Time travel is beyond us

Dr Who: used a police phone box for time travel
David Harding|Metro13 April 2012

Doctor Who made several lifetimes out of the concept, it gave HG Wells a literary career and turned Michael J Fox into a household name.
But they could all have got it wrong - time travelling may never be possible, scientists said yesterday.

Independent groups of physicists have come up with complex new ideas which appear to rule out the idea of travelling back or forward through the ages.

Albert Einstein raised the prospect with his theory of relativity nearly a century ago.

His ideas led to the concept of 'closed time-like curves' - paths which allow travellers to loop back and bump into earlier versions of themselves.

But experts in Britain, Canada and the US - using a specialised idea known as 'string theory' - found it would be impossible to enter the time-like curves.

Amanda Peet, of Toronto University, said: 'When I realised, I was kind of sad but I got over it.'

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