling back in time is impossible. Even sending information back in time is difficult to imagine, because it can change things that have already happened, which should be impossible.

Say you broke your arm falling off the monkey bars. What if you could travel back in time and tell yourself to not go on the bars? If you were successful, you’d never fall and break your arm. But then you would have no reason to travel back in time. So what does this mean for your arm? Did it break, or not?

If thinking about this makes your head hurt, you’re not alone.

Time traveling is a confusing idea for most people. That’s because when we think of time, we think about it as going in a straight line, with one thing happening after another.

If we could travel back in time and change something that happened before, we would then change the order of that line. This would mean breaking a rule called “ causality ”.

Causality is the rule saying that a “cause” (your actions, for instance) happens before an “effect” (the result of your actions). In our monkey bar example, the cause is falling, and the effect is breaking your arm – which happens because you fell.

Causality is one of the unbreakable rules of the universe. Breaking it would have nasty consequences for the universe and all of us. Experts think that because the universe has this rule, traveling to the past must be impossible otherwise the rule would be broken all the time.

Traveling to the future

If going to the past is impossible, can we go forward in time to the future?

Well, technically we’re already traveling forward in time because time is passing. Every second we travel one second into the future. But this happens to everyone, so it’s not really time travel, right?

Well, believe it or not, two people can feel time at different rates. Time passes differently for someone who is moving fast, compared to someone who is staying still. This is a very complicated idea called “time dilation”.

Someone flying from Sydney to Melbourne will feel like the time passed more quickly than someone waiting for them at the airport without moving for the whole time the flight was in the air. So why don’t we notice this difference?

It’s because you have to be moving much, much faster than an airplane before you start to notice time dilation. Even if you flew all the way around the world, the time would only feel about a billionth of a second difference to someone who stayed home.

The only way scientists even know about time dilation is because of amazingly accurate experiments that have measured it.

Unfortunately, this still can’t help us “time travel”. If you flew around the world for more than four million years, people on the ground would only have experienced one more second than you!

How fast can we go?

So if it’s all down to speed, the answer must be to go faster, right? If you could go fast enough for long enough, hundreds of “human” years could slip by on your journey, meaning you would feel like you were traveling into the future!

Unfortunately, a fast enough speed to do this would be close to the speed of light, which is the fastest speed anything can go. Light travels at about one billion kilometers every hour – that’s very, very fast.

The fastest human-made thing is NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, a spaceship sent to the Sun in August 2018. But as fast as it is , it’s only 0.064% as fast as the speed of light. So light is more than 1,000 times faster!

All of this means that if humans want to visit the future, we’ve got a long, long way to go.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe can go as fast as 692,000km per hour.

Looking back to the past

Ok, so we can’t time travel. But we can see into the past, every night.

Light has a fixed speed, as we just learned. It’s really, really fast, but things in the universe are so far apart that it still takes a long time for light to reach us from faraway stars and planets.

When light arrives from the Sun, the light we see actually left the Sun eight minutes and twenty seconds ago. This means we see the Sun as it was eight minutes and twenty seconds in the past . By the way, remember never to look straight at the Sun as it can damage your eyes.

The nearest galaxy to our Milky Way is the Canis Major dwarf galaxy, which is 25,000 light-years away. This means it takes the light 25,000 years to get here!

When we look at this galaxy through a telescope, we’re actually seeing it as it was more than 25,000 years ago. So although we can’t time-travel ourselves, we can look up to the sky and see the past every night.

This article was originally published on The Conversation by Lucy Strang at the University of Melbourne and Jacqueline Bondell at Swinburne University. Read the original article here .

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Traveling Into the Past

Black holes and wormholes, causality and alternate realities, wormhole warnings, so, is time travel to the past really possible.

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Going back in time to visit an earlier era is a fantastic dream. It's a staple of SF and fantasy novels, movies, and TV shows. Who wouldn't like to go back and see the dinosaurs or watch the birth of the universe or meet their great-great grandparents? What could possibly go wrong Could someone travel to a previous era to right a wrong, make a different decision, or even completely alter the course of history? Has it happened? Is it even possible?

There are a lot of questions about travel into the past, but not very many solutions. The best answer science can give us right now is: it's theoretically possible. But, no one has done it. 

It turns out that people time travel all the time, but only in one direction: from the past to the present and moving into the future . Unfortunately, no one has any control over how quickly that time passes and nobody can stop time and continue to live. It seems that time is a one-way street, always moving forward.

This is all right and proper. It also fits with Einstein's theory of relativity because time only flows in one direction—forward. If time flowed the other way, people would remember the future instead of the past. That sounds very counter-intuitive. So, on the face of it, traveling into the past seems to be a violation of the laws of physics.

But not so fast! It turns out that there are theoretical considerations to take into account if somebody wants to build a time machine that goes back to the past. They involve exotic gateways called wormholes, or some science fictional-sounding creation of gateways using a technology not yet available to science. 

The idea of building a time machine, like those often depicted in science fiction films, is likely the stuff of dreams. Unlike the traveler in H.G. Wells's Time Machine, no one has figured out how to build a special carriage that goes from now to yesterday. However, astrophysics gives us one possible pathway: one could possibly harness the power of a black hole to venture through time and space. How would that work?

According to general relativity , a rotating black hole could create a wormhole —a theoretical link between two points of space-time, or perhaps even two points in different universes. However, there's a problem with black holes. They've long been thought to be unstable and therefore un-traversable. However, recent advances in physics theory have shown that these constructs could, in fact, provide a means of traveling through time. Unfortunately, we have almost no idea what to expect by doing so.

Theoretical physics is still trying to predict what would happen inside the wormhole, assuming one could even approach such a place. More to the point, there's no current engineering solution that would allow us to build a craft that would let make that trip safely. Right now, as it stands, once a ship enters the black hole, it's going to get crushed by incredible gravity. The ship, and everyone aboard are made one with the singularity at the heart of the black hole.

But, for the sake of argument, what if it were possible to pass through a wormhole? What would people experience? Some suggest it would probably be a lot like Alice falling through the rabbit hole. Who knows what we would find on the other side? Or in what time frame? Until someone can devise a safe way to make that trip, we aren't likely to find out.

The idea of traveling into the past raises all sorts of paradoxical issues. For instance, what happens if a person goes back in time and kills their parents before they can conceive their child? Lots of dramatic stories have been built around that one. Or, the idea that someone could go back and kill a dictator and change history, or save the life of a famous person. An entire episode of Star Trek was built around that idea.

It turns out that the time traveler effectively creates an alternate reality or parallel universe . So, if someone did travel back and prevent someone else's birth, or murdered someone, a younger version of the victim would never come to be in that reality. And, it might or might not carry on as if nothing had changed. By going back in time, the traveler creates a new reality and would, therefore, never be able to return to the reality they once knew. (If they then tried to travel into the future from there, they would see the future of the new reality, not the one they knew before.) Consider the outcome of the movie "Back to the Future". Marty McFly changes reality for his parents back when they were in high school, and that changes his own reality. He gets back home and finds his parents aren't quite the same as when he left. Did he create a new alternate universe? Theoretically, he did.

This brings us to another issue that is rarely discussed. The nature of wormholes is to take a traveler to a different point in time and space . So if someone left Earth and traveled through a wormhole, they could be transported to the other side of the universe (assuming they are even still in the same universe we currently occupy). If they wanted to travel back to Earth they would either have to travel back through the wormhole they just left (bringing them back, presumably, to the same time and place), or journey by more conventional means. 

Assuming the travelers would even be close enough to make it back to Earth in their lifetimes from wherever the wormhole spat them out, would it still be the "past" when they returned? Since traveling at speeds approaching that of light makes time slow down for the voyager, time would proceed very, very quickly back on Earth. So, the past would fall behind, and the future would become the past... that's the way time works flowing forward ! 

So, while they exited the wormhole in the past (relative to time on Earth), by being so far away it's possible that they wouldn't make it back to Earth at any reasonable time relating to when they left. This would negate the whole purpose of time travel altogether. 

Possible? Yes, theoretically. Probable? No, at least not with our current technology and understanding of physics. But perhaps someday, thousands of years into the future, people could harness enough energy to make time travel a reality. Until that time, the idea will just have to stay relegated to the pages of science-fiction or for viewers to make repeated showings of Back to the Future. 

Edited by Carolyn Collins Petersen .

• Is Time Travel Possible?
• Time Travel: Dream or Possible Reality?
• Wormholes: What Are They and Can We Use Them?
• The Science of Star Trek
• Closed Timelike Curve
• What Is Time? A Simple Explanation
• Is Warp Drive From 'Star Trek' Possible?
• What Is the Twin Paradox? Real Time Travel
• Amazing Astronomy Facts
• Cosmos Episode 4 Viewing Worksheet
• An Introduction to Black Holes
• 9 Worst Science Mistakes in Movies
• Does Time Really Exist?
• The History of the Chinese Space Program
• Sub-light Speed in Star Trek: Can It Be Done?
• Movies That Realistically Present Physics

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Time Travel, Alternate Histories, & Parallel Universes

Travel to another time, another world, another reality, or all of the above with one of these speculative fiction selections that explore the boundaries of time and place.

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Time Travel | Alternate Histories | Parallel Universes & Alternate Realities

Time Travel

Atomic Anna

Barenbaum (A Bend in the Stars) burnishes her reputation as an up-and-coming talent with this audacious time travel story. Anna Berkova, a Soviet nuclear scientist who works at Chernobyl, is asleep on the morning of the meltdown in 1986. The catastrophe transports her to 1992 Mount Aragats, Armenia, where she finds a trail of blood leading to her dying daughter, Manya, who’s been shot. Before dying, Manya reveals that the amplifier her mother was working on had pulled her through a ripple in space-time, and that Berkova must travel farther into the future to save a teenage granddaughter, Raisa, she’s never known. Barenbaum then unfolds the three women’s stories, each of which is laced with tragedy and unfulfilled aspirations. The threads build toward a deeply satisfying denouement, and the author uses the sci-fi plot device to explore parent-child relationships and questions about the morality of changing the past. Barenbaum dares greatly, and succeeds.

The Shining Girls

In Depression-era Chicago, Harper Curtis finds a key to a house that opens on to other times. But it comes at a cost. He has to kill the shining girls: bright young women, burning with potential. He stalks them through their lives across different eras until, in 1989, one of his victims, Kirby Mazrachi, survives and starts hunting him back. Available to download: Audio

Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin. Available to download: eBook Audio

Here and Now and Then

Stranded for eighteen years since the 1990s, time-traveling agent Kin Stewart, suffering from memory loss, has started a new life, but when rescuers from the year 2142 finally arrive, he must choose between his current family and the one he left behind in the future. Available to download: eBook

An Impossible Promise (sequel)

Liam O'Connor has one purpose in this life, to push the woman he loves into the arms of another man. The Irish rogue unknowingly changed the course of destiny when he fell in love with Cora McLeod over a century ago. Their passion was intense, brief and tragic. And the angels have been trying to restore the balance of fate ever since. Available to download: eBook

Three More Months

Chloe Howard's devotion to her job has come at a cost: spending time with the most important person in her life--her mother. Vowing to change, she plans a trip home. Sadly, hours before she arrives, her mother passes away, leaving Chloe without a goodbye and riddled with grief and regret. But maybe...maybe it's not too late. Just days before the funeral, Chloe finds her mother unaccountably alive and well. And it's no longer May; she's been transported back in time to March. No one--not Chloe's brother, friends, or colleagues--understands why Chloe is so confused. How can she make sense of this? It's impossible. But Chloe is going to make the most of it. She's going to do everything differently: repair family rifts, forge new bonds, tell her mother every day how much she loves her, and possibly prevent the inevitable. This is a second chance Chloe never saw coming. She's not wasting a minute of it.

This is How You Lose the Time War

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. Available to download: eBook Audio

When Grantville, West Virginia, was suddenly hurled from 2000 back to 1632, they landed in the middle of the Thirty Years War. But they brought American Freedom and Justice -- and modern guns -- along with them. 

Hurtled back through time more than two hundred years to Scotland in 1743, Claire Randall finds herself caught in the midst of an unfamiliar world torn apart by violence, pestilence, and revolution and haunted by her growing feelings for James Fraser, a young soldier. Available to download: eBook

The Paradox Hotel

Hart follows up his highly praised The Warehouse (2019) with this nifty murder mystery set at a hotel. But this is not your typical hotel. The Paradox Hotel  caters to the clientele of a government-run time-travel facility. January Cole, the hotel’s security chief, has a lot on her plate, what with a bunch of trillionaires coming to the Paradox, each with his or her own special demands, and the last thing she needs is a murder. At least, she thinks there’s been a murder. She’s pretty sure there’s a body, even though she’s the only person who can see it. There’s a distinct possibility she’s imagining it, but there’s also the possibility that the corpse exists in a different time, and that January’s getting glimpses of the body because she is not, shall we say, entirely anchored in the now. This wildly ambitious, well-executed genre-bender is suspenseful, clever, and funny. Available to download: eBook

Tales from the Cafe (sequel)

In a back alley in Tokyo, there is a café that has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. Local legend says that this shop offers something else besides coffee -- the chance to travel back in time. With faces both familiar and new, Tales from the Cafe follows the story of four patrons who visit to take advantage of café Funiculi Funicula's time-traveling offer and revisit moments with family, friends and lovers. Each one must face up to the past to move on with their lives. Kawaguchi's wistful and heartwarming new novel once again invites the reader to ask themselves, 'What would you do if you could travel back in time?' Available to download: Audio

An Ocean of Minutes

America is in the grip of a deadly flu pandemic. When Frank catches the virus, his girlfriend Polly will do whatever it takes to save him, even if it means risking everything. She agrees to a radical plan--time travel has been invented in the future to thwart the virus. If she signs up for a one-way-trip into the future to work as a bonded laborer, the company will pay for the life-saving treatment Frank needs. But when she arrives in a few weeks to find him twelve years in the future, will Frank still be waiting?

The Future of Another Timeline

1992: Seventeen-year-old Beth finds herself in a car with her friend's abusive boyfriend dead in the backseat, agreeing to help her friends hide the body. 2022: Determined to use time travel to create a safer future, Tess has dedicated her life to visiting key moments in history and fighting for change. But a group of dangerous travelers is bent on stopping her at any cost. Tess and Beth's lives intertwine as war breaks out across the timeline--a war that threatens to destroy time travel and leave only a small group of elites with the power to shape the past, present, and future.

The Heavens

A young man, Ben, meets a young woman, Kate--and they begin to fall in love. From their first meeting, Ben knows Kate is unworldly and fanciful, so at first he isn't that concerned when she tells him about the recurring dream she's had since childhood. In the dream, she's transported to the past, where she lives a second life as Emilia, the mistress of a nobleman in Elizabethan England. But for Kate, the dream becomes increasingly real and compelling until it threatens to overwhelm her life. Available to download: eBook

The Time Traveler’s Wife

The love story of Henry and Claire whose lives are punctuated by Henry's disappearance to different points in time--sometimes even back to visit Claire as a young woman. When Henry meets Claire, he is twenty-eight, and she is twenty. He's a hip, handsome librarian; she is an art student with Botticelli hair. Henry has never met Claire before; Claire has known Henry since she was six... Available to download: eBook Audio

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. 

Hazards of Time Travel

A recklessly idealistic girl dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled (future) world and is punished by being sent back in time to a region of North America -- "Wainscotia, Wisconsin"--that existed eighty years before. Cast adrift in time in this idyllic Midwestern town she is set upon a course of "rehabilitation"--but cannot resist falling in love with a fellow exile and questioning the constraints of the Wainscotia world with results that are both devastating and liberating. Available to download: eBook Audio

Version Control

A woman deals with a strange and persistent sense of everything being slightly off, which may or may not be related to her scientist husband's pet project, a "causality violation device" that might actually be working. Available to download: eBook

The Kingdoms

Joe Tournier, suffering from a form of epilepsy that causes amnesia, leaves the French-ruled London for the rebel land of Scotland to search for answers about his identity. Available to download: eBook and Audio

How To Live Safely In a Science Fictional Universe

Charles Yu, time travel technician, helps save people from themselves in Minor Universe 31, a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction. When he's not taking client calls, Yu visits his mother and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog named Ed, and using a book titled "How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe "as his guide, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory.

Alternate Histories

Jillian Cantor reimagines the pioneering, passionate life of Marie Curie using a parallel structure to create two alternative timelines, one that mirrors her real life, one that explores the consequences for Marie and for science if she'd made a different choice.

The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln

President Abraham Lincoln survives the assassination attempt at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865--only to be charged with overstepping his Constitutional authority during the Civil War, and faced with impeachment. A young black woman named Abigail is assigned to assist on the case, but when one of Lincoln's lead lawyers is found brutally murdered, she finds herself plunged into a web of intrigue, politics, and conspiracy more tangled than she could have imagined. Available to download: eBook Audio  

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

A murder mystery based on the premise that a Jewish settlement was created in Alaska following World War II. In the small town of Sitka, Alyeska, Detective Meyer Landsman finds the body of a prominent town figure who has ties to organized crime. As Landsman digs deeper, he discovers that this is only the tip of the iceberg--and all signs point to a greater danger lurking in the shadows. Available to download: eBook

The Man in the High Castle

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war--and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan. Available to download: eBook Audio

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King takes readers on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it. Available to download: eBook Audio

The Calculating Stars

On a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell to earth and obliterated much of the east coast of the United States, including Washington D.C. The ensuing climate cataclysm will soon render the earth inhospitable for humanity, as the last such meteorite did for the dinosaurs. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated effort to colonize space, and requires a much larger share of humanity to take part in the process, and Elma York is determined to be the first woman to earn the title Lady Astronaut. Available to download: eBook

Machines Like Me

In an alternative 1980s London, Britain has lost the Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher battles Tony Benn for power, and Alan Turing achieves a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, leading to the creation of a synthetic human. When Charlie buys Adam, one of the first batch ever sold, he ends up with more than he expected--including a love triangle that’s not entirely human. Available to download: eBook

The Years of Rice and Salt

In an alternate history world in which the population of Europe is almost completely wiped out by the Black Death during the fourteenth century, three superpowers--China, India, and the nations of Islam--battle for supremacy in a World War destined to create a new world order. Available to download: Audio

The Plot Against America

When the renowned aviation hero and rabid isolationist Charles A. Lindbergh defeated Franklin Roosevelt by a landslide in the 1940 presidential election, fear invaded every Jewish household in America. Not only had Lindbergh, publicly blamed the Jews for selfishly pushing America toward a pointless war with Nazi Germany, but upon taking office as the thirty-third president of the United States, he negotiated a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler. What then followed in America is the historical setting for this startling new book by Pulitzer Prize-winner Philip Roth. Available to download: eBook

A thrilling novel that dares to imagine Britain under the thumb of Nazi Germany.

A Neo-Victorian alternate history novel that explores the question of what might have come of Belgium's disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier. Told from a multiplicity of voices: Africans, Europeans, East Asians, and African Americans in complex relationships with one another, in a compelling range of voices that have historically been silenced. Available to download: Audio

Rodham: A Novel

A novel that imagines a deeply compelling what-might-have-been: What if Hillary Rodham hadn't married Bill Clinton?

The Underground Railroad

From prize-winning, bestselling author Colson Whitehead, a magnificent tour de force chronicling a young slave's adventures as she makes a desperate bid for freedom in the antebellum South through the Underground Railroad, which is no mere metaphor--engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Available to download: eBook Audio

Underground Airlines

It is the present-day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: the Civil War never occurred. Underground Airlines is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe. Available to download: eBook

Parallel Universes & Alternate Realities

Life After Life

On a cold and snowy night in 1910, Ursula Todd is born to an English banker and his wife. She dies before she can draw her first breath. On that same cold and snowy night, Ursula Todd is born, lets out a lusty wail, and embarks upon a life that will be, to say the least, unusual. For as she grows, she also dies, repeatedly, in a variety of ways, while the young century marches on towards its second cataclysmic world war. Does Ursula's apparently infinite number of lives give her the power to save the world from its inevitable destiny? And if she can -- will she? Available to download: eBook Audio

Dark Matter

A mind-bending, relentlessly paced science-fiction thriller, in which an ordinary man is kidnapped, knocked unconscious--and awakens in a world inexplicably different from the reality he thought he knew. Available to download: eBook Audio

In the quiet haven of Clearing, Oregon, four neighbors find their lives upended when they begin to see themselves in parallel realities. At first the visions are relatively benign, but they grow increasingly disturbing--and, in some cases, frightening. When a natural disaster threatens Clearing, it becomes obvious that the visions were not what they first seemed and that the town will never be the same. Available to download: eBook

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely ignored, and utterly out of place. Then she finds a strange book. A book that carries the scent of other worlds, and tells a tale of secret doors, of love, adventure and danger. Each page turn reveals impossible truths about the world and January discovers a story increasingly entwined with her own. Available to download: eBook Audio

The Gunslinger

In a world that is weirdly related to our own, Roland Deschain of Gilead, of In-World that was, pursues his enigmatic antagonist to the mountains that separate the desert from the Western Sea. At a way station, he meets Jake, a boy from a particular time (1977) and a particular place (New York City), and soon the two are joined-khef, ka, and ka-tet. The mountains lie before them. So does the man in black and, somewhere far beyond...the Dark Tower. Available to download: eBook Audio

All Our Wrong Todays

It's 2016, and in Tom Barren's world, technology has solved all of humanity's problems. Unfortunately, Tom isn't happy. He's lost the girl of his dreams. And what do you do when you're heartbroken and have a time machine? Something stupid. Finding himself stranded in a terrible alternate reality -- which we immediately recognize as our 2016 -- Tom is desperate to fix his mistake and go home. Right up until the moment he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and the woman who may just be the love of his life. Available to download: Audio

An ode to George Orwell's 1984 told in alternating male and female voices relates the stories of Aomame, an assassin for a secret organization who discovers that she has been transported to an alternate reality, and Tengo, a mathematics lecturer and novice writer. Available to download: eBook

A Darker Shade of Magic

Kell is one of the last Travelers; magicians with a rare, coveted ability to travel between parallel universes. He can choose where he lands. There's Grey London, dirty and boring, without any magic, ruled by a mad King George. Then there's Red London, where life and magic are revered, and the Maresh Dynasty presides over a flourishing empire. White London, ruled by whoever has murdered their way to the throne. And once upon a time, there was Black London. But no one speaks of that now. Available to download: eBook Audio

My Real Children

It's 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. She forgets things she should know-what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don't seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead. Her childhood, her years at Oxford during the Second World War-those were solid things. But after that, did she marry Mark or not? Had she been a housewife who escaped a terrible marriage after her children were grown, or a successful travel writer with homes in Britain and Italy? And the moon outside her window: does it host a benign research station, or a command post bristling with nuclear missiles? Available to download: eBook

To Paradise

In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist's damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him--and solve the mystery of her husband's disappearances. These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it can't exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness. Available to download: eBook and Audio

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Time Travel Superheroes: 15 Heroes Who Can Travel Through Time

How cool would it be to go back in time and meet your younger self? 

Yes, we know. It’s probably a bad idea. These Superheroes, however, don’t think so. Each of them has traveled through time and has saved the world many times using this ability.

Let’s take a look at these time travelers and their adventures!

#15 Rip Hunter

Publisher:  DC Comics Time Travel Meter:  10+

Rip Hunter is a DC superhero that has come to the aid of many heroes if ever there were any time travel-related issues. He first appeared in the ‘Challengers of the unknown’ and later even got his series during the 1960s. 

Hunter is an ordinary man who uses an invention of his called the Time Sphere, and he travels through time seeking new adventures. Rip Hunter has been instrumental in many Crisis events in the comic books. We also see him playing essential roles in the events of the Arrow-verse. 

In the comics, he is the one who develops the tech that our heroes use to go back in time and fight the Anti-Monitor. This is during the events of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. The changes that occur because of this event completely alter the DC fictional universe, making way for new and old stories to be told differently.

#14 Spider-Man 2099

Publisher:  Marvel Comics Time Travel Meter:  5+

Miguel O’Hara, or Spider-Man of 2099, comes from one of the dark timelines of the Marvel Universe. He is a brilliant young geneticist who works with the Alchemax School for Gifted Youngsters, which is implied to be the old X-men Headquarters. Here, the young scientists conducted experiments and studies about the original Spider-Man. During one of these experiments, an accident gives O’Hara spider powers. 

Miguel’s powers are superior to the original Spider-Man’s, and the two have shared pages on many occasions.

Spider-Man 2099 is a regular time traveler as well. Upon realizing that Tyler Stone was his actual father and that an issue in the past might get his father erased, Miguel decides to go back in time to stop the temporal shift from happening. He does so through a time machine that his biological father destroys, which traps him in the past. He travels into the future along with the Spider-man army to fight the Inheritors.

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#13 Franklin Richards

Publisher:  Marvel Comics Time Travel Meter:   4+

Franklin Richards is the son of Mr. Fantastic and the Invisible Woman. Believed to be a mutant, he has vast reality-warping powers and is said to be one of the most powerful beings in the universe. 

The Child of Mr. and Mrs. Fantastic has been riddled by many journeys in time, and most were not at his discretion. There are instances of him being kidnapped into the future and sometimes even being wiped out of existence. 

Time travel is usually mind-bending by itself, but imagine someone who could do it with the snap of his finger. Franklin is said to easily create galaxies in his hand and travel dimensions. In the comics, a young Franklin is trained by a mysterious figure in his play area. The figure is eventually revealed to be an adult, Franklin Richards. Like we said, Mind-bending. 

#12 Wolverine

Publisher:  Marvel Comics Time Travel Meter:  4+

The Wolverine needs no introduction. Weapon X is one of the critical members of the X-men and has been instrumental in saving the day several times. His healing factor makes him a nightmare to go up against, and he can even stand toe-to-toe with the Hulk.

One more should be added among his many persona and titles – Time Traveler. Wolverine has journeyed through time on many occasions, and we also see that in the movie version. It involves Kitty Pryde sending Wolverine’s consciousness back in time to save mutants from annihilation.

In the new series – X Deaths, two Wolverines are sent back in time from two different future timelines. In both timelines, Wolverine is the last mutant alive and must go back in time to change the future.

Time Travel is messy, guys. Please don’t try this at home.

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#11 Kitty Pryde

Publisher:  Marvel Comics Time Travel Meter:   1+

Kitty Pryde is a core member of the X-Men. Her powers allow her to phase through objects, which means she can move through anything. She has used her powers on many occasions and has helped her team save the day. She even uses her abilities to phase out of sync with the earth’s rotation. She can travel at infinite speeds, or at least faster than light. 

In fictional theory, she could use this ability to phase in and out of time. However, Kitty Pryde travels time without achieving this feat as well. Unlike the movie adaptation of the ‘Days of future past’ storyline, Kitty’s consciousness goes back in time to save mutant kind from extinction. Rachel Summers, the daughter of Cyclops and Marvel Girl, can send her back in time. 

She eventually manages to save mutant kind and change their dark future.

#10 Super Boy

Publisher:  DC Comics Time Travel Meter:  5+

Superboy has had many incarnations over the years, with some iterations just being the younger version of the original Superman. As Superboy, Kal El meets the Legion of Superheroes, formed after taking inspiration from the former’s stories. 

The Legion travels back to the 31st century to recruit Superboy to their team and fights threats in the future. The Legion already has time travel tech in the future, and it is using this that Superboy can travel to the future. 

Another character incarnation is Con El, who has the DNA of both Lex Luthor and Superman. This Superboy has died many times but has been revived multiple times as a clone. He is even resurrected in the 31st century by Brainiac. This same Con El travels back in time to live with Jonathan and Martha Kent. 

There are so many origins and stories for this character that it can get confusing at a point.

#9 Dr. Manhattan

Publisher:  DC Comics Time Travel Meter:   Infinite

Dr. Manhattan turned into an energy being after he was exposed to a lab accident. The abilities he acquired manifested over time and slowly grew in power. Eventually, he turned into a being that could be everywhere at once and had the powers of a god. He could change reality to his wishes and create universes out of nothing.

With his omniscience came a significant shift in perspective. He no longer saw time in the same way as others. It was one large picture rather than a string of events, and he could place himself anywhere in that picture with just a thought. This has enabled the Doctor to travel to any moment he wished. 

Since he is a timeless being, he doesn’t precisely need to travel anywhere. He can change realities and change futures instantly. He even destroys the DC universe and restarts it.

What is time to a God?

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#8 Dr. Strange

Publisher:  Marvel Comics Time Travel Meter:  3+

Stephen Strange is no Stranger to time travel. The Sorcerer Supreme is a master of the Mystic Arts and is a core member of the Avengers. He takes the lead on any threat of supernatural origin and is a more powerful practitioner of all things magic. 

We see Dr. Strange using these magical objects to manipulate time on many occasions. The most famous would be the Eye of Agomotto or the Time Stone to see different futures. However, that is not the case in the comics. Dr. Strange discovers that the Book of Cagliostro can be used to travel time and that this method does not align with the scientific techniques in the other versions of time travel fiction. 

Even without tools, Dr. Strange has been shown to simply travel time with her mystic arts.

#7 Superman

Publisher:  DC Comics Time Travel Meter: 4+

There is seemingly very little that Superman can’t do. He is faster than light, can create a rift in reality just by punching it, and bench press the earth for five days straight. That is some next-level power. With the speeds he can achieve, it has been asked whether the Man of Steel can also travel time.

Superman has traveled time on many occasions. The how’s of this are rather sketchy and used to depend on the writer. The Superboy iteration could simply go back and forth in time with relative ease and could even carry people with him.

Even in one of the earlier Superman movies featuring George Reeves, we see the character go back in time but simply slow and reverse the earth’s rotation. He also uses his speed in the comic ‘Return to Krypton’ to go and visit Krypton before its destruction and meet his parent.

There truly is nothing that this man can’t do, huh?

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#6 Green Lantern

Publisher:  DC Comics Time Travel Meter:   5+

The Lantern’s ring is only limited by its wielder’s imagination. From energy constructs to energy projection, the possibilities seem endless. Within its vast capabilities lies the power to manipulate and travel through time.

Hal Jordan has used the Ring to travel to the 70th century, and another GL Arisia Rrab uses the Ring’s power to send time through her and age quickly. We have to admit that the latter is rather strange.

Hal used his power in the comics to open a portal to the past so that he could send a few pterodactyls through it. 

News Flash – comics books can be bizarre. 

#5 Iron Lad

Publisher:  Marvel Comics Time Travel Meter:   5+

Nathaniel Richards is a 30th-century genius and the younger version of Kang the Conqueror. Kang appeared to his younger self and saved him from a bully, thus giving him a glimpse of his future self and his armor similar to that of Iron Man. Upon seeing what he would turn into, Nathaniel renounced his destiny and decided to use his intellect to never become the evil version of himself. 

The armor given to Nathaniel has neuro-kinetic capabilities and allows him to travel time, the same as Kang.

The most amazing time travel Adventure is when Iron Lad travels back in time to warn the Avengers of the oncoming dangers. Unable to get in touch with them, he helps the Young Avengers and even kills his older version in battle.

Publisher:  Marvel Comics Time Travel Meter:   10+

Bishop is the great-grandson of the mutant Gateway, who could manipulate and travel through time. Although he does not possess the powers to do so himself. Bishop is a soldier from the future who can passively absorb energy and dispel it however he wants. He is often depicted holding an energy gun that would allow him to shoot his absorbed energy out as blasts.

Bishop uses time travel devices from the future similar to that of Cable to journey to different periods. He is usually seen traveling back in time from a dystopian future to help the X-men rewrite history.

Bishop was sent back in time to stop Legion from killing Magneto, but his failure to do so is what brought about the Age of Apokolips.

The fastest man on the planet has been known to play around a little too much with time. With the ability to run at a million times the speed of light, The Flash can alter the vibrations in his body to travel through time. He can do the same to travel through dimensions as well. 

Not all versions of the Flash can achieve this feat, but Barry Allen and Wally West seem to do so easily. The most famous time-related adventure by a Flash is the Flashpoint paradox.

Due to his selfish needs, the Flash goes back in time and saves his mother, creating a massive rift and modifying the future to a world on the brink of war and destruction. Once in this new reality, Barry Allen realizes his mistake and works toward correcting his actions. He uses his time traveling abilities to go back in time and correct his errors.

This storyline is the most critical example of why the time stream is not to be tampered with.

Top 10 Fastest Superheroes From Marvel, DC (Ranked) Fans Also Read

#2 Booster Gold

Publisher:  DC Comics Time Travel Meter:  20+

Booster Gold is from the 25th century Gotham, and unlike other future genii who come back in time, he just does so for fame. An underachiever in the future, Booster works as a janitor at the Museum of Superheroes. This is where he discovers much about the legendary heroes and their stories. He manages to steal a flight ring and Brainiac 5’s energy belt. He also takes Rip hunter’s time sphere, and it is with this that he travels back in time. 

All his tools are still high-tech in the 20th century, and he uses them to make people believe that he is a superhero and simply works to become famous. Though initially shown to be a greedy showboat, Booster slowly learns the way of a true hero. He uses his abilities to travel through time and help change histories that lead to dystopian futures.

Booster uses his tech to go back in time and save Blue Beetle from getting murdered just moments before his death.

Publisher:  Marvel Comics Time Travel Meter:  20+

Cable is the most famous time-traveling character in the Marvel Universe. He is the son of Scott Summers and a clone of Jean Grey from the future. He has traveled back in time numerous times to help the X-men with a threat or to prevent a dystopian future from occurring. 

There are many versions of the character and various explanations for how he can travel time. The most common two are – he possesses inherent time travel abilities due to the techno-organic virus in his body, and the other is that he has a time travel device that looks like a watch which helps his travel time.

The best example of this feat is during the events of Ultimate X-men, where he comes back in time to warn and train Professor Xavier for their upcoming battle with Apokolips.

Honorable Mentions

• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Reed Richards

This brings us to the end of our time traveler’s list. If anything, we have learned that messing with time is bad news. However, do you think we could create a timeline where superheroes were real if we mess it up enough?

Interesting. Very interesting.

What Is the Ability to Control Time Called?

Chronokinesis is the ability to alter or control time with your mind. With it, you can travel through time or even stop it.

Which Superhero Can Travel Through Time?

The Flash can travel through time. He can vibrate his body at such speeds that he can phase through time. He can use some power to travel dimensions as well.

Which Marvel Hero Can Time Travel?

Kitty Pryde can time travel. She is the mutant that goes back in tune during the events of Days of Future Past in the comics.

Can Any Marvel Character Time Travel?

Yes, Iron Lad can time travel. He is the younger version of Kang the Conqueror and travels back in time to warn the Avengers of his future self.

What DC Characters Can Time Travel?

Booster Gold can time travel. He does so by making using Rip Hunter’s Time sphere that he stole from the 25th century.

Can Green Lanterns Time Travel?

Yes, Green Lanterns can time travel. Anything is possible as long as there is enough willpower. Hal Jordan once made a jet construct that could travel fast enough to enter the speed force, which means that he can probably travel through time.

• X (Twitter)

Jeremiah de Rozario is a professional songwriter and a comic nut. He has been an avid songwriter for over three years and has vast experience writing comics and pop culture. The people close to Jeremiah say he lives in a bit of fantasy land, as his career choices point us all in the same direction. Comics have taken Jeremiah on adventures since he was a child and continue to be where he draws most of his inspiration and life lessons. We know, weird! From stories of heartbreak, love, evil, and perseverance, comic books have it all. These fantasy stories have taken new and exciting turns on both paper and the big screen, and the little boy with his Incredible Hulk comic could not be happier. Jeremiah started his journey as a writer with Averagebeing and has written numerous detailed articles that deep dive into comic theories, TV shows, and the current happenings of this exciting world. If he isn't writing new songs, he is reading as many comic books as he can find. If you need a breakdown of your favorite comic hero or supervillain, Jeremiah is here to spill the tea.

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From Frugal to Free

20 Tips to Save Money While Traveling Without Sacrificing Experiences

Posted: March 2, 2024 | Last updated: March 2, 2024

Traveling provides so many breathtaking views and unforgettable moments. Although it doesn’t have to, traveling can also be very expensive. Saving money on travel isn’t something they teach in school. Savvy travelers know the best ways to save while still having optimal experiences.

1. Shop Local

Immerse yourself in local culture by stopping at a local market. Pay attention to the kinds of items sold, which booths attract more locals, and which ones pique the interest of tourists. Local markets and grocery stores always sell items at a lower price than tourist traps because they know their audience. Residents don’t typically upcharge their neighbors.

2. Optimize Luggage

Southwest Airlines is the only airline that allows flyers to check bags without paying extra. Each passenger gets two checked bags with a limit of up to 50 pounds per bag. Spoiler alert: Southwest is not a budget airline. Yes, it’s great you get to bring two full bags of luggage, though the cost of airfare undercuts the free bags. Seasoned travelers know how to pack essentials in carryons and don’t check luggage. You may want to bring your entire closet to Costa Rica, but you don’t need every outfit.

3. Negotiate

Many Americans don’t have experience negotiating in markets or stores because prices are usually fixed in North America. When I studied in Peru, our guide instructed us to negotiate when we market hopped since almost every vendor knows how to settle a deal. You can apply this to food and lodging when traveling. Depending on the country, you could save a ton of money.

4. Public Transport

America lacks the public transportation system in which many European countries thrive. Of course, larger cities like New York City and Los Angeles have forms of public transportation, but they’re concentrated in localities. Traveling via public transport is a less costly transportation method compared to private rides in taxis or Uber. Buses, trains, subways, and ferries all provide affordable routes for the public.

5. Large Lunches

It’s no secret that dinners cost more than lunches at restaurants despite offering similar portion sizes. Instead of dining out for every dinner, dine out for lunches. Order larger portions and save the leftovers for dinner that night. You cut costs, satiate hunger, and grant yourself more time to explore nighttime festivities.

Booking a room with a kitchenette is a great way to save money while traveling. This way, you don’t have to overspend on meals. Shop at local markets or grocers for fresh ingredients and try local cuisine. Cook in bulk to portion meals for the next few days to save time and energy.

7. Free Activities

You don’t need to spend much money exploring even when traveling to new countries. You can find free activities to entertain and delight tourists everywhere you go. Cities are fabulous walking grounds, opening up minds to centuries of history. Find a free walking tour to immerse yourself in centuries of rich history. Museums typically offer free days throughout the year, saving potential customers a hefty amount of money as they marvel at iconic pieces.

8. Multiple Copies of Identification

In college, my roommate forgot her passport in the dorm two days before she left the country. All of us had already gone on our winter trips, some visiting home, some journeying abroad, so no one could be her savior and ship her the passport. She had to visit the passport agency, plead her case, pay a lump sum, and hope everything fell into place. It did, but she lost a large portion of her travel funds.

Always have two or three forms of your passport and ID—digital and physical both work.

9. Leave in the Middle of the Week

Experian says the cheapest days of the week to board a plane are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays on early morning or late night flights. Given that most people want to book a flight for the weekend, mid-day options have cheaper fares, plus fewer people trying to book them. Grumbling for a few hours about waking up at 4 AM to catch a flight beats spending $500 on a $100 fare.

10. Ask for an Airline Upgrade

You never know if you don’t ask. When sitting in limbo—the airport tarmac—peek around the plane. Is anyone occupying those first-class seats? How about the business section? Do the curtains reflect a silhouette, or are they cracked and inviting? Ask a flight attendant about upgrading your flight. The worst they can say is no.

11. Emphasize Celebrations

Is it your birthday? Maybe it’s an anniversary. Did you just get engaged at the hotel? Tell the people around you. You never know when someone will feel particularly generous. Tell the hotel receptionist, the restaurant’s hostess, or the tour guide if you’re celebrating a special occasion. You’ll be surprised by how many free items or discounts sneak in.

12. Bring Your Own Water Bottle

Take-5 gives customers a free water bottle when they pull up for an oil change. Grocery stores charge patrons between $1 and $2 for a singular plastic bottle, while amusement parks crank the price to $6. Jetsetters know that tourist traps gain a lot of money from naive tourists willing to spend extra on necessities. Don’t fall for that game. Instead, bring your own refillable and reusable water bottle, fill it up at refill stations, and save on natural resources.

13. Bring Snacks

You can’t always predict when you’ll get hungry or someone might have a dizzy spell, but you equip yourself to tackle the situation head-on. If you aren’t a huge snacker, bring some fruit or trail mix to quell hunger. Refill the snack bag as needed.

14. Opt For All-Inclusive Packages

One of my favorite all-inclusive stays was in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. At age seven, I followed my mom on all her adventures since she worked for a travel agent company, and I fell in love with the idea of all-inclusive hotels. My young self floated in the pool all day as I drank a surplus of orange juice and devoured too many plates of butter noodles. After I scarfed down my meals, I’d bounce over to the trampoline park for hours of jump time while my parents enjoyed the included shows and watersports.

15. Travel Credit Cards

Avid travelers need to research travel credit cards. Not only do these credit cards allow you to travel without annoying notifications from the bank confirming your whereabouts, even though you warned them several times about your travel plans. Various travel credit cards offer points and packages per trip, resulting in more affordable vacations later.

16. Avoid Tourist Traps

If you see someone sketchily hanging out outside a restaurant, waiting for their next victim, or if someone tries to upsell you an experience at a staple attraction (i.e., a guide outside of the Eiffel Tower hoping to sell you an unnecessary tour), walk in the other direction. Tourist traps are pretty easy to spot. One way to determine them is with the absence of locals and the merchandise double the cost.

17. Travel Kit

I cannot express how often owning a travel toothbrush or hairbrush improved my mood after a long haul across oceans. Forgetting a tube of toothpaste or other toiletries can be annoying, especially with the overpriced substitutes in airports or convenience stores. Create a travel bag full of travel-size items like Q-Tips, tweezers, shampoo, and conditioner to circumvent the awful reality of walking through an airport with frizzled hair and morning breath.

18. Budget Accordingly

Travel experts state the best activities to avoid are those you can do at home. Why go to the movies or eat at a chain restaurant when you can explore paradise and local cuisine? Find out niche activities only offered in the particular destination and budget from there.

19. Couchsurf

Couchsurfing is a great way to cut costs on lodging, only if you’re comfortable staying in a stranger’s home. However, if you read threads detailing couchsurfing horror stories, you will never sleep anywhere except in your bed. Most people who couch surf don’t have an issue, yet they can report the host to the safety team if they do. The organization also compiled a guide to navigate the system safely.

20. Skill Exchange

One of my former coworkers participated in a skill exchange program where he lent his animal-friendly skills and gathering techniques to a local village in Bolivia in exchange for room and board (he loved sleeping under tarantulas submerged in the forest). The exchange program focused on helping exotic animals out of toxic circuses or unsafe environments and re-introducing them to the wild. The program paid for his food and lodging while he only fronted the ticket cost.

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The post 20 Tips to Save Money While Traveling Without Sacrificing Experiences first appeared on From Frugal to Free .

Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock / RossHelen.

The content of this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute or replace professional financial advice.

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Solomon Islands' Sogavare says he runs security amid tense wait for new government

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Eating within limited hours can help with weight loss — but that may be because it simply cuts calories

A number of studies have suggested that eating only during a limited window of time can help some people lose weight. But it's unclear why: Does the strategy just help people eat less, or is there something beneficial about keeping meals within a shorter time frame?

New research falls in the former camp, suggesting that the amount of calories people consume matters more than the timing. 

A small, randomized trial at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine — the results of which were published Friday in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine — found that when researchers controlled the number of calories people consumed, both time-restricted and regular eating schedules resulted in similar degrees of weight loss. 

“It makes us think that people who benefit from time-restricted eating — meaning they lose weight — it’s probably from them eating fewer calories because their time window’s shorter and not something else,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Nisa Maruthur, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.

Time-restricted eating regimens vary, and some are similar to intermittent fasting, a type of diet that involves alternating between periods of fasting and eating. The new trial looked at a 10-hour eating window, which is longer than what would typically qualify as intermittent fasting.

The researchers supplied 41 people with prepared meals for 12 weeks. The participants, most of them Black women, had obesity and were either prediabetic or diabetic.

Their meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack) were designed to contain the same number of calories they ate in their daily lives, based on their age, sex, weight, height and level of physical activity. The food had a healthy balance of fat, carbohydrates and protein.

On a given day, participants might have cereal and a fruit cup for breakfast, a kale salad with white beans and lentils for lunch, peanuts or mandarin oranges for a snack and a beef stew for dinner.

Half the group ate meals over a 10-hour window, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Around 80% of their calories were consumed at breakfast and lunch, because some research has suggested that eating most of your calories early in the day could be beneficial for weight loss . 

The other half ate from 8 a.m. to midnight and consumed half of their daily calories at dinner — a schedule meant to mimic many people’s eating patterns outside a research setting. 

During the eating windows, the trial didn’t limit beverages if they were calorie- and caffeine-free. Participants were also each allowed one cup of coffee, diet soda and alcoholic beverage per day. Outside the designated time periods, only water was allowed.

At the end of the study, participants lost roughly the same amount of weight regardless of which regimen they followed. The average in the time-restricted eating group was around 5.1 pounds lost, compared to 5.7 pounds for the other group. There were no significant differences in blood sugar, blood pressure, waist circumference or lipid levels. 

The results were similar to the findings of a randomized trial last year , which found that intermittent fasting was similar to calorie counting as a weight loss strategy.

However, research overall on time-restricted eating is mixed: A six-year study didn’t find a link between weight change and limiting food intake to a specific time window.

The new trial was distinctive in that the researchers controlled what all participants ate — a rarer and more complex experiment design.

But its results come with a few caveats, said Dr. Lisa Chow, a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota who wasn’t involved in the study.

The trial may not have captured the long-term benefits of time-restricted eating, she said. One of her own studies , published last year, found that six months of time-restricted eating — from noon to 8 p.m. daily — was more effective for weight loss than calorie restriction in people with Type 2 diabetes.

What's more, Chow added, the trial didn’t reflect what time-restricted eating looks like in real life, because it controlled people’s calories and meals.  

“When you’re talking about the doctor talking to a patient about weight loss, it’s not the same thing, because the doctor isn’t going to provide all the food,” she said.

Other researchers also think meal timing matters for weight loss.

According to Satchin Panda, a professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, the ideal time-restricted eating schedule involves waiting an hour or two after you wake up to have your first meal, then consuming your last meal three hours before bedtime.

“It doesn’t depend on the world clock — it depends on your internal clock,” Panda said. “A person who wakes up at 6 a.m., it may be OK for them to start at 8 a.m. But the person who wakes up at 8 a.m. may start eating at 9 or 10 a.m.”

That’s because the stress hormone cortisol is high after you wake up, and melatonin — a hormone that regulates sleep — is still declining at that time. So it may be more difficult for people to properly digest soon after they arise, Panda said.

Eating close to bedtime, meanwhile, can disturb sleep, and insufficient sleep may increase cravings, Panda added. Some research also suggests that late-night eating could cause people to store more energy as fat.

Time-restricted eating may offer benefits other than weight loss, as well.

Panda’s research has found that the approach may reduce so-called “bad cholesterol” and improve blood pressure and blood sugar in people with certain chronic health conditions.

On the other hand, a study published last month found that restricting food consumption to less than eight hours per day may increase the risk of cardiovascular death long-term.

At the very least, Panda said, time-restricted eating may offer a simpler alternative to calorie counting.

“It’s easier to count time than count calories,” he said. “I’d guess that most people cannot remember how many calories they’ve consumed, but timing is easy to remember.”

Aria Bendix is the breaking health reporter for NBC News Digital.

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Luckily for flyers, it’s gonna be May very soon.

“May and September are great months to travel, as they’re before and after peak summer here in the US,” flight attendant Bernice Padilla, 29, confided to SWNS .

“You have less crowds and more affordable prices, but the weather is still nice,” she continued. “Every country has their specific shoulder season, so I recommend doing some research before booking.”

Padilla, a flight attendant for six years who has visited 44 countries, is sharing tricks of the travel trade — from flights to book to countries to explore.

The Dallas-based flight attendant , who boasts 144,300 followers on TikTok , said that while Europe is a hot destination for American travelers, it’s best to book holidays in “overlooked” destinations.

“Everyone loves to go to London, Rome, Paris and Barcelona,” she explained. “ I am going to Argentina in a few weeks, for example. I think it is good to book places that aren’t as popular with tourists.”

She added: “Even [if] people are still wanting to visit Europe, there are so many places that aren’t as popular, like Albania and countries on the coast.”

Padilla also revealed her preference for booking the earliest possible flight to avoid delays.

“ If there are any delays , it ends up being a domino effect. Say there is a delay in California due to the weather — then my flight here can’t take off until that flight takes off,” she reasoned. “Everything trickles down, whereas if you fly early, your plane will be there from the night before.”

And when it comes to packing, Padilla recommends traveling with carry-on luggage , especially in the summer.

If that’s not possible, she relies on compression packing cubes .

“I still have a problem with overpacking, but I try not to overpack as much,” she confessed. “I always travel with compression cubes — that way you can fit more into your suitcase.”

Her travel must-haves include a reusable water bottle , a sweater or blanket , a pen to fill out any forms that might be needed at arrival, noise-canceling headphones , and a portable charger .

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Is the US really close to banning TikTok? Yes? And, also: No.

• A bill aimed at banning TikTok in the US could be signed into law as early as this week.
• But that doesn't mean TikTok will be banned in the US anytime soon.
• At the very earliest, a ban wouldn't kick in until 2025. It could take a lot longer than that, though.

The US House of Representatives passed a so-called TikTok-ban bill on Saturday . Does that mean TikTok is getting closer to getting banned in the US?

Absolutely.

Will TikTok get banned in the US anytime soon?

While the conventional wisdom is that the US Senate will likely approve the bill this week, and President Joe Biden will sign it into law shortly after, TikTok won't go anywhere immediately.

At the very earliest, the ban wouldn't go into effect until nine months after Biden signed the bill — meaning 2025. But even that is unlikely to happen.

Let's explain.

I remember reading about a maybe-TikTok-ban bill last month . Has something changed?

A little bit.

In March, the House passed a bill requiring ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese owner, to sell the US operations of TikTok to someone who isn't based in a "foreign adversary"; if not, the app would effectively be banned in the US.

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Since then, the bill's sponsors have made two changes: The first and most important one was bundling the bill along with measures calling for US aid to Ukraine and Israel . While forcing TikTok to sell or leave has mixed political support , the aid packages are a priority for much of Congress. Combining all three things means the TikTok bill will likely be approved as part of the package deal.

The language around the proposed ban has also been tweaked. Instead of requiring ByteDance to sell off its US operations in six months, the company now has nine months to get a deal done. And the bill also gives a US president the power to extend that new deadline by another three months if there's a deal in the works.

So you're saying ByteDance really has a year to sell TikTok to a different owner?

Yes. But also, no.

If Biden signs the bill, that nine-months-to-one-year countdown starts. Except that ByteDance has already said it will challenge the law in court , and will presumably seek an injunction — putting the entire thing on pause. And a court battle could take a very long time.

For reference: In May 2023, Montana lawmakers passed their own TikTok-ban bill; in November, a federal judge blocked the measure . That case is working its way to federal appeals court .

OK. But what if the bill does pass, and does hold up in court? What happens then? Does TikTok disappear from my phone?

If ByteDance can't or won't find a buyer for US TikTok, the bill requires Google and Apple to remove TikTok from their app stores — something they have practice doing in other countries . But that wouldn't shut down TikTok in the US itself — it would just make it very difficult for the app to add more US-based users.

The bill would also prohibit US-based internet companies from helping TikTok maintain or update the service. So TikTok could continue to operate in the US, but its owner would have a harder time keeping it going and growing.

I remember hearing about people who wanted to buy TikTok to keep it going in the US. What's going on with that?

Good question. The first thing to resolve is whether China would actually allow ByteDance to sell one of the country's biggest internet successes at metaphorical gunpoint. Then there are plenty of technical questions about how a sale would work and how TikTok could function if cleaved off from its main owner.

In any case, the most prominent would-be buyer for US TikTok, so far, is Steve Mnuchin, the former treasury secretary from the Trump administration . But Mnuchin himself doesn't have the money for the deal. More important, he's reportedly telling investors that he would essentially rebuild TikTok's vaunted algorithm himself, which makes some observers skeptical about its chance of success.

Watch: TikTok could be banned in US after House vote

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Mount Ruang Erupts in Indonesia, Spewing Lava Thousands of Feet Into the Sky

Hundreds of earthquakes were detected in the weeks preceding the eruption of the volcano in North Sulawesi province. Hundreds of people were evacuated.

By Christine Hauser

Mount Ruang, a volcano in Indonesia, erupted on Tuesday, spewing fiery lava and ash thousands of feet into the night sky and forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people in the North Sulawesi province, according to the authorities and local news reports.

The volcano erupted at about 7:19 p.m. local time, Antara, the national news agency, reported. The country’s National Disaster Mitigation Agency said on Wednesday that more than 800 people in nearby villages were displaced by the eruption, many using ferries and taking shelter in churches and community centers.

The authorities said supplies such as mats, blankets, cleaning materials, and tents were needed, and that more shelters might be opening for people fleeing the volcano.

Indonesia is the world’s largest archipelago nation. It is spread across what is known as the Ring of Fire, where tectonic plates clash under the surface of the Pacific Ocean and spawn earthquakes and eruptions from volcanoes.

Mount Ruang is a stratovolcano , or a steep, conical volcano that has built up over years in layers from explosive eruptions of lava, rock fragments, ash and other properties.

“It is in a part of the world where there are a lot of active volcanoes,” said Dr. Tracy K.P. Gregg , who chairs the geology department at the University at Buffalo.

Its last major eruption was in 2002, when the column of lava and ash that it spewed reached up to 17 miles, Dr. Gregg said.

She said the volcano in 2002 measured 4, a “large” volcano on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, a scale used to measure the strength of an eruption by looking at several factors, such as duration, ash volume and plume height. Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 measured 6 on the index. Mount St. Helens in the United States in 1980 measured 5.

“So it is a little bit smaller than that,” she said of Mount Ruang. Right now, it is not as violent as the previous eruption, she added, but the volcano cannot be fully assessed while it is in progress.

More than 300 volcanic earthquakes were detected over a period of at least two weeks preceding the eruption of Mount Ruang.

It is not immediately clear why the volcano erupted when it did. “Every volcano has its own personality,” she said.

In the past few years, several volcanoes in Indonesia have erupted. In December, 2023, the bodies of 11 hikers were found on the slopes of Mount Marapi on the island of Sumatra, after an eruption that spewed an ash column of nearly 3,000 meters — about 10,000 feet high.

In December 2022, more than 1,900 people were evacuated from the area surrounding Mount Semeru as it erupted. In an eruption there the previous December , more than 50 people were killed and hundreds more were injured.

Christine Hauser is a reporter, covering national and foreign news. Her previous jobs in the newsroom include stints in Business covering financial markets and on the Metro desk in the police bureau. More about Christine Hauser