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Time travelTime travel is the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving betweendifferent points in space, either sending objects (or in some cases just information) backwards in time to somemoment before the present, or sending objects forward from the present to the future without the need to experiencethe intervening period (at least not at the normal rate).Although time travel has been a common plot device in fiction since the 19th century, and one-way travel into thefuture is arguably possible given the phenomenon of time dilation based on velocity in the theory of special relativity(exemplified by the twin paradox), as well as gravitational time dilation in the theory of general relativity, it iscurrently unknown whether the laws of physics would allow backwards time travel.Any technological device, whether fictional or hypothetical, that is used to achieve time travel is commonly knownas a time machine.Some interpretations of time travel also suggest that an attempt to travel backwards in time might take one to aparallel universe whose history would begin to diverge from the traveler's original history after the moment thetraveler arrived in the past.[1]

Origins of the concept• 700s BCE to 300s CE - Mahabharata• 200s to 400s CE - Talmud• 720 CE - "Urashima Tarō"• 1733 - Samuel Madden’s Memoirs of the Twentieth Century• 1771 - Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fût jamais• 1781 - Johan Herman Wessel's Anno 7603• 1819 - Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle"• 1824 - Faddey Bulgarin's "Pravdopodobnie Nebylitsi"• 1836 - Alexander Veltman's Predki Kalimerosa• 1838 - Missing One's Coach: An Anachronism• 1843 - Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol• 1861 - Pierre Boitard’s Paris avant les hommes• 1881 - Edward Page Mitchell’s The Clock That Went Backward• 1887 - Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau's El anacronópete• 1888 - H. G. Wells' The Chronic Argonauts• 1889 - Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court• 1895 - H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine

There is no widespread agreement as to which written work should be recognized as the earliest example of a time travel story, since a number of early works feature elements ambiguously suggestive of time travel. Ancient folk tales and myths sometimes involved something akin to travelling forward in time; for example, in Hindu mythology, the Mahabharata mentions the story of the King Revaita, who travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is shocked to learn that many ages have passed when he returns to Earth.[2] [3] Another one of the earliest known stories to involve traveling forwards in time to a distant future was the Japanese tale of "Urashima Tarō",[4] first described in the Nihongi (720).[5] It was about a young fisherman named Urashima Taro who visits an undersea palace and stays there for three days. After returning home to his village, he finds himself three hundred years in the future, where he is long forgotten, his house in ruins, and his family long dead. Another very old example of this type of story can be found in the Talmud with the story of Honi HaM'agel who went to sleep for 70 years and woke up to a world where his grandchildren were grandparents and where all his friends and family were deceased.[6] More

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recently, Washington Irving's famous 1819 story "Rip Van Winkle" deals with a similar concept, telling the tale of aman named Rip Van Winkle who takes a nap at a mountain and wakes up twenty years in the future, where he hasbeen forgotten, his wife deceased, and his daughter grown up.[4] Sleep was also used for time travel in FaddeyBulgarin's story "Pravdopodobnie Nebylitsi" where the protagonist wakes up in the 29th century.Another more recent story involving travel to the future is Louis-Sébastien Mercier's L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fûtjamais ("The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Were One"), a utopian novel in which the main character istransported to the year 2440. An extremely popular work (it went through twenty-five editions after its firstappearance in 1771), the work describes the adventures of an unnamed man, who, after engaging in a heateddiscussion with a philosopher friend about the injustices of Paris, falls asleep and finds himself in a Paris of thefuture. Robert Darnton writes that "despite its self-proclaimed character of fantasy...L'An 2440 demanded to be readas a serious guidebook to the future."[7]

Backwards time travel seems to be a more modern idea, but the origin of this notion is also somewhat ambiguous.One early story with hints of backwards time travel is Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (1733) by Samuel Madden,which is mainly a series of letters from English ambassadors in various countries to the British Lord High Treasurer,along with a few replies from the British Foreign Office, all purportedly written in 1997 and 1998 and describing theconditions of that era.[8] However, the framing story is that these letters were actual documents given to the narratorby his guardian angel one night in 1728; for this reason, Paul Alkon suggests in his book Origins of FuturisticFiction that "the first time-traveler in English literature is a guardian angel who returns with state documents from1998 to the year 1728",[9] although the book does not explicitly show how the angel obtained these documents.Alkon later qualifies this by writing, "It would be stretching our generosity to praise Madden for being the first toshow a traveler arriving from the future", but also says that Madden "deserves recognition as the first to toy with therich idea of time-travel in the form of an artifact sent backwards from the future to be discovered in the present."[8]

In 1836 Alexander Veltman published Predki Kalimerosa: Aleksandr Filippovich Makedonskii (The forebears ofKalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon), which has been called the first original Russian science fictionnovel and the first novel to use time travel.[10] In it the narrator rides to ancient Greece on a hippogriff, meetsAristotle, and goes on a voyage with Alexander the Great before returning to the 19th century.In the science fiction anthology Far Boundaries (1951), the editor August Derleth identifies the short story "MissingOne's Coach: An Anachronism", written for the Dublin Literary Magazine [11] by an anonymous author in 1838, as avery early time travel story.[12] In this story, the narrator is waiting under a tree to be picked up by a coach whichwill take him out of Newcastle, when he suddenly finds himself transported back over a thousand years, where heencounters the Venerable Bede in a monastery, and gives him somewhat ironic explanations of the developments ofthe coming centuries. It is never entirely clear whether these events actually occurred or were merely a dream—thenarrator says that when he initially found a comfortable-looking spot in the roots of the tree, he sat down, "and as mysceptical reader will tell me, nodded and slept", but then says that he is "resolved not to admit" this explanation. Anumber of dreamlike elements of the story may suggest otherwise to the reader, such as the fact that none of themembers of the monastery seem to be able to see him at first, and the abrupt ending where Bede has been delayedtalking to the narrator and so the other monks burst in thinking that some harm has come to him, and suddenly thenarrator finds himself back under the tree in the present (August 1837), with his coach having just passed his spot onthe road, leaving him stranded in Newcastle for another night.[13]

Charles Dickens' 1843 book A Christmas Carol is considered by some[14] to be one of the first depictions of timetravel, as the main character, Ebenezer Scrooge, is transported to Christmases past, present and yet to come. Thesemight be considered mere visions rather than actual time travel, though, since Scrooge only viewed each time periodpassively, unable to interact with them.A clearer example of time travel is found in the popular 1861 book Paris avant les hommes (Paris before Men) by the French botanist and geologist Pierre Boitard, published posthumously. In this story the main character is transported into the prehistoric past by the magic of a "lame demon" (a French pun on Boitard's name), where he

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encounters such extinct animals as a Plesiosaur, as well as Boitard's imagined version of an apelike human ancestor,and is able to actively interact with some of them.[15]

Another clear early example of time travel in fiction is the short story The Clock That Went Backward[16]PDF (35.7 KB) by Edward Page Mitchell, which appeared in the New York Sun in 1881.Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889), in which the protagonist finds himself in thetime of King Arthur after a fight in which he is hit with a sledge hammer, was another early time travel story whichhelped bring the concept to a wide audience, and was also one of the first stories to show history being changed bythe time traveler's actions.The first time travel story to feature time travel by means of a time machine was Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau's 1887book El Anacronópete.[17] This idea gained popularity with the H. G. Wells story The Time Machine, published in1895 (preceded by a less influential story of time travel Wells wrote in 1888, titled The Chronic Argonauts), whichalso featured a time machine and which is often seen as an inspiration for all later science fiction stories featuringtime travel, using a vehicle that allows an operator to travel purposefully and selectively. The term "time machine",coined by Wells, is now universally used to refer to such a vehicle.Since that time, both science and fiction (see Time travel in fiction) have expanded on the concept of time travel.

TheorySome theories, most notably special and general relativity, suggest that suitable geometries of spacetime, or specifictypes of motion in space, might allow time travel into the past and future if these geometries or motions arepossible.[18] In technical papers, physicists generally avoid the commonplace language of "moving" or "traveling"through time ('movement' normally refers only to a change in spatial position as the time coordinate is varied), andinstead discuss the possibility of closed timelike curves, which are worldlines that form closed loops in spacetime,allowing objects to return to their own past. There are known to be solutions to the equations of general relativitythat describe spacetimes which contain closed timelike curves (such as Gödel spacetime), but the physicalplausibility of these solutions is uncertain.Relativity states that if one were to move away from the Earth at relativistic velocities and return, more time wouldhave passed on Earth than for the traveler, so in this sense it is accepted that relativity allows "travel into the future"(according to relativity there is no single objective answer to how much time has 'really' passed between thedeparture and the return, but there is an objective answer to how much proper time has been experienced by both theEarth and the traveler, i.e. how much each has aged; See twin paradox). On the other hand, many in the scientificcommunity believe that backwards time travel is highly unlikely. Any theory which would allow time travel wouldrequire that problems of causality be resolved. The classic example of a problem involving causality is the"grandfather paradox": what if one were to go back in time and kill one's own grandfather before one's father wasconceived? But some scientists believe that paradoxes can be avoided, either by appealing to the Novikovself-consistency principle or to the notion of branching parallel universes (see the 'Paradoxes' section below).

Tourism in timeStephen Hawking once suggested that the absence of tourists from the future constitutes an argument against theexistence of time travel—a variant of the Fermi paradox. Of course this would not prove that time travel isphysically impossible, since it might be that time travel is physically possible but that it is never in fact developed (oris cautiously never used); and even if it is developed, Hawking notes elsewhere that time travel might only bepossible in a region of spacetime that is warped in the correct way, and that if we cannot create such a region untilthe future, then time travelers would not be able to travel back before that date, so "This picture would explain whywe haven't been over run by tourists from the future."[19] Carl Sagan also once suggested the possibility that timetravelers could be here, but are disguising their existence or are not recognized as time travelers.[20]

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General relativityHowever, the theory of general relativity does suggest scientific grounds for thinking backwards time travel could bepossible in certain unusual scenarios, although arguments from semiclassical gravity suggest that when quantumeffects are incorporated into general relativity, these loopholes may be closed.[21] These semiclassical arguments ledHawking to formulate the chronology protection conjecture, suggesting that the fundamental laws of nature preventtime travel,[22] but physicists cannot come to a definite judgment on the issue without a theory of quantum gravity tojoin quantum mechanics and general relativity into a completely unified theory.[23]

In physicsTime travel to the past is theoretically allowed using the following methods:[24]

• Travelling faster than the speed of light• The use of cosmic strings and black holes• Wormholes and Alcubierre drive

Via faster-than-light travelIf one were able to move information or matter from one point to another faster than light, then according to specialrelativity, there would be some inertial frame of reference in which the signal or object was moving backward intime. This is a consequence of the relativity of simultaneity in special relativity, which says that in some casesdifferent reference frames will disagree on whether two events at different locations happened "at the same time" ornot, and they can also disagree on the order of the two events (technically, these disagreements occur when thespacetime interval between the events is 'space-like', meaning that neither event lies in the future light cone of theother).[25] If one of the two events represents the sending of a signal from one location and the second eventrepresents the reception of the same signal at another location, then as long as the signal is moving at the speed oflight or slower, the mathematics of simultaneity ensures that all reference frames agree that the transmission-eventhappened before the reception-event.[25]

However, in the case of a hypothetical signal moving faster than light, there would always be some frames in whichthe signal was received before it was sent, so that the signal could be said to have moved backwards in time. Andsince one of the two fundamental postulates of special relativity says that the laws of physics should work the sameway in every inertial frame, then if it is possible for signals to move backwards in time in any one frame, it must bepossible in all frames. This means that if observer A sends a signal to observer B which moves FTL (faster thanlight) in A's frame but backwards in time in B's frame, and then B sends a reply which moves FTL in B's frame butbackwards in time in A's frame, it could work out that A receives the reply before sending the original signal, a clearviolation of causality in every frame. An illustration of such a scenario using spacetime diagrams can be foundhere.[26]

According to special relativity, it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate a slower-than-light object tothe speed of light. Although relativity does not forbid the theoretical possibility of tachyons which move faster thanlight at all times, when analyzed using quantum field theory, it seems that it would not actually be possible to usethem to transmit information faster than light,[27] and that there is no evidence for their existence.

Special spacetime geometriesThe general theory of relativity extends the special theory to cover gravity, illustrating it in terms of curvature in spacetime caused by mass-energy and the flow of momentum. General relativity describes the universe under a system of field equations, and there exist solutions to these equations that permit what are called "closed time-like curves," and hence time travel into the past.[18] The first of these was proposed by Kurt Gödel, a solution known as the Gödel metric, but his (and many others') example requires the universe to have physical characteristics that it

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does not appear to have.[18] Whether general relativity forbids closed time-like curves for all realistic conditions isunknown.

Using wormholesWormholes are a hypothetical warped spacetime which are also permitted by the Einstein field equations of generalrelativity,[28] although it would be impossible to travel through a wormhole unless it were what is known as atraversable wormhole.A proposed time-travel machine using a traversable wormhole would (hypothetically) work in the following way:One end of the wormhole is accelerated to some significant fraction of the speed of light, perhaps with someadvanced propulsion system, and then brought back to the point of origin. Alternatively, another way is to take oneentrance of the wormhole and move it to within the gravitational field of an object that has higher gravity than theother entrance, and then return it to a position near the other entrance. For both of these methods, time dilationcauses the end of the wormhole that has been moved to have aged less than the stationary end, as seen by an externalobserver; however, time connects differently through the wormhole than outside it, so that synchronized clocks ateither end of the wormhole will always remain synchronized as seen by an observer passing through the wormhole,no matter how the two ends move around.[29] This means that an observer entering the accelerated end would exitthe stationary end when the stationary end was the same age that the accelerated end had been at the moment beforeentry; for example, if prior to entering the wormhole the observer noted that a clock at the accelerated end read a dateof 2007 while a clock at the stationary end read 2012, then the observer would exit the stationary end when its clockalso read 2007, a trip backwards in time as seen by other observers outside. One significant limitation of such a timemachine is that it is only possible to go as far back in time as the initial creation of the machine;[30] in essence, it ismore of a path through time than it is a device that itself moves through time, and it would not allow the technologyitself to be moved backwards in time. This could provide an alternative explanation for Hawking's observation: atime machine will be built someday, but has not yet been built, so the tourists from the future cannot reach this farback in time.According to current theories on the nature of wormholes, construction of a traversable wormhole would require theexistence of a substance with negative energy (often referred to as "exotic matter") . More technically, the wormholespacetime requires a distribution of energy that violates various energy conditions, such as the null energy conditionalong with the weak, strong, and dominant energy conditions.[31] However, it is known that quantum effects can leadto small measurable violations of the null energy condition,[31] and many physicists believe that the requirednegative energy may actually be possible due to the Casimir effect in quantum physics.[32] Although earlycalculations suggested a very large amount of negative energy would be required, later calculations showed that theamount of negative energy can be made arbitrarily small.[33]

In 1993, Matt Visser argued that the two mouths of a wormhole with such an induced clock difference could not bebrought together without inducing quantum field and gravitational effects that would either make the wormholecollapse or the two mouths repel each other.[34] Because of this, the two mouths could not be brought close enoughfor causality violation to take place. However, in a 1997 paper, Visser hypothesized that a complex "Roman ring"(named after Tom Roman) configuration of an N number of wormholes arranged in a symmetric polygon could stillact as a time machine, although he concludes that this is more likely a flaw in classical quantum gravity theory ratherthan proof that causality violation is possible.[35]

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Other approaches based on general relativityAnother approach involves a dense spinning cylinder usually referred to as a Tipler cylinder, a GR solutiondiscovered by Willem Jacob van Stockum[36] in 1936 and Kornel Lanczos[37] in 1924, but not recognized asallowing closed timelike curves[38] until an analysis by Frank Tipler[39] in 1974. If a cylinder is infinitely long andspins fast enough about its long axis, then a spaceship flying around the cylinder on a spiral path could travel back intime (or forward, depending on the direction of its spiral). However, the density and speed required is so great thatordinary matter is not strong enough to construct it. A similar device might be built from a cosmic string, but noneare known to exist, and it does not seem to be possible to create a new cosmic string.Physicist Robert Forward noted that a naïve application of general relativity to quantum mechanics suggests anotherway to build a time machine. A heavy atomic nucleus in a strong magnetic field would elongate into a cylinder,whose density and "spin" are enough to build a time machine. Gamma rays projected at it might allow information(not matter) to be sent back in time; however, he pointed out that until we have a single theory combining relativityand quantum mechanics, we will have no idea whether such speculations are nonsense.A more fundamental objection to time travel schemes based on rotating cylinders or cosmic strings has been putforward by Stephen Hawking, who proved a theorem showing that according to general relativity it is impossible tobuild a time machine of a special type (a "time machine with the compactly generated Cauchy horizon") in a regionwhere the weak energy condition is satisfied, meaning that the region contains no matter with negative energydensity (exotic matter). Solutions such as Tipler's assume cylinders of infinite length, which are easier to analyzemathematically, and although Tipler suggested that a finite cylinder might produce closed timelike curves if therotation rate were fast enough,[40] he did not prove this. But Hawking points out that because of his theorem, "it can'tbe done with positive energy density everywhere! I can prove that to build a finite time machine, you need negativeenergy."[41] This result comes from Hawking's 1992 paper on the chronology protection conjecture, where heexamines "the case that the causality violations appear in a finite region of spacetime without curvature singularities"and proves that "[t]here will be a Cauchy horizon that is compactly generated and that in general contains one ormore closed null geodesics which will be incomplete. One can define geometrical quantities that measure theLorentz boost and area increase on going round these closed null geodesics. If the causality violation developed froma noncompact initial surface, the averaged weak energy condition must be violated on the Cauchy horizon."[42]

However, this theorem does not rule out the possibility of time travel 1) by means of time machines with thenon-compactly generated Cauchy horizons (such as the Deutsch-Politzer time machine) and 2) in regions whichcontain exotic matter (which would be necessary for traversable wormholes or the Alcubierre drive). Because thetheorem is based on general relativity, it is also conceivable a future theory of quantum gravity which replacedgeneral relativity would allow time travel even without exotic matter (though it is also possible such a theory wouldplace even more restrictions on time travel, or rule it out completely as postulated by Hawking's chronologyprotection conjecture).

Experiments carried outCertain experiments carried out give the impression of reversed causality but are interpreted in a different way by the scientific community. For example, in the delayed choice quantum eraser experiment performed by Marlan Scully, pairs of entangled photons are divided into "signal photons" and "idler photons", with the signal photons emerging from one of two locations and their position later measured as in the double slit experiment, and depending on how the idler photon is measured, the experimenter can either learn which of the two locations the signal photon emerged from or "erase" that information. Even though the signal photons can be measured before the choice has been made about the idler photons, the choice seems to retroactively determine whether or not an interference pattern is observed when one correlates measurements of idler photons to the corresponding signal photons. However, since interference can only be observed after the idler photons are measured and they are correlated with the signal photons, there is no way for experimenters to tell what choice will be made in advance just by looking at the signal

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photons, and under most interpretations of quantum mechanics the results can be explained in a way that does notviolate causality.The experiment of Lijun Wang might also give the appearance of causality violation since it made it possible to sendpackages of waves through a bulb of caesium gas in such a way that the package appeared to exit the bulb 62nanoseconds before its entry. But a wave package is not a single well-defined object but rather a sum of multiplewaves of different frequencies (see Fourier analysis), and the package can appear to move faster than light or evenbackwards in time even if none of the pure waves in the sum do so. This effect cannot be used to send any matter,energy, or information faster than light,[43] so this experiment is understood not to violate causality either.The physicists Günter Nimtz and Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, claim to have violated Einstein'stheory of relativity by transmitting photons faster than the speed of light. They say they have conducted anexperiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - traveled "instantaneously" between a pair ofprisms that had been moved up to 3 ft (0.91 m) apart, using a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling. Nimtz toldNew Scientist magazine: "For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of." However,other physicists say that this phenomenon does not allow information to be transmitted faster than light. AephraimSteinberg, a quantum optics expert at the University of Toronto, Canada, uses the analogy of a train traveling fromChicago to New York, but dropping off train cars at each station along the way, so that the center of the train movesforward at each stop; in this way, the center of the train exceeds the speed of any of the individual cars.[44]

Some physicists have attempted to perform experiments which would show genuine causality violations, but so farwithout success. The Space-time Twisting by Light (STL) experiment run by physicist Ronald Mallett is attemptingto observe a violation of causality when a neutron is passed through a circle made up of a laser whose path has beentwisted by passing it through a photonic crystal. Mallett has some physical arguments that suggest that closedtimelike curves would become possible through the center of a laser which has been twisted into a loop. However,other physicists dispute his arguments (see objections).

Non-physics-based experiments

Several experiments have been carried out to try to entice future humans, who might invent time travel technology,to come back and demonstrate it to people of the present time. Events such as Perth's Destination Day (2005) orMIT's Time Traveler Convention heavily publicized permanent "advertisements" of a meeting time and place forfuture time travelers to meet. Back in 1982, a group in Baltimore, MD., identifying itself as the Krononauts, hostedan event of this type welcoming visitors from the future.[45] [46] These experiments only stood the possibility ofgenerating a positive result demonstrating the existence of time travel, but have failed so far—no time travelers areknown to have attended either event. It is hypothetically possible that future humans have traveled back in time, buthave traveled back to the meeting time and place in a parallel universe.[47] Another factor is that for all the timetravel devices considered under current physics (such as those that operate using wormholes), it is impossible totravel back to before the time machine was actually made.[48] [49]

Time travel to the future in physics

Twin paradox diagram

There are various ways in which a person could "travel into the future"in a limited sense: the person could set things up so that in a smallamount of his own subjective time, a large amount of subjective timehas passed for other people on Earth. For example, an observer mighttake a trip away from the Earth and back at relativistic velocities, withthe trip only lasting a few years according to the observer's own clocks,and return to find that thousands of years had passed on Earth. It

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should be noted, though, that according to relativity there is no objective answer to the question of how much time"really" passed during the trip; it would be equally valid to say that the trip had lasted only a few years or that the triphad lasted thousands of years, depending on your choice of reference frame.This form of "travel into the future" is theoretically allowed (and has been demonstrated at very small time scales)using the following methods:[24]

• Using velocity-based time dilation under the theory of special relativity, for instance:• Traveling at almost the speed of light to a distant star, then slowing down, turning around, and traveling at

almost the speed of light back to Earth[50] (see the Twin paradox)• Using gravitational time dilation under the theory of general relativity, for instance:

• Residing inside of a hollow, high-mass object;• Residing just outside of the event horizon of a black hole, or sufficiently near an object whose mass or density

causes the gravitational time dilation near it to be larger than the time dilation factor on Earth.Additionally, it might be possible to see the distant future of the Earth using methods which do not involve relativityat all, although it is even more debatable whether these should be deemed a form of "time travel":• Hibernation• Suspended animation

Time dilation

Transversal Time dilation

Time dilation is permitted by Albert Einstein's special and generaltheories of relativity. These theories state that, relative to a givenobserver, time passes more slowly for bodies moving quickly relativeto that observer, or bodies that are deeper within a gravity well.[51] Forexample, a clock which is moving relative to the observer will bemeasured to run slow in that observer's rest frame; as a clockapproaches the speed of light it will almost slow to a stop, although itcan never quite reach light speed so it will never completely stop. Fortwo clocks moving inertially (not accelerating) relative to one another,this effect is reciprocal, with each clock measuring the other to beticking slower. However, the symmetry is broken if one clockaccelerates, as in the twin paradox where one twin stays on Earth whilethe other travels into space, turns around (which involves acceleration),and returns—in this case both agree the traveling twin has aged less.General relativity states that time dilation effects also occur if oneclock is deeper in a gravity well than the other, with the clock deeper inthe well ticking more slowly; this effect must be taken into account when calibrating the clocks on the satellites ofthe Global Positioning System, and it could lead to significant differences in rates of aging for observers at differentdistances from a black hole.

It has been calculated that, under general relativity, a person could travel forward in time at a rate four times that ofdistant observers by residing inside a spherical shell with a diameter of 5 meters and the mass of Jupiter.[24] For sucha person, every one second of their "personal" time would correspond to four seconds for distant observers. Ofcourse, squeezing the mass of a large planet into such a structure is not expected to be within our technologicalcapabilities in the near future.There is a great deal of experimental evidence supporting the validity of equations for velocity-based time dilation in special relativity[52] and gravitational time dilation in general relativity.[53] [54] [55] However, with current technologies it is only possible to cause a human traveller to age less than companions on Earth by a very small

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fraction of a second, the current record being about 20 milliseconds for the cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev.

Time perceptionTime perception can be apparently sped up for living organisms through hibernation, where the body temperatureand metabolic rate of the creature is reduced. A more extreme version of this is suspended animation, where the ratesof chemical processes in the subject would be severely reduced.Time dilation and suspended animation only allow "travel" to the future, never the past, so they do not violatecausality, and it's debatable whether they should be called time travel. However time dilation can be viewed as abetter fit for our understanding of the term "time travel" than suspended animation, since with time dilation less timeactually does pass for the traveler than for those who remain behind, so the traveler can be said to have reached thefuture faster than others, whereas with suspended animation this is not the case.

Other ideas from mainstream physics

ParadoxesThe Novikov self-consistency principle and calculations by Kip S. Thorne indicate that simple masses passingthrough time travel wormholes could never engender paradoxes—there are no initial conditions that lead to paradoxonce time travel is introduced. If his results can be generalized, they would suggest, curiously, that none of thesupposed paradoxes formulated in time travel stories can actually be formulated at a precise physical level: that is,that any situation you can set up in a time travel story turns out to permit many consistent solutions. Thecircumstances might, however, turn out to be almost unbelievably strange.Parallel universes might provide a way out of paradoxes. Everett's many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantummechanics suggests that all possible quantum events can occur in mutually exclusive histories.[56] These alternate, orparallel, histories would form a branching tree symbolizing all possible outcomes of any interaction. If allpossibilities exist, any paradoxes could be explained by having the paradoxical events happening in a differentuniverse. This concept is most often used in science-fiction, but some physicists such as David Deutsch havesuggested that if time travel is possible and the MWI is correct, then a time traveler should indeed end up in adifferent history than the one he started from.[1] [57] On the other hand, Stephen Hawking has argued that even if theMWI is correct, we should expect each time traveler to experience a single self-consistent timeline, so that timetravelers remain within their own world rather than traveling to a different one.[19] And the physicist Allen Everettargued that Deutsch's approach "involves modifying fundamental principles of quantum mechanics; it certainly goesbeyond simply adopting the MWI." Everett also argues that even if Deutsch's approach is correct, it would imply thatany macroscopic object composed of multiple particles would be split apart when traveling back in time through awormhole, with different particles emerging in different worlds.[58]

Daniel Greenberger and Karl Svozil proposed that quantum theory gives a model for time travel withoutparadoxes.[59] [60] In quantum theory observation causes possible states to 'collapse' into one measured state; hence,the past observed from the present is deterministic (it has only one possible state), but the present observed from thepast has many possible states until our actions cause it to collapse into one state. Our actions will then be seen tohave been inevitable.

Using quantum entanglementQuantum-mechanical phenomena such as quantum teleportation, the EPR paradox, or quantum entanglement mightappear to create a mechanism that allows for faster-than-light (FTL) communication or time travel, and in fact someinterpretations of quantum mechanics such as the Bohm interpretation presume that some information is beingexchanged between particles instantaneously in order to maintain correlations between particles.[61] This effect wasreferred to as "spooky action at a distance" by Einstein.

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Nevertheless, the fact that causality is preserved in quantum mechanics is a rigorous result in modern quantum fieldtheories, and therefore modern theories do not allow for time travel or FTL communication. In any specific instancewhere FTL has been claimed, more detailed analysis has proven that to get a signal, some form of classicalcommunication must also be used.[62] The no-communication theorem also gives a general proof that quantumentanglement cannot be used to transmit information faster than classical signals. The fact that these quantumphenomena apparently do not allow FTL time travel is often overlooked in popular press coverage of quantumteleportation experiments. How the rules of quantum mechanics work to preserve causality is an active area ofresearch.

Philosophical understandings of time travelTheories of time travel are riddled with questions about causality and paradoxes. Compared to other fundamentalconcepts in modern physics, time is still not understood very well. Philosophers have been theorizing about thenature of time since the era of the ancient Greek philosophers and earlier. Some philosophers and physicists whostudy the nature of time also study the possibility of time travel and its logical implications. The probability ofparadoxes and their possible solutions are often considered.For more information on the philosophical considerations of time travel, consult the work of David Lewis or TedSider [63]. For more information on physics-related theories of time travel, consider the work of Kurt Gödel(especially his theorized universe) and Lawrence Sklar.

Presentism vs. eternalismThe relativity of simultaneity in modern physics favors the philosophical view known as eternalism orfour-dimensionalism (Sider, 2001), in which physical objects are either temporally extended space-time worms, orspace-time worm stages, and this view would be favored further by the possibility of time travel (Sider, 2001).Eternalism, also sometimes known as "block universe theory", builds on a standard method of modeling time as adimension in physics, to give time a similar ontology to that of space (Sider, 2001). This would mean that time is justanother dimension, that future events are "already there", and that there is no objective flow of time. This view isdisputed by Tim Maudlin in his The Metaphysics Within Physics.Presentism is a school of philosophy that holds that neither the future nor the past exist, and there are no non-presentobjects. In this view, time travel is impossible because there is no future or past to travel to. However, some 21stcentury presentists have argued that although past and future objects do not exist, there can still be definite truthsabout past and future events, and thus it is possible that a future truth about a time traveler deciding to travel back tothe present date could explain the time traveler's actual appearance in the present.[64] [65]

The grandfather paradoxOne subject often brought up in philosophical discussion of time is the idea that, if one were to go back in time,paradoxes could ensue if the time traveler were to change things. The best examples of this are the grandfatherparadox and the idea of autoinfanticide. The grandfather paradox is a hypothetical situation in which a time travelergoes back in time and attempts to kill his grandfather at a time before his grandfather met his grandmother. If he didso, then his mother or father never would have been born, and neither would the time traveler himself, in which casethe time traveler never would have gone back in time to kill his grandfather.Autoinfanticide works the same way, where a traveler goes back and attempts to kill himself as an infant. If he wereto do so, he never would have grown up to go back in time to kill himself as an infant.This discussion is important to the philosophy of time travel because philosophers question whether these paradoxes make time travel impossible. Some philosophers answer the paradoxes by arguing that it might be the case that backwards time travel could be possible but that it would be impossible to actually change the past in any way,[66] an

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idea similar to the proposed Novikov self-consistency principle in physics.

Theory of compossibilityDavid Lewis's analysis of compossibility and the implications of changing the past is meant to account for thepossibilities of time travel in a one-dimensional conception of time without creating logical paradoxes. ConsiderLewis’ example of Tim. Tim hates his grandfather and would like nothing more than to kill him. The only problemfor Tim is that his grandfather died years ago. Tim wants so badly to kill his grandfather himself that he constructs atime machine to travel back to 1955 when his grandfather was young and kill him then. Assuming that Tim cantravel to a time when his grandfather is still alive, the question must then be raised; Can Tim kill his grandfather?For Lewis, the answer lies within the context of the usage of the word "can". Lewis explains that the word "can"must be viewed against the context of pertinent facts relating to the situation. Suppose that Tim has a rifle, years ofrifle training, a straight shot on a clear day and no outside force to restrain Tim’s trigger finger. Can Tim shoot hisgrandfather? Considering these facts, it would appear that Tim can in fact kill his grandfather. In other words, all ofthe contextual facts are compossible with Tim killing his grandfather. However, when reflecting on thecompossibility of a given situation, we must gather the most inclusive set of facts that we are able to.Consider now the fact that Tim’s grandfather died in 1993 and not in 1955. This new fact about Tim’s situationreveals that him killing his grandfather is not compossible with the current set of facts. Tim cannot kill hisgrandfather because his grandfather died in 1993 and not when he was young. Thus, Lewis concludes, the statements"Tim doesn’t but can, because he has what it takes," and, "Tim doesn’t, and can’t, because it is logically impossible tochange the past," are not contradictions, they are both true given the relevant set of facts. The usage of the word"can" is equivocal: he "can" and "can not" under different relevant facts. So what must happen to Tim as he takesaim? Lewis believes that his gun will jam, a bird will fly in the way, or Tim simply slips on a banana peel. Eitherway, there will be some logical force of the universe that will prevent Tim every time from killing hisgrandfather.[67]

Ideas from fiction

Rules of time travelTime travel themes in science fiction and the media can generally be grouped into two general categories (based oneffect—methods are extremely varied and numerous), each of which can be further subdivided.[68] [69] [70] [71]

However, there are no formal names for these two categories, so concepts rather than formal names will be used withnotes regarding what categories they are placed under. Note: These classifications do not address the method of timetravel itself, i.e. how to travel through time, but instead call to attention differing rules of what happens to history.

1. There is a single fixed history, which is self-consistent and unchangeable. In this version, everythinghappens on a single timeline which does not contradict itself and cannot interact with anything potentiallyexisting outside of it.

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A man travelling a few seconds into the past in asingle self-consistent timeline. This scenario

raises questions about free will, since once thetraveller has decided to enter the time machine,then as soon as his own double appears, there isabsolutely no way for him to change his mind.

1.1 This can be simply achieved by applying the Novikovself-consistency principle, named after Dr. IgorDmitrievich Novikov, Professor of Astrophysics atCopenhagen University. The principle states that thetimeline is totally fixed, and any actions taken by a timetraveler were part of history all along, so it is impossiblefor the time traveler to "change" history in any way. Thetime traveler's actions may be the cause of events in theirown past though, which leads to the potential for circularcausation and the predestination paradox; for examples ofcircular causation, see Robert A. Heinlein's story "By HisBootstraps". The Novikov self-consistency principleproposes that the local laws of physics in a region ofspacetime containing time travelers cannot be any different from the local laws of physics in any otherregion of spacetime.[72]

1.2 Alternatively, new physical laws take effect regarding time travel that thwarts attempts to change thepast (contradicting the assumption mentioned in 1.1 above that the laws that apply to time travelers arethe same ones that apply to everyone else). These new physical laws can be as unsubtle as to reject timetravelers who travel to the past to change it by pulling them back to the point from when they came asMichael Moorcock's The Dancers at the End of Time or where the traveler is rendered a noncorporealphantom unable to physically interact with the past such as in some Pre-Crisis Superman stories andMichael Garrett's "Brief Encounter" in Twilight Zone Magazine May 1981.

2. History is flexible and is subject to change (Plastic Time)2.1 Changes to history are easy and can impact the traveler, the world, or both

Examples include Doctor Who and the Back to the Future trilogy. In some cases, any resultingparadoxes can be devastating, threatening the very existence of the universe. In other cases thetraveler simply cannot return home. The extreme version of this (Chaotic Time) is that history isvery sensitive to changes with even small changes having large impacts such as in Ray Bradbury's"A Sound of Thunder".

2.2 History is change resistant in direct relationship to the importance of the event ie. small trivialevents can be readily changed but large ones take great effort.

In the Twilight Zone episode "Back There" a traveler tries to prevent the assassination of PresidentLincoln and fails, but his actions have made subtle changes to the status quo in his own time (e.g.a man who had been the butler of his gentleman's club is now a rich tycoon).In the 2002 remake of The Time Machine, it is explained via a vision why Hartdegen could notsave his sweetheart Emma — doing so would have resulted in his never developing the timemachine he used to try and save her.In The Saga of Darren Shan, major events in the past cannot be changed, but their details can alterwhile providing the same outcome. Under this model, if a time traveler were to go back in timeand kill Hitler, another Nazi would simply take his place and commit his same actions, leaving thebroader course of history unchanged.In the Doctor Who episode The Waters of Mars, Captain Adelaide Brooke's death on Mars is the most singular catalyst of human travel outside the solar system. At first, the Doctor realizes her death is a "fixed point in time" and does not intervene, but later defies this rule and transports her and her crew to Earth. Rather than allow human history to change, Captain Brooke commits

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suicide on Earth, leaving history mostly unchanged.

Time travel under the parallel universehypothesis. This scenario has the potential to

preserve free will, but breaks symmetry betweenuniverses.

3. Alternate timelines. In this version of time travel, there aremultiple coexisting alternate histories, so that when the travelergoes back in time, he/she ends up in a new timeline wherehistorical events can differ from the timeline he/she came from,but her original timeline does not cease to exist (this means thegrandfather paradox can be avoided since even if the timetraveler's grandfather is killed at a young age in the newtimeline, he still survived to have children in the originaltimeline, so there is still a causal explanation for the traveler'sexistence). Time travel may actually create a new timeline thatdiverges from the original timeline at the moment the timetraveler appears in the past, or the traveler may arrive in analready existing parallel universe (though unless the paralleluniverse's history was identical to the time traveler's history upuntil the point where the time traveler appeared, it isquestionable whether the latter version qualifies as 'time travel').

James P. Hogan's The Proteus Operation fully explainsparallel universe time travel in chapter 20 where it has Einstein explaining that all the outcomes alreadyexist and all time travel does is change which already existing branch you will experience.

Though Star Trek has a long tradition of using the 2.1 mechanic, as seen in "The City on the Edge ofForever", "Tomorrow is Yesterday", "Time and Again", "Future's End", "Before and After", "Endgame"and as late as Enterprise's Temporal Cold War, "Parallels" had an example of what Data called"quantum realities." His exact words on the matter were "But there is a theory in quantum physics thatall possibilities that can happen do happen in alternate quantum realities," suggesting the writers werethinking of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Michael Crichton's novel Timeline takes the approach that all time travel really is travel to an alreadyexisting parallel universe where time passes at a slower rate than our own but actions in any of theseparallel universes may have already occurred in our past. It is unclear from the novel if any sizablechange in events of these parallel universe can be made.In the Homeline setting of GURPS Infinite Worlds there are echos — parallel universes at an early partof Homeline's history but changes to their history do not affect Homeline's history. However tamperingwith their history can cause them to shift quanta making access harder if not impossible.A type of story which could be placed in this category is one where the alternative version of the pastlies not in some other dimension, but simply at a distant location in space or a future period of time thatreplicates conditions in the traveler's past. For example, in a Futurama episode called The Late Philip J.Fry, the professor designed a forward-only time travel device. Trapped in the future, he and twocolleagues travel forward all the way to the end of the universe, at which point they witness a new BigBang which gives rise to a new universe whose history mirrors their own history. Then they continue togo forward until they reach the exact time of their initial departure. Although this journey is not exactlya backward time travel, the final result is the same.In the Japanese manga, Dragon Ball Z, the character Trunks travels back in time to warn the characters of their deaths soon to come. This does not change his time line, only creates a new one in which they do not die. Soon two of the characters destroy the lab where the monster Cell is being created, stopping him from absorbing the androids, creating a third time line. Later it is revealed that Trunks is killed by

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Cell in the future, then travels to three years before any of the events occurs, which creates a fourth timeline. No matter what any character does in the past, their own original time line is unchanged.

Immutable timelines

Time travel in a type 1 universe does not allow paradoxes such as the grandfather paradox to occur, where onededuces both a conclusion and its opposite (in the case of the grandfather paradox, one can start with the premise ofthe time traveler killing his grandfather, and reach the conclusion that the time traveler will not be able to kill hisgrandfather since he was never born) though it can allow other paradoxes to occur.In 1.1, the Novikov self-consistency principle asserts that the existence of a method of time travel constrains eventsto remain self-consistent. This will cause any attempt to violate such consistency to fail, even if seemingly extremelyimprobable events are required.

Example: You have a device that can send a single bit of information back to itself at a precise moment intime. You receive a bit at 10:00:00 p.m., then no bits for thirty seconds after that. If you send a bit back to10:00:00 p.m., everything works fine. However, if you try to send a bit to 10:00:15 p.m. (a time at which nobit was received), your transmitter will mysteriously fail. Or your dog will distract you for fifteen seconds. Oryour transmitter will appear to work, but as it turns out your receiver failed at exactly 10:00:15 p.m., etc.Examples of this kind of universe are found in Robert Forward's novel Timemaster, the Twilight Zone episode"No Time Like the Past", and the 1980 Jeannot Szwarc film Somewhere In Time (based on Richard Matheson'snovel Bid Time Return).

In 1.2, time travel is constrained to prevent paradox. How this occurs is dependent on whether interaction with thepast is possible.If interaction with the past is possible and one attempts to make a paradox, one undergoes involuntary oruncontrolled time travel. In the time-travel stories of Connie Willis, time travelers encounter "slippage" whichprevents them from either reaching the intended time or translates them a sufficient distance from their destination atthe intended time, as to prevent any paradox from occurring.

Example: A man who travels into the past with intentions to kill Hitler finds himself on a Montana farm in lateApril 1945.

In the The Dancers at the End of Time series, Michael Moorcock invented a plot device called the Morphail Effect.This causes a time traveler to be ejected from the time in which he or she is about to cause a paradox.

Example 1: a man from the End of Time period travels to the past and is executed. Instead of dying (whichwould cause a paradox), he experiences a return to the End of TimeExample 2: time travelers sometimes visit the End of Time from their own epochs in the past. Those thatattempt to return to their own period are likely to reappear inadvertently at the End of Time.

The general consequences are that time travel to the traveler's past is difficult, and many time travelers findthemselves adventuring deeper and deeper into their future.If interaction with the past is not possible then the traveler simply becomes an invisible insubstantial phantom unableto interact with the past as in the case of James Harrigan in Michael Garrett's "Brief Encounter".While a Type 1 universe will prevent a grandfather paradox it doesn't prevent paradoxes in other aspects of physicssuch as the predestination paradox and the ontological paradox (GURPS Infinite Worlds calls this "Free LunchParadox").The predestination paradox is where the traveler's actions create some type of causal loop, in which some event A inthe future helps cause event B in the past via time travel, and the event B in turn is one of the causes of A. Forinstance, a time traveler might go back to investigate a specific historical event like the Great Fire of London, andtheir actions in the past could then inadvertently end up being the original cause of that very event.

Time travel 15

Examples of this kind of causal loop are found in Robert Forward's novel Timemaster, the Twilight Zone episode"No Time Like the Past", EC Comics stories like "Man who was Killed in Time" (Weird Science #5), "Why PapaLeft Home" (Weird Science #11), "Only Time will Tell" (Weird Fantasy #1), "The Connection" (Weird Fantasy #9),"Skeleton Key" (Weird Fantasy #16), and "Counter Clockwise" (Weird Fantasy #18), the 1980 Jeannot Szwarc filmSomewhere In Time (based on Richard Matheson's novel Bid Time Return), the Michael Moorcock novel Behold theMan, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It is also featured in 1972's Doctor Who, in the three part TheDay of the Daleks, where three freedom fighters from the future attempt to kill a British diplomat they believeresponsible for World War Three, and the subsequent easy conquest of Earth by the Daleks. In the future they weretaught an explosion at the diplomat's (Sir Reginald Styles) mansion with foreign delegates inside caused the nationsof the world to attack each other. The Doctor (Jon Pertwee), figures out that they caused the explosion all along byway of a temporal paradox.In the 2006 crime thriller Déjà Vu there appears to be causal loops, as Agent Doug Carlin decides to send a messageback in time to save his partner's life, but this will eventually cause his death. Later in the movie, tough, Carlin isable to change events and create an alternate reality. This apparent paradox can be explained by multiple previousunseen time travels in a type 3 universe.In the videogame Escape from Monkey Island there's a section in which the player, controlling GuybrushThreepwood, gets some items from his future self in the Swamp of Time. Soon after that, he will become the futureGuybrush and will have to give the items to his past self in the same order. This is an example of causal loop becausethose items were created purely from the time travel. Anyway if the player doesn't repeat every action properly, willcause a paradox that sends Guybrush back to the entrance of the swamp, implying a type 1.2 universe.

A version of the ontological paradox. Theappearance of the traveler is the result of his

disappearance a few seconds later. In thisscenario, the traveler is traveling along a closed

timelike curve.

The Novikov self-consistency principle can also result in anontological paradox (also known as the knowledge or informationparadox)[73] where the very existence of some object or information isa time loop. GURPS Infinite Worlds gives the example (from The EyreAffair) of a time traveler going to Shakespeare's time with a book of allhis works. Shakespeare pressed for time simply copies the informationin the book from the future. The paradox is that nobody actually writesthe plays.

The philosopher Kelley L. Ross argues in "Time Travel Paradoxes"[74]

that in an ontological paradox scenario involving a physical object,there can be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. Rossuses Somewhere in Time as an example where Jane Seymour'scharacter gives Christopher Reeve's character a watch she has owned for many years, and when he travels back intime he gives the same watch to Jane Seymour's character 60 years in the past. As Ross states

"The watch is an impossible object. It violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Law ofEntropy. If time travel makes that watch possible, then time travel itself is impossible. The watch,indeed, must be absolutely identical to itself in the 19th and 20th centuries, since Reeve carries it withhim from the future instantaneously into the past and bestows it on Seymour. The watch, however,cannot be identical to itself, since all the years in which it is in the possession of Seymour and thenReeve it will wear in the normal manner. It's [sic] entropy will increase. The watch carried back byReeve will be more worn that [sic] the watch that would have been acquired by Seymour."

On the other hand, the second law of thermodynamics is understood by modern physicists to be a statistical law rather than an absolute one, so spontaneous reversals of entropy or failure to increase in entropy are not impossible, just improbable (see for example the fluctuation theorem). In addition, the second law of thermodynamics only states that entropy should increase in systems which are isolated from interactions with the external world, so Igor Novikov (creator of the Novikov self-consistency principle) has argued that in the case of macroscopic objects like the watch

Time travel 16

whose worldlines form closed loops, the outside world can expend energy to repair wear/entropy that the objectacquires over the course of its history, so that it will be back in its original condition when it closes the loop.[75]

Mutable timelines

Time travel in a Type 2 universe is much more complex. The biggest problem is how to explain changes in the past.One method of explanation is that once the past changes, so too do the memories of all observers. This would meanthat no observer would ever observe the changing of the past (because they will not remember changing the past).This would make it hard to tell whether you are in a Type 1 universe or a Type 2 universe. You could, however, infersuch information by knowing if a) communication with the past were possible or b) it appeared that the time line hadnever been changed as a result of an action someone remembers taking, although evidence exists that other peopleare changing their time lines fairly often.An example of this kind of universe is presented in Thrice Upon a Time, a novel by James P. Hogan. The Back to theFuture trilogy films also seem to feature a single mutable timeline (see the "Back to the Future FAQ [76]" for detailson how the writers imagined time travel worked in the movies' world). By contrast, the short story "BrooklynProject" by William Tenn provides a sketch of life in a Type 2 world where no one even notices as the timelinechanges repeatedly.In type 2.1, attempts are being made at changing the timeline, however, all that is accomplished in the first tries isthat the method in which decisive events occur is changed; final conclusions in the bigger scheme cannot be broughtto a different outcome.As an example, the movie Déjà Vu depicts a paper note sent to the past with vital information to prevent a terroristattack. However, the vital information results in the killing of an ATF agent, but does not prevent the terrorist attack;the very same agent died in the previous version of the timeline as well, albeit under different circumstances. Finally,the timeline is changed by sending a human into the past, arguably a "stronger" measure than simply sending back apaper note, which results in preventing both a murder and the terrorist attack. As in the Back to the Future movietrilogy, there seems to be a ripple effect too as changes from the past "propagate" into the present, and people in thepresent have altered memory of events that occurred after the changes made to the timeline.The science fiction writer Larry Niven suggests in his essay "The Theory and Practice of Time Travel" that in a type2.1 universe, the most efficient way for the universe to "correct" a change is for time travel to never be discovered,and that in a type 2.2 universe, the very large (or infinite) number of time travelers from the endless future will causethe timeline to change wildly until it reaches a history in which time travel is never discovered. However, many other"stable" situations might also exist in which time travel occurs but no paradoxes are created; if thechangeable-timeline universe finds itself in such a state no further changes will occur, and to the inhabitants of theuniverse it will appear identical to the type 1.1 scenario. This is sometimes referred to as the "Time Dilution Effect".Few if any physicists or philosophers have taken seriously the possibility of "changing" the past except in the case ofmultiple universes, and in fact many have argued that this idea is logically incoherent,[66] so the mutable timelineidea is rarely considered outside of science fiction.Also, deciding whether a given universe is of Type 2.1 or 2.2 can not be done objectively, as the categorization oftimeline-invasive measures as "strong" or "weak" is arbitrary, and up to interpretation: An observer can disagreeabout a measure being "weak", and might, in the lack of context, argue instead that simply a mishap occurred whichthen led to no effective change.An example would be the paper note sent back to the past in the film Déjà Vu, as described above. Was it a "tooweak" change, or was it just a local-time alteration which had no extended effect on the larger timeline? As theuniverse in Déjà Vu seems not entirely immune to paradoxes (some arguably minute paradoxes do occur), bothversions seem to be equally possible.

Time travel 17

Alternate histories

In Type 3, any event that appears to have caused a paradox has instead created a new time line. The old time lineremains unchanged, with the time traveler or information sent simply having vanished, never to return. A difficultywith this explanation, however, is that conservation of mass-energy would be violated for the origin timeline and thedestination timeline. A possible solution to this is to have the mechanics of time travel require that mass-energy beexchanged in precise balance between past and future at the moment of travel, or to simply expand the scope of theconservation law to encompass all timelines. Some examples of this kind of time travel can be found in DavidGerrold's book The Man Who Folded Himself and The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, plus several episodes of theTV show Star Trek: The Next Generation and the android saga in the Japanese TV series Dragon Ball Z.

Gradual and instantaneousIn literature, there are two methods of time travel:1. The most commonly used method of time travel in science fiction is the instantaneous movement from one pointin time to another, like using the controls on a CD player to skip to a previous or next song, though in most cases,there is a machine of some sort, and some energy expended in order to make this happen (like the time-traveling DeLorean in Back to the Future or the phone booth that traveled through the "circuits of history" in Bill and Ted'sExcellent Adventure). In some cases, there is not even the beginning of a scientific explanation for this kind of timetravel; it's popular probably because it is more spectacular and makes time travel easier. The "Universal Remote"used by Adam Sandler in the movie Click works in the same manner, although only in one direction, the future.While his character Michael Newman can travel back to a previous point it is merely a playback with which hecannot interact.

A gradual time travel, as in the movie Primer.When the time machine is red, everything inside

is going through time at normal rate, butbackwards. During entry/exit it seems there

would have to be fusion/separation between theforward and reversed versions of the traveler.

2. In The Time Machine, H.G. Wells explains that we are movingthrough time with a constant speed. Time travel then is, in Wells'words, "stopping or accelerating one's drift along the time-dimension,or even turning about and traveling the other way." George Pal,director of the 1960 adaptation based on Wells's classic, accordinglychose to depict time travel by employing time-lapse photography. Toexpand on the audio playback analogy used above, this would be likerewinding or fast forwarding an analogue audio cassette and playingthe tape at a chosen point. Perhaps the oldest example of this methodof time travel is in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass (1871):the White Queen is living backwards, hence her memory is workingboth ways. Her kind of time travel is uncontrolled: she moves throughtime with a constant speed of -1 and she cannot change it. T.H. White,in the first part of his Arthurian novel The Once and Future King, The Sword in the Stone (1938) used the same idea:the wizard Merlyn lives backward in time, because he was born "at the wrong end of time" and has to live backwardsfrom the front. "Some people call it having second sight", he says. This method of gradual time travel is not aspopular in modern science fiction, though a form of it does occur in the film Primer.

Time travel or space-time travelAn objection that is sometimes raised against the concept of time machines in science fiction is that they ignore the motion of the Earth between the date the time machine departs and the date it returns. The idea that a traveler can go into a machine that sends him or her to 1865 and step out into the exact same spot on Earth might be said to ignore the issue that Earth is moving through space around the Sun, which is moving in the galaxy, and so on, so that advocates of this argument imagine that "realistically" the time machine should actually reappear in space far away from the Earth's position at that date. However, the theory of relativity rejects the idea of absolute time and space; in

Time travel 18

relativity there can be no universal truth about the spatial distance between events which occur at different times[77]

(such as an event on Earth today and an event on Earth in 1865), and thus no objective truth about which point inspace at one time is at the "same position" that the Earth was at another time. In the theory of special relativity,which deals with situations where gravity is negligible, the laws of physics work the same way in every inertialframe of reference and therefore no frame's perspective is physically better than any other frame's, and differentframes disagree about whether two events at different times happened at the "same position" or "different positions".In the theory of general relativity, which incorporates the effects of gravity, all coordinate systems are on equalfooting because of a feature known as "diffeomorphism invariance".[78]

Nevertheless, the idea that the Earth moves away from the time traveler when he takes a trip through time has beenused in a few science fiction stories, such as the 2000 AD comic Strontium Dog, in which Johnny Alpha uses "TimeBombs" to propel an enemy several seconds into the future, during which time the movement of the Earth causes theunfortunate victim to re-appear in space. Much earlier, Clark Ashton Smith used this form of time travel in severalstories such as "The Letter from Mohaun Los" (1932) where the protagonist ends up on a planet millions of years inthe future which "happened to occupy the same space through which Earth had passed". Other science fiction storiestry to anticipate this objection and offer a rationale for the fact that the traveler remains on Earth, such as the 1957Robert Heinlein novel The Door into Summer where Heinlein essentially handwaved the issue with a singlesentence: "You stay on the world line you were on." In his 1980 novel The Number of the Beast a "continua device"allows the protagonists to dial in the coordinates of space and time and it instantly moves them there—withoutexplaining how such a device might work.The television series Seven Days also dealt with this problem; when the chrononaut would be 'rewinding', he wouldalso be propelling himself backwards around the Earth's orbit, with the intention of landing at some chosen spatiallocation, though seldom hitting the mark precisely. In Piers Anthony's Bearing an Hourglass, the potent Hourglassof the Incarnation of Time naturally moves the Incarnation in space according to the numerous movements of theglobe through the solar system, the solar system through the galaxy, etc.; but by carefully negating some of themovements he can also travel in space within the limits of the planet. The television series Doctor Who avoided thisissue by establishing early on in the series that the Doctor's TARDIS is able to move about in space in addition totraveling in time.

Notes[1] Deutsch, David (1991). "Quantum mechanics near closed timelike curves". Physical Review D 44 (10): 3197–3217.

Bibcode 1991PhRvD..44.3197D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.44.3197.[2] Revati (http:/ / www. mythfolklore. net/ india/ encyclopedia/ revati. htm), Encyclopedia for Epics of Ancient India[3] Lord Balarama (http:/ / mayapur. com/ node/ 1160/ ), Sri Mayapur[4] Yorke, Christopher (February 2006). "Malchronia: Cryonics and Bionics as Primitive Weapons in the War on Time" (http:/ / jetpress. org/

volume15/ yorke-rowe. html). Journal of Evolution and Technology 15 (1): 73–85. . Retrieved 2009-08-29.[5] Rosenberg, Donna (1997). Folklore, myths, and legends: a world perspective. McGraw-Hill. p. 421. ISBN 084425780X.[6] "Choni HaMe'agel" (http:/ / www. jewishsearch. com/ article_395. html). Jewish search. . Retrieved November 6, 2009.[7] Robert Darnton, The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France (New York: W.W. Norton, 1996), 120.[8] Alkon, Paul K. (1987). Origins of Futuristic Fiction. The University of Georgia Press. pp. 95–96. ISBN 0-8203-0932-X.[9] Alkon, Paul K. (1987). Origins of Futuristic Fiction. The University of Georgia Press. p. 85. ISBN 0-8203-0932-X.[10] Yury Akutin, Александр Вельтман и его роман "Странник" (http:/ / az. lib. ru/ w/ welxtman_a_f/ text_0090. shtml) (A.V. and his novel

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Time travel 20

[51] Physics for Scientists and Engineers with Modern Physics, Fifth Edition, p.1258.[52] Roberts, Tom (October). "What is the experimental basis of Special Relativity?" (http:/ / math. ucr. edu/ home/ baez/ physics/ Relativity/

SR/ experiments. html#Tests_of_time_dilation). . Retrieved 4 December 2009.[53] "Scout Rocket Experiment" (http:/ / hyperphysics. phy-astr. gsu. edu/ hbase/ relativ/ gratim. html#c3). . Retrieved 4 December 2009.[54] "Hafele-Keating Experiment" (http:/ / hyperphysics. phy-astr. gsu. edu/ hbase/ relativ/ airtim. html#c3). . Retrieved 4 December 2009.[55] Pogge, Richard W. (27 April 2009). "GPS and Relativity" (http:/ / www. astronomy. ohio-state. edu/ ~pogge/ Ast162/ Unit5/ gps. html). .

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Encyclopedia of Philosophy article "Time travel and Modern Physics" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ time-travel-phys/ ).[58] Everett, Allen (2004). "Time travel paradoxes, path integrals, and the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics". Physical Review

D 69 (124023). arXiv:gr-qc/0410035. Bibcode 2004PhRvD..69l4023E. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.69.124023.[59] Greenberger, Daniel M; Karl Svozil (2005). Quantum Theory Looks at Time Travel. arXiv:quant-ph/0506027.

Bibcode 2005quant.ph..6027G.[60] Kettlewell, Julianna (2005-06-17). "New model 'permits time travel'" (http:/ / news. bbc. co. uk/ 2/ hi/ 4097258. stm). BBC News. .

Retrieved 2010-05-25.[61] Goldstein, Sheldon. "Bohmian Mechanics" (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ qm-bohm/ ). . Retrieved 2006-10-30.[62] Nielsen, Michael; Chuang, Isaac (2000). Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. Cambridge. p. 28. ISBN 0521632358.[63] http:/ / tedsider. org/[64] Keller, Simon; Michael Nelson (September 2001). "Presentists should believe in time-travel" (http:/ / people. bu. edu/ stk/ Papers/

Timetravel. pdf) (PDF). Australian Journal of Philosophy 79.3 (3): 333–345. doi:10.1080/713931204. .[65] This view is contested by another contemporary advocate of presentism, Craig Bourne, in his recent book A Future for Presentism, although

for substantially different (and more complex) reasons.[66] see this discussion (http:/ / www. sfu. ca/ philosophy/ swartz/ time_travel1. htm) between two philosophers, for example[67] Lewis, David (1976). "The paradoxes of time travel" (http:/ / www. csus. edu/ indiv/ m/ merlinos/ Paradoxes of Time Travel. pdf). American

Philosophical Quarterly 13: 145–52. arXiv:gr-qc/9603042. Bibcode 1996gr.qc.....3042K. .[68] Grey, William (1999). "Troubles with Time Travel". Philosophy (Cambridge University Press) 74 (1): 55–70.

doi:10.1017/S0031819199001047.[69] Rickman, Gregg (2004). The Science Fiction Film Reader. Limelight Editions. ISBN 0879109947.[70] Nahin, Paul J. (2001). Time machines: time travel in physics, metaphysics, and science fiction. Springer. ISBN 0387985719.[71] Schneider, Susan (2009). Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 1405149078.[72] Friedman, John; Michael Morris, Igor Novikov, Fernando Echeverria, Gunnar Klinkhammer, Kip Thorne, Ulvi Yurtsever (1990). "Cauchy

problem in spacetimes with closed timelike curves" (http:/ / authors. library. caltech. edu/ 3737/ ). Physical Review D 42 (6): 1915.Bibcode 1990PhRvD..42.1915F. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.42.1915. .

[73] Sukys, Paul (1999). Lifting the scientific veil: science appreciation for the nonscientist. Ardsley House Publishers. pp. 236–237.ISBN 0847696006.

[74] Kelley L. Ross, " Time Travel Paradoxes (http:/ / www. friesian. com/ paradox. htm)"[75] Gott, J. Richard (2001). Time Travel in Einstein's Universe. Houghton Mifflin. p. 23. ISBN 0395955637.[76] http:/ / web. archive. org/ web/ 20040405144429/ http:/ / www. bttf. com/ film_faq. htm[77] Geroch, Robert (1978). General Relativity From A to B. The University of Chicago Press. p. 124. ISBN 0226288633.[78] Max Planck Institut für Gravitationsphysik (2005-09-12). "Einstein Online: Actors on a changing stage" (http:/ / www. einstein-online. info/

en/ spotlights/ background_independence/ index. html). Einstein-online.info. . Retrieved 2010-05-25.

Bibliography• Davies, Paul (1996). About Time. Pocket Books. ISBN 0-684-81822-1.• Davies, Paul (2002). How to Build a Time Machine. Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0-14-100534-3.• Gale, Richard M (1968). The Philosophy of Time. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-00042-0.• Gott, J. Richard (2002). Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time.

Boston: Mariner Books. ISBN 0-618-25735-7.• Gribbin, John (1985). In Search of Schrödinger's Cat. Corgi Adult. ISBN 0-552-12555-5.• Miller, Kristie (2005). "Time travel and the open future". Disputatio 1 (19): 223–232.• Nahin, Paul J. (2001). Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction.

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Time travel 21

• Nahin, Paul J. (1997). Time Travel: A writer's guide to the real science of plausible time travel. Writer's DigestBooks. Cincinnati, Ohio. ISBN 0-89879-748-9

• Nikolic, H (2006). "Causal paradoxes: a conflict between relativity and the arrow of time". Foundations ofPhysics Letters 19 (3): 259. arXiv:gr-qc/0403121. Bibcode 2006FoPhL..19..259N.doi:10.1007/s10702-006-0516-5.

• Pagels, Heinz (1985). Perfect Symmetry, the Search for the Beginning of Time. Simon & Schuster.ISBN 0-671-46548-1.

• Pickover, Clifford (1999). Time: A Traveler's Guide. Oxford University Press Inc, USA. ISBN 0-19-513096-0.• Randles, Jenny (2005). Breaking the Time Barrier. Simon & Schuster Ltd. ISBN 0-7434-9259-5.• Shore, Graham M (2003). "Constructing Time Machines". Int. J. Mod. Phys. A, Theoretical 18 (23): 4169.

arXiv:gr-qc/0210048. Bibcode 2003IJMPA..18.4169S. doi:10.1142/S0217751X03015118.• Toomey, David (2007). The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics. W.W. Norton &

Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06013-3.

External links• Black holes, Wormholes and Time Travel (http:/ / www. vega. org. uk/ video/ programme/ 61), a Royal Society

Lecture• SF Chronophysics (http:/ / www. xibalba. demon. co. uk/ jbr/ chrono. html), a discussion of Time Travel as it

relates to science fiction• On the Net: Time Travel (http:/ / www. asimovs. com/ _issue_0407/ onthenet2. shtml) by James Patrick Kelly• How Time Travel Will Work (http:/ / www. howstuffworks. com/ time-travel. htm. htm) at HowStuffWorks• Time Travel in Flatland? (http:/ / www. theory. caltech. edu/ people/ patricia/ lctoc. html)• NOVA Online: Time Travel (http:/ / www. pbs. org/ wgbh/ nova/ time)• Professor Predicts Human Time Travel This Century (http:/ / www. physorg. com/ news63371210. html)• Time Traveler Convention (http:/ / web. mit. edu/ adorai/ timetraveler) at MIT• Time Machines in Physics (http:/ / www. math. siu. edu/ Kocik/ tm/ tm-all-ch. htm) - almost 200 citations from

1937 through 2001• Time Travel and Modern Physics (http:/ / plato. stanford. edu/ entries/ time-travel-phys/ ) at the Stanford

Encyclopedia of Philosophy• Time Travel (http:/ / www. iep. utm. edu/ t/ timetrav. htm) at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy• Aparta Krystian: Conventional Models of Time and Their Extensions in Science Fiction (http:/ / www. timetravel.

110mb. com)• Time travellers from the future 'could be here in weeks' (http:/ / www. telegraph. co. uk/ science/

large-hadron-collider/ 3324491/ Time-travellers-from-the-future-could-be-here-in-weeks. html)• Time machine on arxiv.org (http:/ / xstructure. inr. ac. ru/ x-bin/ theme3. py?level=1& index1=-166308)

Article Sources and Contributors 22

Article Sources and ContributorsTime travel  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=431868071  Contributors: -dave-, 12va34, 209.239.196.xxx, 21655, 23skidoo, 2D, 2over0, 5 albert square, 64.34.161.xxx,99Timetravel99, A Nobody, A. Parrot, A5b, ABF, AMglobal, AarCart, Aarktica, Abcdef20, Abomasnow, Abyss42, Acdx, Acebulf, Actcohen, Adam Keller, Adam R. Dennison, Adam78,Adashiel, Addshore, Adhawk, Adiazpaz, AdjustShift, Adlez123, Adonis Albattross, Aerion, Afabbro, Age Happens, AgentPeppermint, Ahoerstemeier, Aillema, Aim Here, Aitias, Aktron, AlMac,Alan_d, Alansohn, AlecStewart, Alecmconroy, Alegoo92, Alekroy, Alex Bakharev, Alex.muller, Alfakim, Alfie66, Ali Abbasi7, AliceTaniyama, AlistairMcMillan, Allen3, Allstarecho,Amatulic, Amit.3ku, Anaxandra, Andareed, Andres, Andrewlp1991, Andrewpmk, Andy Leighton, Andy120290, Andy5421, Andycjp, Angr, Angrybob945, Animum, Anomo, AnonMoos,Anonymous Dissident, Antandrus, Antixt, Antonio Lopez, Apostrophe, Apparition11, Applejuicefool, Appraiser, Arbinado, Arcann, Arcturus, ArielGold, Arjunm, ArmadilloFromHell, Arrt-932,Artcomic, Ashenai, AstroHurricane001, Atimetraveler, AugustinMa, Auric, Avono, Avsa, Awsomelawngnome, Az2yusuf, Azxsdcvf, BBSM, BD2412, Backto1992, Baconmaster117, Bakabaka,Balyg, Banno, Bantomx, Barkingdoc, BarretBonden, Basispitch, Baxxterr, Bcarstens, BeastieLips, Belfunk, BenBaker, Benji64, Benscripps, Bentley4, Bento00, Bertus, Bevo, Bewildebeast,Beyond My Ken, Billy212, Billy213, Billy500, Bisqwit, Bkell, Blake-, Blanchardb, Blueyoshi321, Bmader, Bmckeag, Bmicomp, Bob Castle, Bobbaxter, Bobbb7, Bobo192, Bogey97,Bongwarrior, Booblo, BookGuru, Bougerox134, Boyd.ocon, BoyliciousDarian, Braddie, Branddobbe, Brandon, Brinklej, Brossow, BruceGrubb, Bryan Derksen, Btljs, Bubba hotep, Bugnot,BuickCenturyDriver, BurnDownBabylon, Bwithh, C1k3, CQJ, CWenger, CWii, CalebNoble, Calor, Caltas, Calumrulz, CameronKidd, Camw, Can't sleep, clown will eat me, Canadian-Bacon,Canis Lupus, Capitalist, Capricorn42, CaptainWesker, Carbuncle, Carmichael95, Catastic14, Catbar, Catgut, CatherineMunro, CattleGirl, Cbingel, CedricVonck, Cghobbs, Chairman S.,Chardish, CharlotteWebb, CharmedFreak123, Cheaposgrungy, Cheat2win, Chensiyuan, ChicXulub, Chillum, Chowells, Chrestomanci the Enchanter, ChrisBaker, ChrisHodgesUK, ChristiaanRoorda, Christian Roess, Christian75, Christopher Thomas, Christopher1968, Christy than, Chuq, CinnamonCinder, Ckatz, ClimbRider, Cmdrjameson, Coffeepusher, Cometstyles, Comicist,CommandantNick, CommonsDelinker, Como se what?, ConicProjection, Connelly, Conversion script, Coocooforcocopuffs, Corpx, Corruptcopper, Coyoty, Crazycomputers, Cromulent Kwyjibo,Crowley, Cspj12, Cst17, Cteckerman, Curps, Cutesmartguy, Cybercobra, Cynthia Sue Larson, Cyp, D. 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