I assume you mean are scientists studying things science says we can’t manipulate.

Science doesn’t actually work quite like that, which is why people are being snarky. But assuming your question is asked in the spirit of genuine curiosity:

Google

• Alcubierre warp drive
• Negative mass
• Using lasers to build artificial event horizons
• Modeling wormholes on quantum computers

People are writing papers like

• This one https://arxiv.org/pdf/2606.12528
• This one https://www.academia.edu/170342840/Self_Liquidating_Time_Model_SLTM_Samolikvidačný_model_času_SMČ_An_Axiomatic_Explanation_Axiomaticke_vysvetlenie
• This one https://ijrpr.com/uploads/V5ISSUE11/IJRPR34721.pdf
• Or this one https://www.academia.edu/166978742/Quantum_Tunnelling_Timing_Kernel_for_a_Stabilized_Probabilistic_Time_base

Scientists study super hard problems that seem impossible all the time, and they would all be just as excited as you if something “impossible seeming” turned out to be possible. The thing is, these problems are actually super hard / impossible to solve so…

• The language of the serious science is super complicated AND it doesn’t usually give you practical ways to say, build a time machine.
• BUT, it turns out it IS super possible for someone to say they THINK they can build a time machine, or an anti-gravity machine or an FTL drive. 20 years ago, my brother did a shit ton of drugs (like mushrooms, LSD and ayahuasca all in the same week) and thought that he knew how to build a perpetual motion machine. He even asked me for help raising VC so he could pursue his ideas (I declined and tried to explain why).
• We call these people crackpots. Which is really difficult and probably a little painful for people who want to believe these magical technologies that would let us travel back in time or across the galaxy would exist if scientists would just “try a little harder” or “take this weird theory I read about on the internet seriously.”
• Sadly, that’s not how science works. But physicists would LOVE to discover that FTL was possible or that you could make an anti-gravity belt. And believe it or not, lots of them spend time thinking about how to do that kind of thing. But that doesn’t mean that we’re about to be able to do those. And it REALLY doesn’t mean we’d be able to do them if physicists would just “think outside the box” or “take these outlandish ideas seriously.”
• Anyone who tells you otherwise is crazy, has an axe to grind, is trying to sell you something or all three (cough Sabine Hossenfelder cough cough)

Are we? I’m not. Are you? I’m assuming not, since you’re asking. So the answer to your question would be “no.”

Are some people among the many billions of people? Certainly. Are most of them dim, high, or full of shit? Probably.

Kind of. Being near mass increases the amount of gravity you experience and (slightly) slows the rate at which time passes. The difference is small but it has to be accounted for by GPS satellites to give accurate location data.

There are fundamental forces dictating the flow of time and the force of gravity and not only are we constantly searching for ways to stress these forces but in some cases we’re trying to prove they actually exist at all.

For example, we know gravity waves exist only as a relatively recent discovery and there are many current researchers trying their best to manipulate them in some meaningful way. If they fail then they will have proven what is NOT possible (under specific conditions) which will in itself be a great discovery.

What you might be referring to is Quantum Mechanics breakthroughs such as quantumn system time reversal. These sort of things don’t apply to the atomic scale or larger, just resetting the state of a subatomic system to a previous position, sort of like a windup toy.

So your question is rather broad, but I’ll try to answer. Manipulation of time isn’t really a thing we are remotely capable of. There are people who build theoretical models of time, and look at how things like speed effect time. But time itself isn’t really single thing we can manipulate. It is more of an aspect of how reality functions.

As for gravity, there isn’t even a solid understanding of how gravity works as far as I’m aware. There is research being done to prove the existence of gravitons. So before anyone can really work on manipulating gravity, someone would first have to find the source of and mechanism that causes gravity.

You mean like leaving work early to go juggling?