50 free Time Travel trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Time travel is the one impossible thing everybody has an opinion about, and this quiz covers it from both ends. Forty-one questions take in the fiction: H.G. Wells's Time Machine and the year 802,701, Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee, Billy Pilgrim coming unstuck, the DeLorean and its 1.21 gigawatts, the TARDIS, the Terminator, 12 Monkeys and La Jetée, Bill and Ted's phone booth, Groundhog Day, Outlander, Kindred, Primer, Somewhere in Time and the Avengers' time heist. The science gets equal time: closed timelike curves, Gödel's rotating universe, the grandfather paradox and Novikov's answer to it, Hawking's chronology protection conjecture, wormholes and Einstein-Rosen bridges, the twin paradox, and cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who really is 0.02 seconds younger than he should be. Easy questions ask what speed the DeLorean needs; hard ones want the 1733 book of letters from 1997 and the 1887 Spanish novel with the first time vessel. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the works, ideas and people, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which author's 1895 novella popularised the idea of travelling through the years by mechanical means?
H. G. Wells
He coined the term 'time machine', and sends his Time Traveller to the year 802,701 to meet the Eloi and the Morlocks.
Q 02In H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, the Time Traveller journeys to which year?
802,701
Humanity has split into the childlike Eloi and the subterranean Morlocks, a jab at Victorian class divisions.
Q 03Samuel Madden's 1733 Memoirs of the Twentieth Century is a set of letters from which years?
1997 and 1998
British ambassadors of the future write back to diplomats of the past about politics and religion.
Q 04Enrique Gaspar's 1887 novel El Anacronópete may be the first story to feature what?
A vessel built to travel through time
It beat Wells's Time Machine by eight years.
Q 05In Washington Irving's 1819 tale, what mechanism sends Rip Van Winkle into the future?
An extraordinarily long sleep
It is an early example of the 'time slip' device that Twain later used with a knock on the head.
Q 06In Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, how is Hank Morgan sent back to Camelot?
A severe blow to the head
Twain was inspired by a dream of being a knight, badly inconvenienced by the weight of his armour.
Q 07In Slaughterhouse-Five, Billy Pilgrim is abducted by aliens from which planet?
Tralfamadore
They see in four dimensions and greet every death with 'So it goes'.
Q 08In Back to the Future, what speed must the DeLorean reach to travel through time?
88 miles per hour
Marty triggers it by accident fleeing the terrorists who shot Doc.
Q 09How much power does the DeLorean's flux capacitor need for time travel?
1.21 gigawatts
In 1955 the only source is a lightning bolt, so Doc wires up the clock tower.
Q 10In the first draft of Back to the Future, the time machine was attached to what instead of a car?
A refrigerator
Marty was to climb inside and ride it into a Nevada atomic bomb test to harness the energy.
Q 11Which actor was originally cast as Marty McFly and replaced by Michael J. Fox after filming began?
Eric Stoltz
Reshooting his scenes added $4 million to the budget; the film still became 1985's biggest hit.
Q 12In Back to the Future, Doc sets the destination to November 5, 1955. What happened that day?
He conceived his invention
Marty ends up there without plutonium and has to make sure his parents fall in love.
Q 13What does TARDIS stand for in Doctor Who?
Time And Relative Dimension In Space
Q 21In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors relives which date over and over?
February 2
Filming took place in Woodstock, Illinois, not Punxsutawney.
Q 22In Hot Tub Time Machine, four men are sent back to which year?
1986
It happens at the Kodiak Valley Ski Resort, where they had partied as youths.
Q 23In Somewhere in Time, Christopher Reeve's character travels to 1912 by what method?
Self-hypnosis
He is yanked back to the present when he finds a penny minted in 1979 in his pocket.
Q 24In Outlander, nurse Claire Randall is transported from the 1940s to which era of Scottish history?
The first story in 1963 used the singular 'Dimension'.
Q 14The Doctor's TARDIS is stuck in the shape of what obsolete British object?
A police box
The BBC now holds the trademark on the design, even though the Metropolitan Police created it.
Q 15In which year did Doctor Who first air on the BBC?
1963
Guinness lists it as the longest-running science-fiction series in the world.
Q 16In The Terminator, the cyborg is sent back from which year to 1984?
2029
Its mission is to kill Sarah Connor before her son can lead the resistance against Skynet.
Q 17James Cameron got the idea for The Terminator from what?
A fever dream
It struck during the release of his first film, Piranha II: The Spawning.
Q 18Terry Gilliam's 12 Monkeys is based on which 1962 French short film?
La Jetée
Chris Marker's short is told almost entirely in still photographs.
Q 19In 12 Monkeys, James Cole is sent back from which year, 29 years after the virus?
2035
Brad Pitt earned an Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe for the film.
Q 20In Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, what shape is the time machine?
A phone booth
Rufus brings it to San Dimas so the boys can pass their history report.
The 1700s
She passes through a stone circle at Craigh na Dun near Inverness and meets Jamie Fraser.
Q 25Octavia Butler's Kindred (1979) sends Dana from 1976 Los Angeles to a plantation in which state?
Maryland
She is repeatedly pulled back to the early 19th century and must survive slavery to return home.
Q 26In The Time Traveler's Wife, Henry DeTamble's involuntary time travel is caused by what?
A genetic disorder
It is later named Chrono-Impairment; Audrey Niffenegger's 2003 debut became a film and an HBO series.
Q 27Shane Carruth's cult time-travel film Primer was made for roughly how much?
$7,000
It won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004 with a crew of five.
Q 28In Avengers: Endgame, the heroes reach the past through what?
The Quantum Realm
Scott Lang's escape from it after five years gives them the idea for the 'time heist'.
Q 29Timecop stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as a policeman in 1994 who by 2004 works as what?
A federal agent policing time travel
It was directed by Peter Hyams and based on a Dark Horse comic.
Q 30In physics, what are spacetime loops that would let an object return to its own past called?
Closed timelike curves
Solutions of general relativity contain them, but their physical plausibility is uncertain.