i have a time travel simulator

Filter Results

Games that try to simulate real-world activities (like driving vehicles or living the life of someone else) with as much realism as possible. Simulators generally require more study and orientation than arcade games, and the best simulators are also educational.

Suggest updated description

Time Travel

Suggest description for this tag

• Play in browser
• $15 or less
• Last 7 days
• Last 30 days
• Educational
• Interactive Fiction
• Role Playing
• Visual Novel
• Xbox controller
• Gamepad (any)
• Touchscreen
• Voice control
• Oculus Rift
• Leap Motion
• NeuroSky Mindwave
• Accelerometer
• OSVR (Open-Source Virtual Reality)
• Google Daydream VR
• Google Cardboard VR
• Playstation controller
• MIDI controller
• Oculus Quest
• Windows Mixed Reality
• Valve Index
• A few seconds
• A few minutes
• About a half-hour
• About an hour
• A few hours
• Days or more
• Local multiplayer
• Server-based networked multiplayer
• Ad-hoc networked multiplayer
• Color-blind friendly
• Configurable controls
• High-contrast
• Interactive tutorial
• Blind friendly
• Downloadable
• With Steam keys
• In game jams
• Not in game jams

Related collections

Top simulation games games tools game assets comics books physical games albums & soundtracks game mods everything else tagged time travel (40 results).

• New & Popular
• Top sellers
• Most Recent

Explore Simulation games tagged Time Travel on itch.io · Upload your games to itch.io to have them show up here.

New itch.io is now on YouTube!

Subscribe for game recommendations, clips, and more

/ Anime & Comics / I Have a Time Travel Simulator

I Have a Time Travel Simulator

Anime & comics 145 chapters 1.6m views, author: yullain.

4.52 (30 ratings)

Read In Library Add to Library

The more he got into the Comprehensive world, Kitahara Hakushu initially thought it was just an ordinary everyday Comprehensive world. Who would have thought that after entering high school, unusual things would happen one after another, and I would wake myself up through the simulator. Since then, Kitahara Hakushu has embarked on a path of becoming invincible. [Demon Slayer, Campione!, No Game No Life, Mondaiji-tachi ga Isekai Kara Kuru Sou Desu yo...] ---------------- Support me and get access to additional chapters. www.patreon.com/Yullain ---------------- Original Author: Senbei boy https://wap.faloo.com/1186285.html

Popular tags for the story

# TRANSMIGRATION

# WEAKTOSTRONG

Weekly Power Status

You may also like.

• Writing Quality
• Stability of Updates
• Story Development
• Character Design
• World Background

The total score 0.0

Author yullain

instagram tiktok twitter facebook youtube

© 2024 WebNovel

About Newsroom Brand Guideline

Translators & Editors Commercial Audio business Help & Service DMCA Notification Online service Vulnerability Report

Tags Download Apps Be an Author Help Center Privacy Policy Terms of Service Keywords Affiliate

QiDian Yuewen

Sign in to add this item to your wishlist, follow it, or mark it as ignored

Sign in to see reasons why you may or may not like this based on your games, friends, and curators you follow.

Early Access Game

Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops..

Note: This Early Access game is not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

Why Early Access?

• Early access will give me the possibility to work on the game and get feedback during its development.
• Able to get support for the work while it is being developed!

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

How is the full version planned to differ from the early access version, what is the current state of the early access version, will the game be priced differently during and after early access, how are you planning on involving the community in your development process, buy no time.

Report bugs and leave feedback for this game on the discussion boards

About This Game

• Stalk your past selves in time!
• An open world that changes based on the time period.
• Let them your Steam Friends join you and travel together through time in P2P Multiplayer!
• Procedural Family trees, NPC's marry, have children, die, can become criminals based on the economic situation of the year you travel to.
• A Full-fledged Day and Night cycle with weather and seasons and special in world events!
• Crafting! (Make crazy weapons or time chips to travel to special locations in time)
• A main story with up to 12 hours of playtime!
• Many exciting side stories and mini jobs!
• Your own time machine which can be modified to your liking! (Workshop Support Included)
• Combat! (use any items around you to defend yourself)

System Requirements

• OS *: Windows 7/Vista
• Processor: Intel Core i5-3230M 2.6Ghz or equivalent
• Memory: 4 GB RAM
• Graphics: NVIDIA GT 710M or equivalent. Minimum of 512MB VRAM
• DirectX: Version 11
• Storage: 2 GB available space
• Sound Card: DirectX Compatible

More like this

What curators say, customer reviews.

You can use this widget-maker to generate a bit of HTML that can be embedded in your website to easily allow customers to purchase this game on Steam.

Enter up to 375 characters to add a description to your widget:

Copy and paste the HTML below into your website to make the above widget appear

Popular user-defined tags for this product: (?)

Sign in to add your own tags to this product.

Best Time Travel Games 2023

Who doesn't like a bit of time travel? We've created the ultimate list of the best time travel games to play right now. Find your next game here!

While time travel is traditionally featured in works of science fiction, nowadays, you can find elements of this mysterious phenomenon in just about every genre of gaming. 

It’s typically depicted in one of two ways: a plot device where characters must go back in time to prevent something from happening, or a game mechanic in which players manipulate time to overcome challenges.

In this list, we’ll showcase  the top time travel games to enjoy in 2024 , such as games about traveling through time and the finest time travel games for computer.

We’ll be updating this list in the future with new titles, so make sure to check back and let us know if we missed any of your favorite games involving time travel!

Related: Best Space Games 2023 Best Story-Driven Games 2023 Best Point and Click Adventure Games 2023

Table of Contents Show

Platforms: Windows, PS5

A common trend in more recent games is characters getting stuck in perpetual time loops and having to figure out a way to escape.

One of the more recent titles to explore this trope is Deathloop , an immersive sim shooter about a talented hitman who finds himself trapped in time on a party island with rival assassins.

To end the loop, you’ll have to eliminate the eight targets responsible for your serious case of déjà vu while also navigating the island’s numerous threats.

It’s a clever approach to open-ended gameplay that builds upon previous Arkane games such as Dishonored and only benefits from looking like an acid trip from the ‘70s.

The Forgotten City

Platforms: Windows, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch

Initially conceived as a Skyrim mod , The Forgotten City would eventually become a standalone game spearheaded by lead developer and writer Nick Pearce.

Set during an alternate version of the Roman Empire, it sees you exploring a city subjected to the Golden Rule: a religious mandate where any sinful action causes the entire population to turn into permanent gold statues.

While inspecting the rule’s origins and which transgressions it applies to, you’re advised someone in the city intends to violate it, urging you to travel back in time to prevent them.

It’s an interesting take on time travel that also explores the existential relationship between humanity and its laws, namely what is truly considered right or wrong.

Platform: PS5

Returnal is a PlayStation-exclusive third-person shooter about an astronaut who lands on an alien planet searching for a mysterious signal when she suddenly finds herself trapped in a time loop.

This is a great justification for the game’s roguelike design, which sees the protagonist resurrected after each death as she traverses the planet’s foreign environments and battles a host of extraterrestrial foes.

The further you progress, the stranger and more unsettling Selene’s visions become as she finds herself increasingly entangled in an ever-changing world.

If you manage to make it to the end and break the loop, you’ll be faced with some startling revelations about the main character and the planet that make for great sci-fi storytelling.

Platforms: Windows, PS5, Xbox Series X/S

Although time travel generally involves going forward or backward in history, you can extend this further to account for multiple realities or planes of existence.

With this mindset, one could argue that the horror game The Medium uses time travel as a game mechanic, with the main character able to travel between the spirit world and the living world.

In a practical sense, this allows you to make changes in either world that affects the other, such as unlocking doors to progress, obtaining a key item to solve a puzzle, or warding off hostile enemies.

The story follows psychic Marianne as she’s mysteriously summoned to an abandoned hotel where she’ll have to use her powers to unravel its history and help free the spirits trapped within its grounds.

Reminiscence

Platform: Windows

Reminiscence is a story-driven, psychological horror game that has you warping, jumping, and rewinding time and space in order to save your family.

In it, you play as a man living in a world that’s about to collapse into anarchy who suddenly discovers their wife and kids have mysteriously disappeared.

While searching your home for clues, you stumble upon a watch that lets you travel between two eras: the post-apocalyptic present, and 1950s American suburbia.

By switching back and forth between both realities, you’re able to alter the state of certain objects to solve puzzles and advance the story.

Inspired by sci-fi classics like Back to the Future, No Time sees you stealing a suspiciously familiar time machine vehicle from a secret facility before setting off on a time-traveling adventure.

Unlike many games in the genre which center on heavily scripted missions, the game functions as a time travel simulator with both story and sandbox elements.

As a result, you’re free to explore any date throughout history from 0-2030 AD while making sure not to destroy the current timeline by interfering as little as possible and avoiding your younger self.

The game also features a day/night cycle, various job minigames and side quests, crafting, and a combat system for dealing with pesky Time Agents. 

Outer Wilds

Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch

If you’re looking for an engaging and immersive time travel game about space exploration , look no further than Outer Wilds .

You take on the role of the newest recruit for Outer Wilds Ventures, a fledgling space program looking to expand its knowledge of the galaxy and its ancestors’ mysterious disappearance.

The narrative addresses various sci-fi clichés such as black holes, antimatter, and of course time travel, with your character confined in an everlasting 22-minute time loop.

This is complemented by a densely packed open world consisting of hand-crafted, explorable planets with interesting backstories and distinct hazards that can be tricky to navigate.

Twelve Minutes

Platforms: Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S

Twelve Minutes is an interactive thriller about a man having a romantic dinner with his wife when a mysterious man claiming to be a police detective shows up on his doorstep.

Things quickly escalate and eventually the man is killed, only to find himself transported to the beginning of the evening with his previous memories intact.

Confused and desperate, he sets out to break the time loop by searching the apartment for clues and interviewing each person involved.

While some of the game’s different endings get into weird, taboo territory, there are interesting puzzles and narrative threads to tug at that make the journey worthwhile, though we suggest following a guide.

Platforms: Windows, Mac

In the stealth puzzle adventure game Timelie , every second matters and can bring you one step closer to freedom or death.

The game has you taking on the role of a young woman with a special gift that lets her control the flow of time as if it were a media player, rewinding and fast-forwarding to gain new insights. 

Harnessing this power allows her to manipulate obstacles in her path and avoid detection from robot patrols preventing her from leaving.

The story is quite compelling and the time travel mechanics are explored in some truly fascinating ways that become more complex the further you go.

The Gardens Between

Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Linux, Mac, iOS

The Gardens Between is an indie puzzle game created by The Voxel Agents that has you manipulating time 20 abstract, narrative-driven levels.

The game is unique in that you don’t control the main characters directly but rather move them backward and forwards through time while altering the state of different objects to progress.

Each level reveals more about the relationship between the two main characters, Arian and Frendt, chronicling the evolution of their friendship leading up to a life-changing event.

While it’s a short-lived experience, clocking in around 2.5 hours, The Gardens Between tells a compelling story and explores time travel mechanics in some fun and interesting ways.

Timespinner

Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Linux, Mac

Inspired by ‘90s action-platformers, Timespinner is a story-driven Metroidvania about a magical timekeeper named Lunais who seeks out revenge after her family is murdered by an evil empire.

Her quest for justice brings her to a mysterious and hostile world where she’ll have no choice but to wield her time manipulation power to defend herself and rewrite history.

The game has you exploring beautiful, atmospheric pixel art environments while switching between the past and present as you defeat enemies and acquire new powers.

Mastering Lunais’ time-manipulating abilities open up new possibilities for combat, which is further complemented by familiars that can be trained to fight on your side.

Life Is Strange

Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Linux, Mac, iOS, Android

A standout adventure title from Dontnod Studios and published by Square Enix, Life is Strange follows 18-year old aspiring photographer Max Caulfield as she comes to terms with her newfound powers.

Max has a supernatural ability that lets her move backward or forwards through time to alter the state of objects and their effect on the people around her.

Its applications vary depending on the scenario, allowing Max to mend relationships with her friends and family, solve bigger mysteries, and get revenge against the occasional bully.

Even if the gameplay aspect falls flat at times, the way time travel is introduced and incorporated into the structure of the story makes up for it.

Quantum Break

Platforms: Windows, Xbox One

Quantum Break is a cinematic action game from Remedy Games, best known for titles like Control and Alan Wake, and Max Payne.

In it, you take on the role of Jack Joyce, a man on a mission to prevent his timeline from ending by harnessing an array of unique time-based powers.

The story doubles as a live-action television series with certain events explained in further detail, which can require a bit more of a commitment than your average game.

With that said, Quantum Break is one of the best-looking time travel games in terms of graphical fidelity, boasting cool mind-bending camera tricks and special effects that still look great in 2024.

Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Mac

Superhot  sets itself apart from more traditional  FPS games  by introducing one clever mechanic: time only moves forward when you do.

This grants the player ample time to assess threats and determine the best course of action before setting it in motion with stylish shootouts and melee showdowns.

To ensure combat is always readable, the game employs a minimalist art style that does a great job at conveying info: enemies are always red, environments are white, and weapons are black.

While it’s best enjoyed in VR with full immersion, you’ll still have a lot of fun playing with a gamepad controller or just mouse and keyboard. 

Titanfall 2

Platforms: Windows, PS4, Xbox One

The follow-up to Respawn’s criminally underrated  first-person shooter  features refined gunplay and fluid movement with a touch of time travel.

During Titanfall 2 ’s campaign, your character obtains a special wrist-mounted device that lets them swap back and forth between the past and present.  

This is helpful for exploring deteriorating buildings, avoiding clusters of foes, and solving nature-based challenges as pilot Jack Cooper.

Combine this with exciting parkour-based platforming and an arsenal of satisfyingly powerful weaponry and it’s easy to see why Titanfall fans want to see the series return.

BioShock Infinite

Time travel in the BioShock series is presented as a plot device in which certain characters, namely Elizabeth and the Lutece twins, can create dimensional time-alternating portals called Tears.

To that point, the game’s take on parallel universes and how they affect the overarching story can be boiled down to a single quote: “There’s always a lighthouse, there’s always a man, there’s always a city.”

BioShock Infinite sees you venturing into a floating steampunk city called Columbia where citizens still cling to violent religious and racist beliefs.

In order to make sense of the series’ extensive timeline, consider playing through the first two games in the series or watching a recap video before starting Infinite. 

Platforms: Windows, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Linux, Mac

Our final recommendation is Braid , a beloved indie puzzle platformer that comes from the mind of The Witness designer Jonathan Blow.

In it, you take on the role of a man named Tim as he attempts to rescue a princess from an evil monster using time manipulation.

If that description didn’t make it obvious enough, the game’s story is meant to critique popular trends in modern video games but also features some excellent time travel puzzles.

Levels cover everything from rewinding and fast-forwarding time, altering the state of certain objects, using your character’s movement to determine the flow of time, and much more we don’t wish to spoil.

You Will Love These Too

Samuel is GamingScan's editor-in-chief. He describes himself as a dedicated gamer and programmer. He enjoys helping others discover the joys of gaming. Samuel closely follows the latest trends in the gaming industry in order to keep the visitors in the flow.

• ARCHIVES – SHOW GENRES
• ARCHIVES – HIDE GENRES
• NOVEL ADVANCED SEARCH
• School Life
• Gender Bender
• Martial Arts
• Slice of Life
• Supernatural

I Have a Time Travel Simulator - Chapter 1

• I Have a Time Travel Simulator

People in Zongman: I have a time travel simulator Author: Xianbei Xiaodi

The more he got to the Zongman world, Beiyuan Baiqiu originally thought it was just an ordinary Zongman daily world.

Who would have thought that after entering high school, unusual things would happen one after another, and I would awaken myself through the simulator.

Since then, Beiyuan Baiqiu has embarked on the road of being invincible.

[Ghost Slayer Blade, God Slayer, No Game No Life, Problem Children…]

Chapter 1 Traverse Simulator

What would it be like if the worldview of more than ten years suddenly collapsed?

Kitahara Hakushu will tell you.

Then you will be completely confused.

I have to ask why, because Beiyuan Baiqiu is now in such a state of collapsed worldview.

“That… Kitahara-san, do you believe that there are supernatural beings in this world?”

In memory, the girl’s face was slightly red, and she was a little embarrassed to ask Beiyuan Baiqiu.

It can be seen that for this question.

The girl also thought about it for a long time, and then she mustered up the courage to ask you.

I am very nervous and looking forward to your answer.

“I believe… right?”

Beiyuan Baiqiu remembered that he answered like this at the beginning.

In fact, the reason why he used an uncertain tone was not that Beiyuan Baiqiu didn’t believe in girls.

It’s because he’s so sure it’s unbelievable.

After all, whether he believes in the supernatural or not is up to him.

Because the girl who asked him was the heroine in “The Visible Girl”.

Yotsuya sees the child.

Unlike ordinary people, Yotsuya Miko herself is a psychic girl who can see ghosts.

Her existence, in a sense, already represents the supernatural.

It is obvious that living for more than ten years is normal, but it is not unbelievable that the sudden appearance of the supernatural.

That’s right, Beiyuan Baiqiu is a time traveler.

It has been more than ten years since I traveled to this world, and it has been sixteen years since I was born.

It may be because he didn’t drink Mengpo soup in his reincarnation, he has always kept the memory of his previous life.

It is precisely because of this, as a time traveler.

Beiyuan Baiqiu, who has lived in this world for sixteen years, has clearly determined that this is just an everyday world.

To be precise, it is a daily comic world.

There is no Fuyuki City, and news of gas leaks is not common.

There is only one Sobu Taka and Toyosaki.

Kitahara Hakushu can guarantee it.

When he was young, he had already tried many things in order to determine whether there was any supernatural in this world, and finally came to the conclusion that this was the everyday world.

But for some reason, after deciding to enroll in Sobu High School in high school, Kitahara Hakushu unexpectedly met a classmate named Yotsuya Miko.

Kitahara Hakushu still remembered the bewildered expression on his face when he saw Yotsuya Miko for the first time, full of disbelief.

For this reason, I even read the school name of Zongwu High several times, wondering if I entered the wrong school.

The appearance of Yotsuya Miko.

It is undoubtedly subversive to Kitahara Hakushu’s daily worldview for more than ten years.

For this reason, he even comforted himself, thinking that it might just be a coincidence, after all, that Yotsuya Miko looked quite normal.

Until a few months later, Yotsuya Miko suddenly became abnormal.

If it is an ordinary person, they may not know what the reason is, or they may not be aware of it.

But he has been silently paying attention to Yotsuya Miko, Kitahara Hakushu knows about it!

This is definitely the awakening of Jianzi’s ability to see ghosts.

Beiyuan Baiqiu wanted to cry but had no tears. Only then did he have to admit that this world might not be as simple as he thought.

Although with the setting of ghosts in “The Girl You Can See”, you can’t see ghosts, and ghosts can’t hurt you.

As an invisible person, Kitahara Baiqiu had nothing to worry about.

But as the saying goes, there are two things in everything.

I’m afraid that besides Yotsuya Miko, there are supernatural existences in this world that he doesn’t know about.

As an ordinary person without golden fingers.

Beiyuan Baiqiu felt that after entering high school, his own safety seemed to be a little precarious.

The key is.

Obviously Kitahara Hakuaki often told himself not to have too much contact with Yotsuya Miko.

You are not from the same world.

Every time Kitahara Baiqiu saw Yotsuya Miko’s aggrieved face trembling from fear with tears in her eyes, he couldn’t help but step forward to rescue her.

He can’t see ghosts, but he knows that ghosts exist, and he can help Yotsuya Miko every time with ease.

Once or twice…and so many times.

Naturally, Beiyuan Baiqiu and Jianzi gradually became acquainted.

This is why Yotsuya Miko came to ask Kitahara Hakusho if he believed in supernatural existence.

Obviously they are not from the same world, and they have been in contact with Yotsuya Miko for a long time, and obviously they may be entangled by invisible ghosts.

But Beiyuan Baiqiu couldn’t control it.

Alas, in the final analysis, I was too kind.

It’s unbelievable that a cute girl is suffering from bullying and bears it alone, and I want to bring her some warmth in the world.

Beiyuan Baiqiu sighed, knowing that the kind-hearted him could not remain indifferent.

“Ah, but do I really have no cheats? As a time traveler, it would be too miserable to not have cheats in an obviously abnormal world.”

Beiyuan Baiqiu felt a little crazy, and couldn’t help but let out a cry.

In the past, when he thought the world was just a daily drama, he didn’t have much need for cheats.

After all, even without Goldfinger, as a time traveler, he himself is good enough.

Because he has been very self-disciplined since he was born, plus some accumulation from his previous life.

Therefore, whether it is music, novels, art… Beiyuan Baiqiu has achieved a lot. Every time he takes an exam, he is often compared by many parents. He is commonly known as someone else’s child.

But since Yotsuya Miko appeared, Kitahara Baiqiu’s desire to have a golden finger has been extremely strong, and the reason is self-evident.

Ever since he knew that this world is not ordinary, Beiyuan Baiqiu only felt uncomfortable every day.

The ghost knows if there is a ghost haunting him without his knowledge.

If there is, I still can’t see it, so it’s too intrusive, right?

What’s more, ghosts and monsters are considered good. If one day you are unlucky and are affected by some other unknown supernatural existence, it is not impossible to directly play GG.

As an ordinary person, it is so passive.

Fuck! God! Come on Goldfinger! I am willing to exchange my ten years of life!

“Ding-“

“Charging is complete, the traversal simulator is loaded, and it is starting…”

And just when Beiyuan Baiqiu was thinking wildly, a prompt sound suddenly appeared in his mind, which shocked him, and he was stunned.

Goldfinger?

“Successfully opened, the ability to traverse the simulator is as follows, please explore by yourself.”

After the words fell, the mechanical sound of the system disappeared, and a translucent screen appeared in front of Beiyuan Baiqiu.

“Damn it, it’s actually true, it looks like things aren’t that bad!”

Beiyuan Baiqiu’s heart beat faster, and his face was full of disbelief.

Although he has been talking about cheating cheats these days, but he hasn’t been here for sixteen years, and he has long since lost his mind about such things.

Now that it has really come, it can be said to be a kind of surprise.

Beiyuan Baiqiu held back the excitement in his heart and tried his best to calm himself down before looking at the translucent screen in front of him.

Traverse Simulator:

1. The host can pass through this system for traversal simulation.

2. After each simulation is completed, the host will receive corresponding rewards. Depending on the situation, the simulator will also have a cooldown period.

3. After the host has an evaluation of S-level or above, you can choose whether to pass the current simulation world and enter the next simulation world.

4. No matter how much time passes in the simulator, it will not affect the main world of the host…

“This system is so powerful.”

After Beiyuan Baiqiu read the function introduction of Goldfinger, he couldn’t help but widen his eyes.

As a time traveler and author of light novels himself, Kitahara Hakushu has actually read quite a few anime novels.

It can be said that with the exception of a very small number, most of the protagonists in those animation novels go smoothly, and no matter what crisis they encounter, they can save themselves from danger.

For this situation, people generally call it the protagonist’s halo.

But to be honest, if the experience of the protagonist of the animation novel is brought into reality, the halo of the protagonist is basically unrealistic.

Many life-and-death crises, don’t say you don’t know about them, even if you know about them in advance, they are still full of crises, and you are close to death. If you make a wrong step, you will be directly GG.

And this traversal simulator, the function is almost like taking the world traversal as a game.

Even if you fail, you can try again.

There can be countless opportunities until you successfully pass the level.

Not only that.

After each simulation fails, you can also increase your initial value, increase your chance of clearing the level, and directly increase your survival rate.

It can be said that safety, stability, and everything are brought to the extreme.

“What a strong golden finger.”

Beiyuan Baiqiu’s heart was filled with joy.

Chapter Two: The Blade of Demon Slayer

“The basic functions have been browsed, do you want to start the simulation?”

After Kitahara Baiqiu finished reading the contents of the simulator, the system’s notification sounded again.

Regarding this, Beiyuan Baiqiu took a deep breath, and naturally had no reason to refuse, and replied without hesitation:

“start!”

“Ding, the traversal simulation is starting, and the world is being randomly selected…”

“The extraction is complete, the current world “Ghost Slayer: Blade”.”

Comments for chapter "Chapter 1"

Novel discussion, leave a reply cancel reply.

You must Register or Login to post a comment.

YOU MAY ALSO LIKE

All-American Collection

Harry Potter: Hello the Dark Lord

Knight Century: I’m Just Acting As a Proxy, Not Cheating

Hunter’s Face Fruit

Pirates on Top of the War: I Will Stand In the Sky

The Witcher’s Nightmare Wagon

Username or Email Address *

Remember Me

Lost your password?

← Back to 1ST Kiss Novel

Register For This Site.

Email Address *

Log in | Lost your password?

Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.

Username or Email Address

Report Chapter

Your comment

Best time travel games

Here's our list of the best time travel games with more timeloops and grandfather paradoxes than you can shake a stick at.

Looking for the best time travel games? These 10 entries mark the highlights of a genre that has been going strong for decades – promising the awe of hurtling forward in time, manipulating the present, or changing what’s happened in the past. Haven’t we all wanted to do that at some point?

Is time travel possible? Well, time travel is a pretty recognizable concept by now and has been around for as long as there have been people, whether in Hindu mythology or Japanese fairy tales. The idea of time travel in pop science fiction was widely popularized by H.G. Wells, who wrote the 1895 novel The Time Machine, as well as other stories that saw protagonists propelled into different eras.

While many modern games utilize some kind of repeating loop, like Hades or Loop Hero, the best time travel games take this a step further – allowing the player to distort time for their own ends, or forcing them to adapt to imprisonment within it.

These games don’t just use time travel as a story hook, but an integral part of how the game works – which is what helps them stand out among the bog-standard shooters, puzzle games, and platformers out there. 

So, if you loved watching the likes of Groundhog Day or Russian Doll , then these are the games for you. Who knows, maybe one of these titles will end up on our (or even your) space video games that should be movies or TV shows list. While you’re at it, make sure to check out our guide to the best time travel movies too, or if you’re after more games then these upcoming space games will interest you. 

10. Deathloop

• Release date: September 14, 2021
• Platform: PlayStation 5, PC, Xbox Series X/S

Possibly the best PS5 exclusive to have released on the console at the time (though it has since released on Xbox too), Deathloop is a thrilling time-travel first-person shooter (FPS) romp from the developers behind Dishonored.

You play as Colt, an assassin, who is on a mission to eliminate eight ultra-powerful individuals. These gifted beings are exploiting a time loop machine on a subarctic island to live the same day over and over, essentially becoming immortal and being able to do whatever they desire every night without consequence.

You must take out all eight to stop the loop from restarting – using what you learn across multiple loops to navigate the island and complete your mission in one perfect run. With slick gunplay, a gripping story, and a fascinating sci-fi premise, we don’t recommend you sleep on this one.

9. Twelve Minutes

• Release date: August 19, 2021
• Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC

It’s a fun, curious mystery game, with plenty of satisfaction to be had from toying with the objects and locations in your compact apartment to see how it’ll affect the outcome.

A curious time loop game, mostly in the star talent brought in to voice its trio of main characters: Daisy Ridley (Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker), James McAvoy (X-Men: First Class, Trance), and Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man, The Lighthouse).

The action takes place in a small, one-bedroom apartment, where McAvoy’s protagonist comes home to find a number of surprises waiting for him – one of which is an armed assailant claiming to be a police officer pounding on their door. When you’re knocked unconscious, you begin the time loop again and have to figure out what’s really going on in order to escape the loop for good.

8. Titanfall 2

• Release date: October 28, 2016
• Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC

The sequel to Respawn’s futuristic mecha-combat FPS is a thrilling ride. It has a single-player campaign that pivots effortlessly between fascinating game mechanics, never feeling a need to dwell too long on each one.

The time travel mission, ‘Effect and Cause,’ is a real standout. It allows you to shift between the past and present mid-air as you run, shoot, and platform your way across an expansive military facility. Paired with Respawn’s excellent gunplay, this acclaimed shooter offers far more imagination than the average Call of Duty game.

The brisk campaign has plenty of other thrills to recommend it, but its seamless utilization of time travel as an integral game mechanic – even while limited to a single level – makes it well worth inclusion in this list.

7. Outer Wilds

• Release date: May 28, 2019
• Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch, PC

Another time loop game, you say? Outer Wilds is a standout indie game, so much so that it’s made our best space games list. It sees you scour a solar system to unpack its mysteries, over a series of 22-minute time loops that reset your progress just as the nearest sun explodes into a supernova. Phew.

As with Deathloop, you’ll have to do more than simply map out the game – needing to learn when certain events occur, or which actions are available in the orbits of the solar system’s planetary bodies. Starting out as a student project, Outer Wilds has gone on to be one of the best indie games in recent years, with a heady mix of environmental exploration, galactic mystery, and survival sim all in one.

6. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

• Release date: November 21, 1998
• Platform: Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo Switch

The best game of all time? It’s hard to argue with this assessment for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (OoT), a landmark 3D action-adventure game that launched on the Nintendo 64 in 1998. In it, the young hero Link finds a magical ocarina which is able to change the weather, transport him across distant lands, and even propel him through time to a post-apocalyptic world.

It’s not a one-way trip, thankfully, and much of the puzzle work in OoT is in traveling back and forth between time periods, using what you learn and obtain to progress in each setting. As ever, you’re fighting a great evil, battling monsters, gathering weapons and tools for your journey, and figuring out troublesome dungeons – but time travel is what elevates Ocarina of Time into a game of truly mythical proportions.

It's an oldie, but a goodie. You can find the game through Nintendo Switch Online, or on Nintendo DS systems.

5. Quantum Break

• Release date: April 5, 2016
• Platform: Xbox One, PC

Back in 2016 when Quantum Break released, it was the best-selling game published by Microsoft on the Xbox One. While it soon ceded that title to Sea of Thieves (who needs time travel when you have sea shanties?) it’s still a landmark game, and a fascinating experiment in interactive storytelling.

The main conceit of Quantum Break is its mix of gameplay with an interactive TV show that breaks up the story’s five acts, allowing you to make key decisions that affect the narrative for the rest of the game.

Originally conceived as a sequel to Alan Wake, before pivoting into a new IP, Quantum Break is set in a world where a failed time travel experiment allows you to halt, freeze, accelerate, and generally manipulate time around you – inevitably used to ramp up combat as you take on hordes of soldiers and try to fix a fracture in time itself. Time ‘stutters’ can also freeze objects in your environment, creating obstacles or platforms that help and hinder your progress along the way.

4. Life is Strange

• Release date: January 20, 2015
• Platform: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC, Android

While more recent Life is Strange games play around with the powers of empathy, or telekinesis, the original game is what started the franchise off with such aplomb – following the fortunes of a young girl who is able to rewind time.

Maxine ‘Max’ Caulfield discovers her time-manipulation ability when a classmate faces an unexpected danger – managing to undo the day’s events and keep them alive. As ever, time travel has unintended consequences, and while Max can aid or even save various people in her life, she finds the outcome isn’t always for the best in the long term. 

With a strikingly impressionistic art style, branching narratives, surprisingly high stakes for a high school story, and a good helping of teen angst, this episodic adventure is well worth a try.

3. Wanderer

• Release date: January 27, 2022
• Platform: PlayStation VR, SteamVR, Oculus

If you’re looking for a time-travel VR game, you’ve come to the right place. Wanderer is a first-person puzzle adventure that has you traveling back through time to prevent an apocalyptic present.

With a talking watch on your wrist, and the ability to jump to different places and periods, Wanderer lives up to its name, seeing you jettison across centuries of history and even to the moon. In each case, action is found in localized puzzles (escape rooms, essentially), some of which take imaginative back-and-forth travel to get the right objects for the right situation. 

You’ll get around 10 hours of play out of this one, along with some brain-bending puzzles that make the most of the VR medium (along with one of the best VR headsets )

• Release date: August 6, 2008
• Platform: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Switch, PC, Mac, Linux

Few games play so successfully with time as Braid, a 2008 indie platformer initially launched on Xbox 360 to great acclaim. The developer went on to create The Witness with the profits from this game.

You play Tim, who is trying to find and rescue a princess from some unspecified monster. So far, so Mario. However, things aren’t quite so simple as running and jumping on Goombas: Braid utilizes a number of different time-based mechanics, from a simple rewind (helpful after jumping and missing a ledge) to whole levels that move forward in time as you move right and backward as you move left.

It’s a mind-melting game in many ways, and you may find the story elusive at first, it being gradually pieced together by jigsaw pieces you collect throughout your journey – and blown open by its subversive conclusion. But a recurring theme is the idea of wanting to redo or undo the past, and you won’t find a game that needles this idea as effectively or imaginatively as Braid.

1. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

• Release date: April 27, 2000
• Platform: Nintendo 64, GameCube, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo DS

How could we list the best time travel games without Majora’s Mask? This follow-up to Ocarina of Time takes place in the same land of Hyrule as its predecessor just two months later, even re-using many in-game assets. The key difference is that an unhinged-looking moon going to crash into the Earth, obliterating everything – and you find yourself reliving the same three days over and over in an attempt to prevent the cataclysmic event from happening.

Those three days come to around an hour of actual gameplay time, meaning you play through a loop quite swiftly, but the real magic of Majora’s Mask is in how it expands on the time-warping magic of OoT. Here you’ll use the ocarina to jump back to the start of the loop, slow down the passage of time, or jump forward to a later day, navigating time like a puzzle dungeon in need of solving.

Earning widespread acclaim, Majora’s Mask has been rereleased several times throughout the years. For modern gamers, you can find the game through Nintendo Switch Online, or on Nintendo DS systems.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Get the Space.com Newsletter

Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!

Henry St Leger is a news writer, commissioning editor and all-round geek for the worlds of technology and entertainment. He has years of experience in gadget reviews, has been interviewed live on both BBC World News and Channel News Asia, and will talk endlessly about Neon Genesis Evangelion to anyone who will listen. Bylines include TechRadar, Edge, Space.com, Digital Camera World, and Little White Lies.

Lego Star Wars Executor Super Star Destroyer review

Lego NASA Mars Rover Perseverance review

'Star Trek: Lower Decks' Season 4 blasts onto Blu-ray and DVD on April 16

Most Popular

• 2 Will the constellations ever change?
• 3 Switzerland signs Artemis Accords to join NASA in moon exploration
• 4 James Webb Space Telescope full-size model to be displayed by Space Foundation
• 5 Dark energy could be getting weaker, suggesting the universe will end in a 'Big Crunch'

• Request MTL Novel
• I Have a Time Travel Simulator
• Chapter 76 - Chapter 76

[The two sides started a war! 】

[The digital gods are coming to you again with a terrifying and terrifying coercion! 】

【this time! They feel threatened! Like the birth of a natural enemy! They were determined to find out what was going on! You are about to be exposed! About to be taken down! The fusion is about to end! 】

【but! Mrs Elsa! Athena! Pandora! In front of you without hesitation! 】

[The two sides started a war! Deafening sound! It sounded in this ghost world! 】

[A terrible war has broken out! 】

【Princess Alice, as an ordinary person who has not reached the realm of God, can only accompany you and remember to go around…】

【”It’s over, it’s over! Something happened, something happened! Bai Qiu, you didn’t say that such a situation would happen before. I was cheated, I was tricked, I would have known that I would not say anything, if I could survive this time , you will have to compensate me in the future!”]

【Princess Alice looked at you as the child was sleeping, and said so. 】

[Simply, this battle ended with your victory. 】

【only! your birth! For the gods! Undoubtedly a natural enemy! The real natural enemy! 】

[All the gods began to feel the touch in their hearts, and they already had a bad premonition in their hearts! 】

[Often times, gods come to the door, drink Pandora, question Pandora, and then fight with it. 】

[In this case, even Athena, Pandora, and Mrs. Aisha are very powerful existences, but they slowly began to feel tired and powerless. 】

[Finally… when your fusion progress reaches 98%, and you are about to succeed. 】

【You emit a dazzling light from top to bottom, completely exposed to the sight of all the gods. 】

【When all the gods saw you, their eyes were filled with shock, and they completely understood why they had been restless during this time. 】

[There is no doubt that you are different from the godslayers outside. Once you successfully merge, you are the real natural enemy of the gods! 】

【”Pandora! Do you know what you’re doing?! You’re making monsters! Real monsters!”】

[There is a **** roaring, but the tone is full of panic. 】

【”It’s not a monster! That’s my child!”】

【Pandora retorted loudly, but her petite body burst out with supreme divine power. 】

[Athena smiled, in the form of the Trinity, also staring at the gods in front of her! 】

【”Athena! Are you sure you want to fight us too?”】

[A burly **** with serious eyes asked the same question. 】

【”The body of the concubine is still a body of defeat, and everything about the body of the concubine is naturally his.”】

[Athena answered in this way, glanced at your direction, and her attitude was firm. 】

【Ms. Aisha is quite troubled, her face is full of regret:】

【”If I had known this, I might as well have gone and found Luo Hao, obviously that guy is the godslayer closest to Lord Beiyuan, alas, why is it my turn to protect Lord Beiyuan.

I’ve been tricked, Beiyuan-kun will remember me next time, for example, when you get interested and want to start the battle of the godslayer, don’t forget to let me go while letting Luo Hao go! Otherwise, I’m sorry! “]

[With such willpower, the three joined forces and charged towards the gods together. 】

[Fierce battles begin to break out! 】

【at last. 】

[Ms. Aisha is dead. 】

[She felt that although she hadn’t played much role in the research, at least in the end… when resisting the gods, she should be able to play a little role]

[Athena also died. 】

[She returned to the myth, and before she died, she looked in your direction expectantly. 】

[Pandora is sealed again. 】

2.8 【Her speciality made the gods not kill her, but put a more harsh seal on her. 】

[From now on, she will not have even the slightest bit of freedom, her consciousness will be sealed, and she will fall into eternal darkness. 】

[The gods were relieved to see you after finishing the three of them. 】

[You haven’t succeeded yet. 】

[Now is undoubtedly the most vulnerable time, just a single blow can make you fail for so long. 】

[No one expected that at the moment the gods attacked, Princess Alice pushed you away, allowing you to escape the blow of the gods! 】

【”it hurts…”】

【With such a voice, Princess Alice slowly closed her eyes and began to fall down slowly. 】

【boom-! ! 】

[At this very moment, with the help of everyone’s efforts, at the sacrifice of everyone! 】

【You finally succeeded! 】

【You slowly opened your eyes, as if you saw that the whole world was red, as if it had been infected by blood. 】

【You hugged the fallen Princess Alice subconsciously, but you found that there was no breath of life in her body. 】

【You are very silent, you are very quiet. 】

【You know, they all died because of you. 】

【What happened this time was indeed a bit beyond your expectations. 】

[Looking at the terrified gods in front of me. 】

【You know, all you can do now is to avenge them. 】

【Blood began to stain the entire Netherworld red. 】

[A large number of gods began to die, gods, at this moment, are like worthless. 】

[At the same time, facing many gods, your injuries are getting heavier and heavier, like a blood man. 】

【You didn’t flinch, you killed all the way. 】

[Finally, the “King of the End” Rama was awakened. 】

【You died at his hands. 】.

Chapter 92 The simulation is over! Great harvest!

【you are dead. 】

[This traversal simulation is over, settlement is in progress…]

Another heart-stopping ending.

Beiyuan Baiqiu looked at the ending in this simulation, and his eyelids couldn’t help but think about it.

Fuck, they’re all dead.

Athena, Alice, Lady Elsa, Pandora…

Beiyuan Baiqiu rejoiced more than once that this was just a simulation, and he still had a changed ending.

Otherwise, he couldn’t even imagine what he would become.

Sometimes it’s the kind of thing that can make people lose their minds, completely lose their minds.

“I didn’t expect…just turning my physique into a godslayer would cause such a big commotion.”

Beiyuan Baiqiu muttered to himself.

Didn’t expect that? He really didn’t think of it!

You Shi actually rioted because of this, if he could think of it.

He will definitely make better preparations!

Instead of thinking about it like this now…

Thinking about it carefully, what I did this time may not be simple.

Combining the power of him, Alice, Athena, and Pandora, it took nearly ten years to succeed.

“Fortunately, it was a success in the end. Otherwise, everyone’s hard work for so many years would have been in vain.”

Kitahara Hakushu sighed.

This can be regarded as the only luck in the misfortune.

In the beginning, he gathered the power of the world, the wisdom of human beings from ancient times to the present, combined with the goal of killing gods on the 25th, and it can be regarded as completed.

In the end, he died easily at the hands of the “King of the End”.

In fact, it was mainly because he was seriously injured in the previous battle and was powerless.

Otherwise, even now, he still loses to the “King of the End”.

The “King of the End” would never feel easy if he wanted to kill him.

[Ding, the settlement is successful, your simulation evaluation this time is A+++, and you can choose two of the following rewards.

1. Purple Talent·Heart of the Strong.

2. Blue talent · I am also a person with status.

3. Blue Talent·Story! Solidify!

4. The foundation of all magic and… the final trial of the gods you have obtained in this research.

5. This time you kill all the gods and powers! 】

“what?!”

Looking at the reward in the simulator, Beiyuan Baiqiu was stunned, and his heart was full of unrest.

God… the final trial?

Does such a thing really exist?

Beiyuan Baiqiu couldn’t help but tremble in his heart, only feeling the absurdity.

He had only heard of the final trial of humans before, but he had never heard of the final trial of gods.

But think about it.

Once his physique is successfully integrated.

Isn’t it just that human beings, on the basis of acknowledging the history of mythology, analyze and utilize it, and finally use the power of the censor **** in the human body?

It is no exaggeration to say that in front of his physique, all the gods can only be his nourishment.

The more gods he kills, the faster he grows.

On this basis, there is no doubt that he can transcend the history of mythology and surpass it.

For the gods, this is undoubtedly very terrible.

Those godslayers in the world of godslayers.

It means killing the gods to gain power.

But in fact, this right is in the hands of the gods themselves from beginning to end.

That is, in the hands of Pandora.

It is not out of the control of the gods.

Without Pandora’s help, people in the world of godslayers, even if they succeeded in killing gods, would not be able to become demon kings.

But he was different, he was totally different.

He has completely escaped the control of the gods and has become an independent existence.

No wonder this thing is so difficult to study!

No wonder those gods felt terrified when they saw him!

MANGA DISCUSSION

You may also like.

How Real Wine Became the Light of the Metropolitan Police

Reborn Turtle: Picked Up By Monkey King at the Beginning

May Be the Fake Gintama

Fairy Tail: The Nameless Grim Reaper

Username or Email Address *

Remember Me

Lost your password?

← Back to ReadMTL

Register For This Site.

Email Address *

Log in | Lost your password?

Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.

Username or Email Address

September 2, 2014

Time Travel Simulation Resolves “Grandfather Paradox”

What would happen to you if you went back in time and killed your grandfather? A model using photons reveals that quantum mechanics can solve the quandary—and even foil quantum cryptography

By Lee Billings

On June 28, 2009, the world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking threw a party at the University of Cambridge, complete with balloons, hors d'oeuvres and iced champagne. Everyone was invited but no one showed up. Hawking had expected as much, because he only sent out invitations after his party had concluded. It was, he said, "a welcome reception for future time travelers," a tongue-in-cheek experiment to reinforce his 1992 conjecture that travel into the past is effectively impossible.

But Hawking may be on the wrong side of history. Recent experiments offer tentative support for time travel's feasibility—at least from a mathematical perspective. The study cuts to the core of our understanding of the universe, and the resolution of the possibility of time travel, far from being a topic worthy only of science fiction, would have profound implications for fundamental physics as well as for practical applications such as quantum cryptography and computing.

Closed timelike curves The source of time travel speculation lies in the fact that our best physical theories seem to contain no prohibitions on traveling backward through time. The feat should be possible based on Einstein's theory of general relativity, which describes gravity as the warping of spacetime by energy and matter. An extremely powerful gravitational field, such as that produced by a spinning black hole, could in principle profoundly warp the fabric of existence so that spacetime bends back on itself. This would create a "closed timelike curve," or CTC, a loop that could be traversed to travel back in time.

On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing . By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.

Hawking and many other physicists find CTCs abhorrent, because any macroscopic object traveling through one would inevitably create paradoxes where cause and effect break down. In a model proposed by the theorist David Deutsch in 1991, however, the paradoxes created by CTCs could be avoided at the quantum scale because of the behavior of fundamental particles, which follow only the fuzzy rules of probability rather than strict determinism. "It's intriguing that you've got general relativity predicting these paradoxes, but then you consider them in quantum mechanical terms and the paradoxes go away," says University of Queensland physicist Tim Ralph. "It makes you wonder whether this is important in terms of formulating a theory that unifies general relativity with quantum mechanics."

Experimenting with a curve Recently Ralph and his PhD student Martin Ringbauer led a team that experimentally simulated Deutsch's model of CTCs for the very first time, testing and confirming many aspects of the two-decades-old theory. Their findings are published in Nature Communications. Much of their simulation revolved around investigating how Deutsch's model deals with the “grandfather paradox,” a hypothetical scenario in which someone uses a CTC to travel back through time to murder her own grandfather, thus preventing her own later birth. ( Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)

Deutsch's quantum solution to the grandfather paradox works something like this:

Instead of a human being traversing a CTC to kill her ancestor, imagine that a fundamental particle goes back in time to flip a switch on the particle-generating machine that created it. If the particle flips the switch, the machine emits a particle— the particle—back into the CTC; if the switch isn't flipped, the machine emits nothing. In this scenario there is no a priori deterministic certainty to the particle's emission, only a distribution of probabilities. Deutsch's insight was to postulate self-consistency in the quantum realm, to insist that any particle entering one end of a CTC must emerge at the other end with identical properties. Therefore, a particle emitted by the machine with a probability of one half would enter the CTC and come out the other end to flip the switch with a probability of one half, imbuing itself at birth with a probability of one half of going back to flip the switch. If the particle were a person, she would be born with a one-half probability of killing her grandfather, giving her grandfather a one-half probability of escaping death at her hands—good enough in probabilistic terms to close the causative loop and escape the paradox. Strange though it may be, this solution is in keeping with the known laws of quantum mechanics.

In their new simulation Ralph, Ringbauer and their colleagues studied Deutsch's model using interactions between pairs of polarized photons within a quantum system that they argue is mathematically equivalent to a single photon traversing a CTC. "We encode their polarization so that the second one acts as kind of a past incarnation of the first,” Ringbauer says. So instead of sending a person through a time loop, they created a stunt double of the person and ran him through a time-loop simulator to see if the doppelganger emerging from a CTC exactly resembled the original person as he was in that moment in the past.

By measuring the polarization states of the second photon after its interaction with the first, across multiple trials the team successfully demonstrated Deutsch's self-consistency in action. "The state we got at our output, the second photon at the simulated exit of the CTC, was the same as that of our input, the first encoded photon at the CTC entrance," Ralph says. "Of course, we're not really sending anything back in time but [the simulation] allows us to study weird evolutions normally not allowed in quantum mechanics."

Those "weird evolutions" enabled by a CTC, Ringbauer notes, would have remarkable practical applications, such as breaking quantum-based cryptography through the cloning of the quantum states of fundamental particles. "If you can clone quantum states,” he says, “you can violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle,” which comes in handy in quantum cryptography because the principle forbids simultaneously accurate measurements of certain kinds of paired variables, such as position and momentum. "But if you clone that system, you can measure one quantity in the first and the other quantity in the second, allowing you to decrypt an encoded message."

"In the presence of CTCs, quantum mechanics allows one to perform very powerful information-processing tasks, much more than we believe classical or even normal quantum computers could do," says Todd Brun, a physicist at the University of Southern California who was not involved with the team's experiment. "If the Deutsch model is correct, then this experiment faithfully simulates what could be done with an actual CTC. But this experiment cannot test the Deutsch model itself; that could only be done with access to an actual CTC."

Alternative reasoning Deutsch's model isn’t the only one around, however. In 2009 Seth Lloyd, a theorist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, proposed an alternative , less radical model of CTCs that resolves the grandfather paradox using quantum teleportation and a technique called post-selection, rather than Deutsch's quantum self-consistency. With Canadian collaborators, Lloyd went on to perform successful laboratory simulations of his model in 2011. "Deutsch's theory has a weird effect of destroying correlations," Lloyd says. "That is, a time traveler who emerges from a Deutschian CTC enters a universe that has nothing to do with the one she exited in the future. By contrast, post-selected CTCs preserve correlations, so that the time traveler returns to the same universe that she remembers in the past."

This property of Lloyd's model would make CTCs much less powerful for information processing, although still far superior to what computers could achieve in typical regions of spacetime. "The classes of problems our CTCs could help solve are roughly equivalent to finding needles in haystacks," Lloyd says. "But a computer in a Deutschian CTC could solve why haystacks exist in the first place.”

Lloyd, though, readily admits the speculative nature of CTCs. “I have no idea which model is really right. Probably both of them are wrong,” he says. Of course, he adds, the other possibility is that Hawking is correct, “that CTCs simply don't and cannot exist." Time-travel party planners should save the champagne for themselves—their hoped-for future guests seem unlikely to arrive.

The Quantum Physics of Time Travel   (All-Access Subscribers Only) By David Deutsch and Michael Lockwood

Can Quantum Bayesianism Fix the Paradoxes of Quantum Mechanics?

Astrophysicist J. Richard Gott on Time Travel

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• Backchannel
• Newsletters
• WIRED Insider
• WIRED Consulting

Justin Smith-Ruiu

A New Time-Travel App, Reviewed

We all know by now that the time-reversal invariance governing statistical mechanics at the microlevel maps by a simple equation onto the macroworld, making “time travel” a wholly unsurprising possibility … but damn! The first time you go back there’s just nothing like it.

I know all these first-person accounts of ChronoSwooping have become a cliché here on Substack, where, let’s face it, anyone can write pretty much whatever they want no matter how self-indulgent and derivative. Nonetheless I think I have some unusual insights to share, which derive from my own experience but which may offer some general lessons as to the nature and significance of time travel, both the original and long-prohibited “body-transit” method as well as the newer and more streamlined ChronoSwoop.

This is not only because I spent some years in the archives of the Stadzbybliotiēka of the Margravate of East K****, poring over the notebooks in which Quast first landed on the Quast equation, while in parallel jotting down sundry philosophical reflexions about the nature of Divine Tempus—as he called it—that have largely been neglected by other researchers. It is also because I have used the ChronoSwoop app in ways that are expressly prohibited by its makers, and indeed by the federal government. In light of this, while I am writing this product review for Substack and in the emerging “Substack style,” until the law changes or I depart permanently from the chronological present, I will be posting this piece only on the Hinternet-based Substack oglinda (Romanian for “looking-glass,” a hacking neologism supposedly coined by Guccifer 3.0), which I’m told is undetectable, remaining entirely unknown even to the original company’s founders. Fingers crossed.

Perhaps some readers on this oglinda will appreciate a brief summary of what’s been happening in the world of time travel since Quast first came up with his equation in 1962. I don’t know what sort of information has been circulating down here, and I don’t want anyone to feel left behind.

The early 1960s witnessed great leaps forward not just in time-travel technology, but in the technology of teletransportation as well—which is to say dematerialization of the body, and its rematerialization elsewhere, but without any measurable “metachrony.” By late 1966 poorly regulated teletransporters had begun to pop up on the state fair circuit, tempting daredevils into ever more foolish stunts. But this practice was curtailed already the following year, when, expecting to reappear kneeling before his sweetheart Deb at the stables with a ring in his hand, Roy Bouwsma, aka “the Omaha Kid,” got rematerialized instead with the stable door cutting directly through the center of his body from groin to skull—one half of him flopping down at Deb’s feet, the other half falling, like some neat bodily cross section carefully made for students of anatomy, into the stable with Deb’s confused horse Clem.

But while this atrocious moment, broadcast live on KMTV, nipped the new craze in the bud, the technology underlying it had already been adapted for use in what was then called “Tempus-Gliding,” which had the merely apparent advantage of concealing from those in the present any potential accident in the rematerialization of the voyager to the past. Of course, accidents continued to happen, and news of them eventually made its way back from past to present, bringing about all sorts of familiar paradoxes in the spacetime continuum. Tempus-Gliding, like any metachronic technology relying on body-transit, was a door thrown wide open to all the crazy scenarios we know from the time-travel tropes in science fiction going back at least to H. G. Wells: adults returning to the past and meeting themselves as children, meeting their parents before they were even born, causing themselves never to have been born and so suddenly to vanish, and so on. By the end of the 1960s people, and sometimes entire families, entire lineages, were vanishing as a daily occurrence (just recall the 1969 Harris family reunion in Provo!). You could almost never say exactly why, since the traveler to the past who would unwittingly wipe out all his descendants often had yet, in the present, ever to even try Tempus-Gliding.

Charlie Wood

Eric Ravenscraft

Caitlin Kelly

A campaign to end the practice quickly gained speed. By 1973 the “Don’t Mess With Spacetime” bumper stickers were everywhere, and by the following year Tempus-Gliding was outlawed—which is to say, as is always the case in such matters, that only outlaws continued to Tempus-Glide. Scattered disappearances continued, public outcry against illicit Tempus-Gliding became more widespread. In 1983 Nancy Reagan made an unforgettable guest appearance on Diff’rent Strokes to help get out the message about the dangers of illegal body-transit. (“More than 40,000 young lives are lost each year to illegal Metachron gangs.” “What you talkin’ ’bout Mrs. Reagan?”) By the late 1980s a combination of tough-on-crime measures and transformations in youth culture largely ended the practice, and time travel would likely have remained as dormant as moon-travel if it had not in the last decade been so smoothly integrated into our new mobile technologies, and in a way that overcomes the paradoxes and inconveniences of Tempus-Gliding. It does so, namely, by taking the body out of the trip altogether.

This is the mode of time travel, of course, that has shaped a significant subcurrent of science fiction scenarios, notably Chris Marker’s La Jetée (1962), later adapted into the better known Bruce Willis vehicle 12 Monkeys (1995). While these films might seem exceptional, they also share something important with the great majority of what may be called time-travel tales avant la lettre, in which, typically, a man such as Rip Van Winkle goes to sleep for a very long time and wakes up in “the future.” The “zero form” of time travel, we are reminded, is simply to live, which is to say to travel forward in time at a slow and steady rate that only appears to be sped up or “warped” through deep sleep.

Be that as it may, when the new app-based time-travel technologies began to emerge in the late 2010s—relying as they did on a loophole in the 1974 law against time travel that defined it strictly as “metachronic body-transit”—they were all confronted by the hard limit on innovation already predicted by Quast, who remained committed until the end to the impossibility in principle of future-directed time-travel. “If you want to get to the future, you’re just going to have to wait,” Quast wrote in an entry in his Hefte dated 6 October, 1959 (SB-1omk 21.237). “To live in time is already to travel in time. So be patient” [ In der Zeit zu leben, das ist schon in der Zeit zu reisen. Hab also Geduld ]. Rumors of future-transit apps downloadable from ultra-sketchy oglindas have been circulating for years, but I’ve never seen any, and having studied Quast’s work I have come to believe that they are a theoretical impossibility.

The earliest apps, popping up mostly from anonymous sources, were mostly perceived as too dangerous and illicit to gain widespread appeal. “We’ve got that legal cannabis here in California now,” Whoopi Goldberg said on an episode of The View in September 2019. “If I want to take a little trip, I’m sorry but there’s edibles for that. I’m not messing with spacetime [ audience laughter ].” In an echo of the panic leading to the prohibition of Tempus-Gliding in the early 1970s, the government began to issue PSAs sensitizing the public to the serious psychological trauma that a return to our own pasts can trigger. “This is not lighthearted fun,” the messaging went. “Metachronism can ruin your life.”

The campaign against these new technologies would probably have killed them, or at least pushed them so far down into the oglindas as to occlude them from the public’s consciousness, if in 2021, at the worst moment of the pandemic, the ChronoSwoop company had not appeared as if out of nowhere and dropped its addictive new app with its signature “Swoop left/Swoop right” functions. Key to ChronoSwoop’s success was the discovery that users will draw significantly more pleasure from being cast into random moments in the past (Swoop left) than from being permitted to choose particular moments they have deemed significant in the post-hoc construction of their autobiographical self-narrative. And if you find yourself thrown back into an unpleasant or dull moment, then a single swift Swoop right will bring you immediately back into the present. You can of course go into your settings and laboriously reconfigure the app to permit you to choose your precise dates, but the great miracle of ChronoSwoop’s success is that almost no one bothers to do this. The people want their time travel to come with streamlined, easy interfaces. They want to move through the past like they move through their feeds: going nowhere in particular, with no clear purpose.

Quast had remained agnostic as to the possibility of body-less time travel, though he always insisted that, if it turns out to be possible, this will amount to an empirical proof of body-soul dualism. If the “self” can easily be inserted into the body it possessed at an earlier stage of life, while retaining all the memories of experiences from after that stage, this means, he believed, that the memories, as well as consciousness itself, cannot be dependent on the physical substrate of the brain that supposedly hosts them. When people first started ChronoSwooping, there were rumors of “headaches,” which were supposed to have resulted from the transit back in time of the more fully developed neurological structure of the time traveler—essentially cramming, say, a 38-year-old’s brain into the cranium of his 10-year-old past self. But of course no such thing occurs, for what travels back, as Quast predicted, is the immaterial self alone, and the fact that this is possible does indeed demonstrate, whether the scientific establishment is ready to admit it or not, that we do not need to remain anchored to any parcel of matter at all in order to exist as conscious beings.

ChronoSwoop beat out its early competitors (remember TimeDig? 😂) not only by getting rid of the date-choosing option, but also by adding sensorimotor control to the package. The earliest apps only planted your consciousness into the body of your past self and permitted you to “ride along,” to see and feel everything your former self saw and felt, but not to exercise any control over any of this. Quast predicted that only such passive riding would ever be possible, in part because any will-driven intervention in the sequence of past events, such as ChronoSwooping now makes possible, seems to generate at least as many paradoxes for the spacetime continuum as old-fashioned body-transit.

It’s not clear how ChronoSwoop managed to pull it off, but we can at least affirm what the emerging scientific consensus says about this new option, namely that it demonstrates the truth of the so-called “Many Worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics, where each new timeline created by a different course of action initiated by a time traveler through the vehicle of that traveler’s own former self simply places that self on a different timeline of a different world, of which there are in any case infinitely many. These worlds are all self-contained and non-interacting, unless you can call ChronoSwooping itself a form of interaction, so that, however strange it all is, we at least avoid the more awkward conundra of body-transit, as when, for the millionth time, some idiot gets it into his head to “kill baby Hitler,” which of course means that more or less everyone in the world from roughly 1933 on, being affected by different events of the world, also ends up having sex at different times, different spermatozoa end up fecundating different eggs, and virtually all of us children of the 20th century disappear, until someone else arranges to kill the idiot who killed baby Hitler and set us back on our course again.

As an early adopter, I first ChronoSwooped in November 2021. The particular experience might seem unremarkable when I describe it, but for me, beyond being an occasion to see my deceased father again, it was my initiation into a world from which I have not really returned. I ended up, at random, back in December 2003. It’s Christmastime, and I’m visiting with my dad in Little Rock, where, I quickly recall, he has recently relocated after some career difficulties in the wake of the dotcom crash. “Have you seen this guy called Crazy Frog?” he’s asking me, as we stand in front of his desktop. “He’s kind of dumb but he makes me laugh.” I look at the animated amphibian with the aviator glasses, singing his ringtone melody over a techno remix of Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit.” I had forgotten all about this. How many other fragments of lost culture, I wonder, lie dormant in me at every moment? Crazy Frog jumps on an invisible motorcycle and revs it along a Möbius-strip highway. “I like it,” my dad says, smiling childlike. I am filled suddenly with infinite love for him. I can’t bear it, and I Swoop right.

I go back again and ChronoSwoop tells me it’s June 21, 1998. I’m sitting on a barstool in a place I seem to remember, but only vaguely. I can tell immediately that it’s very late at night, and that the version of me I have just Swooped into was feeling considerable stress just seconds before. I don’t share his precise memories, or, rather, what happened for him just a moment ago is at a 24-year remove for me, but his cortisol levels are mine now too, and I can tell something’s wrong. After a minute or so my ex-girlfriend S**** bursts out of the men’s room, followed by some miserable low-life wearing a T-shirt with a dumb neon alien’s head on it. He wanders off and she comes sheepishly to me. “We were only doing lines, I swear.” She sniffs and rubs her nose. I am suddenly filled with rage. What a miserable time of my life this was, I think, and again I Swoop right.

I took a break for the next three days, believing I had already had enough. I found myself not quite traumatized, but far more melancholic than I usually am, and largely convinced that what the PSAs were saying was true. This is not lighthearted fun. And yet, for some reason, I went back. I landed this time on February 11, 1979. It’s morning, and I’m on the playground of my Montessori school with Jeremy. He’s wearing an Oakland Raiders windbreaker and has mushroom hair like Nicholas from Eight Is Enough. He’s holding his thumb up to his mouth like it’s a microphone and his hand over his ear as if he has a headset. “This is Howard Cosell,” he says in a funny voice—a “Howard Cosell” voice. I am staring at him confusedly. He sees that I’m not laughing at his imitation. Something in my face frightens him, and he begins to cry. I Swoop right.

What was that all about? Jeremy was always a crybaby, but not like this. What did he see in my face that frightened him so? I drink a Nespresso and I think about what to do next. Maybe I’ve had enough already? No, I Swoop left, and it’s August 18, 1975. I’ve just had a shower and I’m in my long red nightshirt. It’s a summer evening in Rio Linda, the windows are open, and the frogs and bugs are croaking and chirping. I’m lying on the couch, and Mom’s cutting my toenails. I have the strong sense that this entire composition and every being involved in it—the frogs, the bugs, Mom, the sun—is in fact only one being; or more precisely, that it is only one being, and that being is me . This is what life used to be like! Before what? Before things came apart. That’s what it is to grow up: to see the world come apart. It’s too much for me. I Swoop right.

I resolve to end my explorations here, and a good two weeks go by before I find myself quite unconsciously, lying on my back on the couch, moving through the well-hidden settings in my app. I click on “Set Target Date” and immediately I am taken to a screen requiring me to upload a scan of a state-issued ID, which will then confirm my date of birth and prevent me from choosing any target date preceding that all-important threshold. Once this formality has been handled, I aim it back to November 19, 1972, and I set the visit duration for just 30 seconds. (I presume that if I am not yet four months old, even if I have some sensorimotor control over my body as well as my usual 49-year old consciousness about me, I still might simply lack the coordination to Swoop right.) It’s hard to say what I experience when I arrive. It’s warm, it’s light, and all is one. I’m lying there next to a funny man who’s watching something on TV, but I don’t know it’s a TV, and the sound of laughter is coming out of it. “PB&J with pickles,” the man says, repeating what he has heard, laughing. Somehow I don’t understand what this means, but I’m thrilled that he finds it so funny. “Did you hear that one? PB&J with pickles !” he shouts to someone who is not in the room with us, but whose presence I can feel. Such joy. Such love. I disappear.

The block on pre-birth travel is ostensibly to prevent the risk of “ditching,” where someone gets permanently stuck in the past. But as long as we are able to preset the duration of the visit, this concern seems ill-placed, and we can only imagine that the real reason is the one that Quast foresaw: “If it ever becomes possible experimentally to prove the immateriality of the soul,” he wrote, “they will do everything in their power to prevent us from finding out about it” (SB-1omk 24.785).

I’m not the sort of person to break the law casually, but what I experienced in the autumn of 1972 was simply too powerful, and I wanted more. I went to the Pakistani mobile-phone shop down at the corner, and sure enough, what they always say about these places is true. Just as the agile shopkeeper will happily oblige any request to repair your touchscreen or to unblock some old battered phone, no questions asked, neither will he look surprised when you ask him, as the parlance has it, to “take away your birthday.”

When I got back home I drank a Diet Dr. Pepper and I pondered different dates and durations until one came to me as if in a message: 1 minute, July 30, 1971—exactly a year before my birth. I Swooped left. I cannot tell you how or why this is so, but I can tell you that exactly a year before I was born, I was floating in warm liquid, and although I had no eyes to see it, I can tell you that there was light. This scene too was charged up with love.

It was also, somehow, charged up with knowledge. Though I did not “know” anything—about PB&J sandwiches, for example, or about parents, or Howard Cosell, or Crazy Frog—it seemed to me after my return that this is only because I knew everything, and I knew it from a vantage where the sharp differentiation between these sundry things seemed a far greater error than their combination. Seeing them all as one, it seemed to me now, felt unmistakably like what is imagined under the idea of heaven. St. Augustine writes that in death the soul returns to regionem suae originis —to the region of its origin, and here he is adapting within a Christian context the broadly Platonic vision of a pre-life life spent in direct communion with the eternal and unchanging Forms. Is that what I was seeing in 1971? If so, then why was everything so wet? No Platonic philosopher, Christian or heathen, ever conceived “baby heaven” in precisely this way.

You probably have some idea of what I did next. I scrolled back to the earliest transit date possible—January 1, 1900. I would have gone back far earlier, to 500 BCE, to 50 million ybp, to God knows when, but the drop-down calendar made its cutoff the beginning of the 20th century. So that’s where I went; nor did I set a duration for the visit.

I can’t tell you what happened after that, or whether I’m still there, or what is even happening anymore. If you think I’ve been spending my days watching mustachioed men on velocipedes going to the beach and changing there into comical striped one-piece bathing suits to play beach-croquet with ladies in bloomers, you really haven’t understood what pre-birth ChronoSwooping is like. I set the thing for 1900, but the human calendar doesn’t mean very much when you’ve shed your body, and your senses, and any trace of your connection to the world of particulars.

I would not recommend doing what I have done. It is not a question of being able “to handle it”; we “handle” whatever comes our way, even or perhaps especially the most impossible things. Unlike the world I saw in 1971, here it’s not even wet or light, but neither is it dry or dark. I know everything, if by “everything” we mean the timeless and universal truths, but as for individuals, facts, things that come and go, contingent beings and the ever-vanishing traces of events, I just can’t make anything out anymore.

“God made time to prevent everything from happening at once,” the diminutive Billy ponders, while looking up at the bright North Star like some junior magus in a Family Circus cartoon circa 1988 that somehow remains vivid to me in its particularity, like the answer to a riddle I never meant to pose, even as almost all other particulars recede from my consciousness. This too is a cliché, of course. Albert Einstein said something similar; so did many other people in fact, and they were all drawing broadly on a theory of temporal idealism that runs through many philosophical systems, including, on at least one understanding, that of Augustine. But no matter, it’s Bil Keane’s cartoon version that sticks with me. I love the Sunday funnies: so stupid; so comforting; so warm. I love TV. I love memes. They’re kind of dumb but I love them.

On these and other such small things was I trained up, like some innocent AI that knows no temporal flow at all, so that the dim outlines of them still move across memory’s stage even after I have used my app against the rules and withdrawn from Time altogether—before Time was yet able to withdraw from me.

You Might Also Like …

Navigate election season with our Politics Lab newsletter and podcast

Think Google’s “Incognito mode” protects your privacy? Think again

Blowing the whistle on sexual harassment and assault in Antarctica

The earth will feast on dead cicadas

Upgrading your Mac? Here’s what you should spend your money on

Angela Watercutter

Jennifer M. Wood

David Gilbert

Universe simulator

SpaceEngine is a realistic virtual Universe you can explore on your computer. You can travel from star to star, from galaxy to galaxy, landing on any planet, moon, or asteroid with the ability to explore its alien landscape. You can alter the speed of time and observe any celestial phenomena you please. All transitions are completely seamless, and this virtual universe has a size of billions of light-years across and contains trillions upon trillions of planetary systems. The procedural generation is based on real scientific knowledge, so SpaceEngine depicts the universe the way it is thought to be by modern science. Real celestial objects are also present if you want to visit them, including the planets and moons of our Solar system, thousands of nearby stars with newly discovered exoplanets, and thousands of galaxies that are currently known.

Cosmographic's Second Anniversary

Author: Alexander T. Long, CEO Yesterday we celebrated our second year as a studio! A lot has happened in the last year, and we have plans for even mo...

Update 0.990.46.2000: Catalog Update and Bug Fixes

Author: Dr. Megan Tannock Today’s update includes several smaller updates to several SpaceEngine features. The first is a major exoplanet catalog ex...

Update 0.990.46.1990: Climate Model Update Full Release

Recently, we announced the addition of a Climate Model to SpaceEngine, which introduced global temperature maps, local pressures, local densities, win...

All types of celestial objects

represented

Galaxies, nebulae, stars and star clusters, planets and moons, comets and asteroids

Thousands of known

celestial objects

Known galaxies, stars, planets, asteroids, nebulae are represented using catalogs: HIPPARCOS, NGC/IC, Messier, MPC, NASA Exoplanet Archive and many others

procedural generation

for uncharted regions

Uncharted regions of space feature procedurally generated objects: galaxies, stars, star clusters, nebulae and planetary systems

Incredibly huge

and realistic Universe

Trillions of galaxies with billions of star systems in each, everything is realistically scaled

free to move

around the universe

Seamless transition from the surface of a planet to the most distant galaxies, and free game-like movement with the WASD keys

Easy navigation

many useful tools

Click on any visible object with the mouse and hit the 'G' key to fly directly to it. Search for objects by name, search by parameters within a certain radius, browse an interactive map of the surrounding space and view a map of the current planetary system

Save locations

and name objects

Save a favorite point in space and time and share it with friend. Give a name to any discovered planet, star or galaxy, and write a description for it.

Observe the Universe

Accelerate, decelerate, or reverse the flow of time to see the orbital motion of planets and moons, and watch sunsets and eclipses

Tools to learn

how the Universe works

Read detailed physical and astronomical data of any celestial body using the built-in Wiki system. Look at the orbital path lines of planets and moons, and compare their size side-by-side

3D landscapes on planets

volumetric galaxies and nebulae

Solar System bodies have real terrain models obtained by space probes; realistic hi-detail terrain on procedural planets

Photorealistic

Photorealistic lighting and atmospheric model

Space ships

with realistic orbital mechanics

Pilot star ships with realistic orbital mechanics, Alcubierre warp drives, and aerodynamics in planetary atmospheres

Multilanguage

Localization in 20 languages, with a simple system for creating new translations

Huge modding

Import space ship models, planetary surface textures and terrain, astronomical catalogs, and more

And much more

Movement made possible with free, spacecraft or aircraft mode

``Select and fly`` autopilot to automatically go directly to the object

Automatic binding of the observer to moving objects

Automatic selection of optimum flight speed

Built-in wiki system with descriptions and ability to extend

Ability to import user addons: models, textures, catalogs

3D models of galaxies and nebulae with interstellar dust clouds

Accurate planetary atmosphere models

Controllable space ships

Original music with context-dependent track switching

Localization in many languages, with the ability to add new ones

• CPU: Intel Core i3-3220T, AMD FX-4100
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti, AMD Radeon RX 460; 3+ GB dedicated video memory (VRAM)
• OS: Windows 10

Recommended

• CPU: Intel Core i5-4430, AMD FX-8350
• GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060, AMD Radeon RX 480; 5+ GB dedicated video memory (VRAM)
• OS: Windows 10/11

If you like SpaceEngine, buy the latest version on Steam , and receive free updates as we make improvements and add new features!

At the moment, we are no longer accepting donations via PayPal. If you want to support SpaceEngine beyond purchasing it for yourself, consider buying a copy for a friend or simply tell your friends and family about SpaceEngine and why you love it. No matter what you do, we deeply appreciate your support!

• April 11, 2024 | Double Trouble: Decoding the Pain-Depression Feedback Loop
• April 11, 2024 | Elemental Surprise: Physicists Discover a New Quantum State
• April 11, 2024 | A Real Life Eye of Sauron? New Technology To Detect Airborne Threats Instantly
• April 11, 2024 | This Math Problem Stumped Scientists for Almost a Century – Two Mathematicians Have Finally Solved It
• April 11, 2024 | Galactic Genesis Unveiled: JWST Witnesses the Dawn of Starlight

Rewinding Reality: Cambridge Uses Time-Travel Simulations To Solve “Impossible” Problems

By University of Cambridge October 21, 2023

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have utilized quantum entanglement to simulate a scenario resembling backward time travel. This allows for past actions to be retroactively altered, potentially leading to improved present outcomes.

Physicists have shown that simulating models of hypothetical time travel can solve experimental problems that appear impossible to solve using standard physics.

If gamblers, investors, and quantum experimentalists could bend the arrow of time, their advantage would be significantly higher, leading to significantly better outcomes.

“We are not proposing a time travel machine, but rather a deep dive into the fundamentals of quantum mechanics.” — David Arvidsson-Shukur try { window._mNHandle.queue.push(function (){ window._mNDetails.loadTag("974871025", "600x250", "974871025"); }); } catch (error) {}

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have shown that by manipulating entanglement – a feature of quantum theory that causes particles to be intrinsically linked – they can simulate what could happen if one could travel backward in time. So that gamblers, investors and quantum experimentalists could, in some cases, retroactively change their past actions and improve their outcomes in the present.

Simulation and Time Loops

Whether particles can travel backward in time is a controversial topic among physicists, even though scientists have previously simulated models of how such spacetime loops could behave if they did exist. By connecting their new theory to quantum metrology, which uses quantum theory to make highly sensitive measurements, the Cambridge team has shown that entanglement can solve problems that otherwise seem impossible. The study was published on October 12 in the journal Physical Review Letters .

“Imagine that you want to send a gift to someone: you need to send it on day one to make sure it arrives on day three,” said lead author David Arvidsson-Shukur, from the Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory. “However, you only receive that person’s wish list on day two. So, in this chronology-respecting scenario, it’s impossible for you to know in advance what they will want as a gift and to make sure you send the right one.

“Now imagine you can change what you send on day one with the information from the wish list received on day two. Our simulation uses quantum entanglement manipulation to show how you could retroactively change your previous actions to ensure the final outcome is the one you want.”

Understanding Quantum Entanglement

The simulation is based on quantum entanglement, which consists of strong correlations that quantum particles can share and classical particles—those governed by everyday physics—cannot.

The particularity of quantum physics is that if two particles are close enough to each other to interact, they can stay connected even when separated. This is the basis of quantum computing – the harnessing of connected particles to perform computations too complex for classical computers.

“In our proposal, an experimentalist entangles two particles,” said co-author Nicole Yunger Halpern, researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland. “The first particle is then sent to be used in an experiment. Upon gaining new information, the experimentalist manipulates the second particle to effectively alter the first particle’s past state, changing the outcome of the experiment.”

“The effect is remarkable, but it happens only one time out of four!” said Arvidsson-Shukur. “In other words, the simulation has a 75% chance of failure. But the good news is that you know if you have failed. If we stay with our gift analogy, one out of four times, the gift will be the desired one (for example a pair of trousers), another time it will be a pair of trousers but in the wrong size, or the wrong color, or it will be a jacket.”

Practical Applications and Limitations

To give their model relevance to technologies, the theorists connected it to quantum metrology. In a common quantum metrology experiment, photons—small particles of light—are shone onto a sample of interest and then registered with a special type of camera. If this experiment is to be efficient, the photons must be prepared in a certain way before they reach the sample. The researchers have shown that even if they learn how to best prepare the photons only after the photons have reached the sample, they can use simulations of time travel to retroactively change the original photons.

To counteract the high chance of failure, the theorists propose to send a huge number of entangled photons, knowing that some will eventually carry the correct, updated information. Then they would use a filter to ensure that the right photons pass to the camera, while the filter rejects the rest of the ‘bad’ photons.

“Consider our earlier analogy about gifts,” said co-author Aidan McConnell, who carried out this research during his master’s degree at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, and is now a PhD student at ETH, Zürich. “Let’s say sending gifts is inexpensive and we can send numerous parcels on day one. On day two we know which gift we should have sent. By the time the parcels arrive on day three, one out of every four gifts will be correct, and we select these by telling the recipient which deliveries to throw away.”

“That we need to use a filter to make our experiment work is actually pretty reassuring,” said Arvidsson-Shukur. “The world would be very strange if our time-travel simulation worked every time. Relativity and all the theories that we are building our understanding of our universe on would be out of the window.

“We are not proposing a time travel machine, but rather a deep dive into the fundamentals of quantum mechanics. These simulations do not allow you to go back and alter your past, but they do allow you to create a better tomorrow by fixing yesterday’s problems today.”

Reference: “Nonclassical Advantage in Metrology Established via Quantum Simulations of Hypothetical Closed Timelike Curves” by David R. M. Arvidsson-Shukur, Aidan G. McConnell and Nicole Yunger Halpern, 12 October 2023, Physical Review Letters . DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.150202

This work was supported by the Sweden-America Foundation, the Lars Hierta Memorial Foundation, Girton College, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

More on SciTechDaily

Gamma Factory: New ‘Super Light Source’ at CERN for Fascinating Insights Into Atoms

Ancient DNA Analysis Reveals Large Scale Migrations Into Bronze Age Britain

Conventional Computers Can Learn To Solve Tricky Quantum Problems in Physics and Chemistry

Electrons Waiting Their Turn: New Model Explains 3D Quantum Material

Arctic Melt Season Is Lengthening by Several Days Each Decade

Study Shows Star RZ Piscium May Be Devouring Wrecked Planets

MIT’s New Fluxonium Qubit Circuit Enables Quantum Operations With Unprecedented Accuracy

Concerning – Popular Hawaiian Tourist Spot Is Being “Overused”

5 comments on "rewinding reality: cambridge uses time-travel simulations to solve “impossible” problems".

So how do we fast track a path to getting the correct answer 4 out of 4 times so that we aren’t at a 25% correct answer ? That’s my question

not provable, I won’t get in to explaining other than given a persons preferences and a multiple amount of life scenarios of such person and prier choices made a list can be formulated with high to low preferences. There are something that simply cannot be changed that’s history and time is fleeting we make it what it is.

Weren’t we just here about a week ago with a similar scenario and that article mysteriously disappeared into some sort of blackhole shortly after it was published? Since the very basis of the worthiness of capitalism is to gain at the expense of others, I can definitely see its value. Of course the experiment could be run in the future with no problem whatsoever and if the answer should be wrong, it could be run again until the correct answer is achieved, then wait, for time to catch up to the tested event, that way if it were to turn out that time is by nature non-euclidean, even a filter would still produce unacceptable errors, such as what occurs in the high energy fields needed for particle accelerators where virtual particles interfer with the desired observation. Something like that, if we think of time in the same manner as we do space, because other research has already revealed that reality.

Surely this is the equivalent of trying to use entanglement to send information faster than light which is forbidden. The proposed filter must fail.

The gifts analogy is flawed. If I send four gifts one day one, on day two I find out the correct one, and day three I tell him to filter out the three incorrect gifts this is not time travel, simulated or otherwise

Leave a comment Cancel reply

Email address is optional. If provided, your email will not be published or shared.

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Mindfulness

How time perspective affects travel, do you live in the past, present, or future.

Posted April 15, 2024 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

• What Is Mindfulness?
• Find a mindfulness-based counsellor
• Understanding your own time perspective can enhance your life experience.
• Our characteristic types are neither good nor bad, just different from one another.
• Children are present-oriented, while adults favor the future. Seniors tend to preserve the past.

As an enjoyable vacation winds down, some of us become impatient to get home and move on to the next thing. Maybe that’s you. But, instead, you might be someone who tries to preserve, or even expand, every remaining moment. In either case, you’ll attempt to lock these precious flashes into your memory bank with mental snapshots. But without any effort, and all too quickly, the present quickly fades into the past. How we experience time is relevant to travel. Understanding your own time perspective can enhance your experience.

Stanford University Professor Emeritus Phil Zimbardo, author of The Time Paradox , notes that we are all oriented to time in one of the following characteristic ways—past, present, or future. According to his profile, I am future-oriented. What might your style be? Let’s see.

Those of us in the future category are goal-driven, focused on the future consequences of our actions, and forward-looking in general. Then there are the present-hedonic folks, the pleasure seekers who enjoy things in real-time, with less concern about tomorrow. Folks who live in the present tend to be open to experiences they didn’t necessarily plan, and they don’t need to check it off their bucket list. If this style fits, you’re probably most content with the moment-to-moment flow of your travel.

Past-oriented people make up the remaining category. This might be you if you compare current experiences with memories of past events or situations. Past-oriented folks determine the value of travel, according to Zimbardo, by assigning a pleasure quotient to the comparison—better or worse and by how much? This style is more analytic and rational, and based less on emotional factors than is true for present-focused folks. Does this sound like you?

Our characteristic types are neither good nor bad—just different from one another. Future- and past-oriented travelers provide a logical, systematic understanding of where travel fits into human experience. These styles have great evolutionary value. Our distant ancestors, who chronicled the past and predicted the future, tended to be the shaman and storytellers of the tribe. Reviewing the past and predicting the future was critical to human survival.

Present-oriented people tend to have more fun in the moment, and every society needs this type of person to keep things from getting too serious. Savoring the present is an acquired skill and is worth the effort to cultivate! Also, by expanding the present-pleasant and then reviewing a trip in the past-positive, you can have both good feelings and pleasurable memories. Since, as Zimbardo’s research indicates, we have characteristic ways of perceiving time, maintaining a present focus may require some work—if this isn’t naturally how you see the world.

Zimbardo points to another dimension of time—one that is age-related. In general, children are present-oriented while adults favor the future. Seniors tend to preserve the past. As a future-focused senior, I'm aware of the need to put my foot on the brake and try to prolong the present—particularly the pleasing moments while vacationing. This takes some work.

Regardless of the type that best explains you, here are some strategies to expand your time orientation:

• If you’re naturally drawn to the past or future , notice these tendencies and gently nudge yourself toward the present moment. When you catch yourself reminiscing about the last time you were in Paris, as you sit at an outdoor café savoring your steaming latte and munching on a croissant, remind yourself that the people you see strolling by are there right now—not last time or next time. The weather is uniquely now, not needing a contrast with a warmer or sunnier last visit. The present can be pleasant without any backward reference—or simply less.
• Future- oriented travelers tend to spend their present moments imagining future trips, which makes sense in planning life but can steal from the here and now. Recently, on a river cruise through Austria, I was struck by how much conversation I overheard about planning the next trip. Busily sharing these thoughts with fellow travelers, these vacationers sat by a large picture window as the ship sailed into a new city—totally missing the present moment, unnoticed outside of the window.
• Again, if future is your natural mode, keep that in mind as you travel. Learn to prolong the only moment that truly exists—this one that you anticipated for months or maybe years. The first step involves gently guiding your awareness back to the present. Practicing meditation even a few minutes a day will make this process easier.

This article is based on a chapter from my book: Inward Traveler: 51 Ways to Explore the World Mindfully, 2018.

Stanford University professor emeritus, Phil Zimbardo, authored The Time Paradox, Free Press, N.Y., 2008.

Francine Toder, Ph.D. , is an emeritus faculty member of California State University, Sacramento and is a clinical psychologist retired from private practice.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Support Group
• International
• New Zealand
• South Africa
• Switzerland
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

• Coronavirus Disease 2019
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Watch CBS News

U.S. issues travel warning for Israel with Iran attack believed to be imminent and fear Gaza war could spread

By Debora Patta , Tucker Reals

Updated on: April 13, 2024 / 5:25 PM EDT / CBS News

Update: Iran launched drone attacks against Israel on Saturday. Read CBS News'  latest coverage here .

Tel Aviv  — Israel is bracing for a worst-case scenario that U.S. officials believe could materialize within just hours — the possibility of a direct attack on Israeli soil by Iran in retaliation for a strike almost two weeks ago that killed seven Iranian military officers. Iran has vowed to take revenge for Israel killing its commanders, who were hit by an April 1 strike on the Iranian embassy in Syria's capital.

Two U.S. officials told CBS News that a major Iranian attack against Israel was expected as soon as Friday, possibly to include more than 100 drones and dozens of missiles aimed at military targets inside the country. Sources have told CBS News the retaliation could include attacks carried out both by Iranian forces, and proxy groups around the region that it has been funneling additional arms to for weeks.  

The officials said it would be challenging for the Israelis to defend against an attack of that magnitude, and while they held out the possibility that the Iranians could opt for a smaller-scale attack to avoid a dramatic escalation, their retaliation was believed to be imminent. 

Asked Friday how imminent he believes an attack is, President Biden responded, "I don't want to get into secure information, but my expectation is sooner than later." The president urged Iran not to move forward, saying his message to Tehran was: "Don't."

Tehran has not indicated publicly how or when it will return fire, so it's unclear how far Iran's leaders will go. If they decide to carry out a direct attack on Israel, there's fear it could blow Israel's ongoing war against Iranian ally Hamas up into a much wider regional conflict.

With the Iranian retaliation expected at any time, the U.S. State Department on Thursday warned Americans in Israel not to travel outside major cities, which are better protected from incoming rocket fire by the country's Iron Dome missile defense system. The latest guidance noted that travel by U.S. government employees in Israel could be further restricted with little notice as things develop in the tinderbox region.

"Whoever harms us, we will harm them," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Thursday as he visited troops at an Israel Defense Forces airbase. "We are prepared … both defensively and offensively."

On Saturday, all U.S. embassies in the Middle East were put on high alert and required to hold emergency action committee meetings. Diplomats in Lebanon and Israel were specifically told not to travel to certain areas within those countries.

Sima Shine, a security expert and former official with Israel's national intelligence agency Mossad, told CBS News it was a dangerous moment for the region, and the "most worried" she has been. She said anxiety over an all-out war was likely just as high "on both sides, in Israel and in Iran."

If Iran does choose to strike Israel directly, it could involve a complex missile and drone attack similar to the one Iranian forces launched against a Saudi oil facility in 2019 .

"They will try to do it on the military or some military asset," Shine predicted. "But the question will be the damage. If there would be many injured people, killed or injured … I think it has the potential for a huge escalation."

Shine stressed, however, that she still believes neither side actually wants a regional conflict.

U.S. "really trying to avoid war"

The U.S. sent a senior general to Israel this week to coordinate with the close American ally on any response it might make to an Iranian attack. Speaking Friday on "CBS Mornings," America's top military officer said, "we're really trying to avoid war."

"This is part of the dialogue that I have with my counterparts within the region, to include the Israeli chief of defense, who I talked to yesterday," said Joint Chiefs chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr., adding that the U.S. military was "doing things not only to prevent a war, but at the same time, one of my primary things is to make sure all the forces in the region are protected."

"My role, as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is to plan and prepare," Brown said. "That's one thing we do very well."

Brown's Israeli counterpart, Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, "completed a comprehensive situational assessment on the readiness of the IDF for all scenarios," Israel's military said Friday. 

"The IDF is very strongly prepared, both offensively and defensively, against any threat," Halevi was quoted as saying in the statement. "The IDF continues to monitor closely what is happening in Iran and different arenas, constantly preparing to deal with existing and potential threats in coordination with the United States Armed Forces." 

The IDF said the visiting U.S. general, Central Command chief Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, was taking part in the IDF's situational assessment.

The dilemma for Iran, said Israeli expert Shine, is to figure out how to deliver its promised response to Israel's attack in Syria, but in a way that does not lead to further escalation. Likewise, Shine said Israel could choose to show restraint when it responds to whatever Iran eventually does.

If either side gets the balance wrong, the consequences for the region, and even the world, could be dire.

Weijia Jiang, David Martin, Margaret Brennan and Olivia Gazis contributed reporting.

• Middle East
• Benjamin Neta​nyahu

Debora Patta is a CBS News foreign correspondent based in Johannesburg. Since joining CBS News in 2013, she has reported on major stories across Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Edward R. Murrow and Scripps Howard awards are among the many accolades Patta has received for her work.

More from CBS News

Rising numbers say Biden should encourage Israel to stop Gaza actions

A close look at Israel's complex air defense system amid the Iran attack

Body found of missing teen whose disappearance sparked deadly settler attack

Johnson faces growing pressure over Ukraine, Israel aid

Advertisement

Supported by

Fjords, Pharaohs or Koalas? Time to Plan for Your Next Eclipse.

If you can’t get enough of totality, or missed out this time, you’ll have three more chances in the next four years in destinations like Iceland, Spain, Egypt and Australia.

• Share full article

By Danielle Dowling

Are you still a little giddy from the magical moments of totality during Monday’s solar eclipse? Or did clouds swoop in to block your view? Maybe you just couldn’t make it to the path of totality this time. No matter what, the question now is “ Where and when will it happen again?”

“People who have never seen it before, the first words out of their mouth after the totality ends is ‘I’ve got to see another one, this is incredible, this is unbelievable.’ That is when you become addicted to these things and end up traveling no matter where the next one is,” said Joseph Rao, an eclipse chaser and guest lecturer at the Hayden Planetarium.

So, if like Mr. Rao, you’ve developed a raging case of umbraphilia — the love of eclipses — you’ll have three chances over the next four years to see the moon blot out the sun. The first, on Aug. 12, 2026, will start above Greenland, then strafe the west coast of Iceland and move along the Atlantic Ocean and over Spain. Almost a year later, on Aug. 2, 2027, another will skirt the Mediterranean coast of North Africa then cross Egypt and part of the Arabian Peninsula. The third, on July 22, 2028, will cut across Australia and the southern tip of New Zealand.

Future Eclipses

Eclipse chasers will have several more chances this decade to view a total solar eclipse .

Last week, as Victoria Sahami , the owner of Sirius Travel , was preparing to guide a group of tourists in Mazatlán, Mexico, for Monday’s big event, she was also planning for these other upcoming eclipses. Ms. Sahami joined the ranks of the eclipse-obsessed when she witnessed one in Venezuela in the 1990s. “Like many people, I was hooked. There was no going back,” she said.

Total solar eclipses happen fairly regularly — about every one to two years — in locations scattered around the world. “That’s the great thing about them: You wind up in places that you don’t normally go,” Ms. Sahami said.

A major spoiler is weather, which will be a big variable in the 2026 eclipse — one Greenland, Iceland and Spain will see.

“Iceland normally has a lot of cloud during that time of year,” said Paul Maley , who runs Ring of Fire Expeditions . “The data shows Spain to have the higher good-weather prospects of all three. However, the sun is low in the sky and the eclipse ends as the sun hits the horizon at sunset.”

Because of Iceland’s mercurial meteorology, Ring of Fire Expeditions is going all in on Spain, with a 10-day excursion on the mainland. Sirius Travel is offering not only a five-day trip to Majorca but also an eight-day tour around Iceland. It will be based in Reykjavik, and the itinerary will remain flexible on the day of the eclipse so the tour can easily pivot toward the location with the least cloud cover. Ms. Sahami recommends the trip for those who already have a few eclipses under their belt and would be happy just to take in the sights of Iceland if the weather doesn’t cooperate.

The 2027 eclipse, on the other hand, promises to be truly stellar: Luxor, Egypt — the site of numerous ancient temples as well as the Valleys of the Kings and Queens — sits right in the middle of the path of totality and will be bathed in darkness for a full 6 minutes 23 seconds. Weather-wise, it is what Ms. Sahami called “a slam dunk.” “You know you’re going to see it. You know that you’re not going to get any clouds,” she said.

But for all its potential, those considering Egypt should be aware that the State Department has a Level 3 “Reconsider Travel” warning for the country because of the risk of terrorism.

The 2028 eclipse will darken the skies over Sydney, Australia, for 3 minutes 49 seconds. It will be the first time the city has experienced a total solar eclipse since 1857. Ms. Sahami has her eyes on a trip based out of there, while Mr. Maley has chartered a cruise ship off the northwest coast of Australia. It will be winter there, he said, but that isn’t likely to mean bad eclipse-viewing weather.

If you want to see any (or all) of these eclipses, you should get started on planning and booking now, particularly if you want to sign up for a trip organized by a tour company. One of Sirius Travel’s excursions to Luxor is already full.

Scrutinize refund policies and look into insuring your trip. Several companies will fully refund your deposit if you cancel a year in advance. A lot can happen, Ms. Sahami said, “but if you think you’re going to go, why not?”

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2024 .

An official website of the United States government Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Air Travel Consumer Report: January 2024 Numbers

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) today released its Air Travel Consumer Report (ATCR) on airline operational data compiled for the month of January 2024 for on-time performance, mishandled baggage, and mishandled wheelchairs and scooters. The ATCR is designed to assist consumers with information on the quality of services provided by airlines. 

DOT expects that airlines will operate flights as scheduled and that when they do not, airlines will provide consumers the services consumers have been promised when a flight is canceled or delayed because of an airline issue. After a two-year DOT push to improve the passenger experience, the 10 largest airlines now guarantee meals and free rebooking on the same airline and nine guarantee hotel accommodations. Consumer-friendly information regarding airline commitments to their customers is available on the Department’s Airline Customer Service Dashboard at FlightRights.Gov. DOT also pushed airlines to provide fee-free family seating and rolled out a new family seating dashboard that highlights the airlines that guarantee fee-free family seating, and those of the 10 largest that do not, making it easier for parents to avoid paying junk fees to sit with their children when they fly.

In addition, DOT is improving transportation for individuals with disabilities. In July 2023, DOT finalized a rule which requires airlines to make lavatories on new, single-aisle aircraft more accessible. Then, in February 2024, DOT issued a proposal to address other barriers that Americans who use a wheelchair encounter when it comes to air travel by, among other things, mandating enhanced training for airline employees and contractors who physically assist passenger with disabilities and handle passengers’ wheelchairs.

Further, when necessary, DOT takes enforcement action against airlines and ticket agents that fail to comply with the Department’s aviation consumer protection requirements. In 2023, DOT issued the largest fines in the history of the consumer protection office. This includes a $140 million penalty against Southwest Airlines for failing passengers during the 2022 holiday meltdown. That penalty, which was in addition to over $600 million DOT already ensured was refunded by Southwest to passengers, requires Southwest to establish a $90 million compensation system for future passengers affected by significant delays and cancellations. DOT has helped return more than $3 billion in refunds to travelers since the pandemic began.

Flight Operations

The 560,352 flights operated in January 2024 were 99.56% of the 562,845 flights operated in January 2023. Operated flights in January 2024 were down 0.44% year-over-year from the 562,845 flights operated in January 2023 and down 7.18% month-over-month from 603,756 flights operated in December 2023. 

In January 2024, the 10 marketing network carriers reported 582,425 scheduled domestic flights, 22,073 (3.8%) of which were canceled. In December 2023, airlines scheduled 606,218 domestic flights, 2,462 (1.3%) of which were canceled. In January 2023, airlines scheduled 573,877 domestic flights, 11,032 (1.9%) of which were canceled.

On January 6, 2024, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) ordered the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft with a mid-cabin door plug installed operated by U.S. airlines or in U.S. territory. On January 24, 2024, FAA cleared all such aircraft to return to service after each aircraft operator successfully completed a new inspection process approved by the FAA. Alaska Airlines and United Airlines have informed the DOT that the grounding of the 737 MAX9 aircraft with the mid-cabin door plug installed has impacted their on-time statistics during this reporting period.

January 2024 On-Time Arrival

In January 2024, reporting marketing carriers posted an on-time arrival rate of 72.8%, down from both 83.9% in December 2023 and from 76.2% in January 2023.

Highest Marketing Carrier On-Time Arrival Rates January 2024 (ATCR Table 1)

• Delta Airlines Network – 77.8%
• Allegiant Air – 75.6%
• Southwest Airlines – 73.9% 

Lowest Marketing Carrier On-Time Arrival Rates January 2024 (ATCR Table 1)

• Alaska Airlines Network – 64.7%
• JetBlue Airways – 69.5%
• American Airlines Network – 70.5%

January 2024 Flight Cancellations

In January 2024, reporting marketing carriers canceled 3.8% of their scheduled domestic flights, higher than both the rate of 0.4% in December 2023 and the rate of 1.9% in January 2023. 

Lowest Marketing Carrier Rates of Canceled Flights January 2024 (ATCR Table 6)

• Hawaiian Airlines – 1.5%  
• Spirit Airlines – 1.5%   
• JetBlue Airways – 1.7%    

Highest Marketing Carrier Rates of Canceled Flights January 2024 (ATCR Table 6)

• Alaska Airlines Network – 11.9%    
• United Airlines Network – 6.9%    
• Southwest Airlines – 3.1%    

Complaints About Airline Service

The release of air travel service complaint data in the Air Travel Consumer Report (ATCR) has been delayed primarily because of the continued high volume of complaints against airlines and ticket agents received by the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection (OACP) and the time needed to review and process these consumer complaints. The Department is investing in modernizing its system for handling consumer complaints with the support of a Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) investment to improve the customer experience for the tens of thousands of consumers who use the system each year and enable OACP to more effectively engage in oversight of the airline industry. 

As DOT modernizes its system, given the continued high volume of air travel service complaints concerning airlines and ticket agents, DOT has revised how it processes consumer complaints received after June 1, 2023. From June 2023 until the date its system is modernized, DOT intends to revise the ATCR to display consumer submissions (complaints, inquiries, and opinions) as opposed to complaints for this period. The Department will continue to display civil rights complaints in the ATCR in a similar manner as before and anticipates publishing submission and civil rights complaint numbers in spring.

Tarmac Delays

In January 2024, airlines reported 71 tarmac delays of more than three hours on domestic flights, compared to five tarmac delays of more than three hours on domestic flights reported in December 2023. In January 2024, airlines reported six tarmac delays of more than four hours on international flights, compared to zero tarmac delays of more than four hours on international flights reported in December 2023. 

Airlines are required to have and adhere to assurances that they will not allow aircraft to remain on the tarmac for more than three hours for domestic flights and four hours for international flights without providing passengers the option to deplane, subject to exceptions related to safety, security, and Air Traffic Control related reasons. An exception also exists for departure delays if the airline begins to return the aircraft to a suitable disembarkation point to deplane passengers by those times.

The Department investigates extended tarmac delays.

Mishandled Baggage

In January 2024, reporting marketing carriers handled 37.4 million bags and posted a mishandled baggage rate of 0.75%, higher than both the rate of 0.50% in December 2023 and the rate of 0.73% in January 2023.

The Department began displaying the mishandled baggage data as a percentage (i.e., per 100 bags enplaned) in January 2022. This is consistent with the manner that the mishandled wheelchairs and scooters rate is calculated and displayed.     In the prior three calendar year reports (2019 to 2021), the Department calculated the mishandled baggage rate based on the number of mishandled bags per 1,000 checked bags. 

Mishandled Wheelchairs and Scooters

In January 2024, reporting marketing carriers reported checking 56,659 wheelchairs and scooters and mishandling 836 for a rate of 1.48% mishandled wheelchairs and scooters, higher than the rate of 1.39% mishandled in December 2023 and lower than the rate of 1.47% mishandled in January 2023.

As described earlier, in February 2024, the Department announced its proposal to strengthen its rule implementing the Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA) to address the serious problems that individuals with disabilities using wheelchairs and scooters face when traveling by air that impact their safety and dignity, including mishandled wheelchairs and scooters and improper transfers to and from aircraft seats, aisle chairs, and personal wheelchairs. The proposed rule would require that airlines meet strict standards in accommodating passengers with disabilities by setting new standards for prompt, safe, and dignified assistance, mandating enhanced training for airline employees and contractors who physically assist passengers with disabilities and handle passengers’ wheelchairs, and outlining actions that airlines must take to protect passengers when a wheelchair is damaged during transport. The proposed rule also clarifies that damaging or delaying the return of a wheelchair is an automatic violation of the ACAA.

Bumping/Oversales

Bumping/oversales data, unlike other air carrier data, are reported quarterly rather than monthly. For the fourth quarter of 2023, the 10 U.S. reporting marketing carriers posted an involuntary denied boarding, or bumping, rate of 0.20 per 10,000 passengers, lower than both the rate of 0.35 in the third quarter of 2023 and the rate of 0.30 in the fourth quarter of 2022.

Incidents Involving Animals

As part of its IT modernization, DOT’s Office of Aviation Consumer Protection (OACP) is improving the options for covered carriers to submit their monthly and annual Reports on Incidents Involving Animals During Air Transport. While the new system is being developed, OACP is permitting covered carriers to delay submission of reports on incidents involving animals during air transport. Annual data on such incidents will be published when DOT receives carriers’ complete submissions of the 2023 data. 

In January 2024, carriers reported zero incidents involving the death, injury, or loss of an animal while traveling by air, equal to the zero reports filed in both December 2023 and in January 2023.

Consumers may file air travel consumer or civil rights complaints online at   https://secure.dot.gov/air-travel-complaint , or they may mail a complaint to the Office of Aviation Consumer Protection, U.S. Department of Transportation, C-70, W96-432, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC 20590.

The ATCR and other aviation consumer matters of interest to the public can be found at https://www.transportation.gov/airconsumer .