Can a Message Come Back From the Past? What We Have Checked
General relativity allows some loops in time 44. This is where the idea starts that a message could be sent back in time and really happen 44.
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In short
People have sealed records for the future for centuries, such as a box found in Aschersleben in 1862 that held documents dating back to 1599 15, and Oglethorpe University's Crypt of Civilization, sealed in 1940 and not to be opened until the year 8113 17. Physics allows the idea of a loop that lets a particle return to its own past, called a closed timelike curve 41, and Stephen Hawking proposed chronology protection because such loops can appear in general relativity 7. Wormholes could also create these loops 57, but their stability depends heavily on exotic matter, which has not been observed 52. Digital records face their own problem, since a 1999 report found no viable long-term strategy yet existed to keep digital information readable 64, so emulation of old systems was proposed 63. In 2026, opened capsules showed how much damage time can do: Mountain View's 1976 bicentennial capsule was damaged by water and mold and its unveiling was scrapped 21, and the 1952 copper box was found corroded and dented 35. Today, archivists use checksums to catch silent corruption, called bit rot 68, and keep multiple copies in different locations and on different media 69.
Mystery boxes from long ago (1599 to 1952)
The oldest time capsule in the document was found in 1862 in the Johannisturm in Aschersleben 15. It was a metal box with six papers inside. The oldest paper was dated 1599 15. One paper from Aschersleben was dated 12 July 1652. It told about the suffering from the Thirty Years' War in Aschersleben. Other writings told about the plague breaking out 16.
In 1940, Oglethorpe University sealed its Crypt of Civilization in a swimming pool that was no longer used. The Crypt is not to be opened until the year 8113 17.
In 1952, people put a copper box in a special ceremony at a hospital. The hospital was being made bigger. The box held building plans, a Bible, old pictures, photos, and legal and history papers 37.
Could science allow a message to go back in time?
The idea that light's speed limit might be broken goes back to the 1960s. Physicist Gerald Feinberg tried to give faster-than-light particles a place in theory, using 'imaginary mass' 70. If a tachyon could outrun light, different observers could disagree about the order of events. One viewpoint could see a particle absorbed before it was sent out 71. That kind of reversal stirred up the old fear that tachyons would break cause and effect 72.
A closed timelike curve is a path that loops back on itself. It lets a particle return to and interact with its own past 41. Gödel's universe was dismissed as a model of physical reality. It is unlike the universe we live in 10. The Novikov self-consistency principle says only solutions that are globally self-consistent can happen in such spacetimes. That keeps loops from making contradictions 56. Gott spacetime has closed timelike curves, but no locally anomalous stress-energy 74.
Wormholes add another route. Their two mouths may move compared to each other. Or gravity may change at the mouths. This could in principle let a traveler go into the past or future 57. But wormhole stability depends heavily on negative energy 52. Exotic matter has not been observed 52. Stephen Hawking formulated the chronology protection conjecture because some solutions of the equations of general relativity allow travel backward in time 7. In 2005, Heinrich Päs, Thomas Weiler and Sandip Pakvasa discussed the possibility that sterile neutrinos could take shortcuts through extra dimensions 11. New Scientist covered the idea in a 2006 article titled 'At last a way to test time travel' 9. In 2009, Heinrich Päs, Sandip Pakvasa, Thomas Weiler and James Dent showed that certain warped extra-dimension ideas could in principle allow time travel 8.
Time capsules meant to last (1999–2009)
A report found that there is no good long-term plan yet to keep digital information readable in the future 64. Its main idea was emulation. That means running old systems on future, unknown systems. This way, a document's original software can still run, even though it is old 63.
A reviewer says a book looks at how to store, read and use digital documents for more than 50 years 1. Keeping data safe and usable for a long time is hard. It takes hard research and careful planning 4. Open file types like PDF/A are seen as lasting a fairly long time 2. The PDF/A-1b version says all pictures and fonts must be inside the PDF file 6. Links to outside files are not allowed 6.
Emulation can work alongside migration, the otherwise dominant strategy 67. It is said to have convincing advantages, especially for dynamic digital objects 67. Under the view path model, preserving an object means extending its metadata and storing secondary objects 65. This lets the object's original environment be recreated, such as its applications or operating systems 65.
Science experiments and tricky quantum ideas (2008–2016)
One document claims that someone who can use time loops could send any amount of classical information using a quantum system of a fixed size 76. Reference 73 says that a rule for time loops can cause strange mixing in tiny quantum bits that keep time order. That is the kind of backward-in-time physics that a backward message would bring up. It does not talk about sealed boxes opened on a future date 73.
Bennett and Schumacher's postselected quantum teleportation is a model of time loops. It gives results that are different from Deutsch's model 42. In this model, a special time loop in the future might affect what happens in an experiment now 45. Sending a qubit into the past through such a loop is somewhat like teleporting the qubit's state 39.
Information kept in a field can still be found later. A person who turns on their detector at a later time can still get it, after the light signal has already passed 75.
Spring and summer 2026: news stories and capsules that failed
On May 9, 2026, physicists said closed timelike curves could in principle let information return to an earlier point in time 53. They also noted that in some quantum experiments with entangled photons, the photons appeared to exchange information retroactively, but no person or object travelled through time 55.
When the lid was taken off, more than half of the capsule was full of water. Even the plastic bags inside had holes in them 25. In 1977, a news article said the concrete vault was "water-proofed." 29 The city did not learn until 2026 that this was not true 29. The 1952 copper time capsule was dented and corroded on the outside 35. Workers used X-rays to find the copper box inside the concrete cornerstone 36. About four weeks before the opening, they broke it out with a jackhammer. The outside marker was not harmed 36.
Where things stand in October 2026
Format registries, like PRONOM and the Library of Congress's Sustainability of Digital Formats initiative, say which file types will likely stay easy to open and which need active care 66. Checking files lets groups find quiet damage, called bit rot, by checking a fingerprint made for each file again from time to time 68. Keeping many copies in different places and on different kinds of storage lowers the risk of loss 69. In one case, Mountain View's 1976 time capsule was damaged by water and mold, and its planned opening was canceled 21. Its project director said the capsule was very sturdy and that he did not expect it to leak or fail 26.
Still unknown
Whether any future-letter service, patent, or public stunt has ever delivered a reply from the future is not settled, because those lanes have no verified entries in the checked evidence.
Whether postselected closed-timelike-curve models describe real physics or only hypothetical loops is still disputed, since the Deutsch and postselected models give different results.
Whether a 2026 result on information in loops could ever be turned into a signal that reaches a past moment is an open question with no settled answer in the evidence.
Whether the 1976 capsule water damage could have been prevented by a different sealing method is not established by the checked records.
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Sources
"The book examines the problem of storing, reading and using digital documents for periods longer than 50 years."Long-Term Preservation of Digital Documents (2006)
"Die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass es in einigen Jahren noch Systeme und Programme gibt, die solche Daten lesen können, ist somit deutlich höher."
"garantiert das richtige Erscheinungsbild des Dokuments für eine Langzeitarchivierung."
"While we are rapidly advancing from vulnerable physical solutions to superior, digital media, preserving and using data over the long term involves complicated research challenges and organization efforts."Long-Term Preservation of Digital Documents (2006)
"Die hohen Kosten, die durch diese Pflege der Datenbestände entstehen, haben allerdings zur Folge, dass nur die wichtigsten Daten derart konserviert werden können."
"Nicht erlaubt sind Referenzen auf Ressourcen, die nicht in der Datei enthalten sind. Alle verwendeten Bilder und Schriftarten (die Begrenzung auf die verwendeten Zeichen ist erlaubt) müssen in der PDF-Datei enthalten sein."
"Die Vermutung zum Schutz der Zeitordnung bzw. der Zeitfolge (engl. chronology protection conjecture bzw. CPC) wurde von Stephen Hawking formuliert, da in einigen Lösungen für die Gleichungen der Allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie geschlossene zeitartige Kurven (engl. closed timelike curves bzw. CTC) auftauchen und diese die Möglichkeit von Zeitreisen auf der Zeitachse rückwärts beinhalten."
"2009 zeigten dieselben Autoren zusammen mit James Dent, dass solche Raumzeit -Szenarien im Prinzip geschlossene zeitartige Kurven ( Zeitreisen ) ermöglichen könnten."
""At last a way to test time travel" , New Scientist 2552 p. 34, 20. Mai 2006 von Marcus Chown"
"As a model of physical reality it can therefore be dismissed because it is unlike the universe we live in."Closed timelike curves in general relativity
"2005 diskutierte er zusammen mit Thomas Weiler und Sandip Pakvasa die Möglichkeit, dass sterile Neutrinos Abkürzungen in Extra-Dimensionen nehmen könnten."
"Another simple space-time containingCTCs is that of van Stockum [2] which representsa cylinder of rigidly rotating dust; however, the cylinder is of infinite length so it could not be realised in practice."Closed timelike curves in general relativity
"Nearly all of these have been regarded as of merely theoretical interest because of some non-physi"Closed timelike curves in general relativity
"in default of a reasonable interpretation of CTC, general relativity does not give a satisfactory account of all phenomenawithin its terms of reference."Closed timelike curves in general relativity
"Bereits 1862 wurde im Johannisturm in Aschersleben eine Zeitkapsel in Form einer Blechbüchse mit sechs verschiedenen Urkunden gefunden, wovon die älteste auf 1599 datiert wurde und diverse Informationen zur Geschichte der Stadt enthalten waren."
"Ein Schriftstück vom 12. Juli 1652 beschrieb beispielsweise die Leiden durch den Dreißigjährigen Krieg in Aschersleben, in anderen Schriften wird vom Auftreten der Pest berichtet."
"die im Jahr 1940 in einem aufgelassenen Schwimmbad an der Oglethorpe University verschlossen wurde und erst im Jahr 8113 geöffnet werden soll."
"Capello said that nearly every item inside had been affected by water, mold, and mildew."Lebanon city time capsule opened after 50 years: Here's what's inside - AOL
"Moisture that seeped through the Public Square capsule's rusted steel container damaged a stack of documents about 10 inches high. Those papers were stuck together and moldy, so they were not salvageable, but at least 200 documents were saved."1976 time capsule opened, 2026 time capsule to be buried in Hagerstown
"When the capsule was finally opened, much of what had been placed inside 50 years ago was wet, stained, stuck together or destroyed."Water-Damaged Time Capsule Still Opens Window Into Kahoka’s Past
"The plan has now been scrapped after the city discovered earlier this month that water and mold had damaged nearly all of the objects inside the capsule."Mountain View cancels unveiling of bicentennial time capsule due to water damage - Mountain View Voice
""It was heartbreaking," she said."Lebanon city time capsule opened after 50 years: Here's what's inside - AOL
"Both had been dug up and opened before the events so staff could check the condition of the capsules and their contents."1976 time capsule opened, 2026 time capsule to be buried in Hagerstown
"“Boy, everything is sure water damaged,” Krueger said. “Really disappointed in this.”"Water-Damaged Time Capsule Still Opens Window Into Kahoka’s Past
"When the capsule lid was removed the next day, they saw that more than half of the vessel was filled with water, Kolb recounted. Even the plastic bags inside the capsule were breached, he said."Mountain View cancels unveiling of bicentennial time capsule due to water damage - Mountain View Voice
""That's a very sturdy time capsule, and we had no idea that it would leak or have any kind of a failure," he said."Lebanon city time capsule opened after 50 years: Here's what's inside - AOL
"The other, buried outside the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, was opened Tuesday ."1976 time capsule opened, 2026 time capsule to be buried in Hagerstown
"“I am crying. I’m not sure what to say. I’m heartbroken.”"Water-Damaged Time Capsule Still Opens Window Into Kahoka’s Past
"According to a news article at the time, the vault was “water-proofed.” However, that turned out not to be the case – a fact that the city only discovered earlier this month."Mountain View cancels unveiling of bicentennial time capsule due to water damage - Mountain View Voice
"Historical Society archivist Shane Keenan said the artifacts were preserved better than most were expecting with the water damage."Lebanon city time capsule opened after 50 years: Here's what's inside - AOL
"The vault is currently being drained,” the city shared in a social media post."Missouri city unearths 50-year-old time capsule, finds water damage
"“There was a little water that ran out, about a gallon or so, so I don’t know if there’s any damage in there or not,” she said."Water-Damaged Time Capsule Still Opens Window Into Kahoka’s Past
"“We were all really disappointed there wasn’t more material that was recoverable,” said Bill Kolb, Mountain View’s assistant library director."Mountain View cancels unveiling of bicentennial time capsule due to water damage - Mountain View Voice
""We'll probably put a plaque out at the Liberty Pole at Coleman Memorial Park saying it's because of damage it's been moved to City Hall," she said."Lebanon city time capsule opened after 50 years: Here's what's inside - AOL
"On the outside, it is a small, metal box, corroded and dented."Time capsule opened on hospital’s 100th anniversary
"Workers used X-rays to locate the copper box inside the concrete cornerstone without damaging the exterior marker, then jackhammered it out approximately four weeks prior to the opening."Time capsule opened on hospital’s 100th anniversary
"The copper box, originally placed during a hospital expansion cornerstone ceremony on September 10, 1952, contained, blueprints, a Bible, historical pictures, photographs and additional legal and historical documents from the era."Time capsule opened on hospital’s 100th anniversary
"The causal relations between points in the manifold are interpreted as describing which events in spacetime can influence which other events."Causal structure
"Sending a qubit into the past by a P-CTC is somewhat like teleporting the qubit’s state"Perfect State Distinguishability and Computational Speedups with Postselected Closed Timelike Curves (2011)
"A closed timelike curve is a closed curve which is everywhere future-directed timelike (or everywhere past-directed timelike)."Causal structure
"describes a worldline in spacetime looping back on itself, allowing a particle to return to and interact with its own past"Experimental simulation of postselected closed timelike curves for decoding scrambled quantum information (2026)
"Bennett and Schumacher’s postselected quantum teleportation is a model of closed timelike curves (CTCs) that leads to results physically different from Deutsch’s model."Perfect State Distinguishability and Computational Speedups with Postselected Closed Timelike Curves (2011)
"A closed null curve is a closed curve which is everywhere future-directed null (or everywhere past-directed null)."Causal structure
"existence of closed timelike curves (CTCs) [1–4]"Retrocausal Capacity of a Quantum Channel: Communicating through Noisy Closed Timelike Curves (2026)
"in which the future existence of a P-CTC might affect the present outcome of an experiment."Perfect State Distinguishability and Computational Speedups with Postselected Closed Timelike Curves (2011)
"because then the future events must produce the past events but also the past events must produce the future events"Two Roads to Retrocausality
"Unconditionallysecurebitcommitmentisforbiddenbyquantummechanics."Strong no-go theorem for Gaussian quantum bit commitment
"Alice locks a secret bit into a safe that"Strong no-go theorem for Gaussian quantum bit commitment
"‘immutable timeline retrocausality,’ where an event in the present having a retrocausal influence on the past can’t change anything about the present because its retrocausal influence has already been exerted"Two Roads to Retrocausality
"Now as explored by Price in ref [15], it transpires that the kind of retrocausality needed to explain the Bell correlations actually can’t be used to create causal paradoxes of this kind"Two Roads to Retrocausality
"The possibility that the laws of physics might allow for the existence of closed time-like curves (CTCs) inside our universe has been a long time conjecture [1], which has been more recently revived by a series of papers [2–15]."ERRATA: "TIME MACHINES: THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF-CONSISTENCY AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE PRINCIPLE OF MINIMAL ACTION" (1996)
"Wormhole simulations revealed that stability is highly dependent on negative energy densities, aligning with theoretical predictions but constrained by the absence of observable exotic matter."THE PHYSICS OF TIME TRAVEL: POSSIBILITIES AND PARADOXES (2022)
"One of the main ideas being studied is the “closed timelike curve,” a theoretical loop in spacetime predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. According to scientists, such loops could potentially allow information to return to an earlier point in time without violating known physical laws."Quantum Physics Research Revives Debate Over Possibility Of Sending Messages Back In Time
"Provided the matter density in some regions of our universe satisfies certain properties (i.e. it violates the so-called ‘averaged weak energy conditions,’ see, e.g., Refs. [3–6]), these 4-d Lorentzian wormhole geometries could, in principle, exist (at least they can be exact solutions of the Einstein equations)."ERRATA: "TIME MACHINES: THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF-CONSISTENCY AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE PRINCIPLE OF MINIMAL ACTION" (1996)
"In some studies, photons appeared to exchange information in ways that seemed retroactive, though researchers emphasised that no actual human or object travelled through time."Quantum Physics Research Revives Debate Over Possibility Of Sending Messages Back In Time
"It states that the only solutions to the laws of physics that can occur in spacetimes containing closed timelike curves are those that are globally self-consistent"Bootstrap Amplification: A Computational Analogue of the Bootstrap Paradox Governed by the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle (2026)
"if the wormhole is traversed from mouth to mouth, it acts as a ‘time machine’ allowing one to travel into the past or into the future."ERRATA: "TIME MACHINES: THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF-CONSISTENCY AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE PRINCIPLE OF MINIMAL ACTION" (1996)
"and no locally initiated event can create a contradiction."Bootstrap Amplification: A Computational Analogue of the Bootstrap Paradox Governed by the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle (2026)
"This requirement has been explicitly formulated as the ‘Principle of self-consistency,’ according to which the only solutions to the laws of physics that can occur locally in the real universe are those which are globally self-consistent [7, 9, 13–15]."ERRATA: "TIME MACHINES: THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF-CONSISTENCY AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE PRINCIPLE OF MINIMAL ACTION" (1996)
"the only possible trajectories (for a particle with fixed initial and final positions and which traverses the wormhole once) minimizing the classical action are those which are globally self-consistent, and that the ‘Principle of self-consistency’ (originally introduced by Novikov) is thus a natural consequence of the ‘Principle of minimal action.’"ERRATA: "TIME MACHINES: THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF-CONSISTENCY AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE PRINCIPLE OF MINIMAL ACTION" (1996)
"The canonical example: a traveller acquires a document at time t₂, travels to t₁ < t₂, and delivers that document to an agent who publishes it, so that the traveller can read it at t₂."Bootstrap Amplification: A Computational Analogue of the Bootstrap Paradox Governed by the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle (2026)
"Crucially, Novikov and colleagues observe that self-consistent solutions to such loops arise naturally from the imposition of fixed-point boundary conditions [1]."Bootstrap Amplification: A Computational Analogue of the Bootstrap Paradox Governed by the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle (2026)
"The central idea of the emulation strategy is to emulate obsolete systems on future, unknown systems, so that a digital document's original software can be run in the future despite being obsolete."Avoiding Technological Quicksand: Finding a Viable Technical Foundation for Digital Preservation (1999)
"There is as yet no viable long-term strategy to ensure that digital information will be readable in the future."Avoiding Technological Quicksand: Finding a Viable Technical Foundation for Digital Preservation (1999)
"The view path model requires extensions of the metadata sets of the primary object as well as additionally stored secondary objects resulting in a reproduction of the object's environment, e.g. applications or operating systems."Requirements for Emulation as a Long-term Preservation Strategy (2009)
"Format registries such as PRONOM and the Library of Congress's Sustainability of Digital Formats initiative provide guidance on which formats are most likely to remain accessible and which require active management."CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES IN LONG-TERM DIGITAL LIBRARY ARCHIVING (2026)
"It can act as a complement to the otherwise dominant digital preservation strategies of migration and has convincing advantages, especially for dynamic digital objects."Requirements for Emulation as a Long-term Preservation Strategy (2009)
"Checksum verification, in which a mathematical fingerprint is calculated for each file and periodically rechecked, allows institutions to detect silent corruption, known as bit rot, before it spreads."CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES IN LONG-TERM DIGITAL LIBRARY ARCHIVING (2026)
"redundancy and geographic distribution, which ensure that multiple copies of digital objects exist in different locations and on different media, reducing the risk of loss from disaster or media failure."CHALLENGES AND STRATEGIES IN LONG-TERM DIGITAL LIBRARY ARCHIVING (2026)
"The idea goes back at least to the 1960s, when physicist Gerald Feinberg tried to give faster-than-light particles a formal place in theory."New tachyon theory could unlock the secrets of time travel and causality - The Brighter Side of News
"If a tachyon could outrun light, then under some circumstances different observers could disagree about the order of events. A particle emitted in one frame of reference could look, in another, like it was absorbed before it was ever sent."New tachyon theory could unlock the secrets of time travel and causality - The Brighter Side of News
"That kind of reversal fed the old fear that tachyons would demolish causality itself."New tachyon theory could unlock the secrets of time travel and causality - The Brighter Side of News
"The causal self-consistency condition for closed timelike curves can give rise to nonlinear interactions on chronology-respecting qubits."Closed time like curves enable perfect state distinguishability (2008)
"Gott spacetime has closed timelike curves, but no locally anomalous stress-energy."Quantum field theory in spaces with closed time-like curves (1992)
"by switching on his detector at latter times he will still be able to access information that is kept encoded in the field."Timelike information broadcasting in cosmology (2016)
"In principle, he can transmit an arbitrarily large amount of classical information with a quantum system of fixed size."Closed time like curves enable perfect state distinguishability (2008)
"The resultant interacting quantum field theory is not unitary because the field operators can create real, on-shell, particles in the acausal region."Quantum field theory in spaces with closed time-like curves (1992)
"As a result, the effective potential within the acausal region is complex, and probability is not conserved."Quantum field theory in spaces with closed time-like curves (1992)
"Closed timelike curves (CTCs) are trajectories in spacetime that effectively travel backwards in time: a test particle following a CTC can in principle interact with its former self in the past."Closed timelike curves via post-selection: theory and experimental demonstration
"CTCs appear in many solutions of Einstein’s field equations and any future quantum version of general relativity will have to reconcile them with the requirements of quantum mechanics and of quantumfieldtheory."Closed timelike curves via post-selection: theory and experimental demonstration
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