Tachyonic antitelephone

A tachyonic antitelephone is a hypothetical device in theoretical physics that could be used to send signals into one's own past. Albert Einstein in 1907 presented a thought experiment of how faster-than-light signals can lead to a paradox of causality, which was described by Einstein and Arnold Sommerfeld in 1910 as a means "to telegraph into the past". The same thought experiment was described by Richard Chace Tolman in 1917; thus, it is also known as Tolman's paradox. A device capable of "telegraphing into the past" was later also called a "tachyonic antitelephone" by Gregory Benford et al. According to the current understanding of physics, no such faster-than-light transfer of information is actually possible.