Time itself is described to be a measurable period from which an event exists from one point to another. This is typically based on the measurement surrounding celestial bodies, such as the Earth rotating on its on axis or around our sun, referred to as solar time; or even our moon’s rotation around our own planet called lunar time. In fact, our own systematic way of measuring time is not in tune with nature or the celestial bodies. For instance, our clocks measure a day to be 24 hours, when in actuality the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is closer to 23 hours and 56 minutes; or we say a lunar month is 28 days, when in actuality the moon takes closer to 29½ days to transition through its four phases, from New Moon, to First Quarter, to Full Moon, to Third Quarter, back to New Moon. What is also interesting is that the Moon’s actual orbit around the earth takes around 27½ days, called a sidereal month. Of course, a commonly known one is the fact the Earth’s orbit around the Sun is closer to 365¼ days, which is why we account for it every four years, called a Leap Year.

We have come to think of time as moving in a linear fashion, from past, to present, to future but what’s interesting is that that mediums by which we both measure time (the planets) and represent time (the clock) don’t; they move in a circular fashion, faithfully completing their cycles one after another. Time itself then is a cycle because the same events occur and reoccur – even the fact that we may get up and go to school or work everyday, or celebrate our birthdays and holidays annually in itself is a cycle. To take things a step further, time does not move at all but rather we move through time. In an existence governed by mathematics, every decision we make and action we take is the input of a mathematical formula which in turn determines the outcome, so in that essence the outcome is already pre-determined by our actions, the outcome being what we refer to as the future and those actions being what refer to as the present to become the past. It is not only arguable that the future has already happened but that all possible futures have, as backed by a project in Quantum Mechanics called the Double Slit Experiment, where all possibilities are happening until observed and it is only when observed that one determined outcome then happens. Retrocausality also speaks of a phenomena in Quantum Physics whereby the effect precedes the cause; in other words the future determines the past. This is a concept touched on in the film Tenet.

The question has been asked for many years whether the time machine is possible. There is a four-dimensional model in science referred to as space-time or the space-time continuum which fuses space and time together. The concept explains that to move through space is to move through time and vice versa because as time continues we are constantly moving through space. Therefore, if we are moving through space, we are indeed moving through time, again emphasising it is not time moving but us moving through time. What is also interesting is that every person’s experience of time is relative, meaning that there are factors that affect one’s experience of time, such as motion or gravity. The phenomena is referred to a time dilation and it has been scientifically proven that the faster one moves, the slower their experience of time is; likewise, the stronger the gravitational pull, the slower one’s experience of time is, so for somebody closer to the planet Earth or actually on the planet time would move slower than for somebody in space. This quite literally means that where you are in space determines where you are in time, so being light years away from Earth could potentially mean being years behind or in front in time, relative to us. Experiments have also been done with the atomic clock, one of the most accurate ways of measuring time, whereby it has been proven that motion does indeed effect time. In this very day and time, scientists are conducting time travel experiments with quantum particles – so time travel is not only a question, it’s a reality.