INSTANT

GENIUS
WHERE DOES TIME
COME FROM?

WHY DOES TIME GO

FORWARD?

COULD WE TRAVEL
IN TIME?

T I M E
COVER STORY

WHERE
DOES TIME
COME FROM?
US physicist Prof Richard Muller thinks that new
chunks of time could be created as the Universe
expands. And he wants to peer into the heart of
colliding black holes to prove it…
WORDS: PROF ROBERT MATTHEWS

ILLUSTRATION: ANDY POTTS

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2 3
COVER STORY
s science stories go, it was huge in
A
every sense: the first-ever
detection of gravitational waves,
ripples in the very fabric of
space and time, triggered by the
collision of two black holes far
beyond the Milky Way.
Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein a
century ago and picked up in September 2015 by
colossal laser detectors in the United States. Now,
they are being hailed as a whole new way to
observe the Universe. And one physicist believes
they may soon allow scientists to witness a truly
mind-boggling event: the emergence of time.
According to Prof Richard Muller of the
University of California, Berkeley, when black
holes collide they do more than disrupt the space
around them. They also create what he calls
“nows”: brief new instants of time.
It’s an astonishing idea, but according to Muller
it’s no sci-fi fantasy. Within a few years, he says,
the same detectors that discovered gravitational
waves may provide hard evidence of instants of
time being created in deep space.
RELATIVELY SPEAKING
Such claims put Muller at the forefront of research
aimed at understanding this most ineffable
component of our Universe. From Aristotle to
Einstein, some of the most brilliant minds in
history have pondered the nature of time, only to
come away baffled. Around 1,500 years ago, the
philosopher Augustine captured the views of many
scientists, and his words continue to resonate
today: “What then is time? If no one asks me, I
know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who
asks, I do not know.”
Muller believes recent advances in physics make
it possible to cut through the confusion to reveal
the truth. At present, that truth is based on
Einstein’s relativity. According to this, the
common-sense view that we inhabit a Universe
with three dimensions of space, with time flowing
from past to future, is an illusion. Einstein insisted
that space and time are just different aspects of one
unified whole that he called ‘space-time’.
While Einstein was in his twenties, he went on to
show that this leads to a host of unexpected effects.
Objects that zip past at close to light speed will
appear distorted, and compressed in the direction
of travel. Clocks moving at such speeds will appear
to run slow.
Despite their outlandishness, the predictions
of relativity have all been tested – and all have
proved correct. Yet there remains something odd
about the supposed ‘oneness’ of space and time. As
Muller points out, there’s a simple experiment
anyone can perform: “We can stand still in space
– but not in time”.
There are other puzzles too. The fundamental
4 5
“IT OCCURRED TO ME
THAT THE FLOW OF
TIME WAS REALLY A
GRADUAL ADDITION OF
NEW MOMENTS OF
Sky map of the
TIME, NEW ‘NOWS’”
southern
hemisphere,
revealing the
location of the
source of the
gravitational
waves detected
by LIGO
laws of nature take no account of the flow of time, One of LIGO’s
mirrors, which are
giving the same answer whether time flows used to detect
forwards or backwards. Yet we’re surrounded by gravitational
events that seem to show that time really does have waves
an ‘arrow’ pointing from the past to the future,
from the erosion of mountains to the decay of all
living things.
Muller started pulling together all his thoughts
on this, in order to write a book. He then had a flash
of inspiration. “As I wrote and continued to think…
it suddenly occurred to me that the flow of time
was really a gradual addition of new moments of
time, new ‘nows’.”
But what could possibly create packets of time? Wavelet graph of
Muller found the answer in the fundamental unity two black holes
merging, as
of space and time. Ever since the discovery of the detected by LIGO
expansion of the Universe more than 90 years ago, in 2015
scientists have had to accept that space really can
be created out of nowhere. And as space and time
are just different aspects of the same thing, that
means time can be created as well.
“Every moment the Universe gets a little bigger,
and there is a little more time,” explains Miller.
That, in turn, provides a stunningly simple
explanation for the supposed flow of time: “The
forefront, expanding edge of time is what we refer
to as now, and the flow of time is the continual
creation of new nows,” he says. “It all fits together.”
PHOTOS: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY X2, CALTECH/MIT/LIGO LAB
TESTING TIME
Muller wasn’t content to stop there, with just an
intriguing idea. He wanted to find a way of putting
it to the test. And he could see no way to do it. “I
had some ideas based on cosmology, but I couldn’t
figure out how to actually perform the tests, at least
within my expected lifetime.” So Muller pressed
on with writing his book, which appeared last year
as Now: The Physics Of Time.
But just as he was finishing his book, he learned
PHOTO: GETTY X2
of the discovery of gravitational waves by the
scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-
Prof Richard Muller thinks black holes could hold the secret to detecting wave Observatory (LIGO). That changed
the creation of time everything. “When the LIGO event was reported, 2
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 COVER STORY

HOW WE’LL DETECT TIME BEING MADE

Before merger
Before merger During merger
During merger After merger
After merger

1. BLACK HOLES COLLIDE “IF WE WITNESS THE

Before merger
Before merger
During merger
During merger
After merger
After merger BIRTH OF A BLACK
HOLE, WE SHOULD
SEE THE CREATION
OF NEW TIME”
The black holes accelerated as Once the black holes had merged 2 I suddenly realised that it presented an
they grew closer, reaching into a single entity, the system opportunity to test the theory.”
The two black holes were held in orbit around speeds close to the speed of settled into equilibrium with a Muller realised that LIGO might detect the
Before merger
each other by their mutual gravitational pull. During merger light. Eventually, they merged After merger regular spherical shape, and the
into a single deformed black emission of gravitational waves creation of time during the collision of black holes
Their huge mass caused space-time to warp
around them. Energy radiated away from hole that radiated enormous dropped rapidly. This is known as – because in the process, they create a huge amount
them in the form of gravitational waves, amounts of energy as the ‘ringdown’.
gravitational waves.
of new three-dimensional space.
leading to their orbits drawing closer.
During merger
During merger
As black holes have a reputation for destruction
rather than creation, the idea that they create fresh
ENGTH
2. OF
TRENGTH GRAVITATIONALWAVES
A OF
SIGNAL IS CREATED
GRAVITATIONALWAVES Before merger
Before merger After merger
After merger space and time is pretty counterintuitive. To
explain how it works, Muller uses an analogy for
During merger
During merger what’s going on. Single black holes are often
STRENGTH OF GRAVITATIONALWAVES Before merger After merger depicted as creating a huge dent in the ‘fabric’ of
GTH OF GRAVITATIONALWAVES Before merger After merger
space and time. “Imagine a whirlpool,” he
explains. “Its total area is greater than the
original area of the flat ocean, because of the way it
dips.” The analogy isn’t perfect: “The area of water
During merger
STRENGTH OF GRAVITATIONALWAVES Before merger After merger near a whirlpool is two-dimensional whereas the
volume near a black hole is three dimensional,”
TIME
TIME
Muller points out, “But except for that, the analogy
is good.”
So if we could witness the birth of a black hole,
TIME
TIME we would see more than just the creation of new
TIME space, says Muller: “We should see the creation of
3. LIGO DETECTS IT new time.” The trouble is, without knowing the
precise moment the black hole is formed, there’s no
Mirror Mirror way to detect the delay created by the newly born
SPACE
GYMNASTICS chunk of time.
As a wave travelling at But Muller realised that the LIGO event of
the speed of light passes September 2015 showed there’s a way around this.
Detector arm Detector arm through space-time, it
first stretches space in It was triggered by the birth of a black hole from the
one direction and collision of two others spiralling in towards each
squeezes it in the other. This is an event that can be timed with split-
Beam splitter perpendicular plane,
then reverses the second precision.
process. According to Muller, the collision would again
THE LIGO EXPERIMENT create fresh space, as the final black hole has a
There are two LIGO observatories, mass larger than either of the originals, and thus
which are located 3,002km apart. forms a bigger depression in space-time. “I was able
Laser Each LIGO observatory consists of a 2
laser source, two detector arms, each to do a rough calculation, and the answer is that
source
with a mirror at the end, and a light Image 1 shows the 1 3 the three-dimensional volume surrounding two
detector. The laser shines onto a beam equal-sized arms when
CATCHING A WAVE splitter and is sent down the detector there are no
such large black holes increases by millions of
Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity tells arms, which each measure precisely gravitational waves. cubic kilometres when they combine.”
Light
us that if two massive objects, such as two detector 4km in length. If light waves fall out of When gravitational Muller then estimated the amount of extra time
black holes, are bound together by gravity, sync due to being affected by waves are present, the
they should create ripples in the fabric of gravitational waves, then the lengths of the arms created. The answer is small, but not hopelessly so:
space-time. These ripples are called resulting ‘spillage’ of light will be distort, as shown in around a millisecond. Scientists at LIGO should be
gravitational waves. picked up by the light detector. images 2 and 3. able to detect the appearance of this brief ‘now’ 2
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COVER STORY
PHYSICS

“THE VERY FIRST

TIME TRIVIA

LIGO EVENT WAS

Muller’s claim that time is created in
deep space is not the only amazing

ALMOST STRONG theory about time… 1

ENOUGH TO TEST 1 According to

Caltech cosmologist
proof that time
does exist.

THE THEORY”
Dr Sean Carroll, the
flow of time from 4 In 2009,

past to future may physicists at the

be the symptom of universities of
our Universe Bristol and
2 as a short delay in the arrival of gravitational having emerged Cambridge showed
waves that signal the merger of the two original from another that the passing of
black holes into the final behemoth. universe that time revealed by,
existed before the say, the cooling of a 2
TIME, PHYSICISTS, PLEASE! Big Bang and cup of tea, may be
Despite the promising results of his back-of-the subsequently gave due to a quantum
envelope calculations, Muller wanted them to be birth to our own. effect called
re-done using the full power of Einstein’s General ‘entanglement’.
Relativity. He got in touch with Shaun Maguire, a 2 In 1967, two This involves the
theoretician at the California Institute of American theorists particles in the tea
Technology. “Shaun is a real expert in relativity derived an equation interacting with
theory, and together we were able to do the math describing the their surroundings,
with some degree of rigour,” says Muller. quantum state of being bound
Maguire confirmed the original estimates, along the whole Universe. together and
with the idea of being able to detect the creation of Known as the becoming harder to
brand new ‘nows’ using LIGO. Wheeler-DeWitt distinguish from
Muller hopes to put his claims to the test by the equation, it each other – a
3
end of the decade: “The very first LIGO event was includes many key one-way process
almost strong enough to test the theory,” he says. “I features of the that requires
am optimistic that we will get an even stronger cosmos, such as its the forward
event in the next year or two.” size. But one aspect progression of time
Confirmation may come even sooner, however. is absent: time. to occur.
Muller has recently teamed up with a colleague to Some theorists

PHOTOS: MICHAEL KOPPITZ/ALBERT EINSTEIN INSTITUTE, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY X5

devise a test of his ideas in the lab. “It involves believe this implies 5 Dark energy, the
creating a microscopic amount of space locally that time only mysterious
and measuring the equally microscopic amount of exists in our minds. anti-gravitational
time using a very sophisticated clock,” says force that propels
Muller. “We’re not giving away the details yet 3 According to the expansion of
because we want to be the first to do it.” theorist Prof Lee the Universe, may 4
So what do others make of Muller’s daring new Smolin at the be linked to the
vision of time? “They are intrigued,” he says. Perimeter Institute, existence of the
“Nobody has found a flaw yet, but until confirmed, Canada, the arrow of time.
they are withholding judgment – as am I.” existence of life in Last year, two
Perhaps time is about to reveal its true nature in the Universe is the cosmologists at the
the laboratory experiments planned by Muller and result of the laws of Yerevan Physics
his colleagues. Or perhaps fresh clues will emerge physics evolving to Institute showed
from studies of the cosmos. One thing’s for sure: their current state that dark energy
after millennia of speculation and theorising, if over an infinite leads to the growth
answers do emerge, it won’t be before time. number of previous of entropy, a
Duncan Geere is a freelance journalist who writes universes. If true, measure of
Prof Robert Matthews is a science writer and visiting about science, technology and the environment. Visualisation this means that our disorder, in the
professor of science at Aston University, Birmingham. of two black very existence is Universe. 5
holes merging
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 PH Y SIC S PH Y SIC S

Discover the

...where time runs backwards

A brand new idea about the
Big Bang reveals why our
clocks always go forwards,
explains Marcus Chown

T
HE BIG BANG may not have spawned one
universe, it may have spawned two. One is
our Universe, where time runs normally.
The second is a twin universe in which
ILLUSTRATION: ANDY POTTS

time runs backwards. The latter universe,

located ‘on the other side of the Big Bang’,
would appear completely normal to its
inhabitants, with stars and galaxies
congealing from the cooling debris of the Big
 PH Y SIC S

Bang much like in our Universe. If it were

possible for us to look back through the Big
Bang to this cosmic doppelgänger, its backward-
running time might make it appear like a universe
in reverse, contracting to a Big Crunch.
Dr Julian Barbour of the University of Oxford, Dr
Tim Koslowski of the University of New Brunswick
and Dr Flavio Mercati of the Perimeter Institute in
Ontario made this extraordinary discovery while
trying to understand one of the great puzzles of
physics: why there is a direction of time. We
commonly associate this ‘arrow’ of time with the
way in which eggs break, people grow old and
castles crumble. We never see eggs unbreak, people
grow young and castles un-crumble. But why we do
not isn’t as obvious as it might seem.

ARROW OF TIME
The problem is that all the fundamental laws of
physics are ‘time symmetric’ – they permit
processes to work equally well backwards as
forwards. For instance, an atom can spit out a
photon of light and it can also suck in a photon of
light. If you were shown a film of an atom doing
something, you would never be able to tell whether
the movie was being run forwards or backwards.
Both events would appear perfectly reasonable. In
contrast, if you were shown a picture of a complete
teacup and the same cup smashed into tiny shards,
you would be in no doubt that the picture of the
broken cup was taken later. “We never see eggs unbreak,
This so-called thermodynamic arrow of time is
associated with the change from order to disorder.
people grow young and castles
And, obviously, this can happen only if the Universe
was in a more ordered state in the past. The trouble
un-crumble. But why we do not isn’t
is that an ordered state is a special state – it smacks as obvious as it might seem”
of something set up by God, which makes it
uncomfortable for physicists to accept.
The 19th Century German physicist Ludwig
Boltzmann speculated that, although the Universe
on the whole was disordered, by some incredible
PHOTO: ISTOCK, SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

fluke we happen to live in a super-ordered location.
It could be considered a rare ‘statistical fluctuation’
– the cosmic equivalent of an unbreaking cup. Most
physicists consider this an unsatisfactory
conclusion since it merely explains the specialness
of our Universe in terms of some other specialness.
Long after Boltzmann’s time, it was discovered
that the Universe burst into being 13.82 billion
years ago in a titanic explosion called the Big Bang,
Above: You never see castles
un-crumble, which puzzles
physicists
and that all the galaxies, including our Milky Way,
congealed out of the cooling debris. This put the
question of the origin of the arrow of time into
sharper focus. Now it appeared that the Big Bang
must have been in a highly ordered and special
state. Again, this is something that physicists find
equally difficult to stomach.
Another logical possibility is that the Universe
goes from order to disorder. This is not because
 PH Y SIC S PH Y SIC S

“The key feature of the model is

that every single solution has two
oppositely pointing arrows of time”
Dr Julian Barbour from the University of Oxford on the arrow of time

pairs of masses, orbiting each other. Barbour and

Dr Julian Barbour (left) carried
out the simulations of 1,000
particles, which suggested
another universe
his colleagues used this as their starting point and
were able to simulate what would happen to their
1,000 particles, but crucially without any reference
to time. They were aided by a special formulation of
physics known as ‘shape dynamics’. Here, it is only
the shape of a configuration of particles that is
important rather than their absolute separation.
In shape dynamics, the ratio of the greatest
distance between particles to the smallest can

TIME TRAVELLERS
If the Universe ever contracts to a point, it
could explain the mystery of dark matter

IF THE REASON things get more disordered is that

the Big Bang was in an ordered state, then this leads
to a conclusion: cups break and coffee grows cold
because distant galaxies are flying away from us in the
aftermath of the Big Bang. It is the ultimate connection
between the everyday and the cosmic.
So what would happen if cosmic expansion were
to one day run out of steam, and the Universe started
contracting down to a Big Crunch? The answer is that
PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY X2, ADAM WALANUS/CC, APS/ALAN STONEBRAKER

the Universe, rather than getting more disordered,

it was super-ordered in the past, but because
there is an infinite scope for increasing
disorder in the future. This possibility has been
pointed out by physicists Sean Carroll and Jennifer
Chen of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. One popular theory of the origin of the
Universe is called eternal inflation. Here, the
Universe keeps spawning baby universes, which in
turn spawn their own baby universes, and so on.
Carroll and Chen contend that this ensures the
Universe becomes ever more complex and
disordered, so there will always be scope for
increasing disorder.
What the super-ordered past and the
Top: The Big Bang may have
spawned two different universes
Above: A simulation of 1,000
particles floating in space. The
central image shows the start
point. The other images show the
two possible future scenarios
super-disordered future have in common is they
are, respectively, ‘initial’ and ‘final’ conditions
imposed on the laws of physics. But what if the
laws of physics themselves actually impose an
arrow of time? In research published in October
2014, Barbour and his colleagues made an
unexpected discovery suggesting that this
could indeed be the case.
Barbour’s team simulated 1,000 massive particles
floating in space. In previous work, other physicists
have discovered that such a group of particles,
influenced only by the mutual attractive force of
gravity, will tend to cluster in small groups after a
long period of time. These are generally seen as
would get more ordered. In such a circumstance,
as pointed out by Thomas Gold of Cornell University
in 1958, time would run backwards.
This has prompted an outrageous suggestion for
the identity of the Universe’s dark matter. Dark matter
outweighs the visible stars and galaxies by a factor of
about six and reveals itself through its gravitational tug
on the visible stuff. In 2000, Lawrence Schulman of
Clarkson University in New York showed in a computer
simulation that stuff with a normal arrow of time could
co-exist with stuff with backward arrow. Just as
stuff with a normal arrow of time can survive into the
contraction phase of the Universe, reverse-time stuff
from the contraction phase can survive into our phase.
What would this stuff look like? If the Universe ever
makes the transition from expansion to contraction it is
likely to happen at least 100 billion years in the future.
By this time, most of the stars will have burnt out. So
any relics from the future surviving into our expanding
After the Big Bang, the Universe started expanding and is getting more disordered.
Universe will give out no light. They will appear,
If it contracts in a Big Crunch, time would run backwards
according to Schulman, just like dark matter!
 PH Y SIC S XXXXXX

be taken as a measure of complexity.

Barbour’s team found that, in pretty much
every starting configuration, the cluster went
through a state of maximum compactness and
minimum complexity, which they associated with
the Big Bang. Crucially, from this state, the
collection of particles could evolve in two possible
ways. “The key feature of the model is that every
single solution has two oppositely pointing arrows
of time,” says Barbour. “This is an entirely new
result,” he explains. “All other proposed solutions
for the existence of an arrow of time of which I am
aware require special initial, final or two-time
conditions to be added to the law.”

Some key laws of physics can all be

explained by a smashed mug

HOW DO FUNDAMENTAL laws that make no

distinction between processes happening in
one direction of time compared to another
result in an everyday world where things
happen in only one direction? The answer
was discovered by the 19th Century physicist
Ludwig Boltzmann.
Imagine a mug. There is only one way it can
be intact, but there are a huge number of ways
it can be broken. For instance, it can be in one
big fragment and 10 smaller fragments, or two
big fragments and seven smaller fragments, or
two big fragments and dozens of dust-sized
fragments. And so on. Now, if all possibilities
are equally likely, it is overwhelmingly probable
that the mug will go from being intact to being
broken. It is not impossible that the broken
fragments will leap back together to make an
intact mug, but it’s so unlikely that you would
probably have to wait many times the current
age of the Universe to see it happen.
What characterises all the changes we see
around us - from mugs breaking to castles
crumbling and people growing old – is a
transition from order to disorder. It is this
transition which sets the direction of the
PHOTO: SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY, ISTOCK
Above: The way particles interact with
one another was used to show that
there could be two universes THE OTHER SIDE
This research suggests that we live in one Universe,
but there is another ‘on the other side of the Big
Bang’ where time goes backwards relative to us. In
this picture, the Big Bang is not the beginning of
the Universe, as everyone imagined, but merely the
mid-point in its life. The doppelgänger universe
will appear to its inhabitants just as our expanding
Universe appears to us, though with different
galaxies and stars. The expectation might be that if
we could see our twin universe, everything would
It is highly unlikely that
these pieces will jump
be going backwards – like a film in reverse. But
back together again… Barbour says it’s impossible to say if this would be
but it’s not impossible the case. “Our model is very simple and we would
have to ‘add’ light so that observations can be made
and questions like this answered.”
ever since the first evidence for it was discovered
by [Joseph-Louis] Lagrange in 1772!” states
Barbour.
“This is important in our understanding of the
time asymmetry of the Universe,” says Dr Lee
Smolin of the Perimeter Institute. “I don’t think
it’s the whole story. But it’s a major insight.”
Barbour’s model is a simple one that employs
only Newtonian gravity. However, our Universe
is orchestrated not by Newtonian gravity but by
Einstein’s more complicated General Theory of
Relativity. Nevertheless, the physicists say that
the features of Newtonian gravity which lead to
their result are also present in Einstein’s theory.
Barbour cautions that all his team has shown is
that there’s a gravitational arrow of time – that is,
a direction of time naturally emerges in a system

thermodynamic arrow of time. In physics, In Barbour’s team’s scenario, the law of gravity
disorder goes by the technical name of both imposes an arrow of time and doesn’t.
‘entropy’. And one of the most famous laws in Although the inhabitants of each universe
physics - the Second Law of Thermodynamics experience an arrow of time, the two arrows are
– says that “entropy never decreases”. These opposite and cancel each other out overall. The
words are even inscribed on Boltzmann’s source of the direction of time appears to be the
headstone in Vienna. law of gravity. This is very unexpected because the
law of gravity is time symmetric. “This feature has
been sitting [unnoticed] inside Newtonian gravity
subject to Newtonian gravity. He believes,
however, that it will be possible to show that the
“thermodynamic arrow of time” – which governs
everyday life and causes cups to break and people
to grow old – is a natural consequence of the
gravitational arrow of time. Watch this space. 
MARCUS CHOWN is a science writer and broadcaster
whose most recent book is The Magicians
TIME TRAVEL

TIME TRAVEL:
A USER’S GUIDE …It comes down to the fact that,
in Einstein’s theory, time is not
absolute, ticked off by a universal

In 1915 in Berlin, at the height of clock with which everyone agrees,

but instead is relative. “I can’t talk
to you in terms of time – your time

WWI, Albert Einstein presented a and my time are different,” wrote

the English novelist Graham Greene.
According to Einstein, the rate

revolutionary new theory of gravity at which time flows for someone

depends on how fast they’re moving
relative to you and the strength of

– the General Theory of Relativity.

the gravity they’re experiencing. If
you can find a way to jump from a
region where time flows at one rate

It has since become one of the most

to a region where it flows at slower
rate, you can go back in time – you’ll
have made a time machine.

successful theories ever, passing

The recognition that time is not
what you think it is goes back to
the Special Theory of Relativity that

every observational test thrown at it

Einstein published in 1905, and it all
hinges on the unique properties of
the speed of light. Einstein realised

and predicating cosmological

that nothing can travel faster than
light – it is the cosmic speed limit
of our Universe. This makes light
uncatchable by anything. He also

phenomena such as the Big Bang, discovered that intervals of space

and time st retch like elastic as
massive objects move through them.

black holes and gravitational waves. By a cosmic conspiracy this means

that everything measures exactly
the same speed for a light beam,

But the theory has also given no matter how fast that thing is
travelling or in which direction.
To be a little more precise, moving

scientists sleepless nights because clocks run slow. So, if someone flies
past you – and it has to be at a speed
approaching 300,000 kilometres

it makes one thing pretty much per second – then their clock will
run slow compa red to yours. If

ILLUSTRATIONS: MERIJN HOS

they could ever reach the speed of

unavoidable: time machines… light – which is impossible for a

material body, though possible for a
massless entity such as a particle of
light (a photon) – time would come
to a complete standstill. 2

18 19
TIME TRAVEL

“This violation of
causality gives scientists
sleepless nights since
it’s synonymous with
time travel”
OPTION 1: Travel faster than light OPTION 2: Spin
TIME TRAVEL: A PRIMER
What if you could travel faster than light? If you could, then
- -
the Universe
you would arrive at your destination before you set off. This
so-called ‘violation of causality’ gives scientists sleepless nights Black hole General In 1949, Kurt Gödel, Einstein’s friend and
since it’s synonymous with time travel. If you travelled faster A region of space-time with
such immense gravity that
Relativity Princeton colleague, figured out a solution
than light from Earth to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, This 1915 theory built on that made it possible for the Universe
then a light beam leaving at the same time would still be on nothing can escape. Special Relativity by adding to contain ready-made time machines.
its way by the time you had arrived. This makes it possible for gravitational effects and All it requires is that the Universe is
you to look back at Earth and see your spacecraft blasting off. - proposing that space-time rotating. This Gödel Universe contains
But how would you ever be able to travel faster than light if Cosmic strings is curved. closed loops that literally act like time
nothing material can even achieve the speed of light? Physicists Hypothetical thin ‘cracks’ machines. Travel around one and you
have postulated the existence of hypothetical particles called in space-time, left over from - would arrive at yesterday. Go around
tachyons. Tachyons are born moving faster than light, just as the Universe’s formation. Special Relativity again and you’d get to the day before that.
photons (particles of light) are born travelling at the speed of Einstein’s first theory of the The path of light rays in a Gödel
light. If we could convert the atoms of our bodies into tachyons, - structure of space-time, Universe is bent into a banana shape
fire them across space, then change them back into atoms, we Photon introduced in 1905. It’s by cosmic rotation. This means that it’s
could travel faster than light. And some observers would see A particle of light. based on the postulates always possible to beat a light beam –
us going backwards in time. that the laws of physics are that is, to travel faster than light – by
But there’s a catch. In 1974, US physicist Richard Gott of - the same for all observers in travelling in a straight line from one tip
Princeton University discovered that a tachyon radiates a cone Space-time uniform motion relative to of the banana to the other.
of gravitational waves (ripples in space-time) that trails behind The fusion of three- one another, and that the Scientists, including Einstein, were
it, much like the way an aeroplane creates a sonic boom when dimensional space (length, speed of light in a vacuum is spared sleepless nights because nature
exceeding the speed of sound. Thanks to the tachyon’s unusual width, height) with time, to the same for all observers. doesn’t appear to have created a rotating
properties, this cone would cause the particle to lose energy make four-dimensional Gödel Universe. Instead, as American
and speed up – the opposite of what you might expect – before space-time. It is warped in - astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered in
finally colliding with an equally fast-moving anti-tachyon and the presence of matter, such
as stars and planets.
Wormhole the 1920s, we live in expanding Universe
annihilating. Although the collision would occur at infinite Theoretical tunnel through whose galaxies are flying apart like pieces

ILLUSTRATIONS: MERIJN HOS

speed, Gott’s solutions suggest that most of a tachyon’s life would space-time that could of cosmic shrapnel in the aftermath of a
be spent moving at barely above the speed of light. However, - provide shortcuts to titanic explosion: the Big Bang.
this would make any time travel effect exceedingly small. Tachyon another region of
A hypothetical particle the Universe. A spinning Universe would create ready-
Time travel is possible, but you have to become a hypothetical particle that travels faster than the made time machines. Sadly, our Universe
called a tachyon. Probably not likely. speed of light. doesn’t spin. 2
TIME TRAVEL
OPTION 3: Split
the Universe
If all these time machines seem contrived
and wildly impractical, well, they are.
But that’s not the point. The point is that
time travel is possible in principle. And
that permits nightmare paradoxes to
raise their heads. For instance, you could
use a time machine to go back in time
to murder your grandfather before your
mother was born. The question would
then be: how could you have murdered
your grandfather if you had never been
born? To avoid the grandfather paradox,
the late Stephen Hawking proposed the
‘chronology protection conjecture’. This is
just a fancy way of saying: time travel is
impossible. Hawking was convinced that
some undiscovered law of physics must
intervene to prevent it ever happening.
But there’s another way out of the
grandfather paradox. Quantum theory is
our best description of the microscopic
world of atoms and their constituents. But
it implies that fundamental particles can
do many things at once, the equivalent
of you doing shopping and mowing the
lawn at the same time. According to the
many worlds interpretation of quantum
theory, every time a quantum event occurs
– for instance, a photon is emitted by an
atom or not emitted by an atom – both
things happen but in parallel realities.
The Universe is constantly splitting into
versions that play out all possible histories
and there are infinite parallel realities
stacked like the pages of a neverending
book. In the many worlds scenario, if you
go back in time and kill your grandfather,
you kill a parallel grandfather in a parallel
universe, not your one. Hey presto, time
travel without the paradoxes.
If the Universe contains parallel realities,
then tricky time travel paradoxes are avoided.
OPTION 4: Jump through OPTION 5: Take a
cosmic strings wormhole shortcut
It’s possible to build a time machine using cosmic strings. These one- According to General Relativity, time flows
dimensional faults in space-time preserve the high-energy conditions at different rates in different gravity. So
of the ultra-early Universe. Cosmic strings are analogous to the cracks to create a time machine, we just need
that form when water freezes to make ice and they crop up in about to connect two such regions and travel
half the theories proposed to unify nature’s fundamental forces. They between them.
have no ends and, in an infinite Universe, are either infinite in extent Imagine one place on Earth where time
or exist in closed loops. passes at the normal rate and another place
Cosmic strings are under enormous tension, which causes them to near a black hole, where time flows more
straighten out with time and lash about at speeds typically greater slowly thanks to the intense gravity. If two
than half of the speed of light. In General Relativity, such tension identical clocks begin ticking on Monday –
gives rise to repulsive gravity. So, despite the fact that strings have one on Earth and one at the black hole – by
enormous masses – about 10 million billion tonnes per centimetre – the time it’s Friday on Earth, it would only
their gravity is cancelled out and doesn’t affect nearby objects. be Wednesday at the black hole. So, if you
could travel instantaneously from Earth to
“A cosmic string
the black hole, you could go from Friday
back to Wednesday. Theoretical physicists
Michael Morris and Kip Thorne proposed
represents a tiny chink in
such a method using a wormhole.
A wormhole is a shortcut through space-
time, predicted by Einstein. Imagine two
the armour of space-time”
points, A and B, on a piece of paper. If the
paper is folded in two, A and B are now
much closer. If they could be connected
somehow you could travel between them
The hint that a string might be used for time travel comes from more quickly than if you had to go across
what it does to space-time. Imagine the string coming up through this the paper. This is a shortcut analogous to a
page and a circular disc of space-time surrounding it in the plane wormhole. If the Earth and the black hole
of this page. This is normal space-time. But a string does something are connected by such a wormhole, we
weird to space-time: it cuts out a chunk like a pizza slice. On either have a time machine. The problem with
side of the missing slice, the space-time joins up. So, the space-time wormholes is they snap shut in the blink
around the string, rather than being flat, is a shallow cone. Suddenly of an eye and would have to be propped
it’s possible to see how to go faster than a light beam. Travelling open by something with repulsive gravity
around the string is a shortcut through space-time because it’s pos- for us to travel through them. Actually,
sible to complete a circle without having to travel 360°. It should be most of the stuff in the Universe – dark
pointed out that the pizza slice that’s cut out of space-time is teeny, energy – does have such repulsive gravity.
about a thousandth of a degree. So, a cosmic string represents only a The problem is it’s too weak to keep a
tiny chink in the armour of space-time and it requires considerable wormhole open. Also, in order to prop
ingenuity to exploit it for time travel. open a wormhole big enough for a person
However, in 1991, physicist Richard Gott imagined a peculiar to crawl through, we’d require energy
ILLUSTRATIONS: MERIJN HOS
scenario in which two infinitely long cosmic strings are passing each equivalent to that radiated by many of the
other in opposite directions at 99.999999996 per cent of the speed of stars in our Galaxy over their entire lives.
light, which would warp space-time even further. According to Gott,
the space-time of this cosmic string solution would be sufficiently Wormholes offer a way to travel through space
twisted that it would be possible to travel anticlockwise around to a region where time flows differently. The
the two moving cosmic strings, always towards the future and still problem is keeping the wormhole open.
arrive home when you started. He likens it to an Escher drawing in
which monks travelling clockwise on a staircase are always climbing
higher but, after circling around a courtyard, find themselves back
where they started.
Marcus Chown is the author of The Ascent Of Gravity
Cosmic strings warp space-time, so time travel could be possible if we (£16.99, Weidenfeld & Nicolson), which was The Sunday
zoom around them. Times science book of the year.