Will this guy be the first to build a time machine?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Neat!
I didn't understand most of the science involved, but it sounded gobbldlygooked enough to be real. Or at least realistic.
Good luck pal! Hopefully you don't succeed only to have the government co-opt the project for military uses!
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Scientist believes time travelling will be viable this century
When you have a time machine, time travel is viable during any century!
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Not according to the article.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Cool!
But.. No freakin' way...
Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
Looks like some first-class bulls*** to me.
Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
Well, he's a real professor (I looked him up) so it's first-class bulls*** that he's getting paid for.
Posted by starLisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
quote:Scientist believes time travelling will be viable this century
When you have a time machine, time travel is viable during any century!
That was my first thought.
Posted by Enigmatic (Member # 7785) on :
That's what makes it first-class!
--Enigmatic
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Originally posted by starLisa:
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
quote:Scientist believes time travelling will be viable this century
When you have a time machine, time travel is viable during any century!
That was my first thought.
Unless you get your hands on a time machine, it was mine first!
Posted by Kristen (Member # 9200) on :
This has probably been said before, but the best evidence that time travel isn't possible is that we haven't gotten any visitors from the future...that we know of...
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
Another proof that time travel isn't possible is that so many bad things have not been corrected. Unless they were the necessary consequence of eliminating a less savory alternative. Hey, what a great story idea! Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
pooka: What about the nuclear war that was averted in 1978.... Oh that's right. You don't remember because it didn't happen =)
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:Hey, what a great story idea!
Asimov wrote a story where a group of people kept fixing problems in society, and the fixes removing humanity's quest for the stars.
Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
I read a story in one of the science fiction magazines in which time travelers kept trying to avert World War I, but no matter what they did war always broke out around that time. Which, now that I know more about history, seems like a fairly obvious conclusion, but at the time I thought it was clever.
Posted by airmanfour (Member # 6111) on :
It's stupid. No-one will ever be able to actually "time travel" in the popularized sense of the term. So why bother?
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Nobody will ever travel to the moon, either, so why bother?
Posted by Jon Boy (Member # 4284) on :
Porter made me laugh in spite of my now-low opinion of him.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Ok! I admit it! I'm a time traveler!
I was born in 2143. I stayed in this time when I met my husband. (If I had known I was going to stay I would have studied this point in history a lot more closely.)
So lessee... Global warming is bunk. The war on terror will wax and wane, get really bad and finally be resolved the nuke-u-lar way. Meat is outlawed (which is why I love it now!) On a brighter note, gay marriage will finally come to pass in all 50 states within the next 50 years. (No, I don't remember the year. Do you remember when women got the right to vote? No googling now...)
Cars in the future run on electricity we produce from a fusion plant on the moon and beam to distribution points via microwave.
For a while the dictatorship of the prolitariate will come to pass in the US and it's not near as cozy as Marx would have you believe...
Oh, and Arnold NEVER becoems president.
Pix
Posted by Kristen (Member # 9200) on :
Disclaimer: Only took AP Physics.
Isn't there a way that some sort of anti-particle in a black hole could maybe, potentially travel in time? Maybe it was only for the future? Hawking wrote about it in his latest book, but after about Chapter 3, I was just (mentally) nodding and smiling. But he seemed to say it could happen on a minute scale.
Posted by blacwolve (Member # 2972) on :
1919
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
quote:But he seemed to say it could happen on a minute scale.
So I'd have to go on a diet.
Posted by Reticulum (Member # 8776) on :
Well, technicaly, do to relativity, and the speed of light, you COULD travel into the FUTURE. Say you wanted to travel 50 years into the FUTURE. If you jumped in a craft traveling at the speed of light, and got out in fifty years time (to ones not in a time machine), you would only age around 1 month. Thus, you wouldn't be any older, but you would be 50 years in the FUTURE...and stuck there.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Heck, you don't have to do anything special to travel to the future.
In fact, you can't help but do so.
Posted by xnera (Member # 187) on :
quote:This fall, with UConn colleague Dr. Chandra Raychoudri, Mallett will begin work on building a "ring laser"--basically, a device that will create a circulating light beam, perhaps within a photonic crystal that will bend the light's trajectory and slow it down.
I saw Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm, as it was bright; And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years, Driv'n by the spheres Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world And all her train were hurl'd.
Posted by I Am The War Chief (Member # 9266) on :
Einstein proved time travel was impossible, he did say time viewing was possible... maybe that was a movie...
Posted by SteveRogers (Member # 7130) on :
I don't like the implications of this one bit...
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
We all remember what happened to President Agnew, right? Those time-travelling accountants set him up.
Posted by prolixshore (Member # 4496) on :
What's not to like?
--ApostleRadio
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Niven's Law, or at least one of them: if time machines are possible, they will not be invented. Because if they're invented, there are so many reasons to tamper with the past that eventually they are prevented from being invented. A stable state.
(But not ours. I'd think it would be a state without intelligent life. Will B's Law: if time machines are possible, I really really want them not to be invented. Dying is one thing. Never existing is worse!)
OK: time travel is fantasy. Of course we don't have a trace of a way to do it. But. I know enough physics to say that this isn't nonsense. He's playing with interesting ideas. (But really. "Mallett's proposition has generated considerable popularity; The Christian Science Monitor, Village Voice and Boston Globe have all taken note." Not places where science gets published...)
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I think time travel is one of those things that will always be 'just around the corner'.
I'd love to be an invisible observer of time. It's my not-so-secret daydream. But I don't think time travel will ever be a possible in a meaningful scientific way. If time travel is possible I get the feeling it will be in a chaotic, directionless, high-energy, mangled-body kind of way.
I still hope though.
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
quote:This has probably been said before, but the best evidence that time travel isn't possible is that we haven't gotten any visitors from the future...that we know of...
I think, because of the potential paradoxes involved with modifying your own past, the fact that we haven't gotten any visitors from the future means nothing. Three options: no time travel, hence no visitors; time travel exists, but no one uses it because they don't want to turn the universe into nothingness; time travel exists and we have had visitors from the future but just didn't know it. The fourth option, we've had visitors and we know it is obviously out, cause we don't know it.
Posted by Vasslia Cora (Member # 7981) on :
I am surprised nobody has mentioned OSC's book, PastWatch.
It really depends on what happens if you chage the past, if you destroy the future, create an alternate universe or just change the future. Depending which it is, then you might think about going back in time.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Primal Curve: Looks like some first-class bulls*** to me.
I cry shennanigans
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAh
The best part of the articles is where it says that he was inspired by the book "The time Machine" by H.G. Wells. It goes on to say that the book is about a scientist who's fiance dies, and he is overcome with grief....
That was the movie version, the book has no fiance, the book is told from the perspective of one of the scientist's friends, and constists mostly of a story within a story, in which the scientists regails his dinner party with wild stories of the distant future! Obviously this guy never read the story, or the writer of the article made this part up about the grief of loss of his dad/and Wells parallel.
OR I could ironically be wrong, and there was a fiance in there somewhere, its been a while. Regardless this is not the point of the original novel, I know that for a fact.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
The science involved in this so immensely stupid too. Even if everything this article suggests where remotely realistic, what happens when you travel 6 months into the past? Are you not deposited into a point in space which the earth has left behind? Are you not dropped into a random spot in the vacuum of space?
I also like the sheer illogic of the idea that you can have a time machine which you walk into, and it transfers YOUR BODY back in time with lasers. If it transfers your body back in time, how can you walk through it? The exit wouldn't be there for you to emerge from, so the machine would need to have existed in the time you are visiting. Only it wouldn't be in the right point in space.... ah the sad truth about time travel.
Edit: I also appreciate the detailed research involved, postulating that you could fly to andromeda and back at the speed of light and it would take, oh, 2.2 million years. Except Andromeda is thought to be over 25 million light years away. Hmmm.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
quote:Originally posted by Reticulum: Well, technicaly, do to relativity, and the speed of light, you COULD travel into the FUTURE. Say you wanted to travel 50 years into the FUTURE. If you jumped in a craft traveling at the speed of light, and got out in fifty years time (to ones not in a time machine), you would only age around 1 month. Thus, you wouldn't be any older, but you would be 50 years in the FUTURE...and stuck there.
I'm a time traveller, and have completed most of my jump to 50 years in the future. I was born in 1965, and am already over 40 years into the future. I'm figuring that in another 9 1/2 years, I'll make it all the way to 2015.
Posted by Tante Shvester (Member # 8202) on :
quote:Originally posted by Vasslia Cora: I am surprised nobody has mentioned OSC's book, PastWatch.
I really liked that book.
Posted by Euripides (Member # 9315) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: [QB] HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAh
[...]
That was the movie version, the book has no fiance, the book is told from the perspective of one of the scientist's friends, and constists mostly of a story within a story, in which the scientists regails his dinner party with wild stories of the distant future! Obviously this guy never read the story, or the writer of the article made this part up about the grief of loss of his dad/and Wells parallel. [...]
*sigh* Journalists...
Is it just me or has the link broken?
Posted by stihl1 (Member # 1562) on :
There's a book by Mona Clee called Branch point. In it people travel through time to prevent a nuclear war during the Cuban Missle crisis. What happens is time is not changed, but an alternate timeline is created where that war never happens. Instead of changing the future for their people, they simply create a new timeline that they follow, the war still happens in the original timeline. I tend to believe this is what would happen if time travel is made possible. Not a new future, but an alternate timeline. Original events still happen. Good book, don't like the way it ends.
Posted by imogen (Member # 5485) on :
quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head:
quote:Hey, what a great story idea!
Asimov wrote a story where a group of people kept fixing problems in society, and the fixes removing humanity's quest for the stars.
The End of Eternity.
I really like that book, I think mostly for the last line.
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
quote:I also like the sheer illogic of the idea that you can have a time machine which you walk into, and it transfers YOUR BODY back in time with lasers. If it transfers your body back in time, how can you walk through it? The exit wouldn't be there for you to emerge from, so the machine would need to have existed in the time you are visiting. Only it wouldn't be in the right point in space.... ah the sad truth about time travel.
...or the subject's body is ripped to shreds when only part of said subject is in the field.
Or perhaps, assuming they get past that little problem (or it doesn't exist for some reason or other) maybe you can only go as far back as the machine has been on. :shrug:
And then again, we're not dealing with space and tmie so much as we're dealing with spacetime. The logic is strange.
Posted by Telperion the Silver (Member # 6074) on :
A beautiful article.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
quote:I also like the sheer illogic of the idea that you can have a time machine which you walk into, and it transfers YOUR BODY back in time with lasers. If it transfers your body back in time, how can you walk through it? The exit wouldn't be there for you to emerge from, so the machine would need to have existed in the time you are visiting. Only it wouldn't be in the right point in space.... ah the sad truth about time travel.
To be fair, the article does quote Mallett as saying ". . .I don't think we can go back any further than when we have a time machine that works."
Maybe we haven't gotten any visitors from the future because we haven't created a time machine on our end point yet. Maybe on the day the first time machine is created someone will walk out of it from 1000 years in the future with a copy of Time Travel for Dummies, a contract to follow strict guidelines for time travel, and a bomb to blow up the machine if we refuse to sign the contract.
(If you use this idea and get famous, you can thank me in the "forward" to one of your novels. )
Posted by El JT de Spang (Member # 7742) on :
quote:I am surprised nobody has mentioned OSC's book, PastWatch.
Someone has. Note the winking smiley below.
quote:Another proof that time travel isn't possible is that so many bad things have not been corrected. Unless they were the necessary consequence of eliminating a less savory alternative. Hey, what a great story idea!
Posted by Vasslia Cora (Member # 7981) on :
Opps, now how did I miss that?
Posted by suminonA (Member # 8757) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: The science involved in this so immensely stupid too. Even if everything this article suggests where remotely realistic, what happens when you travel 6 months into the past? Are you not deposited into a point in space which the earth has left behind? Are you not dropped into a random spot in the vacuum of space?
I also like the sheer illogic of the idea that you can have a time machine which you walk into, and it transfers YOUR BODY back in time with lasers. If it transfers your body back in time, how can you walk through it? The exit wouldn't be there for you to emerge from, so the machine would need to have existed in the time you are visiting. Only it wouldn't be in the right point in space.... ah the sad truth about time travel.
As long as we are using our imagination, time-travel (or better said space-time-travel) to any point in past-future-Universe is possible.
Here’s why: 1) even if the “time-machine” is of the “walk into” type, the important part is not the machine itself but the DISTORTION produced in the space-time. So if a physical device can produce such a distortion, it would actually connect two “distant” points in space-time. “Getting out” on the other end does not need the physical device to be present there too. So you could go as “far back” as you like. And even the “coming back to the future” would be possible. You could carry with you a portable device capable to “remotely” activate the “time-machine”, producing the distortion needed to “go back”, or you could pre-program your system to activate the coming back distortion, if you can plan your voyage well enough. 2) The movement of the Earth through space in the time period “arched” between the two ends of the distortion of the space-time can be calculated precisely enough such as not to “land in the vacuum of space”. The physical presence of some material on the “distant” end would indeed be a problem, that could be solved by sending through a "cleansing field" first. At any rate, at least sending first a probe, would be a good idea. 3) The “grand-father paradox” is also easily ruled out with the “many-worlds-theory”. As long as we don’t try, we’re left only with the theories.
My personal argument “against” the article is the idea that “as light and matter are the same, following Einstein’s formula, if matter can bend space, light should too”. Well, according to the theory, it is MASS that bends space, not energy. As light doesn’t have any mass… it always follows A RIGHT PATH (through the already curved space-time). Creating a “vortex of light” using a laser and some crystals, would by an interesting alternative to stocking weightless energy, but from there to “time travel”… We should wait to see the results of the “neutrino experiment” before building a “vortex-of-laser” based time-machine.
Meanwhile, use your imagination. ANYTHING is possible!
A.
Posted by Stephan (Member # 7549) on :
Humans are careless by nature. If one day we were to become capable, then I'm sure we would have found anachronistic items in ancient digs by now.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
btw... the earth is spinning at 1000 miles/hr.... not to mention going around the sun and the sun rotating around the galaxy and the galaxy's movement within the local group and expanding away from the big bang.
We're all moving really really fast....
What happens if you move back in time, but not to the space where the earth was at the time you travel to? Much less taking into account objects you might appear inside or how many feet above/below the ground you might be...
Posted by suminonA (Member # 8757) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: btw... the earth is spinning at 1000 miles/hr.... not to mention going around the sun and the sun rotating around the galaxy and the galaxy's movement within the local group and expanding away from the big bang.
We're all moving really really fast....
What happens if you move back in time, but not to the space where the earth was at the time you travel to? Much less taking into account objects you might appear inside or how many feet above/below the ground you might be...
1) The spinning of the Earth is not measured in miles/hr, but in rotations/second. The geographical North Pole is “turning on itself” actually. The farther a point is from the axis of rotation, the greater its velocity vector (assuming the same spin). 2) The movement of the Galaxy or the movements of the local group “expanding away “ are irrelevant for this. There is no ABSOLUTE frame of reference, therefore we would use the Solar System (namely the position of the Sun) as our point of reference. Since we can calculate the orbits of the planets (including Earth) through time, there is no problem in “predicting” the position of Earth (or any point at its surface) at any “point in time” (past or future) in our Sun-based frame of reference.
For the “above/below ground” problem there is the use of a probe coming into the picture.
A.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
The 'Time Machine' mistake made me stop taking the article seriously.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
I was annoyed at the lack of deceleration time in their trip to Andromeda hypothetical.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Siminon, you can't calculate future events with complete certainty, according to the uncertainty principal, an event cannot be counted on until it has been observed, and since you can't observe future events, you can't exactly predict them. There are quantum events which have unpredictable outcomes, therefore the positions of future objects have not been determined at the present time. In a way the future your headed for does not exist, and even if it did, things wouldn't be the way you expected.
Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
On the mass/energy thing:
E = mc^2
The equation means that mass and energy are one and the same. Matter is just a way of storing energy. The two are related through the constant speed of light. This has been thoroughly tested. So technically... *shrug* energy is mass. Where the problem comes in is the absolutely COLLOSSAL amount of energy needed to create a little mass. M = e/c^2. c being the speed of light (roughly: 3x10^8 m/s) you're looking at a whole ton of energy needed just to create a kilogram of mass.
Also, I'm not entirely sure that light counts as pure energy. I haven't taken modern yet, so while I learned the significance of the energy/mass relationship, I'm not quite sure where light fits in (being made up of massless photons). Its a form of energy to be sure (or contains it anyway), but is it pure energy?
Either way, it would take a whole shitload more light than we are capable of firing through a lazer to even produce the equivelent of some sort of nominal mass. Forget one large enough to warp space time.
To give you an idea how much:
1 kg equivelent in energy is: 9x10^16 J
Robert Zubrin estimated in his book Entering Space That humanity used about 29 TWh (terra-watt hours) in the years 1998 to 2000. By my calculations (feel free to check em) thats about 1.044x10^17 J. In otherwords, we'd need about as much energy as we used in two years to create the equivelent of 1 kg worth of light.
Yeah... its not gonna work. But let him try it, some of the most significant discoveries in science came from people experiementing on seriously crackpot theories hoping for completely different results.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Orincoro, that's a rather large misstatement of the uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle "merely" has to do with the simultaneous measurement of certain pairs of variables. It doesn't have anything to do with events, per se. You seem to be thinking of the uncertainty of unobserved events due to the action of probabilistic quantum phenomena, leading to a quantum wavefunction that hasn't collapsed yet, such as in the Schrodinger's Cat paradox.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Alcon: once you get small enough, it becomes almost useless to talk about a difference between mass and energy; its just convenient to use one in some contexts, and the other in others. In a limited sense, photons are pure energy, because they have no rest mass, but because they're always moving, they have mass (or energy, from another perspective).
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Orincoro, that's a rather large misstatement of the uncertainty principle. The uncertainty principle "merely" has to do with the simultaneous measurement of certain pairs of variables. It doesn't have anything to do with events, per se. You seem to be thinking of the uncertainty of unobserved events due to the action of probabilistic quantum phenomena, leading to a quantum wavefunction that hasn't collapsed yet, such as in the Schrodinger's Cat paradox.
Your right, I just conflated two ideas into one argument, the uncertainty principal AND the cat.
I was thinking of schrodinger's Cat, the idea that future events exist as a waveform that doesn't collapse until you open the box. This is in the same vain. I am also aware that you can't measure position without effecting speed, speed without changing position etc. This too would not allow for a person to predict future events from the information they could gather at present, since the information will always be either incomplete or innacurate.
Posted by suminonA (Member # 8757) on :
Orinoco, the movement of the planets is not an "event" at all. If you know what Schrödinger's Cat experiment is about, then you shouldn’t confuse things. It's one thing to "predict" an event based on a quantum wave function, and quite another to apply the laws of Mechanics.
True, the EXACT (as in 100% accurate) position AND speed cannot be calculated simultaneously, not for an electron and not even for an elephant.[The magnitude of mass IS relevant.] The incertitude/error for the electron is important, but the incertitude/error for an elephant is so small that it is null for any practical purpose.
So, the position of the other end of the space-time distortion is subject to such an "imprecision". But an irrelevant one. Assuming that the distortion can be “cleanly localised” (as opposed to a worm-hole the size of a planet), the incertitude in the prediction of its position is the least of the problems.
quote:Originally posted by Alcon: Also, I'm not entirely sure that light counts as pure energy.
Alcon, what is “pure energy” for you ?
A.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
Suminon, your saying that in a billion years the uncertainty will STILL be negligable? a BILLION years?
For every event there is an effect bubble which moves away from that event at the speed of light in all directions. In traveling to the future, there would be a reverse bubble effect, so that the farther you travel, the larger the bubble of events that will effect the world you arrive in, will be. If you travelled a billion years in the future, then the future you arive in will be affected in some way by every event which has occured over a billion light years since you left. That's too much uncertainty in combination.
Besides all that, since the speed of light is finite, you couldn't predict a future any more lightyears away than you could actually see, or else unseen events which are in your reverse effect bubble will change the future before you get there, and things will be different.
Posted by suminonA (Member # 8757) on :
quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Suminon, your saying that in a billion years the uncertainty will STILL be negligable? a BILLION years?
No, that’s not what I‘m saying.
quote:For every event there is an effect bubble which moves away from that event at the speed of light in all directions. In traveling to the future, there would be a reverse bubble effect, so that the farther you travel, the larger the bubble of events that will effect the world you arrive in, will be. If you travelled a billion years in the future, then the future you arive in will be affected in some way by every event which has occured over a billion light years since you left. That's too much uncertainty in combination.
Besides all that, since the speed of light is finite, you couldn't predict a future any more lightyears away than you could actually see, or else unseen events which are in your reverse effect bubble will change the future before you get there, and things will be different.
I agree with the “effect bubble” description. As long as we don’t completely know “the present”, we won’t be able to perfectly predict the future. In a billion years it might be that our entire Solar System wouldn’t exist at all anymore. Or at least our frail blue marble that we call Earth. The laws of Mechanics allow us to calculate the position of Earth with respect to the Sun at ANY point in time. For the past (but obviously not past the birth of the Solar System) we are sure the Earth “was there”. For the future, the further we go, the less chances we have to find the Earth (existing) there. So in a billion years, the “certainty” of finding the Earth in the expected spot is quite small.
But the incertitude on its position it is not the sum of “combined uncertainty” for every particle in the Universe evolving “second by second” until then. The presence of an asteroid that we presently ignore, which could intersect Earth’s trajectory and deviate/destroy it is a totally uncontrollable incertitude. And it has nothing to do with Heisenberg’s Incertitude Principle.
The Solar System is a stable enough mechanical system to be predictable. That’s what I was saying.
A.
Posted by Alcon (Member # 6645) on :
quote:Alcon, what is “pure energy” for you ?
Not sure as in: "I don't know" Anything measured in joules maybe?
Light probably does count, still with the needing more of it than we're capable of producing to do anything along these lines.
Posted by Boothby171 (Member # 807) on :
Let's not forget the same "time branching" concept in James P. Hogan's "Thrice Upon a Time."
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by suminonA: The Solar System is a stable enough mechanical system to be predictable. That’s what I was saying.
A.
Works for me! As long as your not thinking you could actually predict the future PRACTICALLY. Since this might would building a computer so big that generated its own gravity well, thus the act of calculating future events might also alter them. Now we really are in insano physics territory.
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Anything measured in joules maybe?