Argentine physicist reveals impact of time travel: 'You can go to the future, but there's a catch'

The long-held science fiction dream of time travel is grounded in physics, according to renowned Argentine theoretical physicist Juan Martín Maldacena. He explained that traveling into the future is indeed possible, a concept rooted in Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

Maldacena, a professor at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, elaborated that the key lies in achieving speeds close to the speed of light. According to Einstein's special relativity, time does not flow uniformly for all observers. When an object moves at extremely high velocities, time slows down for that object relative to a stationary observer.

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That's the simplest way: travel at very fast speeds.

However, Maldacena highlighted a significant "trap" for any future traveler. While the journey might feel brief for the person traveling at near-light speeds, many more years could have passed on Earth. Crucially, there is no simple or equivalent method to return to one's original time once the future has been reached.

He also added a curious consequence of such high-speed travel: "At those speeds, we wouldn't age either." This means that while the traveler would still age, they would do so considerably less than those who remained on Earth, assuming the speed achieved was sufficiently high. This revelation, stemming from fundamental principles of physics, offers a fascinating glimpse into the theoretical possibilities of manipulating time.

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At those speeds, we wouldn't age either.