The Trump Admin Claims US Tech Can 'Manipulate Time And Space,' But Don't Get Too Excited Yet

The U.S. is home to some of the world's most advanced tech stacks, and at the same time, it's riddled with conspiracy theories that raise their heads almost on a regular cadence. Flying saucers, mysterious blinking lights, unexplained explosions, and secret time travel. You name it, and there's a segment that believes in it. Even NASA had to clarify the moon landing hoax myths. In a climate like that, if the government talks about something as advanced as time and space manipulation, it is going to make waves for all the wrong reasons.

That's just what transpired, coming straight from Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. In remarks April 14 at the Endless Frontiers Retreat in Austin, Texas, Kratsios said: "Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space. They leave distance annihilated, cause things to grow, and improve productivity."

At first glance, one might think that Kratsios is talking about a theoretical phenomenon where the fabric of space-time can be manipulated to cover stellar distances in a very short amount of time. This could also allow one to go into the past by breaking the light-speed barrier and creating a gravitational pull capable of reversing the relative flow of time. But while multiple theories on space-time manipulation exist, none of them has been demonstrated at a meaningful scale beyond science labs.

If one were to go by the literal meaning, it would seem that this senior government official was talking about real space-time manipulation — a staple of science fiction for years, as warp drives, wormholes, gravity distortion, and time jumps have appeared in dozens of books, films, and TV shows. However, Kratsios' subsequent remarks made it clear that it was all part of a rousing speech aimed at inspiring the American people, while citing examples of a glorious scientific past. Take a look at his concluding note: 

"It is the choices of individuals that will make the new American Golden Age possible: the choice of individuals to master the sclerosis of the state, and the choice of individuals to craft new technologies and give themselves to scientific discoveries that will bend time and space, make more with less, and drive us further into the endless frontier."

In a nutshell, Kratsios suggests that Americans must work harder to achieve technological goalposts yet to materialize, and thus push the country into a new golden age. So far, the White House hasn't issued any clarification regarding the remarks, given how they have been misrepresented and sensationalized on the internet and social media.

Realistically, space-time manipulation is observed in the cosmos, but at a very minuscule scale. Replicating it for large mass objects, such as a spaceship, using man-made machinery, is something that remains in the realm of theoretical paradoxes.

Avi Loeb, a former member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and founder of Harvard University's Black Hole Initiative, discussed Kratsios' statement regarding space-time manipulation in a recent piece at Medium. Loeb cited the example of Einstein's famed field equations that link how mass, energy, and light can affect the flow of space-time. "The distortions of time or space are minuscule unless one concentrates a huge amount of mass within a small volume," writes Loeb, one of the world's leading theoretical physicists.

So space-time manipulation is a real phenomenon, but its tangible impact is only observable at a cosmic scale. NASA explains that when a massive object rotates in space, it leads to some time distortions. "The effect of frame-dragging on the passage of time is strange, but it is real," the space agency says. Yet, it says, the effects are not fully predictable on the nearby objects.

Loeb notes: "The immediate vicinity of black holes is characterized by large spacetime distortions, but the U.S. government does not have access to such environments." To observe or create such events on Earth, one would need to construct machines that can create enough energy (or energetic objects) capable of space-time manipulations. The largest particle accelerator on Earth is far too small, Loeb says, adding that if the U.S. had succeeded in maniuplating space-time, "it would have been noticed" by scientists.