For something that only exists as a theory so complex that no two people can actually agree on how it would work, time travel is immensely popular. So much so, in fact, that whenever some yahoo comes along claiming to be FROM THE FUUUUUUTURRRRRE…OR THE PAAAAAAAST, WHICHEEEEEEEVERRRRR, people just wet themselves with excitement. And it doesn’t really matter how many times we’ve been burnt by fakes and hoaxes, we’re always ready to wet ourselves over the next big time lord. Observe:

10. Father Pellegrino Ernetti

In 1992, Father Ernetti claimed that he, a French Theologian named Francois Brune, and twelve famous scientists had, during the 1950s, invented a machine called the “Chronovisor,” which would revolutionize the study of history forever.

Of course, the Chronovisor isn’t an actual time machine, because that would be silly; it was more like a time window. The device allowed anyone using it to look anywhere into the past, and watch whatever events they desired.

Ernetti described speeches by Napoleon, scenes from ancient Rome, and a performance of “Thyestes,” a supposed lost play by Quintus Ennius. Also: the Crucifixion of Jesus.

It’s about this time you’ll notice that we have no images of the Chronovisor (also it’s sixty years later and you’re pretty sure that you would have heard of this by now). That’s because Ernetti never actually let anyone see his device. Also, those scientists? All but two were anonymous, and those two were dead at the time it was announced. Oh, and there’s also the little fact that Ernetti admitted on his death bed that he had written the play and faked the image of Christ…while still insisting that the Chronovisor worked. But you’re not allowed to see it.

So of course, this example is a hoax, unlike…

9. Billy Meier

Billy Meier’s interaction with aliens began in 1942 when he was only five years old. A Pleiadian by the name of Sfath came to him as a father figure, guiding him through life for eleven years before he died and was replaced by a woman named Asket. She too stayed with him for eleven years, before finally departing and giving Meier an eleven-year break from this kind of nonsense.

Then, on January 28th 1975, Meier met Semjase, the granddaughter of Sfath, and — wait, do you want us to back up?

Meier’s friends come from both far away (the Plejares star system) and the future — one fraction of a second in the future, from an alternate timeline in a parallel dimension. He also has only one arm, because of a bus crash. Yeah, that one came out of nowhere, didn’t it?

Meier has warned of an impending World War III several times — it was supposed to start in November of 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2011, and now just two years after four world leaders die within seven days of each other. Of course, this won’t happen if we “finally gain mastery over (our) reason and change (our) behavior.” In other words, it won’t happen if it doesn’t happen, but if it does it totally will, so watch out.

Anyway, after hanging out with Asket for a while, she decided it was time to take Meier back to meet Jmmanuel — who is, in fact, Jesus. They hung out for four days and talked about how much people have evolved in the past 2,000 years.

Okay so fine, that one’s a hoax too. Unlike…

8. Jacques Vallee

Dr. Vallee is a french scientist and advocate of the Interdimensional Hypothesis, which states that UFOs are actually visitors from other realities, or times, other than our own. He claims that what we now call UFOs are simply the contemporary manifestation of something that has occurred throughout human history — what we once would have called a sign from God, we now call a UFO.

Unlike other people on this list, Jacques does not claim to have traveled through time, but he has been witness to UFOs and therefore believes to have interacted with travelers from another dimension or time.

In 1979, he was brought on as a consultant for the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and even encouraged Steven Spielberg to make the film about interdimensional beings instead of aliens, but Spielberg thought that wouldn’t be as interesting to audiences.

7. Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain

Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain were two women who experienced what would come to be call the Ghosts of Petit Trianon. In August of 1901, while visiting the palace of Versailles, both women claim to have slipped over two hundred years into the past to 1792. They crossed a bridge and wandered through the Palace, and even saw Marie Antoinette and the Comte de Vaudreuil, before retiring to Jourdain’s apartment.

When they returned the next day, the bridge they thought they had crossed was gone. They first assumed they had stumbled into a private party or some other event they weren’t supposed to be attending, but their research uncovered nothing of the sort. Finally, they realized what they had done, and published their story, creatively titled An Adventure.

6. John Titor

John Titor was an anonymous forum goer, posting on several bulletin boards in 2000 and 2001, who claimed to be from the year 2036. He said he had traveled back to 1975 to get an IBM computer needed to debug a computer in 2036 (for some reason), but was making a personal stop in 2000 to visit his families and take pictures.

He offered no explanation as to why he had stopped at 2000, but did offer several predictions about the future. For example, a second American Civil War started in 2005, and 2015 saw the US getting the Hell nuked out of it by Russia.

So you know, watch out for that…and if you’re reading this after 2015, I’m sorry for being so flippant about the fact that we got nuked by Russia.

5. Bob White/Tim Jones

Back in 2003, hundreds of people around the internet started getting e-mails from someone who claimed to need an “AMD Dimensional Warp Generator module containing the GRC79 Induction Motor,” as well as some other…stuff. He had some links that went to websites, and was offering $5,000.

He was friendly, engaged in conversation, and even offered to explain some of the mechanics of his time travel and teleportation devices.

Eventually, someone offered him the warp generator, and was even given a time and place to meet them with the goods (the corner of Cummings Ave. and Village Street in Woburn, Massachusetts at 3:00 PM on July 28th, 2003). A few people went and waited, but there’s no record of anything out of the ordinary happening.

Hopefully, Bob/Tim got home. Or, failing that, is resting comfortably in a mental hospital.

4. Air Marshall Sir Victor Goddard

Though best known as the guy who managed to avoid death due to a crazy dream his friend had, Air Marshall Sir Victor Goddard had at least one other crazy adventure during his time in the Royal Air Force.

In 1935, Goddard was flying over an abandoned airfield in Drem near Edinburgh, when he encountered a weird storm. The turbulence almost caused him to crash, but he regained control of his plane and quickly flew out of the storm. At this point he discovered that, beneath him, Drem looked completely different: its hangers were new and refurbished, there were strange looking planes, and the uniforms of the mechanics were blue instead of brown. Goddard told some of his fellow officers about his experience, but when they didn’t believe it he decided to keep quiet.

Four years later, the RAF started using the planes Goddard thought he had seen, and switched their uniform color to blue. It wasn’t until the 60’s that Goddard decided to write his whole experience down.

There’s no tell if Goddard made the story up, suffered a coincidental hallucination or really traveled through time, but his experience is eerily similar to…

3. J. Bernard Hutton and Joachim Brandt

In 1932, two German newspaper reporters named J. Bernard Hutton and Joachim Brandt were hired to do a story on the Hamburg-Altona Shipyards. During their tour of the site, they, like Moberly, Bourdain and Goddard, suddenly had shared hallucinations of bombs exploding all around them, and anti-aircraft gunfire. They drove away in a panic.

Eleven years later, the exact same thing happened — only for real.

But here’s where it gets real freaky…

2. Doctor Ronald Mallett

Yes, that’s an actual PhD this guy has. Ronald Mallett is a professor of Physics at Connecticut University, and one of the few scientists who admits to believing time travel is possible. His passion for this study comes from two men: his father, who inspired him to pursue science, and Einstein — both of whom died the same year.

Using equations based on Einstein’s relativity theories, Mallett has come up with several experiments involving neutrons and circulating light beams and, possibly, time travel. He says that, if he got his experiments funded, he could have answers within a decade.

For just $250,000 (which is… surprisingly cheap, all things considered), Dr. Mallett says that he could get results. And this isn’t just crackpot nonsense; his ideas are published in peer reviewed journals.

Still, this all pales in comparison to…

1. Dr. Stephen Frickin’ Hawking

Yes, that Stephen Hawking. Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Lifetime member of the pontifical Academy of Science, recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Simpsons guest star, and guy who says time travel is totally possible.

The idea is that nothing is perfect: no matter how smooth or flat something is, if you look close enough at it you will find “crevices, wrinkles and voids”. This is true for things in the first three dimensions, and could be true for time as well.

Non-hypothetical evidence is observed every day with our GPS satellites. Hardwired into each one is an intensely precise clock, but every single one of those clocks gains exactly a third of a billionth of a second every day — but only once the satellites are launched. This is because “time travels faster in space than it does down below.” Which means, that if we went to a black hole in the center of our solar system, we could slow the travel into the future aboard that ship by half. Adding to the possibilities, if we found a way to travel at 99 percent the speed of light, a single day could be a whole year of time on Earth.

That’s time travel. And according to really really smart people, it’s possible.

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