Is Time Travel Possible?

My interest in the subject of time travel was triggered by reading an article in 28 September 2006 New Scientist claiming that not only might time travel be possible but that experiments within the near future could confirm this. The physicist making this claim, John G Cramer, is already well known for producing his own interpretation of quantum mechanics. I was intrigued and became very excited by this possibility. This is certainly not the first time that serious scientists have discussed time travel but it is I believe the first time their ideas went beyond thought experiments with little or no hope of being tested.

Initially I had high hopes that Cramer might actually be right, and this section of my website was written while excited about this possibility. Looking back I remain interested but more level headed. Cramer's approach no longer looks hopeful but I have a continuing interest in the idea. While these pages were written in the few months after first learning of this proposal, today I continue to think about the subject and have formulated my own as yet unpublished ideas. Perhaps I will have more to say about this again at some point.

I have organised this section of my website as follows. In Experiment I explain how nano-interval time travel may already have been created by accident and I describe John G Cramer's proposals. In the brief pages following I contextualize the subject showing how developments in physics have been leading in the direction of time travel for a 100 years. The clues are there in the subject. The relevance of the one science fiction page, Asimov, will become apparent in the following section, Time Gate, where I discuss what happens if the proposed experiments succeed and how to build a device for transmitting information backwards through time. I consider the paradox of time travel in Theory. Implications explores the consequences of this discovery for the whole of society. This page along with the final page, Omnipresence, still in preparation, is written from a much more speculative point of view. There are many mistakes.

I would encourage feedback, intelligent comments and criticisms are most welcome. email Paul Friedlander

Acknowledgments to all those who were kind enough to reply to my inquiries on this and other related subjects on the foundations of physics: Julian Barbour, Brandon Carter, John Cramer, Kathryn Cramer, Mark Hadley, Nick Herbert, Steve Hopkins, Joao Maguiero, Jonathan Pressburger and Lee Smolin.