Is time travel a scientific possibility or just the stuff of science fiction? In this episode of The Cabinet of Science & Fiction, we crack open the theoretical toolbox of modern physics to find out.

We’ll journey through the mind-bending solutions allowed by Einstein’s General Relativity—from traversable wormholes and cosmic strings to the Alcubierre warp drive. But we soon discover a catch: these cosmic shortcuts demand exotic matter and energies far beyond our reach, placing them firmly in the realm of theory.

The plot thickens when we confront the logical nightmares of time travel itself. What happens if you trigger the infamous grandfather paradox? Could you be trapped in a bootstrap paradox, where an object has no true origin? We explore the fascinating theoretical resolutions, from the Novikov self-consistency principle—which insists the past is already set in stone—to the universe-splitting escape route offered by the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.