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Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible, Researchers Say

Matthew S. Schwartz

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

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

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

Turns out, King might have been on to something.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• grandfather paradox
• time travel

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Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible: Physicist “Squares the Numbers” on Time Travel

By University of Queensland September 24, 2020

UQ physicists have been seeking to understand the time travel’s underlying laws. Credit: JMortonPhoto.com & OtoGodfrey.com

Paradox-free time travel is theoretically possible, according to the mathematical modeling of a prodigious University of Queensland (UQ) undergraduate student.

Fourth-year Bachelor of Advanced Science (Honours) student Germain Tobar has been investigating the possibility of time travel, under the supervision of UQ physicist Dr. Fabio Costa.

“Classical dynamics says if you know the state of a system at a particular time, this can tell us the entire history of the system,” Mr. Tobar said. “This has a wide range of applications, from allowing us to send rockets to other planets and modeling how fluids flow.

“For example, if I know the current position and velocity of an object falling under the force of gravity, I can calculate where it will be at any time.

“However, Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts the existence of time loops or time travel – where an event can be both in the past and future of itself – theoretically turning the study of dynamics on its head.”

Mr. Tobar said a unified theory that could reconcile both traditional dynamics and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was the holy grail of physics.

“But the current science says both theories cannot both be true,” he said. “As physicists, we want to understand the Universe’s most basic, underlying laws and for years I’ve been puzzled on how the science of dynamics can square with Einstein’s predictions.”

“I wondered is time travel mathematically possible?”

Mr. Tobar and Dr. Costa say they have found a way to “square the numbers” and Dr. Costa said the calculations could have fascinating consequences for science.

Dr. Fabio Costa (left) with Bachelor of Advanced Science (Honours) student Germain Tobar. Credit: Ho Vu

“The maths checks out – and the results are the stuff of science fiction,” Dr. Costa said.

“Say you traveled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19 ’s patient zero from being exposed to the virus . However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected – that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place.

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

“Some physicists say it is possible, but logically it’s hard to accept because that would affect our freedom to make any arbitrary action. It would mean you can time travel, but you cannot do anything that would cause a paradox to occur.”

However, the researchers say their work shows that neither of these conditions has to be the case, and it is possible for events to adjust themselves to be logically consistent with any action that the time traveler makes.

“In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would,” Mr. Tobar said.

“No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you. This would mean that – no matter your actions – the pandemic would occur, giving your younger self the motivation to go back and stop it.

“Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency.

“The range of mathematical processes we discovered show that time travel with free will is logically possible in our universe without any paradox.”

Reference: “Reversible dynamics with closed time-like curves and freedom of choice” by Germain Tobar and Fabio Costa, 21 September 2020, Classical and Quantum Gravity . DOI: 10.1088/1361-6382/aba4bc

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20 comments on "paradox-free time travel is theoretically possible: physicist “squares the numbers” on time travel".

“Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will ALWAYS adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency.”

What if someone were to got back in time and kill their mother before she gave birth to him? How does that get ‘adjusted?’

You decide to go back and end Covid-19; it is Sept 24 2020: If you stopped “person-zero” from getting COVID-19, then “person-one” will get it in the “adjustment”. Back in Sept 24, 2020, COVID-19 is still around, and you still decide to go back to stop it. So then you are stopping “person-one”, and “person-two” gets the adjustment. Back in Sept 24, 2020, COVID-19 is still around, and you still decide to go back to stop it. So then you are stopping “person-two” and “person-three” gets the adjustment. So ….. you get trapped in an infinite time-loop from which you can never escape. OR this is a poorly written article in which (a) the author did not understand the mathematical model, or (b) the mathematicians did a poor job explaining what they are modeling, or (c) both, or (d) the MODEL is an incorrect model of the “real” universe, even though the “math” that describes the model is error free. Whatever the answer, this article left me with more questions than answers regarding the title of the article. WHAT?

I don’t think it’s neccessary to get trapped in endless loop. If I would like to try to stop the Patient-Zero from being infected by jumping back in time I would see the futility of the failed attempts and give up after a few loops. More over, jumping back-and-back-to-the-future-again should not cause memory erasure so all the trials would appear to me as a normal cause-effect chain from my perspective, so why should I try again and again? But now we know that timespace could be this self-correcting data stream and I should take this theory into consideration before I try to lose a chunk of >my< lifespan in the history. But that's just me trying to sound logical to myself 🙂

It seems that the poison made by Einstein continues toxicating physicists who blindly believe the current orthodox. They use general relativity as a tool to mathematically speculate the possibility of the existence of closed time curves in the so-called four-dimensional spacetime, but have never seriously defined what time travel really means. When they say somebody time travels to the past, which is the boundary of the person and his surroundings, and how do his surroundings continuously connect from the present to the past? Obviously, there is no way to have a logically consistent definition for so-called time travel.

It’s true that time scale is different for different physical processes. For example, a rabbit thinks that one year is a long time, but a turtle feels one year is just a blink. Some physical processes can even be reversed. Thus we define our physical time to be irreversible with a fixed scale as shown on a physical clock and use a rate to customize the description of the change of each physical process. For example, when a car has driven 100 km at a speed of 100 km/h, we know it takes one hour time, but then after it has driven for another 100 km backward at the same speed, we still think that the time it takes is another hour rather than a negative one hour because we consider the backward speed is negative, rather than time is negative. If somebody got healthier and looked younger after eating some special food, we would not think that time was reversed but just his aging rate was negative during the period. Reversible physical processes exist everywhere, but our physical time is always irreversible as we have defined.

Einstein made a fatal mistake in his special relativity. He assumed that the speed of light should be the same relative to all inertial reference frames, which requires the change of the definition of space and time. But he never verified that the newly defined time was still the time measured with physical clocks. Then many mathematicians and theoretical physicists think that time is like a playdough which can be made to fit all kinds of theories, while our physical time measured with physical clocks is stiff and absolute, which won’t change with the change of the definition of the space and time. Actually, the newly defined relativistic time is no longer the time measured with physical clocks, but just a mathematical variable without physical meanings, which can be easily verified as follows:

We know physical time T has a relationship with the relativistic time t in Einstein’s special relativity: T = tf/k where f is the relativistic frequency of the clock and k is a calibration constant. Now We would like to use the property of our physical time in Lorentz Transformation to verify that the relativistic time defined by Lorentz Transformation is no longer our physical time.

If you have a clock (clock 1) with you and watch my clock (clock 2) in motion and both clocks are set to be synchronized to show the same physical time T relative to your inertial reference frame, you will see your clock time: T1 = tf1/k1 = T and my clock time: T2 = tf2/k2 = T, where t is the relativistic time of your reference frame, f1 and f2 are the relativistic frequencies of clock 1 and clock 2 respectively, k1 and k2 are calibration constants of the clocks. The two events (Clock1, T1=T, x1=0, y1=0, z1=0, t1=t) and (Clock2, T2=T, x2=vt, y2=0, z2=0, t2=t) are simultaneous measured with both relativistic time t and clock time T in your reference frame. When these two clocks are observed by me in the moving inertial reference frame, according to special relativity, we can use Lorentz Transformation to get the events in my frame (x’, y’, z’, t’): (clock1, T1′, x1’=-vt1′, y1’=0, z1’=0, t1′) and (clock2, T2′, x2’=0, y2’=0, z2’=0, t2′), where T1′ = t1’f1’/k1 = (t/γ)(γf1)/k1 = tf1/k1 = T1 = T and T2′ = t2’f2’/k2 = (γt)(f2/γ)/k2 = tf2/k2 = T2 = T, where γ = 1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2). That is, no matter observed from which inertial reference frame, the events are still simultaneous measured with physical time T i.e. the two clocks are always synchronized measured with physical time T, but not synchronized measured with relativistic time t’. Therefore, our physical time and the relativistic time behave differently in Lorentz Transformation and thus they are not the same thing. The change of the reference frame only makes changes of the relativistic time from t to t’ and the relativistic frequency from f to f’, which cancel each other in the formula: T = tf/k to make the physical time T unchanged i.e. our physical time is still absolute in special relativity. Therefore, based on the artificial relativistic time, special relativity is wrong, so is general relativity. For more details, please check: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297527784_Challenge_to_the_Special_Theory_of_Relativity

Once we know our physical time is absolute, there is no room for those mathematicians and theoretical physicists to speculate.

I find it disconcerting that space is never discussed while musing over time travel. The arrow of time moves with space, forward. To travel back in time, one would also need to move in space. So, you may go back in time (if you had a sci-fi apparatus), but, the rest of the universe would proceed on its merry way. Thus, you and your apparatus, going back in time one hour would find that you are out drifting in space because the earth and the rest of the universe continues on it way. Time and space do not readily part ways to accommodate a fantasy. There are probably more profitable areas of conjecture for intelligent students, professors and scientists to spend their time.

And because time travel implicitly requires space travel, the amount of energy required becomes mind boggling. Also, because there is a finite limit on the speed of any material object, it means that one can’t go back in time instantaneously. It would require a very long time to move to the position in space occupied by Earth 100 million years ago, even at the speed of light. And, the calculations would have to be unobtainably accurate or one might end up outside the atmosphere, or in the interior of the Earth.

Perhaps we should be changing the name of the website from “Sci-Tech Daily” to “Sci-Assume Daily”?

You fail no matter what you do. It could turn out that it wasn’t really your mother but a lookalike. Or that you hallucinated it, which wouldn’t be far fetched for someone seriously trying to kill their mother.

So this is still wrong. The events wouldn’t “shift” to prevent the paradox. There IS no paradox. You did it because in your timeline the events happened. But in doing so, youve created a timeline where they didn’t. There is no need for your younger self to go back, but you did. This isn’t a paradox, it’s a different timeline. You crated a branch in the timeline. An alternate universe.

What evidence do you have that alternate universes exist?

… Yeah, “Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible” … it doesn’t mean that we actually have a time travel, or that some advanced civilization has developed a time travel, after all… So! The next idea it might be that aliens are the humans from the future! Yeah, that is a great idea, a really great one…

The act of time traveling is a paradox within itself. It has to happen in the greater time line for everything afterwards to occur. Also, the Russians already achieved a six minute time travel a decade ago…

… “I wondered: “is time travel mathematically possible?”

Well, we all have asked our self the very same question. However, we have no evidence of such a thing happening, or ever happened. Though, it would be great. Second thing is that time dilatation, which has been proven correct, but was it perceived in a proper way, or it is just the numbers that mean something else. …

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

… ask Goedel, he would know about paradoxes that might arise from theory of relativity…

It would correct itself if you tried to kill your mother by someone stopping you from doing it or you leave thinking your mother is dead but isn’t or even that you’re giving birth to buy a different woman. And this time travel thing kind of plays along in the theory that our universe is actually the interior of a black hole just inside the horizon. A wormhole would be like getting right to the edge of the horizon and then it bending you back around to a point in the past as you try to cross it. Which kind of goes along with the fact that if you tried to travel in a straight line away from the Earth fast enough for long enough you would get back to the Earth except if the speed is fast enough you would get back to the Earth in the future though you would not have aged. But anyway going back in the past and killing your mother would be made impossible by whatever happened to stop you from killing her. Moreover you would never even be allowed to meet her at least not where she’s aware that it’s you because that would change the future. So impossible to kill your mother in the past no matter how hard you tried. And people like to say well if sometime people invent time travel to the past why haven’t they come back and talk to us. Maybe it’s impossible because of time correcting itself. Or if creating a paradox is possible people of the future realize that they could wipe themselves out and interference with the past is not something they do. They only observe. Maybe even have rules for exactly when they’re allowed to go to. Maybe they’re only allowed to travel to prehistory. Not travel to somewhere where it could cause a paradox just by knowing someone’s from the future.

All of these comments are interesting and informative.

But they all assume a past Paradigm that only Time Moves. We are holding onto a rock in the river of Time as the current flows past us from the Past through the Present and into the Future.

We are not holding onto the rock of Earth as the Sun, planets, stars and galaxies flow around us. We move through moving Space.

ALL OF THESE VIEWS also assume we can change Time with our actions. WE NEVER CHANGE TIME WITH OUR ACTIONS. WE CHANGE OUR JOURNEY THROUGH TIME WITH OUR ACTIONS. (Drop your egocentric notions.)

We move through moving spacetime.

A Paradigm Shift from geocentric to heliocentric helped explain our neighboring space.

A Paradigm Shift from Newton to Einstein helped explain our neighboring spacetime.

Publishing my spacetime / mattergy Paradigm Shift Work will solve all your Paradoxes.

Time travel could very well be possible in this day and age. But it may be a whole lot slower than people would imagine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCEwPT80cSA

I’ve been travelling forward in time for sixty years.

Time travel? The paradox that these two words conjure in one’s analytical mind are endless. No two people imagine what these words mean in the same way. Some believe only a single body jumps through time with all the cognitive capabilities and memories of another time left in tact. Where others imagine the time travelers mind and memories also change to synchronize with the time visited. Does this insinuation limit time travel for someone to the number of years they have been alive? And does the visitation of a time where the traveler was an infant subject that person to a life of Deja-Vu episodes? Does the number of times one has time traveled have a direct correlation with an elevated intelligence to reasoning capability? If so, would that be a reason to assume an increased intellectual capability of anyone who leaps through time to visit our planet. And No, the mere virtue of them having the technology to travel in that method does not imply they must understand how it works. Look how many use modern conveniences regularly with no clue as to their engineering. Everything a person does in this modern society is by the grace of someone else’s knowledge and occupation. My guess is that if time travel is possible, the ancillary effects of doing so would be unavoidable. Nothing in this universe has only positive result. For every action does have an equal and opposite reaction. My luck I would leap to a time in the future, and find its one day after my burial. Oh Chit!

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A Student Just Proved Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Possible

Now we can all go back to 2019.

• This follows recent research observing that the present is not changed by a time-traveling qubit.
• It's still not very nice to step on butterflies, though.

In a peer-reviewed paper, an honors undergraduate student says he has mathematically proven the physical feasibility of a specific kind of time travel. The paper appears in Classical and Quantum Gravity .

University of Queensland student Germain Tobar, who the university’s press release calls “prodigious,” worked with UQ physics professor Fabio Costa on this paper . In “ Reversible dynamics with closed time-like curves and freedom of choice ,” Tobar and Costa say they’ve found a middle ground in mathematics that solves a major logical paradox in one model of time travel. Let’s dig in.

The math itself is complex, but it boils down to something fairly simple. Time travel discussion focuses on closed time-like curves (CTCs), something Albert Einstein first posited. And Tobar and Costa say that as long as just two pieces of an entire scenario within a CTC are still in “causal order” when you leave, the rest is subject to local free will.

“Our results show that CTCs are not only compatible with determinism and with the local 'free choice' of operations, but also with a rich and diverse range of scenarios and dynamical processes,” their paper concludes.

In a university statement, Costa illustrates the science with an analogy:

“Say you travelled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus. However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected, that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place. This is a paradox, an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe. [L]ogically it's hard to accept because that would affect our freedom to make any arbitrary action. It would mean you can time travel, but you cannot do anything that would cause a paradox to occur."

Some outcomes of this are grouped as the “ butterfly effect ,” which refers to unintended large consequences of small actions. But the real truth, in terms of the mathematical outcomes, is more like another classic parable: the monkey’s paw. Be careful what you wish for, and be careful what you time travel for. Tobar explains in the statement:

“In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would. No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you. Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency.”

While that sounds frustrating for the person trying to prevent a pandemic or kill Hitler, for mathematicians, it helps to smooth a fundamental speed bump in the way we think about time. It also fits with quantum findings from Los Alamos , for example, and the way random walk mathematics behave in one and two dimensions.

At the very least, this research suggests that anyone eventually designing a way to meaningfully travel in time could do so and experiment without an underlying fear of ruining the world—at least not right away.

Caroline Delbert is a writer, avid reader, and contributing editor at Pop Mech. She's also an enthusiast of just about everything. Her favorite topics include nuclear energy, cosmology, math of everyday things, and the philosophy of it all. 

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April 26, 2023

Is Time Travel Possible?

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

By Sarah Scoles

yuanyuan yan/Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Theoretically Possible, Researchers Say

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

Turns out, King might have been onto something.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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September 24, 2020

Young physicist 'squares the numbers' on time travel

by University of Queensland

Paradox-free time travel is theoretically possible, according to the mathematical modeling of a prodigious University of Queensland undergraduate student.

Fourth-year Bachelor of Advanced Science (Honours) student Germain Tobar has been investigating the possibility of time travel, under the supervision of UQ physicist Dr. Fabio Costa.

"Classical dynamics says if you know the state of a system at a particular time, this can tell us the entire history of the system," Mr Tobar said.

"This has a wide range of applications, from allowing us to send rockets to other planets and modeling how fluids flow.

"For example, if I know the current position and velocity of an object falling under the force of gravity, I can calculate where it will be at any time.

"However, Einstein's theory of general relativity predicts the existence of time loops or time travel—where an event can be both in the past and future of itself—theoretically turning the study of dynamics on its head."

Mr Tobar said a unified theory that could reconcile both traditional dynamics and Einstein's Theory of Relativity was the holy grail of physics.

"But the current science says both theories cannot both be true," he said.

"As physicists, we want to understand the Universe's most basic, underlying laws and for years I've puzzled on how the science of dynamics can square with Einstein's predictions.

"I wondered: "is time travel mathematically possible?"

Mr Tobar and Dr. Costa say they have found a way to "square the numbers" and Dr. Costa said the calculations could have fascinating consequences for science.

"The maths checks out—and the results are the stuff of science fiction," Dr. Costa said.

"Say you traveled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus.

"However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected—that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place.

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

"Some physicists say it is possible, but logically it's hard to accept because that would affect our freedom to make any arbitrary action.

"It would mean you can time travel, but you cannot do anything that would cause a paradox to occur."

However the researchers say their work shows that neither of these conditions have to be the case, and it is possible for events to adjust themselves to be logically consistent with any action that the time traveler makes.

"In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would," Mr Tobar said.

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

"This would mean that—no matter your actions—the pandemic would occur, giving your younger self the motivation to go back and stop it.

"Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency.

"The range of mathematical processes we discovered show that time travel with free will is logically possible in our universe without any paradox."

The research is published in Classical and Quantum Gravity .

Provided by University of Queensland

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A Student Just Proved Paradox-Free Time Travel Is Possible

From Esquire

In a new peer-reviewed paper, a senior honours undergraduate says he has mathematically proven the physical feasibility of a specific kind of time travel. The paper appears in Classical and Quantum Gravity.

University of Queensland student Germain Tobar, who the university’s press release calls “prodigious,” worked with UQ physics professor Fabio Costa on this paper . In “Reversible dynamics with closed time-like curves and freedom of choice,” Tobar and Costa say they’ve found a middle ground in mathematics that solves a major logical paradox in one model of time travel. Let’s dig in.

The math itself is complex, but it boils down to something fairly simple. Time travel discussion focuses on closed time-like curves (CTCs), something Albert Einstein first posited. And Tobar and Costa say that as long as just two pieces of an entire scenario within a CTC are still in “causal order” when you leave, the rest is subject to local free will.

“Our results show that CTCs are not only compatible with determinism and with the local 'free choice' of operations, but also with a rich and diverse range of scenarios and dynamical processes,” their paper concludes.

In a university statement, Costa illustrates the science with an analogy:

“Say you travelled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19's patient zero from being exposed to the virus. However if you stopped that individual from becoming infected, that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place. This is a paradox, an inconsistency that often leads people to think that time travel cannot occur in our universe. [L]ogically it's hard to accept because that would affect our freedom to make any arbitrary action. It would mean you can time travel, but you cannot do anything that would cause a paradox to occur."

Some outcomes of this are grouped as the “ butterfly effect ,” which refers to unintended large consequences of small actions. But the real truth, in terms of the mathematical outcomes, is more like another classic parable: the monkey’s paw. Be careful what you wish for, and be careful what you time travel for. Tobar explains in the statement:

“In the coronavirus patient zero example, you might try and stop patient zero from becoming infected, but in doing so you would catch the virus and become patient zero, or someone else would. No matter what you did, the salient events would just recalibrate around you. Try as you might to create a paradox, the events will always adjust themselves, to avoid any inconsistency.”

While that sounds frustrating for the person trying to prevent a pandemic or kill Hitler, for mathematicians, it helps to smooth a fundamental speed bump in the way we think about time. It also fits with recent quantum findings from Los Alamos , for example, and the way random walk mathematics behave in one and two dimensions.

At the very least, this research suggests that anyone eventually designing a way to meaningfully travel in time could do so and experiment without an underlying fear of ruining the world—at least not right away. Someone tell Christopher Nolan.

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

Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Disclosure statement

Adi Foord does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time is relative

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

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

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

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

Paradoxes and failed dinner parties

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

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

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

Telescopes are time machines

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

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

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

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to [email protected] . Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

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Is Time Travel Possible?

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

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

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

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

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

How do we know that time travel is possible?

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

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

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

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

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

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Can we use time travel in everyday life?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Summary:

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

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Paradox-Free Time Travel is Mathematically Possible: Study

Time travel with free will is logically possible in our Universe without any paradox, according to new research from the University of Queensland.

Physicists seek to understand the underlying laws of the Universe. Image credit: Johnson Martin.

“Classical dynamics says if you know the state of a system at a particular time, this can tell us the entire history of the system,” said Germain Tobar , a student in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland.

“This has a wide range of applications, from allowing us to send rockets to other planets and modeling how fluids flow.”

“For example, if I know the current position and velocity of an object falling under the force of gravity, I can calculate where it will be at any time.”

“However, Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicts the existence of time loops or time travel — where an event can be both in the past and future of itself — theoretically turning the study of dynamics on its head.”

A unified theory that could reconcile both traditional dynamics and Einstein’s theory of relativity is the holy grail of physics.

“But the current science says both theories cannot both be true,” Tobar said.

“As physicists, we want to understand the Universe’s most basic, underlying laws and for years I’ve puzzled on how the science of dynamics can square with Einstein’s predictions.”

“I wondered: Is time travel mathematically possible?”

Tobar and his colleague, Dr. Fabio Costa from the Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland, found a way to ‘square the numbers’ and their calculations could have fascinating consequences for science.

“The maths checks out — and the results are the stuff of science fiction,” Dr. Costa said.

“Say you traveled in time, in an attempt to stop COVID-19’s patient zero from being exposed to the virus.”

“However, if you stopped that individual from becoming infected — that would eliminate the motivation for you to go back and stop the pandemic in the first place.”

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

“Some physicists say it is possible, but logically it’s hard to accept because that would affect our freedom to make any arbitrary action.”

“It would mean you can time travel, but you cannot do anything that would cause a paradox to occur.”

The team’s work shows that neither of these conditions has to be the case, and it is possible for events to adjust themselves to be logically consistent with any action that the time traveler makes.

The study was published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity .

Germain Tobar & Fabio Costa. 2020. Reversible dynamics with closed time-like curves and freedom of choice. Class. Quantum Grav 37: 205011; doi: 10.1088/1361-6382/aba4bc

This article is based on text provided by the University of Queensland.

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40 Best Time Travel Books To Read Right Now (2024)

This post may contain affiliate links that earn us a commission at no extra cost to you.

Travel back in time with the best time travel books, including engrossing thrillers, romance, contemporary lit, and mind-bending sci-fi.

Table of Contents

Best Time Travel Books

Books about time travel promise to not only transport you across time periods and space – Doctor Who-style – but also tesser you into new dimensions and around the world. Most readers already know about classics like The Time Traveler’s Wife , A Christmas Carol , and The Time Machine .

For romance time travel, grab In A Holidaze or One Last Stop . For contemporary and new time travel books, Haig’s The Midnight Library and Serle’s In Five Years captivated our hearts and minds.

Recursion re-kindled our love for science fiction, and Ruby Red transported us to 18th-century London. Books like Displacement promise intuitive and raw commentary about generational trauma and racism in graphic novel form.

Below, find the best time travel novels across genres for adults and teens, including history, romance, classics, sci-fi, YA, and thrilling fiction. Get ready to travel in the blink of an eye, and be sure to let us know your favorites in the comments. Let’s get started!

Contemporary & Literary Fiction

If you enjoy contemporary and literary fiction filled with strong main characters, these are some of the best books in the time travel genre. Uncover new releases as well as books on the bestseller lists. Of course, we’ll share a few lesser-known gems too.

In Five Years by Rebecca Serle

Would your life change if you had one seemingly real dream or premonition? What if some key facts were missing but you had no idea? Can we change the future?

One of the best books about time travel and friendship, don’t skip In Five Years . In fact, we read this New York City-based novel in half a day. Have the tissue box ready.

Dannie nails an important job interview and is hoping to get engaged. Of course, this is all a part of her perfect 5-year plan. Dannie has arranged every minute of her life ever since her brother died in a drunk driving accident.

On the night of Dannie’s “scheduled” engagement, she falls asleep only to have a vision of herself 5 years into the future in the arms of another man. Did she just time travel or could this be a dream? When Dannie arrives back in 2020, her life goes back to normal. …That is until she meets the man from her dream.

We were expecting In Five Years to be a time travel romance story; however, this is a different type of love and one of the best books about strong friendships .

Read In Five Years : Amazon | Goodreads

Before the coffee gets cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Translated by Geoffrey Trousselot | We just love Japanese literature . One of the most debated time travel books among our readers – you’ll either love it or hate it – Before the coffee gets cold takes place at a cafe in Tokyo, Japan.

Along with coffee, this 140-year-old, back-alley cafe lets visitors travel back in time. Four visitors at the cafe are hoping to time travel to see someone for the last (or first) time. The way each patron views the cafe says a lot about them. The details and repetition are everything.

True to the title, visits may only last as long as it takes for the coffee to grow cold. If they don’t finish their coffee in time, there are ghostly consequences.

Before the coffee gets cold asks, who would you want to see one last time, and what issues you would confront?

Along with the many rules of time travel, these visitors are warned that the present will not change. Would you still travel back knowing this? Can something, anything, still change – even within you?

The story has a drop of humor with a beautiful message. We shed a tear or two. Discover even more terrific and thought-provoking Japanese fantasy novels here .

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If you are looking for the most inspiring take on time travel in books, Haig’s The Midnight Library is it. This is one of those profound stories that make you think more deeply . TWs for pet death (early on) and suicide ideation.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Imagine if you could see your other possible lives and fix your regrets. Would that path be better? Would these changes make you happier?

Set in Bedford, England, and at a library , Nora answers these questions as she intentionally overdoses on pills. Caught in the Midnight Library – a purgatory of sorts – Nora explores books filled with the ways her life could have turned out. She tries on these alternative lives, pursuing different dreams, marrying different people, and realizing that some parts of her root life were not as they seemed on the surface.

Find hope and simplicity in one of the most authentic and heaviest time travel novels on this list. Haig addresses mental health through a new lens that is both beautiful and moving.

With a team full of avid readers and librarians, discover our top selections featuring more books about books .

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The Two Lives of Lydia Bird by Josie Silver

Some of the best time travel books are those with alternate realities, including The Two Lives of Lydia Bird . There are content warnings for prescription pill addiction and more.

Set in England, Lydia and Freddie are planning their marriage when the unthinkable happens. Freddie dies in a car accident on the way to Lydia’s birthday dinner. In a matter of seconds, Lydia’s world falls apart. She isn’t sure how she will survive. When Lydia starts taking magical pink sleeping pills, she enters an alternate universe where Freddie is alive and well.

Caught between her dream world and real life, Lydia must decide if she will give in to her addiction – living in a temporary fantasy world – or give it up completely.

While the repetitive and predictable plot drags a bit – slightly hurting the pacing – the overall story shows emotional growth and the nature of healing after loss. And, as Lydia soon learns via her dreams, no love is perfect. Maybe her future was destined to be different anyway, which is reminiscent of Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library .

Read The Two Lives of Lydia Bird Jose Silver : Amazon | Goodreads

The First Fifteen Lives Of Harry August by Claire North

If you are looking for more suspenseful books about time travel and like Groundhog Day , check out The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. However, this is not just one day on repeat; instead, this is a lifetime.

Harry August is repeatedly reborn into the same life, retaining his memories each time. No matter what Harry does or says, when he lands on his deathbed, he always returns back to his childhood, again and again. On the verge of his eleventh death, though, a girl changes the course of his life. He must use his accumulated wisdom to prevent catastrophe.

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An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim

When it comes to time travel books, An Ocean of Minutes is one of the most original takes about time travel’s effects on alternate history.

Polly and Frank are deeply in love in 1981 when a pandemic devastates the planet. By the end of 1981, time travel (invented in this alternate reality in 1993) has been made available.

Because of this invention, individuals can sign on to work for the TimeRaiser corporation in order to escape or save their loved ones in the present. Due to a flaw in the technology, though, they can only transport people for 12 years. This prevents them from stopping the pandemic by just 6 months.

When Frank gets ill, Polly signs up, both agreeing they will meet back up in 1993. Now alone in the future, Polly has to learn to navigate a world she has less than zero preparation for. In this world, she is a time refugee, bonded to TimeRaiser without a physical cent to her name.

Lim uses the time travel mechanic to cleverly explore the subject of immigration, forcing the reader to follow Polly blindly into a world they should know, but don’t. This is what makes An Ocean of Minutes one of the most unique time travel novels on this reading list.

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Time Travel In Science Fiction

For fantasy and sci-fi lovers, take a quantum leap into fictional worlds, quantum physics, possible futures, black holes, and endless possibilities. See if you can tell the difference between the real world and new dimensions.

Recursion by Blake Crouch

Recursion is one of our all-time favorite time travel books to gift to dads who love sci-fi. Can you tell what we gave our dad for Christmas one year?

In Recursion, no one actually physically time travels – well, sort of. Instead, memories become the time-traveling reality.

Detective Barry Sutton is investigating False Memory Syndrome. Neuroscientist Helena Smith might have the answers he needs. The disease drives people crazy – and to their deaths – by causing them to remember entire lives that aren’t theirs. Or are they!?

All goes to heck when the government gets its hands on this mind-blowing technology. Can Barry and Helena stop this endless loop?

Recursion is also a (2019) Goodreads Best Book for Science Fiction.

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This Is How You Lose The War by Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar 

A Goodreads runner-up for one of the best science fiction novels (of 2019) – and one of the shortest time travel novels on this list – This Is How You Lose The Time War follows two warring time-traveling agents falling in love through a letter exchange.

Red and Blue have nothing in common except that they travel across time and space and are alone. Their growing and forbidden love is punishable by death and their agencies might be onto them.

In a somewhat beautiful yet bizarre story, we watch as Red and Blue slowly fall for each other and confess their love. They engage in playful banter and nicknames. Every shade of red and blue reminds them of each other.

The first half of the novel is a bit abstract. You might wonder what the heck you’ve gotten yourself into. However, once you get your feet planted firmly on the ground of the plot, the story picks up and starts making more sense.

We can’t promise you’ll love or even understand This Is How You Lose The Time War – we aren’t sure we do. However, this is truly one of the most unique sci-fi and LGBTQ+ time travel romance books on this reading list – written by two authors. Also, maybe crack out the dictionary…

Explore even more of the best LGBTQ+ fantasy books to read next.

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All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai

A debut novel, All Our Wrong Todays is both a humorous and entertaining time travel book that speaks to how we become who we are.

In 2016, technology perfected the world for Tom Barren. However, we all know that perfection doesn’t equate to happiness. Barren has lost his girlfriend, and he just happens to own a time machine… Now, Barren has to decide if he wants to keep his new, manipulated future or if he just wants to go back home to his depressing but normal life.

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Here And Now And Then by Mike Chen

Imagine getting trapped in time and starting over. That’s exactly what happens to IT worker, Kin Stewart, in one of the bestselling science fiction time travel books, Here And Now And Then .

Stewart has two lives since he is a displaced time-traveling agent stuck in San Francisco in the 1990s. He has a family that knows nothing about his past; or, should we say future. When a rescue team arrives to take him back, Stewart has to decide what he is willing to risk for his new family.

Here And Now And Then is a time travel book filled with emotional depth surrounding themes of bonds, identity, and sacrifice. Find even more books set in San Francisco, California (and more!).

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How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe is one of the most unusual books about time travel out there.

Our protagonist Charles Yu lives in a world where time travel exists and is readily available to the average person. And yes, he is named after the author, and yes, it is as meta as it sounds; and yes, this is just the beginning of this speculative fiction time travel book.

Charles Yu’s day job is spent repairing time machines for Time Warner Time. But in his free time, he tries to help the people who use time travel to do so safely and to counsel them if things have gone wrong.

It’s no surprise that Charles’ entire life revolves around time travel since his father invented the technology many years ago. And then he disappeared. In fact, Charles is also trying to find out just what happened to his dad, and where – or when – he’s gone.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe won’t be for everyone, but it’s one of the best time travel books if you want delightfully meta, fantastically non-linear, and very very weird.

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The Vanished Birds by Simon Jimenez

For beautiful, lyrical time travel novels about found family and love, The Vanished Birds is a must-read.

Nia Imani exists outside of time and space. She travels in and out of the world through a pocket of time with her space crew. They emerge to trade or sell goods every eight months. But eight months for them is 15 years for everyone else.

She has lived this way for hundreds of years. Though she has her crew, and there are people she shares connections with sporadically throughout their lives, she is lonely. And although she barely ages, she watches friends and lovers grow old and die.

One such person is Kaeda, who meets Nia for the first time when he is 7. The next time he sees her, he has aged 15 years, while she is only months older. She continues to come every 15 years of his life, always looking the same.

Then one day a mysterious, mute boy falls from the sky into Nia’s life. His name is Ahro, and there’s something extra special about him. Something that could revolutionize space travel forever. And now there might be people after Ahro who won’t love him the way Nia does.

If you love a character-driven book with exquisite prose – and a few time warps – this is one of the best time travel books for you.

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Night Watch by Terry Pratchett

Night Watch is one of the most fun and thrilling books about time travel. It’s also a bit ridiculous and very very British.

Why can’t policing just be simple? All Sam Vimes wanted to do was capture and arrest a dangerous murderer. But thanks to those damned wizards and their experiments, he and the killer have both been accidentally thrown back in time thirty years.

And to top it off, the man who would have become a mentor to young Sam Vimes in the past has been killed in the process! How’s Vimes going to get this all sorted out?

The City Watch he’s spent years improving is just a bunch of semi-competent volunteers at this point. He’s got no money, no clothes, and no friends. But at least he’s making enemies fast. Can he catch the killer, stop history from not repeating itself, and get home to his family? Oh, and the city’s about to dissolve into civil war. Typical.

Night Watch is perfect if you prefer your time travel books to be fantasy-based.

P.S. There may be mild spoilers for previous books in the Discworld series, but this can be read as a standalone. And if you only ever read one Discworld novel, this is one of the best there is – and so far the only one of the Discworld books with time travel!

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The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz

The Future of Another Timeline is one of the few time travel books to explore history through a feminist lens.

In 1992, Beth – a high school senior – and her friends Heather, Lizzy, and Soojin attend a riot grrl concert with Heather’s boyfriend Scott. But afterward, one of Scott’s not-so-funny sexist jokes gets out of hand and Lizzy accidentally kills him. Now they’re on the run, and the bodies just keep piling up.

Meanwhile, in 2022, Tess is part of a group of women and non-binary people working together to change history. They have the use of five time devices which only allow them to travel backward and back to the present day – but never forwards.

Beth and Tess come from two wildly different times (1992, and 2022, respectively). But, while Beth is busy making history, Tess is quite literally trying to change it. However, both of them want the same thing: a better world. When their worlds collide, will they be able to save each other – and the world?

The Future of Another Timeline is a time travel fiction celebration of feminism and queerness with lots of sci-fi and punk rock thrown in. This is one of the best time travel novels for those who enjoy stellar women making history .

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The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley

The Kingdoms is wildly imaginative and sure to enchant fans of time travel books, alternative history stories, and tales about parallel universes.

In 1898 Joe Tournier steps off a train and suddenly can’t remember anything that comes before that moment. The world he now finds himself in is as foreign to him as it is to us: an alternate history/reality where the UK lost the Battle of Trafalgar and is now a French colony.

In this world, the British are kept as slaves. Napoleon is a popular name for pets, and tartan is outlawed. Since Joe arrives on a train from Glasgow speaking English and wearing tartan, there is some speculation he might be from The Saints, a terrorist group based in Edinburgh fighting for freedom.

But all Joe remembers is the fading image of a woman and the name Madeline. Although he is identified by his owner and brought “home,” Joe is determined to find this Madeline. And his resolve is only strengthened when he receives a postcard signed ‘– M’ and dated 90 years in the past.

Discover even more books about Scottish culture, history, and everyday life.

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The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

The Light Brigade is one of the best time travel stories for anyone who loves character-driven tales or books about war and conflict.

As war wages on Mars, the military has devised the perfect soldier to fight on the frontlines: being made of light. The Light Brigade, as they’re called back home, is made up of soldiers who have undergone a procedure that breaks them down into atoms capable of traveling at the speed of light. They are the perfect soldiers, but broken people.

The book follows one such soldier, Dietz, an eager new recruit who is experiencing battle out of sync with everyone else. Because of this, she – and we – see a different reality of the war than the one presented by the Corporate Corps. As Dietz becomes more and more unstuck in time, she becomes more and more unsure of her own sanity and the role she is playing in this war.

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The Umbrella Academy by Gerard Way

You Look Like Death Volume 1 | Now a popular (and excellent) Netflix TV show, The Umbrella Academy is one of the best time travel books of all time.

One day, forty-seven children are suddenly and inexplicably born to women who were not previously pregnant. Eccentric millionaire Reginald Hargreeves goes around the world buying as many of the surviving children as he possibly can. He is able to get seven.

These children, it turns out, all have superpowers (except, it seems, for the unremarkable Number Seven aka Vanya). They become the crime-fighting group: The Umbrella Academy.

Fast forward several years, and Number Five, whose special power is that he can travel in time a few seconds or minutes per go, has mysteriously appeared after Hargreeves dies. And now he brings warning of an apocalypse – one which he insists none of his siblings will survive.

The Umbrella Academy series currently has three volumes, all packed with tales of time travel, parallel worlds, family drama, and lots of epic battles. We’ve absolutely loved this time travel book series so far; we can’t wait to see what Gerard Way does with future installments.

Discover even more great books with music, musicians, and bands.

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Historical Fiction

Travel back in time to witness wars and history. See what happens if you try to rewrite the future. Many of these historical fiction books with time travel promise to teach you more.

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

We have a plethora of Agatha Christie fans amongst our Uncorked Readers , and Turton’s The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evenlyn Hardcastle is inspired by Christie.

Similar to Levithan’s Every Day , each day, Aiden wakes up in a different body from the guests of the Blackheath Manor. Trapped in a time loop, Aiden must solve Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder to escape. In the process, he navigates the tangled web of secrets, lies, and interconnected lives of the guests. Can he identify the killer and break the cycle?

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is an award-winning historical thriller and one of the best time travel novels if you enjoy Downton Abbey and Groundhog’s Day . Discover even more great books set at hotels, mansions, and more.

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Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Travel back in time to Scotland in one of the most well-known time travel book series (and now TV series) of all time. Outlander is a part of pop culture. A New York Times bestseller and one of the top 10 most loved books according to The Great America Read, get ready to enter Scotland in 1743.

Claire Randall, a former British combat nurse, walks through an ancient circle of stones and is transported into a world of love, death, and war. This is a place of political intrigue, clan conflicts, and romantic entanglements. Claire must navigate the unfamiliar landscape while grappling with her feelings for the dashing Jamie Fraser.

Encounter even more cult-classic books from the ’90s like A Game Of Thrones , which is perfect for fantasy map lovers .

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11/22/63: A Novel by Stephen King

Written by bestselling author, Stephen King, 11/22/63 is one of the best award-winning time travel books for historical fiction lovers. Set in 1963 when President Kennedy is shot, 11/22/63 begs the question: what if you could go back in time and change history?

Enter Jake Epping in Lisbon Falls, Maine.  Epping asks his students to write about a time that altered the course of their lives. Inspired by one of those haunting essays, Epping enlists to prevent Kennedy’s assassination.  How is this time travel possible? With the discovery of a time portal in a local diner’s storeroom…

11/22/63 is one of the most thrilling and realistic books about time travel, according to both critics and readers.

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Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

If you are looking for historical fiction novels about time travel that address slavery and racism, be sure to check out Butler’s Kindred. This is also one of the best books published in the 1970s .

One minute Dana is celebrating her birthday in modern-day California. The next, she finds herself in the Antebellum South on a Pre-Civil War Maryland plantation. Dana is expected to save the plantation owner’s son from drowning. Each time Dana finds herself back in this time period as well as the slave quarters, her stays grow longer and longer as well as more dangerous.

Examine the haunting legacy and trauma of slavery across time. For younger readers, there is also a graphic novel adaptation . Discover more books that will transport you to the South .

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What The Wind Knows by Amy Harmon

A bestseller and Goodreads top choice book, if you devour historical Irish fiction, What The Wind Knows will transport you to Ireland in the 1920s.

Anne Gallagher heads to Ireland to spread her grandfather’s ashes. Devastated, her grief pulls her into another time. Ireland is on the verge of entering a war, and Anne embraces a case of mistaken identity. She finds herself pulled into Ireland’s fight for Independence at the risk of losing her future life. She also falls for another main character and doctor, Thomas Smith.

What The Wind Knows is one of the best time travel novels that both romance and fantasy readers can appreciate. Witness connections that transcend time.

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The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Known for being one of the best time travel books for thriller lovers, The Shining Girls also has the reputation as the spookiest novel on this reading list.

Kirby Mazrachi is the last shining girl – a girl with a future and so much potential. Harper Curtis is a murderer from the past meant to kill Mazrachi. However, Kirby is not about to easily go out without a fight, leading her on one violent quantum leap through multiple decades.

As Kirby races against time to track down a serial killer and unravel the mysteries of the House, encounter themes of resilience, fate, and the shining spirit that can transcend even the darkest forces.

Read The Shining Girls : Amazon | Goodreads

Time Travel Romance Books

We love a good time-travel romance novel, but we also understand how hard it can be to hold onto love when time is so unstable. From queer love stories set on trains to holiday celebrations, fall in love across time with these books.

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

From bestselling author, Casey McQuiston of Red, White, & Royal Blue – one of our favorite LGBTQ+ books for new adults – don’t miss the most-talked-about book (from 2021), One Last Stop.

Twenty-three-year-old August is quite the cynic and living in New York City. Up until now, August has jumped schools and towns as often as you change a pair of socks. August has also never been in a serious relationship and wants to find “her person.” August’s life suddenly changes, though, when she meets a beautiful and mysterious woman on the train.

Jane looks a little…out of date… and for good reason; she’s from the 1970s and trapped in the train’s energy. August wants nothing more than to help Jane leave the train, but does that mean leaving her too?

A feel-good, older coming-of-age story, laugh out loud and be utterly dazzled as you follow love across time and space. You’ll cozy (and drink) up in the parties and community surrounding August. One Last Stop is one of the all-time best LGBTQ+ time travel books – and perfect if you enjoy books that take place on trains .

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The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Time Traveler’s Wife is one the top time travel romance novels – and not just because the story features a librarian . We are so biased.

Henry and Clare have loved each other pretty much forever. Unfortunately, Henry has Chrono-Displacement Disorder, sporadically misplacing him in time. Of course, this time-traveling dilemma makes Clare’s and Henry’s marriage and future together pretty darn interesting.

Grab some Kleenex as they attempt to live normal lives and survive impending devastation. The Time Traveler’s Wife has also been made into a romantic movie classic . Watch even more fantasy movies with romance .

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In A Holidaze by Christina Lauren

If you are looking for a sweet and sexy holiday rom-com set in Utah, grab In A Holidaze by Christina Lauren.

Mae leaves her family and friend’s Christmas vacation home after drunkenly making out with an old childhood friend. Blame the spiked eggnog. Unfortunately, Mae’s secretly in love with her best friend’s brother, Andrew. On the ride to the airport, Mae wishes for happiness just as a truck hits her parent’s car. 

Mae lands in a time-travel loop where her dreams start coming true.  Is it too good to last?   What happens when she isn’t happy once again? Is she trapped?

For holiday books about time travel, this one is sure to put you in the Christmas spirit if you enjoy movies like Holidates  or  Groundhog’s Day . It’s light with a happy ending – typical of this author duo. We also recommend In A Holidaze if you are looking for Christmas family gathering books – a big request we see here at TUL.

P.S. Did you know that Christina Lauren is a pen name for a writing duo, Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings? Christina Lauren also wrote The Unhoneymooners , which was also hilariously enjoyable and set on an island .

Read In A Holidaze : Amazon | Goodreads

A Knight In Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux

For cozy time travel romance books and a feminist tale set abroad, try A Knight In Shining Armor .

Dougless Montgomery is weeping on top of a tombstone when Nicholas Stafford, Earl of Thornwyck, appears. Although this armor-clad hunk allegedly died in 1564, he stands before her about to embark on a journey to clear his name. Convicted of treason, Montgomery vows to help her soon-to-be lover find his accuser and set the record straight.

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The Night Mark by Tiffany Reisz

Set in South Carolina, if you love lighthouses and beach vibes, you’ll find something enjoyable in the time travel romance, The Night Mark .

After Faye’s husband dies, she cannot move on and recover. Accepting a photographer job in SC, Faye becomes obsessed with the local lighthouse’s myth, The Lady of the Light.

Back in 1921, the lighthouse keeper’s daughter mysteriously drowned. Faye is drawn into a love story that isn’t hers and becomes entangled in a passionate and forbidden love affair.

Read The Night Mark : Amazon | Goodreads

The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston

Anyone who likes their time travel books to have a magical love story should pick up The Seven Year Slip for their next read. It’s one of our favorite magical realism novels .

When Clementine’s aunt dies, she inherits her fancy New York apartment on the Upper East Side. Although Clementine would really rather have her aunt back and can’t imagine living in her home, she eventually forces herself to move in and inhabit her aunt’s space.

And not long after, she wakes up to discover a strange man in her living room… except it’s not her living room, it’s her aunt’s… from seven years ago. Clementine’s aunt always said her apartment held a touch of magic; sometimes it created time slips that brought two people together when they were at a crossroads.

But what happens when you start to fall for someone stuck seven years in the past? Clementine knows there’s no future together, but she also can’t let go of this link to her aunt.

Like her previous speculative fiction romance, The Dead Romantics , Ashely Poston’s unique time travel tale is full of heartache and grief. However, it will also make you swoon. Basically, this one is a must if you are a fan of time travel romance books.

Read The Seven Year Slip : Amazon | Goodreads

Classic Books

No time travel reading list would be complete without the classics. Below, uncover just a few great time travel novels that started it all.

The End of Eternity by Issac Asimov

The End of Eternity is said to be one of Asimov’s science fiction masterpieces. This is also one of the most spellbinding books about time travel – although some criticize the story for its loopholes.

Harlan is a member of the elite future known as an Eternal. He lives and works in Eternity, which like any good time travel novel, is located separately from time and space.

Harlan makes small changes in the timeline in order to better history. Of course, altering the course of the world is dangerous and comes with repercussions, especially when Harlan falls in love.

Read The End of Eternity : Amazon | Goodreads

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

It goes without saying that Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is one of the most famous and best time travel books for classic lovers – and a literary canon-worthy Christmas novel.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a greedy, lonely, and cruel man who truly has no Christmas spirit. Haunted by the ghosts of the past, present, and future, Scrooge must find the ultimate redemption before it’s too late. Does he have a heart?

Find even more classic and contemporary ghost books , including a few unique takes on ghosts.

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Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaughterhouse-Five is a somewhat bizarre time travel book about finding meaning in our sometimes fractured and broken lives. It’s also one of the most popular books published in the ’60s .

Similar to The Time Traveler’s Wife, Billy Pilgrim is “unstuck” in time in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. Drafted into World War II, Pilgrim serves as a Chaplain’s assistant until he is captured by the Germans. He survives the bombing at Dresden and ultimately becomes a married optometrist. Things get a little wild…

Suffering from PTSD, Billy claims that he is kidnapped by aliens in a different dimension. Like most time travel novels, the story is out of order and Billy travels to different parts of his life.

Aliens come in all shapes and sizes; have more alien encounters with this reading list .

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A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

First published in 1889, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court is one of the most popular classic and satirical time travel novels that’s set close to our childhood home. Having grown up in CT close to the old Colt factory, this story makes us smile.

Hank Morgan supervises the gun factory and is knocked unconscious. Upon waking, he finds himself in Britain about to be executed by the Knights of King Arthur’s Round Table in Camelot.

Morgan uses his future knowledge to his advantage, making him a powerful and revered wizard, which unfortunately doesn’t quite save him as he hopes. Not to mention that Morgan tries to introduce modern-day conveniences and luxuries to a time period that isn’t quite ready for them.

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The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

The Time Machine is one of the best frontrunner time travel books of all time. Published in 1895, the Time Traveler recalls his exhausting time travel adventures to incredulous believers. He even disappears in front of them.

Blended with fantasy and science fiction over the course of 800,000 years, the Time Traveler battles “bad guys.” He also loses his time machine, debatably falls in love, and meets the underground dwelling Morlocks.

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Young Adults Books

For young adults and teens – plus adults who appreciate YA – read the best middle-grade and high school time travel books. We’ve included more time travel graphic novels and manga here too.

Displacement by Kiku Hughes

For historical YA graphic novels , Displacement is one of the must-read books about time travel that will teach young readers about generational trauma, racism, politics, and war.

Follow Kiku, who is displaced in time, back to the period of U.S. Japanese incarceration [internment] camps – essentially glorified prisons – during WW2. Kiku begins learning more about her deceased grandmother’s history, which mirrors the horrid actions under former President Donald Trump. How can Kiku help stop the past from repeating itself, and more so, how can we?

In a simplistic but powerful style of storytelling, Hughes’s emotional YA WW2 book is accessible to young readers. Displacement is also one of the shorter and quicker books with time travel on this list. Find even more LGBT+ graphic novels to read – one of our favorite genres.

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The Girl From Everywhere by Heidi Heilig

Changing the past can be pretty tempting. We’ve even seen that The Flash cannot resist. However, altering the course of history can be dangerous…

The first of two YA time travel books, Nix is the daughter of a time traveler. Her dad can sail anywhere on his ship, The Temptation. Her dad has his own temptation, though: to travel back to Honolulu in 1868, the year before her mom dies in childbirth. Nix’s father threatens to possibly erase her life and destroy a relationship with her only friend.

Discover even more great books about maps. Or, travel via armchair with these ship books.

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Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier

Translated by Anthea Bell | If you are looking for time travel in books and enjoy YA historical fiction, try Ruby Red , which is the first in the Ruby Red Trilogy.

Gwyneth Shepherd quickly learns that she can easily time travel, unlike her cousin who has been preparing her entire life for the feat. Gwyneth wants to know why such a secret was kept from her. There are so many lies. Gwyneth time travels with the handsome Gideon back and forth between modern-day and 18th-century London to uncover secrets from the past.

Back in our MLIS and library days, Ruby Red was one of our favorite YA time travel books to recommend since so few knew about the series. Just a small warning that this enemies-to-lovers trope is a tad sexist, though. Find books like Ruby Red on our books with red (and more colors) in the title reading list .

Read Ruby Red : Amazon | Goodreads

Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

A little creepier for young adult time travel novels, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is all about time loops. We’ve only read the first in this eerie series that mixes manipulated vintage photography with a suspenseful and chilling story.

Jacob discovers a decaying orphanage on a mysterious island off the coast of Wales. Known as Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, the building isn’t exactly abandoned… Jacob runs into peculiar children who might be more than just ghosts.

If you are looking for Kurt Vonnegut-esque time travel books for teenagers, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is for you. Find even more great adult and YA haunted house books to add to your reading list .

Read Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children : Amazon | Goodreads

A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle

One of the most well-known books about time travel for families – made even more popular by Oprah and Mindy Kaling, A Wrinkle In Time , is the first book in The Time Quintet .

Although a time travel book series for elementary and middle-grade students – and also a 1963 Newbery Medal winner – adults will love the lessons and whimsical sci-fi quality of A Wrinkle In Time.

Meg Murray and her brother, Charles Wallace, go on an adventure in time to find and rescue their father. Their dad disappeared while working for the government on a mysterious tesseract project.

Watch this thrilling time travel adventure mixed with a coming-of-age story and a little girl power, too.

Read A Wrinkle in Time : Amazon | Goodreads

Orange by Ichigo Takano

Translated by Lasse Christian Christiansen and Amber Tamosaitis | This YA sci-fi romance manga is one of the most endearing time travel books you’ll ever read.

On the first day of 11th grade, Naho oversleeps for the first time ever. She also receives a letter that claims to be sent from herself 10 years in the future. The letter tells her both of the two big things that will happen to her that day as proof of sender: she will be late, and there will be a new kid in class named Naruse Kakeru from Tokyo who will sit next to her.

Naho is unsure if she trusts the letter, or whether or not she should heed its warnings – especially since it talks about past regrets and trying to undo them.

Orange is an adorable, but heartbreaking time travel manga that teaches us the meaning of friendship, love, regret, and so much more. If you’re looking for the best books about time travel for teens, Orange is the perfect option (and adults will love it too).

Read Orange : Amazon | Goodreads

If you devour the time travel genre, don’t miss these great movies…

If you enjoy books that take you back in time, you might also appreciate these top movies with time loops . Would you be able to fix past mistakes, fall in love, and you know, maybe not die this time? Find out if these protagonists succeed.

Travel Back In Time With These Reading Lists:

• Best ’90s Books
• Iconic ’80s Books
• Best WWII Historical Fiction

Christine Frascarelli

Dagney McKinney

45 Comments

Hi, nice list but just FYI you have one of the novels named incorrectly: it should be All Our Wrong Todays, not All Our Wrongs Today.

Thanks for letting us know! Every year, this list grows, and sometimes we miss a few mistakes.

The Things Are Bad Series by Paul L Giles is the funniest, most insightful time travel books I’ve ever read. It has everything!

Thanks so much for the review and rec!

Dream Daughter by Diane Chamberlain is an engrossing time travel book that I enjoyed immensely.

Our readers and contributors are big Diane Chamberlain fans. Thanks!

A huge time travel fan. A great list. Another time travel book recommendation: Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montemore. Wonderful story.

Thank you so much for the kind words and recommendation! We’ll have to check it out.

Great list, thanks. I also love seeing all the recommendations in the comments. I would add the Chronos Files series to your list. And, of course, the film ABOUT TIME, which is fantastic!

Thanks so much for the recommendations. We appreciate it!

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18 Eras In History That Time Travelers Would Visit First

Posted: April 25, 2024 | Last updated: April 25, 2024

Gather ’round, fellow adventurers and aspiring time-travelers, for I have a tale that will warp your mind faster than a DeLorean hitting 88 miles per hour! Hold onto your hats (and your paradoxes), because we’re about to embark on a journey through the space-time continuum! Just be careful, very wrong turn could lead to a wardrobe malfunction at the Renaissance faire or an accidental duel with a medieval knight!

Ancient Egypt

Witness the construction of the pyramids, marvel at the mysteries of the Sphinx, and explore the bustling markets along the Nile River. Just be sure to avoid any encounters with curses or mummies—those things tend to be a bit pesky! And remember, in ancient Egypt, cats were considered sacred, so be prepared to worship our feline overlords.

Classical Greece

Experience the birthplace of democracy, philosophy, and the Olympic games. Join Socrates for a lively debate or challenge Hercules to an arm-wrestling match—just make sure to bring your own olive wreath for the victory celebration! And don’t worry, if you get lost in the labyrinth of ancient Athens, you can always ask a minotaur for directions.

Roman Empire

Explore the grandeur of Rome, witness epic gladiator fights at the Colosseum, and indulge in a feast fit for an emperor. Just be careful not to anger the gods—those lightning bolts can really ruin your toga party! And don’t forget, when in Rome, do as the Romans do…which apparently involves a lot of olive oil and conquering neighboring civilizations.

Medieval Europe

Encounter knights in shining armor, explore majestic castles, and marvel at the intricate beauty of Gothic cathedrals. Just watch out for the bubonic plague—nothing ruins a medieval vacation like a sudden outbreak of Black Death! And keep in mind, if someone challenges you to a jousting match, it’s probably best to politely decline…unless you happen to have a spare suit of armor lying around!

Renaissance Italy

Witness the flourishing of art, science, and culture in cities like Florence and Venice. Rub shoulders with the likes of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, and maybe even snag a selfie with the Mona Lisa. And don’t forget, in Renaissance Italy, fashion is everything—so make sure to bring your fanciest doublet and hose!

Age of Exploration

Sail with Christopher Columbus or Ferdinand Magellan to discover new lands and chart unexplored territories. Just be prepared for a long journey—those ships aren’t exactly known for their luxury accommodations! And remember, when encountering foreign people, diplomacy is key…but it never hurts to have a few shiny trinkets to trade!

Elizabethan England

Experience the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and immerse yourself in the works of Shakespeare. Attend a royal banquet, try your hand at archery, and maybe even catch a glimpse of a mischievous fairy or two! And don’t forget, in Elizabethan England, gossip spreads faster than the plague—so watch what you say, or you might end up in the Tower of London!

French Revolution

Witness the overthrow of the monarchy and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. Join the revolutionaries on the streets of Paris, but watch out for flying guillotines—those things tend to be a bit messy! Just keep in mind, in revolutionary France, liberty, equality, and fraternity aren’t just words—they’re the keys to a successful uprising!

Victorian Era

Experience the Industrial Revolution, Queen Victoria’s reign, and the peak of British imperialism. Marvel at the wonders of steam power as you take a stroll through London’s foggy streets. And remember, in Victorian England, proper etiquette is everything—so mind your manners, or you might find yourself without a tea invitation! How bizarre.

Step into the neon-colored world of the 1980s, where big hair, leg warmers, and cassette tapes reigned supreme. Dance the night away at an iconic disco club, challenge your friends to a game of Pac-Man, and maybe even catch a glimpse of a DeLorean zipping through time! And remember, in the ’80s, fashion was all about excess—so don’t be afraid to rock those shoulder pads and acid wash jeans like there’s no tomorrow!

American Wild West

Live the adventures of cowboys, outlaws, and pioneers in the American frontier. Ride horses across the open plains, try your luck at a game of poker, and maybe even pan for gold in a rushing river! Just don’t forget, in the Wild West, it’s every person for themselves—so keep your wits about you, or you might end up on the wrong end of a showdown at high noon!

Belle Époque

Experience the elegance and cultural innovations of Europe before World War I. Attend glamorous soirées, witness the birth of the modern automobile, and maybe even meet a dashing count or two! And keep in mind, in the Belle Époque, beauty is paramount—so don’t forget to powder your wig and polish your monocle!

Roaring Twenties

Witness the Jazz Age, prohibition, and the rise of flapper culture in the United States. Dance the Charleston, live lavishly, and maybe even rub elbows with the likes of Al Capone! And remember, in the Roaring Twenties, anything goes—so throw caution to the wind and embrace the spirit of rebellion!

Ancient China

Explore the dynasties, philosophy, and technological advancements of China. Walk the Great Wall, study with Confucius, and maybe even discover the secret to immortality (spoiler alert: it involves a lot of herbal tea)! And don’t forget, in ancient China, harmony is key—so always strive for balance, whether you’re practicing martial arts or negotiating trade deals!

The Early 2000s

Enter the dawn of the new millennium, where flip phones, frosted tips, and Y2K paranoia reigned supreme. Groove to the beats of boy bands and pop princesses, binge-watch DVDs of your favorite TV shows, and maybe even try your hand at creating your own Myspace profile (just don’t forget to add plenty of glitter graphics)! Just keep in mind, in the early 2000s, the internet was still a wild frontier—so be sure to watch out for any prank calls!

Experience the isolationist period of Japan, samurai culture, and traditional arts. Attend a tea ceremony, practice the way of the sword, and maybe even catch a glimpse of a ninja in the shadows! And remember, in Edo Japan, honor is everything—so always act with integrity, whether you’re serving your lord or challenging a rival to a duel!

Aztec Empire

Explore the rich culture and mysterious rituals of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Witness awe-inspiring pyramids, participate in colorful festivals, and maybe even find the lost city of gold! And don’t forget, in the Aztec Empire, honor is everything—so always show respect to the gods and your fellow warriors, whether you’re conquering new lands or building a floating garden!

Futuristic Utopia

Travel to a speculative future where technology has solved humanity’s problems and society thrives in harmony. Ride hoverboards through gleaming cities, dine on cuisine synthesized from pure energy, and maybe even attend a concert performed by sentient robots! And remember, in this futuristic utopia, the possibilities are endless—so always dream big and never stop striving for a better tomorrow!

As our journey through time draws to a close, we are left with a tapestry woven with threads of adventure, wisdom, and wonder. From the majestic heights of ancient empires to the innovation of future utopias, each era has offered insights into the human condition and the evolution of society. Though our time-traveling adventure may end here, the echoes of history continue to reverberate, reminding us of the rich tapestry of experiences that shape our world.

For the Latest Travel News, Headlines & Videos, head to Bon Voyaged

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Being back in the beach house that witnessed much of my 20s feels strange and wondrous – like a sort of time travel

I run from room to room, touching things as if they’ll somehow transport me to the past. Not much has changed in the old weatherboard

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M any years ago, a friend from university invited some of us to his mum’s beach house at Walkerville South. His mum had bought the house super cheap before the world had discovered that there was another impressive coastline in Victoria, far away from the more established houses of the Mornington Peninsula or the Great Ocean Road.

The house was a weatherboard shack hidden in thick native bush. There were two bedrooms, and a large corner couch in the lounge that doubled as two extra beds when needed. Fronted by large windows, you could spy the ocean through the tall trees while standing in the kitchen and waiting for the kettle to boil. It was a house that didn’t need too much attention. From the straw matting on the floor to the green bathroom straight out of the 1970s, it was immediately welcoming, and once you arrived, you didn’t want to leave.

On that first visit, I slept on one of the couch-beds, preferring to keep the curtains open so I could see the darkness of the sky. And in the morning, I woke to a row of noisy rosellas hanging out on the edge of the deck, waiting for birdseed. We swam even in the height of winter, running into the cold, foamy water and lasting only minutes before tiptoeing with bare feet back up the hill to the waiting fire. We drank too much cheap red wine, ate simple meals of beans and rice, and laughed late into the night. It was one of those bonding weekends that was so joyful, it was repeated more than once.

After we left university and scattered in different directions, I still borrowed the house from time to time, introducing it to other friends, including the man who would one day become my partner. After he and I started going out, we visited just the two of us, and I remember mocking him for pulling on a wetsuit before wading into the sea. The house witnessed much of my 20s, those lost years when none of us knew what we were going to do with the rest of our lives, and coming together somehow made us feel safe.

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And then my university friend married his partner and moved to another state, and we lost contact. I stopped visiting the house because he wasn’t around to lend me the keys. But years later, each time I read Alison Lester’s wonderful Magic Beach to my children, I would be transported back to the wilds of Walkerville South, a place that had become almost mythical in my memory.

Three years ago, as the pandemic restrictions lifted, friends invited the kids and I to visit them on their summer holiday. I’d been to the Gippsland coast often as an adult and knew the roads well, but I hadn’t stayed at Walkerville South since that time. I was surprised to see how little had changed. A gravel road still led the way in, and the hill behind the beach was still dotted with only a handful of houses.

We pulled up outside the place my friends had rented and started unloading the car. As we walked in, I felt a prickle of familiarity. There was a corner couch that doubled as a bed in the lounge, large sliding glass doors out to the deck, and a green kitchen straight out of the 1970s. But it was the coloured Marimekko curtains that hung to the floor, more faded than when I’d last seen them, that did it. I knew immediately that it was the same house.

Excited, I asked who owned the house and my friend told me. I grinned when I heard that my old university friend’s mum still owned it. They didn’t know her well, but she was a friend of a friend and she still rented out the place to people sometimes. Now in her 90s, she didn’t visit it herself very often any more.

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I ran from room to room checking the fittings to see if they were the same, touching things as if they’d somehow transport me back to the past. I gripped the same green ball handles on the bathroom door. Ran my fingers along the same boxed-up board games stacked in the shelves in the lounge. And bent down to rub the fur back of the large grey, stuffed wombat that sat waiting near the fireplace, a little more loved looking than it had been all those years before.

Not much had changed in the old weatherboard. It held such stories in its walls. And now I was back, and it felt strange and wondrous like a sort of time travel. I stood on the deck, knowing the rosellas would soon land, and remembered a time when I was younger, freer, less worried about what was coming. When sleeping on a couch in the corner of a room was fought over, and when swimming in the winter sea was a given.

Nova Weetman is an award-winning children’s author. Her adult memoir, Love, Death & Other Scenes , is out in April 2024 from UQP

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London Marathon 2024: Where to watch, route, start time, rail strikes and celebrities to look out for

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Swap your sambas for sneakers and get warming up that cheer voice. Britain’s biggest marathon, the London Marathon , returns to the streets of central London this weekend and it’s set to be the greatest yet. More than half a million people are set to take on the world-famous 26.2-mile course — a new record (the previous was set in 2019) — and many thousands more are set to turn out to cheer them on.

If you managed to secure a place in the running equivalent of Glastonbury, you should probably buy a lottery ticket and watch out for lightning (apparently just four per cent of applicants actually get a place, according to new data). If you weren’t lucky enough to nab a spot this year, you can still revel in the buzz and drama of race day. Bonus: no blisters. Folding bike brand Brompton is offering free bike hire to anyone supporting so you can whizz to as many cheer spots as possible. Just head to the brand’s hire stations at East India, Broadgate and Regents Place.

From the hottest support spots and celebrities to look out for, to free food and Brockwell Lido dips for finishers, here’s everything you need to know.

When is the 2024 London marathon?

Sunday is race day and conditions are looking good, with mild temperatures, gentle winds (finally!) and lots of sunshine.

The elite and wheelchair races start from 08:30am, and the mass participation waves will kick off between 10:00am until 11:30am.

Where to watch

For cheer-squad novices, there are two rules for supporting: download the official London marathon app so you can track your runner, and plan ahead. The route starts in Blackheath and winds its way past many of the capital’s most iconic sights before ending on The Mall, so prepare yourself for some shoulder-barging if you want to see your runner (and your runner to see you).

The most popular cheer spots are at the Cutty Sark (mile 6), Tower Bridge (mile 12), Canary Wharf (mile 18), the Tower of London (mile 22), the London Eye and Big Ben (mile 25) and Buckingham Palace (mile 26), but you might have a better chance of wiggling your way to the front of the crowd if you pick a different spot. Miles 9 to 12 around Rotherhithe and Bermondsey are a good option if you want to give your runner a much-needed pick-me-up early-on, and miles 14 to 21 around Limehouse and Canary Wharf are a great base if you want to see your runner multiple times without having to walk too far.

That said, you might not need to walk at all. Thanks to Brompton’s special marathon day treat, supporters can bag themselves a free folding bike for getting around town. Just email [email protected] with your runner’s bib number and you’ll receive a special code. The three hire stations with access to the race route are East India Station, Broadgate, and Regents Place. For those with disabilities, the accessible cheer points can be found at Cutty Sark, Canary Wharf, Rainbow Row (Butcher Row), Tower Hill and Victoria Embankment.

See above for a map of the route on Strava. And here’s our list of the best pubs, bars and restaurants along the full 26.2-mile route.

Will rail strikes affect the London marathon 2024?

No self-respecting British event would be complete without a train strike. Mercifully, there are no Tube strikes planned for Sunday, but if you’re taking part and have friends or family travelling into London from the Midlands or the north, they’ll need to plan ahead.

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Strike action will affect the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) network with no service on Saturday 20 April, the day before the race, and reduced service on the day itself. Although strike action shouldn’t affect London trains, do note that there are planned engineering works and closures on the Elizabeth line, Waterloo & City line and the London tram on race day itself.

How to watch on TV and live stream

If you can’t make it into the capital for race day (or fancy a lie-in), you can still enjoy the excitement on TV.

The BBC will be broadcasting the whole thing, with live coverage on BBC One from 08:30 to 14:15, before moving to BBC Two from 14:15 until 15:00. If you miss it, you can watch highlights on BBC Two from 18:00-19:00 and online on BBC iPlayer.

Which celebrities are taking part?

There’s something ever so slightly satisfying about watching your favourite celebrity grinding it out for 26.2 miles, looking a little less polished than they do on Instagram.

The race always attracts big names, with this year’s stars including the comedian Romesh Ranganathan, who’s running for suicide prevention charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM); The Woman in the Wall actress Ruth Wilson MBE, who’s running for Alzheimer’s Research UK; and ex-Doctor Who actor Christopher Eccleston, who’s running to raise awareness for charity The Big Issue.

Special mention goes to Eastenders stars Emma Barton and Jamie Borthwick, who’ll be running as their characters, Honey and Jay, for a special episode of the soap. The storyline will follow the fictional pair as they run the marathon in memory of Jay’s wife, Lola, who died of a brain tumour in 2023. If you spot them, make sure you’re smiling: you could just make your debut as an extra in the background of the show.

Who are the other stars of the amateur race?

Fancy dress is a quintessential part of the London marathon. Remember the guy who spent five days completing the course dressed in a deep sea diving suit?

Conservation charity Save the Rhino claim to have pioneered the whole thing, when a runner completed the race wearing a 12kg rhino costume in 1992, and this year it’s debuting a new first: the marathon’s first ever rhino wheelchair costume, which will be worn by member of Wales Rugby League wheelchair team, Martin Turner.

You might also spot Dave 'the Running Telephone', who’ll be running his 25th marathon in aid of this year’s race charity, Samaritans, dressed in a telephone costume.

This year’s oldest competitor is 91-year-old David Picksley from Croydon, who has run an impressive 13 marathons to date. He’ll be walking the 26.2 mile route to raise money for Bowel Cancer UK in memory of his sister, who he lost to the disease in 1974.

Where to go after

If you’ve got any energy left to celebrate after the finish line, fitness studio Barry’s Bootcamp will be hosting a marathon after-party at its SW1 studio. Think live music, refreshments, and free protein shakes for anyone who shows their medal. It's free to join, but you do need to sign up in advance.

They’re not the only ones handing out freebies for medal-holders. Greene King is offering a free drink of Guinness (or Guinness 0.0%), G&Ts and soft drinks to all finishers who show a medal at one of its London pubs between Sunday and Tuesday; Lush is offering medallists its all-new Cold Water Soother Epsom salt cube (worth £6) and Wiccy Magic Muscles solid massage oil (worth £8); and Franco Manca, Bills, Meatliquor and The Real Greek are among those handing out free food.

Recovery-wise, Fusion Lifestyle is offering all finishers a free swim at Brockwell Lido or North London Park Road Leisure, and online yoga site Live Yoga Teachers is offering free livestreamed recovery classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday after the race. Just send in a picture of you at the finish line with your medal and they’ll send you a voucher.

Deliveroo and Boots have also teamed up to launch a ‘ Marathon Roo-covery’ hub featuring everything from bath salts and Compeed blister plasters to protein bars. Just use the code ROOCOVERY10 for £10 off all Boots products on Deliveroo.

When does the ballot open for next year?

If you find yourself getting sucked in by the joy of the event (don’t say we didn’t warn you), there’s not long to wait until you can try your luck for a coveted place.

The London marathon 2025 is set to take place on Sunday, April 27, and the ballot opens this Saturday, April 20, the day before this year’s race. It’ll close on Friday, April 26, so you have just under a week to throw your name into the ring. Here’s to making it into that lucky four per cent.

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These are the most budget-friendly beaches in the U.S.

Here’s where to take that beach vacation for less

Are you dreaming of a beach vacation that won’t break the bank? A new study by Dive In Travel reveals the most affordable beaches in the U.S. where you can catch some rays for a whole lot less.

The team from the travel and gear review site calculated dining and beverage prices and the median cost for a six-night stay for two to rank the best wallet-friendly beach destinations for spring and summer travel. The results showcase the top spots for budget-conscious travelers to have fun in the sun.

According to Dive In’s data, the most affordable beach in the U.S. is Twelvemile Beach in Michigan. Located on the shores of Lake Superior in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, this tranquil beach has everything you need for a great beach vacation at a pretty sweet price. The area's average hotel costs around $465 for a six-night stay, and you can enjoy meals for around $20.

Other affordable beach destinations include Mustang Island State Park in Texas, where the average hotel price is around $477 for a six-night stay; Wrightsville Beach in North Carolina, which costs $637; Coast Guard Beach in Cape Cod, which costs $652; and Sand Beach in Acadia National Park, which costs $797.

If you can’t swing a trip to the most popular beach spots, these affordable alternatives are worth considering. And if money is no object? Well, Honokalani Beach on Maui ranks as the most expensive (but certainly a deserving addition to any beach bucket list).

• Gerrish Lopez Contributor, New Orleans

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Chase Freedom Unlimited Review: A Potential One-Card Solution

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3% of each transaction in U.S. dollars

• INTRO OFFER: Earn an additional 1.5% cash back on everything you buy (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year) - worth up to $300 cash back!
• Enjoy 6.5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel, our premier rewards program that lets you redeem rewards for cash back, travel, gift cards and more; 4.5% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and 3% on all other purchases (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year).
• After your first year or $20,000 spent, enjoy 5% cash back on travel purchased through Chase Travel, 3% cash back on drugstore purchases and dining at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery service, and unlimited 1.5% cash back on all other purchases.
• No minimum to redeem for cash back. You can choose to receive a statement credit or direct deposit into most U.S. checking and savings accounts. Cash Back rewards do not expire as long as your account is open!
• Enjoy 0% Intro APR for 15 months from account opening on purchases and balance transfers, then a variable APR of 20.49% - 29.24%.
• No annual fee – You won't have to pay an annual fee for all the great features that come with your Freedom Unlimited® card
• Keep tabs on your credit health, Chase Credit Journey helps you monitor your credit with free access to your latest score, alerts, and more.
• Member FDIC

No annual fee

Intro APR period

High rewards rate

No minimum redemption amount

Requires good/excellent credit

The Chase Freedom Unlimited® offers a compelling combination of valuable rewards, flexible redemption options, a lengthy 0% introductory APR period and a sign-up bonus that’s worth more than most cash-back cards offer — all for an annual fee of $0 .

The Chase Freedom Unlimited® earns 3% cash back on restaurants and drugstore purchases, 5% back on travel booked through Chase and 1.5% back on other purchases. Put that together and you have a card that can really pile up the cash back. And if you carry other credit cards that also earn Chase Ultimate Rewards® points , it packs even more value.

But all those different rewards rates make the card more complicated than competitors that offer a simpler 1.5% back on everything. One remedy: Make the Chase Freedom Unlimited® a top-of-wallet card for every purchase, and you’ll be sure to score those bonus rewards without having to think much about it.

It’s why this card makes a compelling case to be a one-card solution among cash-back credit cards.

Chase Freedom Unlimited® : Basics

Card type: Cash back .

Annual fee: $0 .

Sign-up bonus: Earn an additional 1.5% cash back on everything you buy (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year) - worth up to $300 cash back! ( NOTE: This offer is available when you apply through NerdWallet. If you apply directly with Chase or through a different website, you may not be eligible for this offer.)

5% back on travel booked through Chase.

3% back at restaurants, including takeout and eligible delivery services.

3% back on drugstore purchases.

Through March 31, 2025, 5% back on qualifying Lyft services purchased through the Lyft app.

1.5% cash back on everything else.

Interest rate: 0% intro APR on purchases and Balance Transfers for 15 months, and then the ongoing APR of 20.49%-29.24% Variable APR .

Foreign transaction fee: 3%.

» MORE: Benefits of the Chase Freedom Unlimited

Chase Ultimate Rewards® points

Although the Chase Freedom Unlimited® is marketed as a cash-back card, your spending actually earns Chase Ultimate Rewards® points. Points are worth a penny apiece when redeemed for cash back, thus you get 1.5% cash back or more depending on the category of your purchase. Points may also be redeemed for:

Gift cards at 1 cent per point.

Travel booked through Chase at 1 cent per point.

Amazon purchases at 0.8 cent per point.

The Chase Freedom Unlimited® is an excellent card on its own, but it's even better as a companion to other cards that earn Chase Ultimate Rewards® points. More on that below.

» MORE: Chase credit cards mobile app review

Chase Freedom Unlimited® vs. Chase Freedom Flex℠

If you're looking at the Chase Freedom Unlimited® , it's logical to wonder how it compares with the similarly named Chase Freedom Flex℠ .

Both Freedom-branded cards have an annual fee of $0 , and both offer lucrative ways to earn cash back.

The choice mostly comes down to rewards: 5% quarterly rotating categories on the Chase Freedom Flex℠ or the 1.5% “everything else” (instead of 1% everything else) of the Chase Freedom Unlimited® .

A quick evaluation:

Chase Freedom Flex℠ : The 5% cash back is enticing but complicated. Bonus cash back is also capped at $1,500 per quarter in spending before reverting to 1% back. Category activation is required; all other purchases earn 1% cash back.

Chase Freedom Unlimited® : The 1.5% back on everything else is less exciting but simpler and way more flexible.

Which is more valuable will depend on how well the rotating bonus categories of the Chase Freedom Flex℠ match your spending. It also depends on how much you spend overall. Big spenders might get more value from 1.5% on everything else because it’s unlimited.

The Chase Freedom Unlimited® runs on the Visa payment network, while the Chase Freedom Flex℠ is a Mastercard. In terms of acceptance, it doesn't matter much if you carry a Visa or a Mastercard . But Visa and Mastercard do offer some differing side perks.

The table in the dropdown menu below highlights the differences in rewards between the two cards and the older Chase Freedom® , which is no longer accepting applications and has been effectively replaced by the Chase Freedom Flex℠ .

For more information on which of these Freedom credit cards is right for you, see our full comparison story .

(There is yet another rewards-earning Freedom product — the Chase Freedom Rise℠ — but unlike the cards above, it is meant for beginners to credit.)

As a cash-back card, the Chase Freedom Unlimited® delivers a great treat for new cardholders followed by high ongoing value at a low cost. Its best features include:

Potentially rich sign-up bonus

Unlike a standard credit card bonus, which pays you a lump sum once you hit a specific spending amount, the bonus on the Chase Freedom Unlimited® comes in the form of higher reward rates in the first year, which, depending on how much you spend, can really add up: Earn an additional 1.5% cash back on everything you buy (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year) - worth up to $300 cash back! ( NOTE: This offer is available when you apply through NerdWallet. If you apply directly with Chase or through a different website, you may not be eligible for this offer.)

Comparable no-fee cash-back cards nowadays offer bonuses of around $200.

Useful bonus categories

The bonus rewards categories are useful and lucrative:

5% back on travel purchased through Chase.

Restaurants and drugstores are especially useful rewards categories for many households. Spend $3,000 a year combined in those categories, and you’ll earn $90 annually.

And if you book travel through Chase, 5% can add up quickly on pricey travel itineraries. Vacation travel costing $6,000 gets you back $300, for example.

1.5% on 'everything else'

Cash-back credit cards with bonus categories, like 3% back on restaurants, typically offer 1% cash back on “everything else.” The Chase Freedom Unlimited® offers 1.5% back on everything else.

While 0.5% more doesn’t seem like much, it adds up for big spenders because it has no limit. And many big-ticket expenses seldom fall neatly into typical bonus categories — think medical bills, car tires and furnace repair.

For those who spend a lot, say $5,000 per month on “everything else,” the extra 0.5% rate on the Chase Freedom Unlimited® means an extra $300 a year in cash back, compared with its typical competitors.

» MORE: Which 1.5% cash-back credit card should you choose?

Point transfers to maximize value

Because Chase allows you to transfer its points among cards that earn them, the Chase Freedom Unlimited® can be a cornerstone of a strategy to get maximum value out of every dollar you spend. If you have multiple Chase cards, you can:

Earn more points by splitting your spending between this card and the Chase Freedom Flex. By using the Chase Freedom Flex for purchases in the 5% bonus categories and the Chase Freedom Unlimited® on all other spending, you'd boost your overall rewards earnings significantly.

Get more value per point by transferring rewards to a card with elevated redemption values. Points earned with this card are usually worth a penny apiece. But several Chase cards give you more value per point when you use them to book travel through Chase's online portal, operated by Expedia:

With the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card and the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card , each point is worth 1.25 cents when redeemed for travel through Chase.

With the Chase Sapphire Reserve® , points are worth 1.5 cents apiece when redeemed for travel through Chase.

These three cards also allow you to transfer points at a 1:1 ratio to about a dozen airline and hotel loyalty programs, including United Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, Marriott and Hyatt. Depending on how you use transferred points, you could reap even more value.

» MORE: What is the 'Chase trifecta'?

It’s complicated

The 1.5% flat rate is easy enough to understand, but the mix of reward rates in other spending categories is head-spinning — especially for cash-back lovers, who tend to value simplicity. Add in the extra 1.5% in the first year, and things get even more ... interesting.

If you don’t want to carry around a rewards cheat sheet to optimally use a credit card and you’re just interested in cash-back rewards — not necessarily Chase Ultimate Rewards® — the Wells Fargo Active Cash® Card is one of the best flat-rate cards on the market. It offers 2% cash back on everything — and not just for a limited time.

» MORE: Credit cards that earn 2% cash back or more on purchases

Better rates available in specific categories

Cards with rewards bonus categories are most valuable when you spend a significant amount in those categories.

Alternative options include:

The Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express pays an industry-leading 6% cash back at U.S. supermarkets on up to $6,000 a year in spending (then 1%), plus 6% on select U.S. streaming subscriptions, 3% at U.S. gas stations, 3% on transit and 1% on all other spending. Terms apply ( see rates and fees ). It comes at a cost, though: A $0 intro annual fee for the first year, then $95. Terms apply. This is an ideal card for high grocery spenders.

The Bank of America® Customized Cash Rewards credit card pays 3% in a category of your choice (gas/EV charging, online shopping (including cable, phone, internet and streaming services), dining, travel, drugstores or home improvement/furnishings) and 2% at grocery stores and wholesale clubs, on up to $2,500 in combined choice-category/grocery-store/wholesale-club spending per quarter. All other spending earns 1% cash back.

You can find out more about how this cash-back credit card compares versus the competition by visiting our list of best credit cards to get .

The Chase Freedom Unlimited® is a great deal for consumers — especially for those who already have the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card or Chase Sapphire Reserve® .

It comes with a potentially rich sign-up offer, useful bonus rewards categories and plenty of options for cashing in rewards. It’s not as simple as a flat-rate cash-back card, but its versatility and value make it a strong choice.

» MORE: Which Chase Freedom credit card is right for you?

To view rates and fees of the Blue Cash Preferred® Card from American Express , see this page .

Looking For Something Else?

Methodology.

NerdWallet reviews credit cards with an eye toward both the quantitative and qualitative features of a card. Quantitative features are those that boil down to dollars and cents, such as fees, interest rates, rewards (including earning rates and redemption values) and the cash value of benefits and perks. Qualitative factors are those that affect how easy or difficult it is for a typical cardholder to get good value from the card. They include such things as the ease of application, simplicity of the rewards structure, the likelihood of using certain features, and whether a card is well-suited to everyday use or is best reserved for specific purchases. Our star ratings serve as a general gauge of how each card compares with others in its class, but star ratings are intended to be just one consideration when a consumer is choosing a credit card. Learn how NerdWallet rates credit cards.

Frequently asked questions

Cardholders earn 5% back on travel booked through Chase and 3% back at restaurants and drugstore purchases. All other purchases earn 1.5% back. Plus, through March 31, 2025, cardholders earn 5% back on qualifying Lyft services purchased through the Lyft app.

You’ll need good to excellent credit to qualify for the Chase Freedom Unlimited® . Generally speaking, this is defined as a credit score of 690 or better. But a credit score alone isn’t enough to qualify for any credit card. Issuers take into account your income, existing debts and other information.

It depends on your spending habits. The cards have identical sign-up bonuses, 0% APR periods and $0 annual fees. The main difference is in the rewards. The travel, restaurant and drugstore rewards are the same on both cards. But the Chase Freedom Unlimited® offers a solid 1.5% back on "everything else," while the Chase Freedom Flex℠ offers 5% cash back in rotating quarterly categories and 1% on other spending.

The annual fee on the Chase Freedom Unlimited® is $0 .

The Chase Freedom Unlimited® is a Visa.

Yes. The bonus is: Earn an additional 1.5% cash back on everything you buy (on up to $20,000 spent in the first year) - worth up to $300 cash back!

Yes. The cards have some identical rewards, but you can use them together to maximize your cash back.

About the author s

Claire Tsosie

Gregory Karp

Miami Heat at Boston Celtics FREE NBA Playoffs live stream: Time, channel

• Updated: Apr. 21, 2024, 10:52 a.m. |
• Published: Apr. 21, 2024, 10:52 a.m.

Miami Heat guard Tyler Herro (14) defends against Boston Celtics forward Jayson Tatum (0) during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, Feb. 11, 2024, in Miami. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

• Dustin Hockensmith | [email protected]

The Miami Heat have an upset in mind as they travel to Boston on Sunday for Game 1 of their NBA Playoff series . The game is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. ET with TV coverage on ABC and streaming on-demand .

• Watch: Live streams of the Celtics-Heat game are available with offers from FuboTV (free trial) , DirecTV Stream (free trial) and SlingTV (free trial) .

The Celtics were the clear-cut top team in the Eastern Conference and on the short list of top NBA title contenders throughout the 2023-’24 season. Boston finished with an NBA-best 64-18 record and was dominant at TD Garden with a 37-4 home record, earning its place as a big 13.5-point favorite in Game 1 over the Heat.

Watch live streams of the Celtics-Heat game: FuboTV (free trial) | DirecTV Stream (free trial) | Sling (low intro rate)

A trio of Celtics finished the season averaging 20-plus points per game, led by stars Jayson Tatum (26.9 ppg) and Jaylen Brown (23.0 ppg) and center Kristaps Porzingis (20.1 ppg). The Celtics were in elite company in terms of both their scoring offense (120.6 ppg, 2nd in the NBA) and defense (109.2 ppg, 5th), which was the driving force behind their monster regular season.

The Heat limp into this one, likely without the services of postseason veteran Jimmy Butler but having won the East’s No. 8 seed with a 112-91 win over the Chicago Bulls in the NBA Play-In Tournament. Miami had the NBA’s third-best defense in the regular season and leaned on that effort against Chicago, holding the Bulls to 38 percent shooting in a blowout victory. Tyler Herro led all scorers with his 24 points, and Kevin Love chipped in 16 big points with 10-for-10 free throw shooting in that win over Chicago. Miami finished the regular season with a 46-36 record and had the second-best road record (24-17) in the Eastern Conference.

The Heat and Celtics are set for a 1 p.m. ET start on ABC. Live streams are available from FuboTV (free trial) , DirecTV Stream (free trial) and SlingTV (free trial) .

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Starfield space travel just got way better thanks to this mod

Starfield space travel just got way better thanks to this mod which adds 50 new events to galactic exploration.

Angharad Redden

In Bethesda’s action RPG Starfield, there is plenty to do across the intergalactic open-world. However, with many players criticising the lack of space combat, one modder has them covered.

Released in 2023, Starfield is Bethesda's latest RPG project that has players join a group of space explorers who must venture to various lands across the galaxy to find mysterious artifacts.

Check out our Starfield review below!

With Starfield receiving quite a mixed overall review from critics and players alike, it is by no means comparable to other Bethesda titles such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Fallout : New Vegas. One such gripe players had was the lack of dynamic space combat and encounters.

To help address this, modder kaosnyrb on Nexus Mods has created Dark Universe, a free downloadable mod that adds 50 brand-new space encounters to Starfield.

“I never felt like space only characters were very viable. This attempts to change that”, they wrote . “This massively increases the amount of space POIs, adding more variety to space gameplay.”

As mentioned, Starfield’s ship gameplay and exploration will now include multiple points of interest to discover and interact with. More specifically, the events will focus on skirmishes between factions including one between The First and The Crimson Fleet.

New encounters you will discover include piracy boarding, faction skirmishes, faction strongholds, lone ships, ships under fire, lost shipments, stranded ships, boss fights and more.

As Starfield’s space explorer, you will discover a variety of fellow ships in distress, in the middle of fights, searching for hope and more. Not only that but there is no time to get lenient as some strong enemies may also be lurking among the stars.

Dark Universe is available to download for free on Nexus Mods and is just one of hundreds of mods ready to add brand-new and exciting combat to your game.

Topics:  Starfield , Bethesda , Mods , PC

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