Here’s the (obvious) secret about time travel: you’re doing it right now! Admittedly, it’s not very sci-fi, but you are moving through time, into the future specifically. But if you go fast enough or travel close enough to something with an immense amount of gravity, you can travel into the future in a way that resembles the movies. Just don’t be surprised when everyone you know…well, doesn’t make the same trip.
But what about traveling into the past, is that possible? Can you go back and then go back to the future?
In the video above, I try to lay out the different theoretical options for traveling to the past. One involves the geometry of the universe and the other super-luminal travel. My favorite theory however, involves the scientific concept that everyone walking out of Interstellar wanted to know about: wormholes. There’s a pretty big catch with that mode of time reversal though.
As far as we know, the universe makes backwards time travel very difficult, maybe impossible. There are so many paradoxes you’d have to avoid and cosmic oddities you’d have to discover–it doesn’t seem like the universe wants it to happen. Of course, if you’re a mad scientist who steals plutonium from terrorists who knows what you can figure out.
What would you rather have: the power to travel into the future or the past? Would it be worth it? What rights would you wrong? What sights would you like to see? Let me know in the comments below.
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IMAGE: DeLorean by Matt Clark
