Ars Live: Time Travel In Movies—The Science Behind The Fiction

Thoroughly enjoyed this. Thanks 👍

I loved the "explanation" of Superman's time travelling at 24:26. I had never heard of Gravity Probe B, and that it proved that frame dragging was real. I thought that it was only theoretical.

Honestly, Ed Solomon's idea for Curb Your Enthusiasm sounded pretty quintessentially "Curb", and I think it would have totally worked if they had ever wanted to incorporate a little science fiction. As for Superman, I like James Kakalios' explanation here. The reversal of Earth's rotation that we see was not the cause of the time travel, it was the effect. I think a lot of viewers have that simple misunderstanding. The movie is just using that shot as a visual clue that we are traveling back in time, it is not saying that reversing the Earth's rotation is what is generating the reversal of time.

Timecrimes is Cronocrimenes, a Spanish movie!

I don't remember the "red matter" scene in the Star Trek movie but you can easily get away with not explaining it by having the Star Trek characters not know much about it either. Then the viewer explores it along with the movie's characters.

I’d have loved to have known your guys thoughts on the film Predestination starring Ethan Hawke. I absolutely love that film and even though I feel like I understand it. Id love to know if it is actually a theoretically sound film regarding its premise and how it turns out. I didn’t think it’d get a mention due to it being a relatively small film but I thought it might’ve stood out enough to warrant a mention on the topic.

What is the you traveling into the future? Isn't everything becoming the future version not really time travel. The traveler would have to travel against the ground of changing time without the traveler being a part of that ground. Time travel needs to be a displacement, which is travel as opposed to change parallel with the ground.

Teddy Roosevelt was assassinated... ooops, I went back and fixed that, he was shot and survived.

if it’s not interesting it’s not photography… the script is the science not necessarily the picture… 😢