- We have the past, the
present and the future,
all stacked on top of each other,
all happening at the same time.
- I'm confused. (laughs)
- I have this very distinct
memory of scrolling through
Twitter and Instagram and TikTok
this past New Year's Eve
and pretty much every post
went a little something like,
"Look out because 2020
is going to be my year.
Just you wait, it's going A-MA-ZING".
"I'm going to accomplish all the goals
on my vision board and
everybody's going to be
shipping my perfect
relationship on Instagram
and I'm totally going to
crush it at school and"--
(record scratches)
(crying)
- [Isabella] Aw, what
innocent babies we were.
We had no idea that 2020
was going to turn into
such a flaming dumpster fire of a year.
Wouldn't it be awesome
if we could just skip out
on the rest of the year and
spend it in another year?
Sorry, just fantasizing here.
But this brings me to the
riddle of last episode.
What's in the future or the past,
but it's also happening now?
I've given you a pretty good hint.
If you know the answer,
shout it out on three.
One, two, three, time travel.
(dramatic music)
That's right.
I've always been fascinated
with time travel.
A couple months ago, I
even made a YouTube video
called, "Is time-travel real?"
And while I encourage you to
check it out, spoiler alert,
(siren wails)
"No," at this present
moment on Planet Earth,
time travel is not considered possible.
- When it comes to time travel, to me
one of the most exciting
parts, and I'm curious to see
if you agree with this,
is the inconsistencies,
or as we might say, paradoxes, that occur
because of just the idea of time tracking.
- The idea like, oh, if I go back in time
and kill my grandpa,
would I ever like be able
to even go back in time
and kill my grandpa?
Meaning that, I wouldn't be there,
but would I be there type of thing?
- Well exactly.
- But even though we're
stuck in the here and now
we can still have a super fun escape.
We're visiting some of our favorite
time-travel TV shows and movies.
So fire up the DeLorean
and get in, Know it All's,
because I'm taking you back to the future.
- [Isabella] So I wanted
to do this episode
because the second season
of the Umbrella Academy
just dropped on Netflix.
And I got sucked in so hard.
I'm basically stuck in a time loop.
Here's the crib notes to catch you up
if you haven't seen the show.
- I have adopted six children
(dramatic music)
gifted with abilities
far beyond the ordinary.
I gave you...
the Umbrella Academy
(dramatic music peaks)
(upbeat music)
- [Isabella] And one of these
kids, a character named Five,
has the ability to jump
through time and space.
Except at the end of the first season,
Five doesn't just travel himself.
He brings his brothers and
sisters back to the sixties,
along with him.
- 1963.
- I don't want to tell you any more,
because this really is a must see TV
if you're a Sci-Fi fan
like me, but it got me
reminiscing about all my other
favorite time-travel narratives.
I know at the end of my
YouTube video I said,
we should all live in the
now because our time here
is limited, stop taking
the present for granted
and yada, yada, yada.
But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy
a little time-travel fiction.
As science fiction writer,
Isaac Asimov famously said,
"Time travel is theoretically impossible,
but I wouldn't want to give
it up as a plot gimmick."
Touche.
It's hard to argue with that.
So let's start traveling time, courtesy
of the good old fashioned
Hollywood time machine.
(bright music)
So around the same time
that movie technology
was just being invented, HG Wells wrote
a science-fiction novella called,
"The Time Machine" in 1895.
This was the story that first popularized
the concept of time travel
by mechanical means,
which inspired countless other movies,
TV shows and literary works
to riff off this plot device.
Time machines are one
of the main plot devices
of the time travel genre.
- But it brings up one
of my favorite points
about time travel that they
never seem to talk about,
is when you travel through
time, let's use the DeLorean
in, "Back to the Future."
It's a machine, it's no
longer set on the ground.
It moves and drives, or it flies
depending on which sequel
we're talking about.
How do you know where you would end up?
Because time is fixed,
- Hm mm.
- but space isn't.
- Let's say there's a dude that goes
into an empty field 200 years ago.
And he shoots forward 200 years.
And then bam, he's just like
in the middle of concrete
in New York city, he's
inside a building now,
but dead because he is in the wrong spot.
- He's like spinning because the whole,
everything changes around them.
The other is a time slip,
which allows a person or people
to travel through time via unknown means.
According to Darrell Schweitzer,
author of the "Fantastic Horizon,"
a major difference from
mechanical time machine stories
is that in time slip stories,
the protagonist typically
has no idea what's going on and no control
over the time travel process.
They're either left
marooned in a past time
and must make the best of it,
or are eventually returned by a similarly
unpredictable process.
Theoretically time slips
could be possible via
what physicists referred to as wormholes.
(dramatic chords)
- [Disembodied voice] Word Alert!
- [Isabella] You know what
that means, Know-it-All's?
I just got a word alert.
When I say wormholes, I'm not talking
about a garden infestation here.
In this context, a wormhole
is defined as the hypothetical
connection between widely
separated regions of space-time.
Think of it as a secret passageway
or a sort of secret tunnel where you can
very quickly traverse a
large swath of space-time.
Wormholes are consistent with the general
Theory of Relativity, but
whether wormholes actually exist
remains to be seen, but
we can still enjoy them
for our entertainment.
- I don't, I wish I had a
piece of paper next to me,
but you know--
- Do the whole, fold the piece
of paper with a pen through.
- Yeah, from "Event Horizon."
That's where I learned it.
But that's my favorite
visualization of it,
is that it basically
bends point A and point B
and puts them together.
It's a shortcut through time and space.
- [Isabella] Another thing
you see a lot in time travel
movies is the time loop.
The Encyclopedia of Science
Fiction defines a time loop
as a plot device in
which periods of time are
repeated and re-experienced
by the characters.
Typically these stories
end when the protagonist
breaks out of the cycle of repetition,
a time loop could also
be called Groundhog Day
in reference to perhaps the
most famous time loop movie
of all time, "Groundhog
Day," starring Bill Murray.
In this nineties movie,
his character is forced
to relive February 2nd, AKA Groundhog Day
over and over until he
learns from his mistakes,
becoming less selfish and
more caring with each loop.
He has to grow into a better person
in order to break out of the time loop.
This is a popular hallmark
in time loop narratives.
- Does he keep going?
Cause again, it's just his
memory that's going back in time.
So again, are we stuck
on another little loop
and time is still going
forward after that day.
It's just that the memory
that this Bill Murray has
is from the future.
- But I have to say one of
the most intriguing theories
to play out on screen
is the butterfly effect.
- [Disembodied voice] Word Alert!
- [Isabella] Whoa, cool.
Double word alert.
The butterfly effect is a
term coined by mathematician
Edward Lorenz to describe
events observed in chaos theory
where one teeny tiny change
in the initial conditions
can result in vastly different outcomes.
This phenomenon has become
a popular time travel trope
and even inspired the 2004 movie called,
"The Butterfly Effect,"
starring Ashton Kutcher.
I've seen the butterfly effect play out
in countless movies and TV
shows, but it never gets old.
I think that's because it shows
the power of smaller actions
and on a grander scale, I
love the genre of time travel
and entertainment because
it begs a huge set
of fascinating questions
about what would be possible
in a world where time wasn't fixed,
like time tourism, teleportation,
and even immortality.
- I guess it'd be more like time voyeurism
instead of tourism,
because you can't really
interact with things.
You'd have to specifically not interact.
You could watch, but you can't
obviously influence anything.
Cause those implications
that we've talked about,
like the butterfly effect,
stuff like that could be far
reaching and never ending.
- Maybe someday time
travel will be possible.
In fact, a few months ago,
a group of NASA scientists
working on an experiment in Antarctica
detected evidence of a parallel universe,
but as long as they keep
making good TV about it,
I don't even care.
It's really fun to think about.
But the truth is in reality time travel
would probably be more
of a waking nightmare
than a fun escape.
Hit me up on TikTok and
Instagram @onlyjayus
or Twitter @notjayus and let me know
what year you would want
to travel to if you could,
would it be in the past or in the future?
(dramatic music)
- Let the people know
what you have going on?
- Well, you can check out
on a youtube.com/vsauce3,
and that's really about all I got.
That's all I have in my life
is that YouTube channel.
- Check out Vsauce3,
(sniggers)
Join me again in two
weeks for another episode
of Know it All.
