A. Merlocks's Blog: Time for Fantasy

Recent Time Travel Research

Time travel has always been a fertile field of research even if it has not yielded any tangible fruits. Although the number of works of fiction discussing the topic of time travel clearly exceeds that of those of academic extraction, the research on time travel continues producing papers that discuss theoretical aspects of this interesting subject. Some recent examples are:

Reversible time travel with freedom of choice

Episodic-like memory and mental time travel in animals

Future-oriented mental time travel in individuals with disordered gambling

Time Travel, Double Occupancy, and The Cheshire Cat

Mental time travel to the future might be reduced in sleep

Delorean: Using Time Travel to Avoid Bugs and Failures in SDN Applications

Is Time Travel Too Strange to Be Possible? Determinism and Indeterminism on Closed Timelike Curves

Probing Faster than Light Travel and Chronology Protection with Superluminal Warp Drives

Memory, mental time travel and The Moustachio Quartet

Distinguishing quantum states using time-traveling qubits in the presence of thermal environments

There are some recent books as well:

Time Machines: Time Travel in Physics, Metaphysics, and Science Fiction
Quantum Physics Of Time Travel: Relativity, Space Time, Black Holes, Worm Holes, Paradoxes
The Physics of Stargates: Parallel Universes, Time Travel, and the Enigma of Wormhole Physics

Time travel by traveling to a place frozen in time

There are places out there that appear to have been suddenly abandoned, uninhabited sites that somebody called home long ago. Traveling to one of these places is probably the closest thing to time travel most of us will ever experience.

Arguably one of the oldest places frozen in time is the Roman quarry of Mons Claudianus, Eastern Desert, Egypt:

Mons Claudianus, Wikipedia
Some photos

Apparently, it was abandoned nearly 1,700 years ago

Not as old as the Egyptian quarry and a lot easier to visit is the deserted medieval village of Wharram Percy in North Yorkshire, England:

Wharram Percy, Wikipedia

BBC4 program

It has remained mostly abandoned since the Black Death of 1348–49.

The ghost town of Kolmanskop is in the Namib desert in southern Namibia:

Kolmanskop, Wikipedia

Kolmanskop Ghost Town Tour

The town has remained abandoned since 1954.

North Brother Island is located close to New York City:

North and South Brother Islands, Wikipedia

The future of North Brother Island

This unusual place has been off-limits since the late 60s.

Another island frozen in time is Hashima Island, near Nagasaki in northern Japan:

Hashima Island, Wikipedia

A forgotten world

Once one of the most densely populated places in the entire planet, it has remained abandoned since 1974.

Time Travel... Through Memory

Chronesthesia, the ability of perform mental time travel, is a controversial area of research. We can travel back in time, for example returning to childhood, through memory. We can generate future events in our minds, the ability of foresight. A different issue is whether these future events will actually take place. The ability to perform time travel is not restricted to humans, great apes can do it too:

Great ape foresight is looking great

How great is great ape foresight?

Great apes can defer exchange: a replication with different results suggesting future oriented behavior

Keeping track of time: evidence for episodic-like memory in great apes

and also birds:

Episodic-like memory during cache recovery by scrub jays

Effects of experience and social context on prospective caching strategies by scrub jays

Can animals recall the past and plan for the future?

Worm holes and avian space-time

This research topic is controversial, no doubt about that:

The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans?

Behavioural evidence for mental time travel in nonhuman animals

Mental time travel in animals: a challenging question

One thing is clear, authors of time-travel fiction can do it. But, even little children can:

Episodic future thinking in 3- to 5-year-old children: the ability to think of what will be needed from a different point of view

A recent new study looks into the details of mental time travel:

Neural Activity in the Medial Temporal Lobe Reveals the Fidelity of Mental Time Travel

How The Brain Performs 'Mental Time Travel'

A bit older:

Mental time travel - the neurocognitive basis of future thinking

What makes mental time travel possible?

Happy mental time travel! But be careful:

Schizotypy and mental time travel

Time Machines... Odd Stuff

The concept of a time machine is so alluring that it is frequently used out of context due to its momentary appeal. This post is a non-exhaustive compilation of non-fiction works that include references to time machines even if the central topic of the research study has little to do with time travel or time-machine devices. Most readers will find some of the titles funny, shocking, and/or intriguing. In fact, the contents of some of the works cited here are certainly odd. Let's start:

Reconfiguring Older Bodies in the Prison Time Machine (Criminology and Gerontology)

A Time Machine: New Evidence of Post-Materialist Value Change (Politics)

The evolutionary time machine: using dormant propagules to forecast how populations can adapt to changing environments (Biology)

Teaching in a Time Machine: The "Make-Do" Mentality in Small-Town Schools (Education)

Time-machine computing: a time-centric approach for the information environment (Computing)

Building a time machine for efficient recording and retrieval of high-volume network traffic (Computing)

The virtual time machine (Computing)

A time machine for text search (Computing)

Mr. Madison Meets a Time Machine: the political science of federal sentencing reform (Politics)

Surviving in the time machine suicidal prisoners and the pains of prison time (Criminology)

Leadership and the Art of Mentoring: Tool Kit for the Time Machine (Leadership)

The itty-bitty time machine: genetics of the cyanobacterial circadian clock (Biology)

The Forest Time Machine—a multi-purpose forest management decision-support system (Agriculture)

Arabian time machine (Politics)


Changing Past Behavior Without Means of a Time Machine: Effects on Future Behavioral Decisions (Cognitive Science)

The time machine: federated searching today and tomorrow (Computing)

It is clear that controversial titles grab more attention but also word-driven titles can grab the attention of prospective readers. If you are a non-fiction author, words like Time Travel, Time Machine can be used to your advantage. Enjoy!

Time Travel... Polls

One in ten Americans (9 per cent) list the ability to travel through time as the futuristic invention they would like to have. This percentage is higher (11 per cent) in the age group 30-49 years and lower (3 per cent) for 65+. This is one of the findings of a new national survey by the Pew Research Center and Smithsonian magazine, which asked Americans about a wide range of potential scientific developments. See more results here:

U.S. Views of Technology and the Future

New Poll Reveals Americans' Predictions of the Future

Polls have become an indispensable way for governments and other institutions to try and determine public mood about certain issues. However, they are not always accurate. We know well that they have been wrong many times in the past; after all, polls are answers to questions. Surveys suggest that public opinion polls are usually wrong. However, this appears not to be the case with Time Travel. A recent (unrelated) survey completed by games developer Big Fish also showed that 11 per cent of Scots admit that they think about traveling back in time regularly. In fact, the survey reveals that 80 per cent of Scots would like to travel back in time. See more here:

80 per cent of Scots would like to travel back in time, survey reveals

The results of this survey appear to be directly affected by the works of Diana Gabaldon , more specifically Outlander .




If you want, you can watch Outlander's Rupert & Angus discuss travelling through time:

Video: Outlander's Rupert & Angus discuss travelling through time

But if Time Travel is possible, what period of time would you travel back (or forward) to if you could? In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, voters were asked which 20th century decade they would choose to return to. A summary of the results can be found here:

Poll: What decade would you most like to time-travel back to?

The original study is presented here:

We still like Ike

As for Time Travel in the movies, Back to the Future (1985) is still considered the best by nearly 28 per cent of the voters. See more details here:

Poll: Top Time Travel Films

and the DeLorean is the best fictional gadget yet:

Back to the Future's DeLorean time travel car voted best fictional gadget from the movies

By the way, the novelizations of the Back to the Future-franchise films are still out there:

Back To The Future
Back to the Future, Part 2
Back to the Future, Part 3




And some people still use a DeLorean in their wedding day:

Where we're going, we don't need roads! Graphic novel fans stage Back To The Future wedding complete with DeLorean car (and a floral bouquet of Batman comics)

And if you want to know more about polls visit
Polls and Surveys. Enjoy!

Time Travel... In Non-Fiction

Perhaps the first reference to Time Travel in non-fiction can be found in:

Trouble with time travel

written by noted astrophysicist Paul Davies. His bestseller How to Build a Time Machine summarizes main-stream ideas as of 2003.


Another interesting reading is:

Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments by Martin Gardner. When first published, 1987, this book was rated for ages 6 and up. Surprising for a book on time travel and mathematics!


Cosmic Time Travel: A Scientific Odyssey
Written by award-winning science writer Barry Parker this book was first published in 1991 and was current at that time. As you may guess, the release of Back to the Future in 1985 may have been the catalyst for the publication of these books.

Time Machines This book written by Paul Nahin and released in 1993 is perhaps more technical than the previous two but still in the wake of the Back to the Future franchise (Back to the Future Part II was released in 1989 and Back to the Future Part III was released in 1990). See also Time Travel



Time Travel: Fact, Fiction and Possibility This little known book was released in 1996 and has almost nothing to do with the previous three.


Carl Sagan's Universe One of the essays included in this book released in 1997 is "Do the Laws of Physics Permit Wormholes for Interstellar Travel and Machines for Time Travel?" written by noted theoretical astrophysicist Kip S. Thorne. Yes, the same Kip S. Thorne behind the film Interstellar:

Parsing the Science of Interstellar with Physicist Kip Thorne

What's New in Black Holes? 'Interstellar' Physicist Kip Thorne Tells All

also see:

The Science of Interstellar




In Search of the Edge of Time: Black Holes, White Holes, Wormholes This controversial book was published in 1999. A few comments:

The prospects for time travel

Prospects for time travel

The prospects for time travel

The prospects for time travel

Time: A Traveler's Guide Another attempt at summarizing what was known about time travel in 1999. The book talks extensively about clocks and it is still well-liked today.


Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time Published more than a decade after the release of the last installment of the Back to the Future franchise, renowned astrophysicist J. Richard Gott wrote this fascinating bestseller.


And here I finish this short stroll through Time Travel in non-finction since the late 70s (the release of the first Star Wars film) until the beginning of the 21st century.
For references prior to the 70s you can always try the
Time Travel Agency Enjoy!

Time Machines... The Unfunny Side

Rotating cylinders and the possibility of global causality violation, what a title! In this paper, written by Frank J. Tipler in 1974, it is suggested that a finite rotating cylinder would also act as a time machine:

Rotating cylinders and the possibility of global causality violation

The idea was explored (literarily) in Larry Niven's short story Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation that appears in

Microcosmic Tales: 100 Wondrous Science Fiction Short-Short Stories or Convergent Series




The original paper spawned a lengthy thread of research. For example:

Causality Violation in Asymptotically Flat Space-Times (1976)

Singularities and causality violation (1977)

Assumptions of the singularity theorems and the rejuvenation of universes (1978)

Some properties of time-machines (1978)

The rigidly rotating relativistic dust cylinder (1980)

A stationary cylindrically symmetric electrovac space-time (1982)

Rotating hollow cylinders: General solution and Machian effects (1983)

The breakdown of quantum mechanics in the presence of time machinest (1993)

Quantum propagator for a nonrelativistic particle in the vicinity of a time machine (1994)

Improved time-machine model (1996)

Time machine (1988--2001) (2003)

Can a Circulating Light Beam Produce a Time Machine (2005)

A Class of Time-Machine Solutions with a Compact Vacuum Core (2005)

Closed Timelike Curves and Time Travel: Dispelling the Myth (2005)

Time Machine at the LHC (2008)

Billiard ball in the space with a time machine (2010)

As you can see, plenty of peer-reviewed papers exist on time travel. The vast majority of them conclude that backwards time travel is impossible but they leave the forward door open. In other words, if travel through time is possible, the main problem is that you cannot buy a return ticket and tell everybody about you success. That may explain a few things!

Time Travel... Patents

Do you want to have a go at building a time machine? If you really want, you may be interested in the following (almost) patents:

"Method of gravity distortion and time displacement" [US 20060073976 A1]

"Method of space compression time dilation machine" [WO 2013088425 A2]

"Practical Time Machine Using Dynamic Efficient Virtual And Real Robots" [US 20090234788 A1]

"Traveling method" [WO 2012046284 A2]

More on this here:

Time Travel Patents: Here Are Four People Who Claim To Have Invented Real-Life Time Machines


But there are others:

PHT Corporation Patents "Time Travel" for Clinical Research

U.S. Patent No. 1

"Time Machine Software" (US 20080281766 A1)


This is an unrelated (or not) patent:

"Air board" (US 7210549 B2)


Of course, you also have:

STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine

and

The Time Travel Handbook: A Manual of Practical Teleportation & Time Travel

or John Titor:

JOHN TITOR TIMES

John Titor: a Time Traveller From The Year 2036?

Time Travel Institute



By the way, Doc (Emmett) Brown did not file a patent for his flux capacitor, or did he? The phrase "flux capacitor" appears in U.S. Patent 6,084,285:

Lateral flux capacitor having fractal-shaped perimeters

Christmas through... Time Travel

Is it that time of the year already? Time flies even without... Time Travel. You may hate Christmas (you are not alone, think of Scrooge or the Grinch) or you may love it, but we all have to admit that Christmas is an inherent part of the western cultural traditions. If you are interested in Christmas through time you may enjoy these links:

Christmas through Time

Christmas through time: Medieval and Tudor

And, what about Christmas and Time Travel? How many times these two themes are set side by side in Literature?

Just a few examples:

The Time Machine, the Medical Man makes reference to Christmas at some point in Chapter I (in the 1960 film the connection is far more explicit).

A Christmas Carol, also features Time Travel and it appeared 52 years prior to the publication of The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

Home in Time for Christmas, not even similar to the previous two.

A Time-Travel Christmas, short stories.




Also this essay:

The Ghosts and the Machine: A Christmas Carol and Time Travel by Pete Orford

Enjoy and feel free to add more!

Time Travel... Old Stuff

This is a compilation of old stuff about Time Travel. The first link is quite old, 1999, in Internet time terms. The last one was almost yesterday, 2010. Most of them appeared in newspapers. All of them discuss different aspects of Time Travel:

Carl Sagan Ponders Time Travel, an interview with the late Carl Sagan, PBS (10-Dec-1999)

Traveling Through Time, by Clifford Pickover, a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, PBS (10-Dec-1999)

Time Travelers to Meet in Not Too Distant Future,
by Pam Belluck, The New York Times (6-May-2005)

Student organizes time traveler conference, by Michael Kunzelman, USA TODAY (7-Jul-2005)

New model 'permits time travel', by Julianna Kettlewell, BBC News (17-Jun-2005)

Physicist throws time-travel theories a curve, by Michelle Lefort, USA TODAY (28-Jul-2005)

Fast-forward to the past: The great time travel debate, by Paul Sussman, CNN (2-April-2007)

The dream of time travel, by Neil Bowdler, BBC News (6-Aug-2007)

The world's first time machine? Tunnel to the past could open door to future within three months, say Russians, Daily Mail (7-Feb-2008)

Physicist Says Time Travel Is Not Only Possible, but Likely, FOX News (3-Apr-2008)

Statistical Time Travel Helps to Answer What-Ifs, by Carl Bialik, Wall Street Journal (12-Nov-2009)

Quantum time machine 'allows paradox-free time travel', by Tom Chivers, The Telegraph (22-Jul-2010)

Enjoy and, for those readers in the US, Happy Thanksgiving!