In the Back to the Future movies, manipulating time is challenging, but not impossible. The ability to do it all hinges on the flux capacitor, the core component of Doc Brown’s time traveling technology. ThinkGeek is making it possible to wear that technology on your person at all times – kind of.

The Back to the Future Flux Capacitor Wristwatch is a scale replica of Doc Brown’s invention that doesn’t necessarily control time, but it will help you keep track of it. The stainless steel casing features a Y-shaped blinking apparatus that displays the time with a series of lights.

Although it looks confusing at first, the lights flash in a pattern that makes it relatively easy to tell the time. The time circuit LCD shows you the current date – but if you want to escape, you can press a button to activate “Time Travel Mode.” In this mode, the time circuit displays a random date so you can pretend that you’ve escaped to some other point in the time-space continuum. At $50, it’ll cost you far less than building your own DeLorian version.

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We may not be able to send scientists gallivanting around in time to right the wrongs of the past (yet), but physicists at the University of Queensland in Australia have discovered that the peculiar quantum phenomenon of entanglement applies not only through space, but through time as well. Entanglement, famously referred to as “spooky” by Einstein, is the quantum property that involves two or more particles so closely linked that any changes to one also occur in the other(s).

The Queensland physicists believe that thinking about the universe as consisting of one dimension of space and one dimension of time can begin to demonstrate how entangled atoms can span time as well as space. Looking at the above graph, the x-axis represents spatial dimension and the y-axis represents time. If two particles are present on the x-axis, their representations of the “past” and “future” on the y-axis will overlap – meaning that the particles could have interacted in the past and could interact again in the future, but only in the areas where the “past” and “future” representations overlap. In essence, the physicists are saying what anyone familiar with quantum theory already knows: entanglement transcends both physical space and the human measures of time.

However, the Queensland research indicates that it is possible to travel from the present to the future without traveling through the time in between the two – possible for a particle, anyway. According ot the researchers, the future detection of the qubit must line up with its creation in the past. The example given by the researchers is “if the past detector was active at a quarter to 12:00, then the future detector must wait to become active at precisely a quarter past 12:00 in order to achieve entanglement.” Thanks to this peculiarity, the researchers are calling their research “teleportation in time.” Because spatial teleportation is almost a routine practice in labs today, it’s only a matter of time before scientists start tinkering with sending particles into the future.

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As anxious as we are to travel through time, that pesky grandfather paradox always gives us pause. For the uninitiated, the grandfather paradox is the troubling problem that a time traveler runs into when journeying to the past: it’s the possibility that a time traveler could do something in the past that will prevent his or her grandparents from meeting and conceiving one of the traveler’s parents, thus negating the traveler’s own existence. A group of scientists think they have solved the problem with a bizarre, yet completely reasonable, quantum theory.

The theory is based on postselection, one of the most fascinating components of quantum computing. It’s the quality that allows all possible solutions for a problem to be computed at the same time, with the most correct solution being chosen afterward. Theoretically, this principle combined with the principle of quantum entanglement would allow particles to travel backward in time in a paradox-free quantum time machine.

Two big benefits of this theoretical time travel method: no bending of the space-time continuum is needed, and the grandfather paradox is eliminated. The second benefit is true because no matter what happens, there was already a chance of it happening…in other words, there are no surprises in quantum time travel. The theory hasn’t yet been tested, but the entire mind-blowing paper can be read here (if you can handle all that quantum theory).

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The weeks leading up to the activation of the Large Hadron Collider were vaguely reminiscent of the days leading up to Y2K: fear abounded about the end of the world. But, like Y2K, the first run of the LHC came and went with no catastrophes. A black hole didn’t suddenly form and swallow the planet, much to the surprise of many doomsday belivers. The operation of the LHC hasn’t exactly gone according to schedule since then, though. A problem with the particle accelerator’s superconductor magnets forced it to be temporarily shut down on September 19, 2008, just nine days after it was turned on for the first time. In fact, the LHC’s short existence has been fraught with problems ranging from random breakdowns to explosions to vacuum leaks to the arrest of one of the scientists due to alleged terrorism.

Most people look at the mishaps of the multi-billion dollar project as nothing more than coincidence. The project is, after all, about 30 years in the making. It’s bound to run into problems now and then. But some respected members of the scientific community are now wondering if there’s more to these setbacks than mere chance. The LHC was built, in part, to create the elusive Higgs boson particle; a particle which some scientists feel could be “abhorrent to nature.” According to Holger Bech Nielsen (of the Niels Bohr Institute, Stockholm) and Masao Ninomiya (of the Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto), that abhorrence could be causing nature, God, or the LHC itself to sabotage the project – from the future.

Sounds crazy, right? The mathematical theory put forth by the scientists claims that, if the LHC were able to create the Higgs boson particle (simulated image above) in the future and it had catastrophic consequences, the discovery would basically send out shockwaves into the past. The shockwaves would effectively seek to cripple the LHC and make the discovery impossible. While this theory would be dismissed out of hand coming from just about anyone else, it does warrant a second look when it comes from a scientist of Nielsen’s standing.

Since part of the LHC’s mission is to investigate additional dimensions of space/time, it kind of makes sense to pay attention to an idea that incorporates as-yet undiscovered elements of space and time. However, since we haven’t yet confirmed that any type of time travel is possible, most people are finding this self-sabotage theory hard to swallow. If it’s right, though, the LHC won’t succeed in its mission no matter how many times the scientists at CERN try.

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Sci-Fi TV shows and movies have made generations of us believe that there’s so much more out there than we know. While sci-fi has always been entertaining, it was hard to find a scientist who actually believed that things like warp-speed travel or teleportation would ever be possible. But today, science is finally catching up to science fiction. What was impossible thirty years ago, scientists now believe may someday actually happen.

Michio Kaku, admired futurist and theoretical physicist, sat down to talk with Popular Science about the science of Star Trek and what may or may not become science fact some day. Most interesting was his take on warp-speed travel. To some extent, scientists have already worked out how it might happen. Mexican relativist Miguel Alcubierre examined the question and came up with the solution of bringing the stars to the traveler rather than taking the traveler to the stars: essentially folding space to make the distance traveled much shorter. It’s not a perfect theory, but the fact that it’s being seriously considered by the scientific community is a step toward someday testing that theory.

As for the question of teleportation, well, we’ve already been working on that problem for the past decade. Scientists have teleported photons, along with atoms of cesium, rubidium and terbium, as far as 1800 feet. Teleportation is very complicated, obviously, and the kinks to be worked out are considerable, but current science has proven that it’s possible on a small scale. In another couple of centuries, it’s possible that we’ll be able to teleport whole people.

Kaku, himself a Star Trek fan, outlines these and other theories in his bestselling book, Physics of the Impossible.  A large portion of the book is devoted to Star Trek gadgets and technology, with examinations of many other pop culture fantasy technologies making an appearance. It’s definitely worth a look for aspiring scientists, futurists, and those of us who never stopped believing that we’d one day travel freely amongst the stars.

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