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Physics

First real time-travel movies are loopers

By Jacob Aron

30 January 2013

Video: First time-travel movies reveal weird universe

91av. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

(Image: M. Buser, E. Kajari and W. P. Schleich)

First real time-travel movies are loopers
Turn left into last week

Turn left into last week

(Image: Amblin/Universal)

TAKE that, Hollywood. You may have grappled with time travel for decades, but now that physicists are in on the action, they have the first movies of what travelling to the past actually looks like.

The visualisations are surreal, the result of the shape of a hypothetical universe in which time travel is possible. They might help us understand the origins of causality, which is still shrouded in mystery, and pave the way to physical, table-top models…

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