Talk:Time travel

replacement for wretched wording and markup

   A colleague (who didn't take the trouble to encourage constructive discussion by even saving -- for those who care who the colleague is or when they held forth -- the trouble of searching the edit history) did add to Time travel#Tourism in time the following comment markup (to which i've added meta-markup, on this talk page, trying to make the markup display in a more intuitively clear way here):

"This picture would explain why we haven't been over run [sic]

<!-- several people have tried to edit this, but note that it says "over run" rather than "overrun" in the original essay on Hawking's website, and direct quotes should match the original source so please don't change it -->

by tourists from the future."

   The colleague's concern for non-misrepresentation is praiseworthy, even tho the wording "have tried to edit" reeks too much of the Inquisition or the Klan, and the typographic travesty that is their solution may not even be appropriate for some critical edition of Hawking's works. Here -- leaving behind the pedants' concern about who (Hawking, an editor, a typesetter?) is responsible for the inappropriate internal space -- is an encyclopedia-appropriate version of the passage:

"This picture would explain why we haven't been [overrun] by tourists from the future."

It's literate, harmless, almost devoid of distraction, and not significantly better nor worse than

Stephen Hawking says that this picture would explain why our times haven't been overrun by "tourists from the future."{{cn|date=January 2015}}

--Jerzy•t 04:21 & 07:05, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 6 August 2025

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books Publication date ‏ : ‎ November 9, 2007 Language ‏ : ‎ English Print length ‏ : ‎ 239 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 156858363X ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1568583631 Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 7.2 ounces Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.25 inches Best Sellers Rank: #781,650 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

1. 164 in Relativity Physics (Books)
2. 550 in Scientist Biographies
3. 2,280 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)

Customer Reviews: 4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars (269) 2601:282:1F21:186E:ED2A:AF7C:E6E1:C6BA (talk) 18:01, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Alpha Beta Delta Lambda (talk) 18:06, 6 August 2025 (UTC)

External links

Will the following link be accepted: Time Slips? תיל"ם (talk) 10:28, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

For the benefit of other editors, this is a YouTube video of a narrator describing an recollection by Carl Jung and a friend; they claimed to have seen mosaics in a church that did not exist but which match descriptions of mosaics in a church that had burnt down centuries ago.

Seem like this would be more suitable for Synchronicity or Time Slip. The video does not discuss travel but only recollections of an inaccessible past. Johnjbarton (talk) 17:17, 4 December 2025 (UTC)

History section

The History section seems badly in need of an overhaul.

1. The origins of forward jumps in time lie in myth and legend; some in a religious context, others not. But this is not time travel as such (e.g. it does not meet the definition at the beginning of the article), and such examples should be presented as no more than precursors to the idea. The secular aspect is as significant as the religious.
2. In the section on Science fiction, the dream examples are not time travel as such, any more than long sleep is. A dream is not science fiction, it is just fiction - or, if it tuns out to be true, fantasy.
3. The Early time machines are a subset of science fiction, not a separate topic. The heading hierarchy should reflect this.
4. The modern equivalent of myth and legend is fantasy fiction; a Fantasy subtopic is missing. Notable are the dream stories noted above, including for example the unfinished time-travelling novels of JRR Tolliken, which literary commentators have discussed.

Does anybody have strong objections to an overhaul on these lines? — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 16:02, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Anything that reliable sources call "time travel" is suitable subject. "History" should cite historians or at least reliable meta commentators. Since fiction may or may not evolve, a topic like time-travel in fantasy need not be in History. I'm not answering you question but I hope this helps give a sense of what I would look for. give it a try! Johnjbarton (talk) 19:14, 2 April 2026 (UTC)

Why is there no information on Astronauts and Portable Atomic Clock Tests?

Several years ago, the Wikipedia article on time travel had a Time Dilation section that referenced Astronauts travelling into the future on orbital and space flights (albeit for less than a millisecond). There was also a reference to small Backpack Hewlett-Packard Atomic clocks being taken up a mountain in Washington State to confirm time dilation in a gravity well (they were compared with the same clocks at sea level). I am a little bit saddened that neither of these items are mentioned in the current article on Time Travel. Is anyone else bothered by this? Eparaqutam (talk) 06:32, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

I rewrote the section to match the key source by Gott.

The astronaut is still there.

I suppose the atomic clock thing was removed because it is a topic for atomic clock or gravitational time dilation. If you can find the reference I could add that to those articles. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:25, 10 July 2026 (UTC)