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Revealed: How time travel may be possible, expert says

Whether its meeting a long-dead relative or undoing the embarrassing damage at a work Christmas party, the idea of time travel is one people can only dream about.

But according to astrophysicist and NASA columnist Ethan Siegel that could one day change.

In specific conditions, the rules of theoretical physics could create a series of elaborate wormholes that would allow to transfer matter through time.

There’s just one catch… you can only go backwards.

"From the time turner in Harry Potter to Back To The Future to Groundhog Day, traveling back in time provides us with the possibility of righting wrongs in our own past," Mr Siegel wrote in a blog for Forbes.

Mr Siegel said with a wormhole large enough, time travel would be possible... but only backwards. Source: Getty
Mr Siegel said with a wormhole large enough, time travel would be possible... but only backwards. Source: Getty

"But thanks to some very interesting properties of space and time in Einstein's General Relativity, traveling back in time may be possible after all."

Mr Siegel of Lewis and Clark College explained that “there’s nothing forbidding” travelling back in time but said backwards time travel would rely on finding negative mass to act as a counterpart to the zero mass particles found throughout the world.

To date, no such particles have ever been found.

"If this negative mass/energy matter exists, then creating both a supermassive black hole and the negative mass/energy counterpart to it, while then connecting them, should allow for a traversable wormhole," Mr Siegel added.

Back To The Future generation further intrigue into the idea time travel. Source: Twitter
Back To The Future generation further intrigue into the idea time travel. Source: Twitter

Such a wormhole would allow a person to be transported through it, "instantly disappearing from one location" before reapparing in another.

Mr Siegel theorised that if you were to travel at the speed of light towards the star and then return back to earth, “you’d find something odd”.

“[The] end of the wormhole would have aged 40 years, but the "at rest" end would only have aged by 1 year," he explained.