Neil deGrasse Tyson is a multiple-award-winning astrophysicist, science communicator, author, host, and actor, and his brilliance is known worldwide. So, needless to say, given his stature in the scientific community and in pop culture, when he offers up an intellectual hot take, people listen.
That being said, on the October 14th episode of Hot Ones Game Night, host Joe Santagato asked Tyson about the possibility of time travel. While most people (myself included) believe time travel belongs in the fictional realm of books and Hollywood, Tyson confirmed it’s theoretically possible in real life. Prepare to have your mind blown.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: “We Can Time Travel to the Future, but Not the Past.”
During Tyson’s appearance on Hot Ones Game Night, Santagato leads Tyson in a Hot Ones board game where there are different challenges to play and questions to answer. During one moment in the one-on-one competition, Santagato poses the question to Tyson, “Will humans ever be able to time travel?”
At first, Tyson very quickly responds, “No. Next.” When Santagato gauges Tyson’s absoluteness on the matter, that’s when things take an interesting turn. The scientist clarifies, “We can time travel to the future, but not the past.” Further explaining the rationale, he adds:
“If I accelerate you through space for a while, and you age, let’s say 10 minutes, and I bring you back to Earth, depending on what speed I sent you, we could have aged an hour, a day, a year. You went into the future. Not into your own future. You went into everybody else’s future.
“It’s a form of time travel, but there’s no way for you to go into your own future. No. You are a prisoner of the present in your timeline, forever transitioning between your inaccessible past and your unknowable future.”
Neil deGrasse Tyson explains how humans can ACTUALLY TIME TRAVEL into the FUTURE, but traveling BACK TO THE PAST is IMPOSSIBLE 🤯⏳ pic.twitter.com/GGPQSGvSXf
— Killa 🌺 (@KillaKreww) October 15, 2026
All that being said, while Tyson confirmed time travel to the future is possible, he stopped short of adding validity to the time travel plots of movies like Marvel Avengers films.
Neil deGrasse Tyson Ranks “Famously Smart People”
Another interesting moment in the Hot Ones Game Night episode occurs when Santagato asks Tyson to “Rank these famously smart people from most to least intelligent.” In the lineup, there’s Bill Nye, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, and Tyson. The astrophysicist answers:
“Definitely Stephen Hawking, top shelf right there, okay? The undisputed champion. Well, post-Einstein, yes. And I’d say next, Carl Sagan was a smart guy. Yeah, I’ll put him ahead of me there.”
Now, when it comes to the third and fourth spots in this ranking, Tyson notes that he and Nye are not only friends, but appear to be very similar in intellect. So instead of assigning a fourth spot, Tyson claims he and Nye are tied at third. You can check out Tyson’s full conversation with Santagato below.
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