It Could Happen. Couldn’t It?

UW Professor emeritus of physics John Cramer may be a well-known science fiction writer, but he doesn’t get confused when it comes to his own work with the edges of scientific study, which may bring time travel to the everyday. It’s exciting, but as Cramer outlines in his interview with Tim Appelo (“Quantum Mechanic,” City Arts Seattle), it’s not what you’re used to seeing in the movies.

Dr. Cramer hasn't budgeted for a luxury vehicle as part of his experiments

Back to the Future
In the Robert Zemeckis classic, Dr. Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd) sends his beloved dog Einstein back into the future to become to the world’s first time traveler. 

Speculative Reality
Dr. Cramer is currently researching the process of sending light beams along fiber-optic cable to transmit a simple message “perhaps a thousandth of a second” back in time. So it’s unlikely you’ll see too many Delorean-aided time traveling dogs anytime soon.

Bogus - time is not a simple tool to help solve minor personal crisis

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
In this cult comedy, Bill and Ted escape jail by positing that they will go forward in time to hide keys and set distractions to aid their flight.

Possible Reality
In the article, Cramer brings up stockbrokers as possible beneficiaries of time travel technology, which they could use to send messages back in time a few milliseconds to traders. While possibly just as beneficial, it’s a long way off from slipping your past-self a key, or any useful object, from the future.

Time machines have come a long way since the 1980s

Hot Tub Time Machine
A group of friends parties hard in a hot tub and wakes up after being transported back in time to the 1980s due to the hot tub’s mysterious time travel function. 

Theoretical Reality
When it comes to time travel, it’s for photons not friends and even then it’s for milliseconds instead of decades. For particles, time isn’t a place to go to (or accidentally arrive at), but a force, like gravity, that influences events. •