Is time travel possible? sort of. Here’s the science behind it.

A common theme in science fiction media, time travel is fascinating. In his essay “The Time Travel Paradox” by the late philosopher David Lewis, “[involving] The difference between time and space. Any passenger departs and reaches his destination; The elapsed time from the origin to the destination is… the duration of the trip.

Time travel is usually understood by many as going back in time or jumping forward to a point in the future. But how much of the idea is based on reality? Is it possible to travel in time?

Is time travel possible?

According to NASA, time travel is possible, just not in the way you might expect. Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity states that time and motion are relative, nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second. Time travel is done through what is called “time dilation”.

Time dilation, according to Live Science, is how one’s perception of time differs from another’s, depending on one’s motion or location. Therefore, time is relative.

Dr. Ana Alonso Serrano, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany, explained time travel and how researchers test the theories.

Space and time are not absolute values, Alonso-Serrano said. And what makes this all complicated is that you can shape spacetime.

“The moment you map spacetime, you can play with that curve to make the clock come in a circle and make a time machine,” Alonso-Serrano told USA TODAY.

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She explains, in theory, how time travel is possible. The math behind the curvature of spacetime is solid, but trying to recreate the rigorous physical conditions needed to prove these theories can be challenging.

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“The tricky part of that is if you can find a physical, realistic, way to do it,” she said.

Alonso-Serrano says wormholes and warp drives are the tools used to create this curve. The case of finding spacetime through a wormhole is a special case that has not been successfully worked out. Researchers don’t even know this kind of thing exists, she said.

“It’s because what we’re doing is theoretically possible and it’s a great way to test our theory and look for potential paradoxes,” Alonso-Serrano added.

Apart from the methods mentioned above, Alonso-Serrano is not sure about other methods in time travel.

“I can’t say it’s impossible, but I can’t ignore the possibility,” she said.

She also mentioned the story of Stephen Hawking’s champagne party for time travelers, where Hawking had a GPS-based location for the party. He did not send invitations until the invitation was given so that only those who were going on the previous trip could attend. None were seen, and Hawking referred to this event as “experimental evidence” that time travel is impossible.

This article originally appeared on USA Today: Is Time Travel Possible? The science behind the conditions.