Kip Thorne Quotes

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.

The river of time may fork into rivers, in which case you have a parallel reality and so then you can become a time traveler and not have to worry about causing a time paradox.

The energy necessary to create a wormhole or to wrap time into nuts is incredible. It's not for us. It's maybe for our descendants who have mastered the energy of this technology. So if one day, somebody knocks on your door and claims to be your great great great great granddaughter, don't slam the door.

Whether you can go back in time is held in the grip of the law of quantum gravity.

If you have a wormhole, then you can turn them into time machines for going backward in time.

Apparently, some physicists argue that time is curved. I suppose this means that the past is in some way still present.

The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics.

I've always been a big fan of time travel, and I'm very into the notion that some day we'll be able to do it. Beam me up!

I put instant coffee in a microwave oven and almost went back in time.

If time travel were possible, you still wouldn't be able to change the past - it's already happened!

Time travel is a fantasy we all have. The 'Back to the Future' series really exploits that wish.

I know, on 'Rick and Morty,' we had the time where they unfreeze time, and they're in trouble because of it. The time starts splitting. That episode, we got a little too focused on 'how,' the hows and the science behind it, and oh my God, it was - it was spiraling us for sure.

When you cut into the present the future leaks out.

I feel like I'm a time traveler from the future who has been sent back to be annoyed.

In Einstein's equation, time is a river. It speeds up, meanders, and slows down. The new wrinkle is that it can have whirlpools and fork into two rivers. So, if the river of time can be bent into a pretzel, create whirlpools and fork into two rivers, then time travel cannot be ruled out.

Black holes, we all know, are these regions where if an object falls in, it can't get out, but the puzzle that many struggled with over the decades is, what happens to the information that an object contains when it falls into a black hole. Is it simply lost?

Time travel may be achieved one day, or it may not. But if it is, it should not require any fundamental change in world-view, at least for those who broadly share the world view I am presenting in this book.

Wormholes don't exist because the only way they would exist is if they were seeded with exotic material created by an intelligence far beyond our own. Something would have to make one.

I wouldn't say that 'The Fabric of the Cosmos' is a book on cosmology. Cosmology certainly plays a big part, but the major theme is our ever-evolving understanding of space and time, and what it all means for our sense of reality.

I find the whole time travel question very unsettling if you take it to its logical extension. I think it might eventually be possible, but then what happens?

Time travel offends our sense of cause and effect - but maybe the universe doesn't insist on cause and effect.

One of the most powerful devices is to distort time, to go from human time to atomic time, geologic time. Sometimes you can actually accomplish that, with one unexpected word choice.

I do think you can change the past and the present somehow. Even if something has already happened, it doesn't mean it's settled.

When you look at the calculation, it's amazing that every time you try to prove or disprove time travel, you've pushed Einstein's theory to the very limits where quantum effects must dominate. That's telling us that you really need a theory of everything to resolve this question. And the only candidate is string theory.

Ultimately, my Ph.D. is in mathematical physics, focusing on quantum field theory and curved space-time, and I worked with Stephen Hawking.