quotations about time travel
Imagine a world where virtual reality exists and is ubiquitous, and we have whatever device we need to experience it. How cool would it be if you were at a concert in the countryside and I could be there with you -- hearing, smelling, seeing it, too? Or the presidential inauguration -- that would be amazing. That's what Instagram is now, in a very low-fidelity way. I like to say we're working on time travel, but the difference is we're not sending you there -- it's coming to you.
KEVIN SYSTROM
"Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom: 'We're working on time travel'", The Guardian, October 2, 2015
Forward time travel is no big deal, being in reality nothing but slow aging.
KATINKA RIDDERBOS
Time
What if tomorrow vanished in the storm? What if time stood still? And yesterday--if once we lost our way, blundered in the storm--would we find yesterday again ahead of us, where we had thought tomorrow's sun would rise?
ROBERT NATHAN
Portrait of Jennie
A seminar on time travel will be held two weeks ago.
GEOFF TIBBALLS
The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes
Most physicists now working would bet against the possibility of time travel, not merely because of the practical difficulties of generating the necessary conditions to allow it but also because of the implications of time travel if it becomes possible.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
"What Einstein and Bill Gates Teach Us About Time Travel", NBC News, May 10, 2017
A lot of people think time travel is something invented by movie directors and science fiction writers. While it is certainly true this technology is often used in sci-fi settings, it is not as unfeasible as most people think it is. To be more specific, it is mathematically possible to travel in time, even though that does not mean it will ever become a reality.
JP BUNTINX
"New Research Confirms Time Travel is Mathematically Possible", The Merkle, April 30, 2017
Well, yes, it's real, but unfortunately it's mostly real just in our heads. I mean, I'm speaking to you from yesterday. It's Friday where I am. You're my future, and I know that's just a trick of the clock. I mean, that's not time travel.
JAMES GLEICK
"The Nation: Patrick Gower interviews James Gleick", Scoop, May 6, 2017
Without unscrambled eggs, there was no time travel, no more depredation of the Now.
JASPER FFORDE
First Among Sequels
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
T. S. ELIOT
"Burnt Norton", Four Quartets
I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine.
SAMANTHA HUNT
The Invention of Everything Else
Perhaps the most famous of all the time travel paradoxes is the one in which the time traveler goes back in time and murders one of his ancestors, for example, his mother. The problem is then obvious. If his mother dies before giving birth, then the time traveler would never have existed. But in that case he would not be able to carry out the murder. So if the woman lives, she dies, but if she dies, she lives! Either way, contradictory nonsense results.
PAUL DAVIES
How to Build a Time Machine
The theoretical underpinnings of time travel date back to 1905, when Albert Einstein wrote down his special theory of relativity that showed space and time are intimately linked, and to 1916, when Einstein's general theory of relativity showed that space and time are malleable -- that is, they respond to the presence of matter or energy by warping, bending, expanding, and contracting. By extension, this means if one can imagine space being filled with some exotic form of energy, then space and time could warp in a way so that time, as well as space, could bend back upon themselves like circles, allowing one to move forward in a straight line and still return to one's starting point in both space and time.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
"What Einstein and Bill Gates Teach Us About Time Travel", NBC News, May 10, 2017
Theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking likes two things: simple experiments and Champagne. So he combined the two and solved one of humanity's age old questions: Will humans ever be able to time travel? Hawking threw a Champagne party for time travelers complete with Krug and hors d'oeuvres in 2009, and didn't release the invitations until after the party had taken place. If people had shown up, he hypothesized, it would be proof that time travel is real. Since people didn't show up, time travel is not real, probably. "I sat there a long time, but no one came," Hawking said in a statement. Video of what the party was like from his documentary "Into the Universe" showed around 10 bottles of Krug being poured into a pyramid of Champagne flutes. Small plates were alongside the drinks. They remained untouched. To be fair, the invitation didn't say there was going to be Krug.
NICK HINES
"That Time Stephen Hawking Threw a Champagne Party for Time Travelers", VinePair, May 15, 2017
In some sense, of course, we're all time travelers: We move forward in time from one minute to the next. But going back in time, whether to avoid some mistake or perhaps to repeat it, is something far more elusive. And for those who yearn to see what the world will look like a century or a millennium from now, the slow tick of your watch as time passes just doesn't cut it.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
"What Einstein and Bill Gates Teach Us About Time Travel", NBC News, May 10, 2017
The earth orbits the sun at more than 100,000 km per hour. This means that any time traveller would shift 29 kilometres for every one second they traveled back in time. Take the movie Back to the Future. If a real life Marty McFly could use a Delorean to travel 30 years into the past, he would be fatally teleported into a section of space approximately 28 billion kilometres away from his starting point on earth.
TRISTIN HOPPER
"Here's what time travel will look like once we invent it", National Post, May 4, 2017
To revisit the spitfire world
of the duel, you put on a suit
of white body armour, a helmet
like an insect's composite eye
and step out like a space walker
under haloed lights, trailing a cord.
LES MURRAY
"Time Travel", Collected Poems
Time is intimately related to mind and thought and ... to possibility and probability; hence, time is as real as thought. However, we all have access to that timeless, spaceless realm where time itself is created. Time is a projection of mind, and by changing our ego structures--the way we think about our roles as individuals in the world--we can defeat our ego-conditioning and become aware of our ability to time travel.
FRED ALAN WOLF
The Yoga of Time Travel: How the Mind Can Defeat Time
All I really need
Is time travel and you
Don't know what this is
We're travelling through
All the memories
Unravel with you
So all I really need
Is time travel
And you...
DALEY
"Time Travel"
Time travel is a philosophical concept, not a scientific one. It is, in fact, as has been pointed out, scientific nonsense.
ALEXEI PANSHIN
introduction, "All You Zombies--", The Mirror of Infinity
Time travel over short distances is one thing, expeditions deep into the millennia quite another. The difference is more or less like that between going for a stroll downtown and journeying to the stars.
LEM STANISLAW
"The Twentieth Voyage of Ijon Tichy", The Star Diaries