As a self-identifying geek, I sometimes get into arguments with others about what they may consider ridiculous concepts in science fiction. One of my points is that whatever an author can dream up in a science fiction book should not be picked apart for theoretical inaccuracies. It’s fiction for f%$k’s sake! The very definition of made-up shit. But science fiction purists argue that you cannot write something that defies the laws of physics. My counter is that science changes over time, even our concept of those nearly religiously held beliefs about physics. I am of the belief that whatever the human brain can dream of will eventually be possible, perhaps not in my time, but someday…With that crazy thought in mind, I set out to research whether any reputable scientists today shared that belief. Believe it or not…some do! Here is what I learned.

One of the most notable scientists of the 20th century, Albert Einstein and his famous theory of relativity, proposed that, “time moves relative to the observer and does not clock at the same rate for everyone.”
Astronauts who spend a lot of time in orbit age more slowly than the rest of us. The technical reason is that they are orbiting the Earth at approximately 17,500 mph, which is faster than the Earth’s rotation rate. That means astronauts spent less time than those of us not in space, and when they returned to Earth, they shaved off time to their aging bodies. So an astronaut is technically a real-life time traveler. NASA actually did a twin study with Mark and Scott Kelly to study this phenomenon, since Scott spent more time in space than Mark.
As for untouchable physics…reputable physicists have demonstrated in a lab environment that waves can bounce off boundaries in time, not just in space, creating signals that behave as time-reversed copies of the original. While the study was beyond my puny brain’s ability to comprehend, tossing about terminology like metamaterials, photonic time interface, broadband frequency translation, and temporal reflection of an electromagnetic signal, the study was peer-reviewed and reported in Nature Physics.
Another experiment, also not easily understood by us regular folk, was described in Nature Communications. Basically, challenging the view of time and extending that into mechanical systems.
Other prominent scientists have conducted theoretical studies, such as the work with closed timeline curves (CTC), theorizing loops in time. For example, looking at a hypothetical spaceship and theorizing that after completing a round-trip of the curve, all systems aboard would return to their original states. No wear and tear.
Clocks on airplanes and satellites travel at different speeds than those on Earth, proving that time is definitely relative. That has been proven through an experiment…not theoretical.
Telescopes technically look back in time. When we look at stars, we are seeing what those stars looked like a long time ago.

Perhaps in five hundred years, people will talk about how ridiculous we were to think that time travel was not possible, just like we laugh at those who thought the Earth was flat. I’d like to think that my new novel, set in both the 26th and 21st centuries, is not as far-fetched as people believe. Perhaps someone will find my novel in five hundred years and consider me a visionary! In the meantime, you can all read it and dream of something that is theoretically possible, according to scientists! You know the drill, click the links below…