Equation-Induced Time Travel

Tag Area: Time Travel Method
Short Film

D.N.E.: Do Not Erase

After Brian’s girlfriend walks out on him and he invents time travel, a parade of future Brians shows up with one dire warning after another.

If you have a nice girlfriend or boyfriend and you are trying to crack time travel, please take this short film as a warning. —Michael Main
Brian: I am on the verge . . .
Sophie: . . . of cracking time travel, I know. Maybe when you do, we can go back in time and actually have all of the dates that you canceled.
Multiple images of Nar Williams (as Brian), one who holds a raygun and three of whom are dumbfounded.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Essay

Can You Really Go Back in Time by Breaking the Speed of Light?

The folks behind the Nova science TV series provide a write-up of how the velocity addition formula of Einstein’s special relativity would behave at superluminal velocities —Michael Main
We pictured what the trip would look like to an observer waiting back on Earth and watching the ship’s progress through a powerful super-telescope.
A luminous red hand on a clock appears to tick backward at a rate of minus 1000 minutes per minute.
  • Nonfiction
  • Definite Time Travel
Feature Film

Displacement

  • written and directed by Kenneth Mader
  • (Boston SciFi Film Festival, 7 February 2016)
Brilliant physics student Cassandra Sinclair finds herself running from the evil Initiative Organization—which includes her childhood friend Josh and a posh lady with an English accent—who are after the equations in her thesis notes that somehow (she’s not quite sure how) launched her on multiple slips back in time (we counted eight) that may or may not result in destroying yourself by getting too close to yourself, a closed timelike curve, quantum entanglement, and/or solving the Grandfather Paradox (without ever having anything that resembles the Grandfather Paradox, quantum entanglement, or a closed timelike curve). We suspect that writer/director Kenneth Mader had been reading “Experimental Simulation of Closed Timelike Curves,” but the actual science didn’t fully translate from the lab to the silver screen.

Handy Hint: The movie is eminently more watchable in a late-night group where everyone shouts “Great Scott!” whenever a character spews a sequence of pseudoscientific quantum mumbo jumbo that vaguely resembles an English sentence. —Michael Main
We’ve been running simulations to resolve the Grandfather Paradox, and we experienced an unusual electromagnetic pulse at the school that was triggered remotely. We were able to locate the source, but I suspect someone may have taken our simulations a step further. . . . The equation in your daughter’s thesis notes may have actually solved the paradox. But they’re untested and now they’re missing, and you said Charles has been absent. Could he have taken them and induced an entanglement?!
Repeated images of a thoughtful Courtney Hope fade into a firey high-tech blueprint.
  • Science Fiction
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Umbrella Academy, Season 1

  • by multiple writers and directors
  • 10 episodes (Netflix, USA, 15 February 2019)
Of the 43 children born 1 October 1989 with no gestation period, the eccentric and sometimes cruel billionaire Reginald Hargreeves brought up seven of them and turned them into the super-powered group called the Umbrella Academy when they developed powers. Nearly thirty years later, after Hargreeves dies, the five surviving members of the group gather at their family home. Oh, and: Number Six died some time ago and only Number Four can see him; Number Five disappeared about seventeen years ago, but he’s back (and in his 13-year-old body) after living 45 years in a post-apocalyptic future that’s scheduled to start in eight days. —Michael Main
As far as I could tell, I was the last person left alive. I never figured out what killed the human race. I did find something else: the date it happens. . . . The world ends in eight days, and I have no idea how to stop it.
The six living siblings of the Umbrella Academy gather in colorful garb under a black umbrella held by Luthor.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel
TV Season

The Umbrella Academy, Season 2

  • by multiple writers and directors
  • ten episodes (Netflix, USA, 31 July 2020)
Five’s plan for the Umbrella siblings to escape the apocalypse by going into the past ends up scattering them throughout different years of Dallas in the 1960s. They manage okay on their own until shortly after 11/22/63, when secondary effects from changes to the timeline cause a nuclear holocaust that can be averted only by recently arrived Five jumping back to 11/15/63 to exert his unique charm into getting the gang to work together. —Michael Main
Hazel to Five: If you want to live, come with me.”
All seven siblings of the Umbrella Academy walk in a straight line in their blue uniforms over a background of 1960s psychedelic black lines.
  • Eloi Silver Medal
  • Superhero
  • Audience: YA and Up
  • Definite Time Travel