Not all time-travel movies are created equal. Some are entertaining but scientifically suspect; others sacrifice storytelling in the interests of accuracy. For @arstechnica@JenLucPiquant and @seanmcarroll ranked 20 movies for both entertainment value and logic. Which do you reckon came out on top? Tell us in the comments if you agree.
Most of our respondents agreed with the experts that "12 Monkeys" hits the sweet spot for scientific accuracy and entertainment value, although there was some debate in the comments about how accurate a movie can really be if it involves time travel. Fun fact: "12 Monkeys" was one of the four VHS tapes we (and our six roommates) owned at university, along with "Armageddon" "The Shawshank Redemption" and "Beaches."
@wrog Good point! Per the article, these are the conditions the authors are using:
"Einstein’s theory of general relativity — which says that space and time are unified into 'spacetime' and the curvature of spacetime gives rise to gravity — at least lets us contemplate the possibility of time travel in a scientifically plausible context."
"gives lip service to GR"
≠
"scientifically plausible"
That is, just because you can posit a made-to-order universe and solve for it in GR doesn't make it real, and that's especially the case for solutions containing weird, impossible artifacts (e.g., Tippler's infinite, massive rotating cylinder, or exotic matter with negative or imaginary mass), and, so far as I know, that's the case for all known solutions containing closed timelike loops ..
the existence of such solutions more likely means that GR is under-constrained, never mind that we already KNOW that GR is not the whole story, that it will necessarily be WRONG in at least some out-of-bounds situations (because it doesn't account for quantum mechanics)
and also closed timelike loops aren't really time travel in the sense people want, because a loop, by definition, is something you can't get into or out of
(I suppose you could posit a toroidal universe where the end wraps around to the beginning and put the Earth and all of human history inside of one big loop, but (1) that's not really useful for anything and (2) it would violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which for most physicists would be a huge red flag.)
@wrog This feels like a @seanmcarroll conversation but would love for other scientific folk to weigh in (our expertise, such as it is, is in the entertainment value department!).
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