Is Time Travel Possible Today?

“The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” ~ Albert Einstein.

In the history of humanity, time travel is regarded as one of the greatest things man can accomplish, and a lot of progress has been made in this field. However, real time travel is not possible yet, but we can break a few rules of time here on Earth.

As you know, the Earth is divided into various timezones. This is because Earth is a sphere that rotates on its axis, so light coming from the sun will hit different parts of the Earth at different times. We cannot use the same time globally, so we split the Earth into smaller imaginary divisions which we call timezones.

Hypothetically, let’s say you were to travel around the world, starting from Greenwich in the United Kingdom on Monday 21st December at 12:00 PM (Noon), moving westward. After making it across the North Atlantic Ocean, and a little bit inland of North America, you would land in the city of Chicago. Here people live 6 hours in the past, according to the timezone followed here which is 6 hours behind the time in Greenwich, so it is about 6:00 AM here.

Image credit: Google Earth

Now, without taking a break, we resume our journey, progressing further westward. We cross the North Pacific Ocean, landing up in the Hawaiian Islands where the time is 10 hours behind GMT, making it 2:00 AM, still on 21st December. What lies ahead of us now is the International Date Line, which is our time travel machine. On the other side of this Line is a Russian timezone that lies 12 hours ahead of GMT.

Image credit: Google Earth

So as we part from the Hawaiian islands, cross the Bering Sea, travelling towards the North, we reach the Russian city of Anadyr.

Image credit: Google Earth

Here, the time is 12:00 AM, 22nd December. With that, we travelled 1 day into the future. With this experiment we can observe a few things:

1. Upon travelling across the International Date Line (IDL) in a West – East direction, we travel almost one day into the future

2. If we go the opposite direction, i.e. East – West, we travel almost one day into the past
   

If we travel across the International Date Line, we can travel a day into the past or the future. In order to time travel across a larger time difference we need to cross two timezones with the largest time difference in the shortest possible period of time. Basically we need to travel from two points of land which are generally close to each other and are on 2 very different timezones.

At first the shortest distance appears to be between the eastern most part of Russia and the western most part of Alaska with the distance between them being roughly a 100 kilometers.

But upon closer inspection we can arrive at the Diomede islands. This group of islands comprises of just 2 islands, namely little Diomede and Big Diomede. They are located in between Russia and Alaska (USA). Big Diomede is under Russian governance and Little Diomede is under US governance. These islands are used for the US-Russia border, thus making the distance between them just 4 kilometers.

Little Diomede follows Alaskan Standard Time, which is 9 hours behind GMT. So if it is 12:00 PM (Noon), December 21st at GMT, then it would be 3:00 AM, December 21st at Little Diomede. Big Diomede however, is on the other side of the IDL, and it follows Anadyr Standard Time which is 12 hours ahead of GMT it will be 12:00 AM, December 22nd. So by travelling 4 kilometers across these islands, you can either move one day into the future or past. Due to these islands’ high latitude, the water in between them freezes in the winter, so you can actually walk across the International Date Line and travel across time.

An easier way to time travel

Looking at the image above, we can see that timezones are formed using longitudes of the Earth, which converge at the North and South Pole, so you could travel to the Arctic or Antarctica and walk around the North Pole or South Pole, and travel through multiple timezones at once as the distance between them is very less or negligible. You won’t experience any difference in day or night however due to the tilt of the Earth’s axis.

Thanks for reading!

1. Oblate spheroid for geometry geeks.

2. For simplicity purposes, just imagine that as we travel we don’t spend anytime in the actual travelling between two points on the Earth’s surface.

3. Central Standard Timezone.

4. Ignoring Daylight Savings Time.