Sandrine Ceurstemont, editor, New Scientist TV
Time travel in the real world isn't yet possible. But thanks to new physics flicks, you can now experience an alternate universe to see what it might look like.
Developed by Wolfgang Schleich and colleagues at the University of Ulm in Germany, these first time-travel videos mathematically recreate the weird world of Gödel's universe. In the first clip, a camera is placed at the centre of this cylindrical universe, simulating what an Earth-like object would look like. Because light behaves differently in this space, as the sphere moves away from you, you see an image of both the front and the back. If it moves above you, it appears as a collection of slices. During its orbit, you see many versions from different time periods all at once.
The video gets even more trippy as it simulates what you would see when looking up at a ball. Because the universe is rotating, light rays move in spirals, creating circular echoes around the object. If a single ball is replaced by a stack, you see all the balls at once.
Of course the visualisation isn't complete without a taste of time travel. The last clip follows a bizarre ball as it meets a younger version of itself, then ages.
For more about the simulation, check out our article "First real time-travel movies are loopers".
If you enjoyed this post, see how to build a time machine or check out how the universe emerged from nothing.
First time-travel movies reveal surreal universe
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