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.

This idea comes directly from experiment. An interesting discovery that has been talked about but its implications not yet explored. Those implications are so surprising that most physicists appear to have been avoiding them.

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. I analyse them and agree that they do really offer a way to transmit information instantly or back through time.

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 all 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 Cramer's proposed experiments succeed and how to build a device for transmitting information backwards through time.

I interpret the implications of this research for physics in Theory. Implications explores the consequences of this discovery for the whole of society. This page along with the final page, Omnipresence is written in a much more speculative state of mind. Time travel, if it is coming, is going to change the World far more than we can possibly imagine at this moment.

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

Acknowledgements 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 and Lee Smolin.