Is Time Traveling Possible?

On April 23, 2006, a man in his early 20s was spotted in Kiev, Ukraine, staring at a high-rise apartment building. Witnesses described him as confused and anxious, and thought he might have been a lost tourist. The man approached two police officers and nervously asked for directions to a place that didn't exist. The officers asked the young man for identification, but there were two problems with his ID: his documents were issued by the Soviet Union, which no longer existed, and according to his birth date, this young man was born in 1932.

The story of Sergey Panamerenko, a man who seemed to be slipping in and out of time, was told in a Russian documentary called "The Time Traveler." Eyewitnesses first saw Panamerenko standing at an intersection in Kiev looking confused and frightened. He was described as being in his early 20s and wearing clothes that looked new but were 50 years out of fashion. Panamerenko was asking everyone he met how to get to Peshnaya Street, but nobody had heard of it.

His strange behavior caught the attention of police officer Sergey Annapenko and his partner, who approached him. Again, Panamerenko wanted directions to Peshnaya Street. When he tried to find the street on a map, all that was there was a landfill. Officer Anapanco now took notice of Sergey's vintage clothing that looked brand new. He noticed that Sergey was wearing an antique camera around his neck, which also looked new. But what really caught the police officer's attention was Sergey's identification. According to the document, Sergey was born in Kiev in 1932, which should make him 74 years old. But here he was, looking older than 25.

"I assume this person was out of his mind and had to get him to a psychiatrist," Annapenko said. Panamerenko didn't want to see a psychiatrist, but his options were either that or be arrested for vagrancy, an easy choice. So Sergey was taken to a private psychiatric clinic where everything was captured on video, and that's when things got really strange.

Sergey Panamerenko can be seen on CCTV acting agitated and nervous. The receptionist said that when he arrived, he became even more confused. "I remember he kept looking at my mobile phone, just staring at it. He didn't want to give me his code or his camera or any of his belongings. I knew he was going to be a difficult patient." Compared to the picture at the time of his disappearance, he hasn't aged at all, but even more strange is the background of the photograph. You can see the Mother Motherland statue over Sergey's right shoulder. There's no question that this is Kiev. Investigators went to the exact spot where Sergey took the picture. They found the location, but the rest of the skyline is wrong. Kiev doesn't have all those skyscrapers, at least not yet.

On the back of the photograph was a message to Valentina, written in Sergey's hand. "Dearest Valentina, everything is fine with me. I'll try to return when I can. Yours, Sergey." It would seem that Sergey Panamerenko had jumped into the future once again, but considering how big Kiev looks in the photos and given what the city has endured recently, there's no way to tell just how far into the future Sergey traveled. As of 2011, when this documentary was released, Sergey had not reached out to Valentina nor was he spotted anywhere in the city.

The concept of time travel has been a staple of science fiction for a long time. In 1770, Louis Sebastian Mercier wrote the book "The Year 2440".