Time Travel

FutureMe: Sending Messages Through Time

Not exactly time travel, but it's something!

Earlier this year, physicist Luke Butcher raised the possibility that we could harness collapsing wormholes to send messages backward or forward through time.

“…the negative Casimir energy does allow the wormhole to collapse extremely slowly, its lifetime growing without bound as the throat-length is increased. We find that the throat closes slowly enough that its central region can be safely traversed by a pulse of light.”

While not quite the handwritten letters from time travelers we’d all probably like to receive, it’s something. Hypothetically.

Of course, if you’re in the mood to send a message through time right now, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.

The bad news (which should always come first) is that, for now, you can’t send messages backward in time. Not unless you have a friend like John Titor who’s willing to act as your temporal delivery man. The good news is that FutureMe exists, which allows you to send messages in the other direction.

FutureMe.org, in short, is an email service that delivers emails to yourself, or someone you know, in the future.

“Usually, it’s the future that will reflect back on the present. We decided to flip that around.

So send your future self some words of inspiration. Or maybe a swift kick in the pants. Or just share some thoughts on where you’ll or what you’ll be up to in a year, three years…more? And then we’ll do some time travel magic and deliver the letter to you.

FutureYou, that is.”

If you head over to their “Public, but Anonymous” section, you can even view some of the messages people have sent themselves. Here’s an example, an email sent ten years ago that just arrived today:

“Happy Birthday from Yourself in the Past

Dear FutureMe,

HappyBirthday. This is you, from 2004. I hope you are doing well. Please say hi to your wife and kids, whatever their names are. I’m sure they are great too. Keep rockin’ and rollin’ and makin better films.

-Andrew circa 2004”

Sure, it’s a little underwhelming, not exactly what you’d call time travel. But until someone develops PastMe.org or figures out how to send light beams through collapsing wormholes, it’s the best thing we’ve got.

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Rob Schwarz

Writer, blogger, and part-time peddler of mysterious tales. Editor-in-chief of Stranger Dimensions.