Callum Jones
The discussion surrounding time travel never seems to go away, no matter how ludicrous some of the conspiracy theories surrounding it may seem.
While the likes of Back to the Future has always given us a taste of what time travel could be like, it seems scientists have discovered actual evidence of time travel for the very first time.
While the latest evidence may be at a microscopic level, the new research conducted by Till Bohmer and Thomas Blochowicz has provided much optimism for the future of time travel.
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A new study published in Nature Physics named 'Time reversibility during the ageing of materials', was conducted by the two researchers at the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany.
The research focused on time effectively ‘shuffling’ in the structure of certain materials like glass, however, the study provided some rather surprising conclusions.
It was discovered that time doesn't exactly behave in a linear manner - with glass being used as it features one of the most fascinating structures of any items humans use everyday.
The item doesn't follow traditional molecular structures, instead constantly falling into new places - subsequently making glass molecules more unique.
Glass structures were watched using scattered laser light by researchers working on the study, which led to them observing the glass samples pushing and reforming into new arrangements.
Professor Blochowicz said: "The minuscule fluctuations in the molecules had to be documented using an ultra-sensitive video camera.
"You can't just watch the molecules jiggle around."
Scientists are not able to determine whether the changes are happening forwards or backwards, though it does provide hope time travel may happen sometime in the future.
The recent study contradicts a previous research project that suggested that time travel would never be a possibility.
The team working on the study, which has been published in full in the journal 'Optica', delivered the expected solution on either side of the interface.
But there was one crucial requirement to achieving this... it needs time to only move forward.
While the equation may just be one dimensional, it has solved a long-standing controversy that has stumped scientists for many a year.
"We found that we can ascribe a ‘proper time’ to the wave, which is entirely analogous to the proper time in the general theory of relativity," study lead Professor Marco Ornigotti explained.
While the results may have been a major breakthrough, many thought it pretty much said goodbye to the possibility of time travelling into the past.