Wormholes Make the Best Time Machines

A model of 'folded' space-time illustrates how a wormhole bridge might form with at least two mouths that are connected to a single throat or tube. (Image credit: edobric | Shutterstock)

If you're a science fiction nut like everyone here at SPACE.com, you most likely have already had an encounter or two with time travel. From Marty McFly in "Back to the Future" to Doctor's Who's TARDIS and that crazy sun-slingshot thing they do in "Star Trek," there are literally a million ways to travel through time in science fiction. But astrophysicist Eric W. Davis says time travel could one day be real. All you need is a wormhole. To quote Marty, "This is heavy."

The story comes from our sister site LiveScience, which caught up with Davis in a recent interview. He's an astrophysicist at the EarthTech International Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin and published a paper in July on the aspects of wormhole time travel in the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' journal.

"You can go into the future or into the past using traversable wormholes," Davis told LiveScience. But it won't be easy: "It would take a Herculean effort to turn a wormhole into a time machine. It's going to be tough enough to pull off a wormhole." So sadly, no DeLoreans that time travel at 88 mph yet. You can read the full time travel interview at Livescience here.

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Tariq is the award-winning Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001. He covers human spaceflight, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com's Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. He's a recipient of the 2022 Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting and the 2025 Space Pioneer Award from the National Space Society. He is an Eagle Scout and Space Camp alum with journalism degrees from the USC and NYU. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.