Celebrated astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson confirmed during an appearance on Hot Ones Game Night that human time travel to the future is theoretically possible through space acceleration. However, the scientist emphasized that traveling backward into the past remains completely impossible under the laws of physics.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, known worldwide as a multiple-award-winning astrophysicist, author, science communicator, host, and actor, addressed the mechanics of temporal movement during a recent appearance on the October 14th episode of Hot Ones Game Night. When host Joe Santagato asked whether humans would ever be able to time travel, Tyson initially offered a brief reply before diving into the physics of the concept.
–>How Future Time Travel Works According to Tyson
While most people associate time travel strictly with books and Hollywood fiction, Tyson explained that moving forward in time is grounded in theoretical reality. The process relies on accelerating an individual through space. According to the astrophysicist, if a traveler is sent speeding through space and ages 10 minutes before returning to Earth, the people back on the planet might have aged an hour, a day, or even a full year depending on the speed utilized.
–>If I accelerate you through space for a while, and you age, let’s say 10 minutes, and I bring you back to Earth, depending on what speed I sent you, we could have aged an hour, a day, a year. You went into the future. Not into your own future. You went into everybody else’s future.
Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist
Tyson clarified that this mechanism does not allow someone to access their own personal future. Instead, travelers remain bound to the present within their individual timelines, forever moving between an inaccessible past and an unknowable future, meaning Hollywood movie plots like those seen in the Marvel Avengers films do not align with actual physics.
–>Ranking Famous Intellects on Hot Ones Game Night
The episode also featured a segment where Santagato asked Tyson to rank a lineup of famously smart individuals from most to least intelligent, which included Bill Nye, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, and Tyson himself.
–>Tyson placed Stephen Hawking in the top spot as the undisputed champion following Einstein. He positioned Carl Sagan in the second spot ahead of himself. Regarding the remaining positions, Tyson noted that he and Bill Nye share a very similar intellect, choosing to declare a tie for the third spot rather than assigning a separate fourth.
