Representation of time travel with blue clocks in darkness.
Representation of time travel with blue clocks in darkness.

Past, Present, Future: Time Travel with Brian Greene

Ajaj1818, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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About This Episode

What type of time travel is used in A Christmas Carol? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic co-host Chuck Nice answer fan questions on time travel, paradoxes, and wormholes with theoretical physicist, Brian Greene. Did Ebenezer Scrooge get pulled through a wormhole?

How did people think about time travel before Einstein? How did the special theory of relativity change how we think about time? Discover time dilation and how speed and gravity affects an object’s passage of time. What type of time travel was Charles Dickens using?

Learn about the possible paradoxes of traveling and meddling with the past. Is there one immutable timeline or many timelines in a multiverse? Do we have free will? What is time to a photon traveling at the speed of light? How would we police time travel if it were possible? Will we even have time travel in the future? If time travel gets invented, why are we not overrun by tourists from the future?

Which films depict time travel best? How are cells affected by time travel? We explore the movement of information in and out of black holes, string theory, and tachyons. Could we theoretically time travel to before the big bang? Finally, is there even a realm to travel to before the Big Bang?

NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can watch or listen to this entire episode commercial-free.