The Truth about Time Travel

What if you could bend time like taffy, stretching moments, collapsing centuries, and stepping through the folds of history itself? In this episode of Math! Science! History!, Gabrielle explores the myths, literature, and scientific breakthroughs that brought time travel from ancient dreams to modern equations.

From the Mahabharata to H.G. Wells, from Einstein's relativity to Ronald Mallett's laser loop, we uncover how humanity's yearning to rewrite the past or glimpse the future evolved into one of science's most mind-bending pursuits.

Join Gabrielle for a journey through paradoxes, wormholes, and the minds who dared to ask: Can we really travel through time?

Three Key Points

1.      How ancient myths from India and Japan foreshadowed the physics of time dilation centuries before Einstein.

2.      Why Einstein's relativity transformed time from a constant into a flexible dimension, and what experiments proved it.

3.      How real physicists like Ronald Mallett are working to turn theoretical equations into the first tangible steps toward time travel.

Resources & References

·         Einstein, Albert. Relativity: The Special and General Theory. 1916.

·         Kip Thorne. Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy. W.W. Norton, 1994.

·         Ronald L. Mallett. Time Traveler: A Scientist's Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality. Basic Books, 2006.

·         Gödel, Kurt. "An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solutions of Einstein's Field Equations." Reviews of Modern Physics, 1949.

·         Hafele, J. C., & Keating, R. E. "Around-the-World Atomic Clocks: Predicted Relativistic Time Gains." Science, 1972.

·         .css-j9qmi7{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:row;-ms-flex-direction:row;flex-direction:row;font-weight:700;margin-bottom:1rem;margin-top:2.8rem;width:100%;-webkit-box-pack:start;-ms-flex-pack:start;-webkit-justify-content:start;justify-content:start;padding-left:5rem;}@media only screen and (max-width: 599px){.css-j9qmi7{padding-left:0;-webkit-box-pack:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;justify-content:center;}}.css-j9qmi7 svg{fill:#27292D;}.css-j9qmi7 .eagfbvw0{-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;color:#27292D;}