The Science of Stephen King

Meg:“NASA has a theory about travelers being able to go back in time via wormholes. Can you explain how this could be possible?”

James Hedberg: “I’m guessing you might be referring to the breakthrough propulsion physics program, in which NASA engineers explored some modes of space travel somewhat more exotic than strapping astronauts to giant rockets. Terms like ‘warp drive’ and ‘wormholes’ were mentioned in some of the original project descriptions, but to my knowledge, these research topics are no longer being seriously explored at an official level by NASA. The basic idea of using a wormhole for time travel is predicated on having an ‘arbitrarily advanced civilization’ that could first construct a wormhole. This is well beyond the scope of our current technology. But, the mathematical framework from general relativity that has successfully been used to model much of what we see in the observable universe does appear to allow for the possibility of some type of folding of spacetime, the basis of wormholes, and also for time dilation effects to enable time travel, once the wormhole has been created.”

Kelly:“We read about astronomer Frank Tipler’s idea of a cylinder to time travel. Are you familiar with his idea and do you think it could work?”

James Hedberg: “I was not familiar with a Tipler cylinder before this. Would it work? I doubt it.”

Meg:“We’ve seen in some movies and TV shows that black holes or cosmic strings can be used to time travel. What is the scientific basis behind these theories?”

James Hedberg: “The ‘scientific’ origin of all of these time travel sci-fi setups seems largely based on the observable fact that in the vicinity of very large (i.e., massive) objects like black holes, time does behave differently than our normal experience would suggest. Even near a rather small object like the Earth, engineers must account for relativity effects when programming the satellites in orbit. Near something much heavier, like a black hole, these effects will be more noticeable, and can easily serve as conceptual launching pads for more exotic (and much less verifiable) ideas like time travel. Though, as far as actually exploiting these mechanisms, I don’t think there is much scientific basis.”

Kelly:“What is your favorite theory of time travel, either based in science or science fiction, and why?”

James Hedberg: “I usually liked Star Trek’s TNG time travel scenarios the best. They seemed to usually take care in dealing with the sticky issues of causality. In general, I love to imagine controlling our positions in time like we can our positions in space, but my science training doesn’t make me think we’ll ever have much luck making such things a reality. Most time travel scenarios in fiction seem to ignore the most obvious problem: that not only is Earth turning, but it is also moving around the sun, and the sun is moving around the galaxy, and the galaxy is moving through the universe, so were I to just blink back in time five minutes, the Earth would be somewhere completely different. But, yes, I do enjoy a good sci-fi time travel story.”

Meg:“Me too! Do you have a favorite Stephen King book or movie adaptation? What stuck with you about it?”

James Hedberg: “I read a few as a kid, and they certainly did leave an impression. Cujo probably spent the most time bouncing around in my head growing up. I spent a lot of time in cars waiting for grown-ups to do something (back when it was okay to leave your kid alone in a car in a parking lot for hours …) and couldn’t help but relate.”

Kelly: “That would be much rarer to see nowadays! Thank you for explaining these complicated topics to us!”

There’s a theory called the butterfly effect that could explain why things change each time Jake travels back in time. When Isaac Newton came up with the law of motion and universal gravitation in the 1600s, everything seemed predictable within science and the universe. This led to the belief that the future is set and we need to just wait for it to reveal itself. Determinism is the idea that the future is fixed while chaos theory purports that a small deviance could drastically change the outcome. The science of the butterfly effect is that tiny changes in big systems can have complex results.