The prospect of revisiting the past or jumping to the future has captured people's imaginations for centuries. Our contemporary understanding of time travel is a marriage of theoretical physics and science fiction.
Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.
Much of the film Interstellar is centered on the existence of a wormhole and black hole, which happen to be two of the most perplexing things in the universe. Astrophysicist and StarTalk Radio host Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how wormholes and black holes work in real life in this two-minute video.
This grandfather paradox – the notion that changing the past may alter the present conditions that motivated the time traveler in the first place – instills doubt in time travel. But, as this video explains, subatomic particles regularly do different things in parallel. So, what if the universe exists in two states: one where your grandfather is alive and another where he’s dead? Intrigued? Confused? Let the animations in this 2-minute video help you wrap your mind around the possibility.
Humans have been captivated by the prospect of leaping forward and backward in time for thousands of years. Georgia Institute of Technology Science Fiction Studies Professor Lisa Yaszek recounts how the concept has been utilized by storytellers from 400 BCE to modern-day to explore our relationship with the supernatural, technology, and the past. In a way, this historical recounting is a journey through time.
We can travel forward and backward, up and down, side-to-side in space. So, why can’t we travel back in time? Why can we only move forward? This article takes us all the way to the beginning of time – the Big Bang – to explain why time only moves in one direction. And it raises the ominous question: If time has a beginning and only moves in one direction, does it have an end?
Are you thinking of writing a story that involves time travel? You might want to read this guide first. It offers questions to consider, mistakes to avoid and strategies to employ to ensure you avoid paradoxes, plot holes and implausibilities.
Time travel has fascinated humans for centuries. It appears in myths, literature, and science fiction. One of the earliest examples comes from the 400 BCE Hindu epic Mahabharata, describing time dilation long before Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. By the 19th century, stories introduced machines enabling time travel—setting the stage for modern sci-fi.
While the author discounts the possibility of traveling to the past, it lays out five hypothetical modes of catapulting into the future: speed, gravity, suspended animation, wormholes, and light. Each has some scientific basis, but none are realistic for humans. Read the article to learn where they offer promise and where they fall short.
This 8-minute video explores how time travel influences the narrative arc of several movies, books and video games, from Harry Potter to A Christmas Carol. (Warning: it contains spoilers!) J.K. Rowling and Charles Dickens set myriad parameters as they’re worldbuilding to avoid paradoxes and create quasi-logical timelines. By drawing diagrams as he’s speaking, the video breaks down how time works in some of popular culture’s most beloved fictional universes.
If you went back in time and killed your grandfather when he was a child, what would happen to you? One of your parents would never be born, so you wouldn’t be born either. But, if you’re never born, how could you kill your grandfather in the first place? This so-called grandfather paradox is something physicists, philosophers and sci-fi writers constantly ponder. Read the piece to learn how they’ve been trying to reconcile it.
Take a step back with this 5-minute video that raises questions about the very existence of time. Does it physically exist, or is it just in our heads? Einstein’s theories of relativity, which explain the behavior of large objects, assert that time is a fundamental property of the universe. But, as physicists try to develop a Theory of Everything that explains the behavior of large and small things, they’ve begun to ponder if time might just be an illusion.
