“Well,” Geoff began, “do you think your experiments here will lead to some sort of time travel device at some point?”
“Well, a particle accelerator is a very useful tool in probing the qualities of quantum physics, and, yes, time is always a very important factor in many calculations, but I hesitate to say that we are doing research into time travel. Still, we have come up with a very interesting demonstration recently.”
Geoff brightened. “What kind of demonstration?”
“Well, first I have to give you a little background. Are you familiar with string theory?”
“Sure, yeah. I’ve heard of it.”
“Ok, let’s just make sure you’re up to speed here, Geoff. You understand that atoms are made up of smaller particles; electrons, protons, neutrons, and that these particles in turn are made up of smaller particles, muons, gluons, quarks, etc. Then there are photons, and so forth.”
Geoff nodded.
“Of course you can’t go on splitting particles down into smaller particles forever. At some point you must run into particles that are not composed of anything smaller. String theory says that these particles are actually dimensional strings. That is, like the dimensions that we perceive in units of distance, but these dimensions are wrapped around tip to tail, into a little loop. Effectively, they have no substance at all, but they do have size.”
“Yes, I’ve heard all that.” Geoff said.
“Good, and you know that the characteristics of each string is dependent on how it vibrates?”
“Yes.”
“Well, some of these particles vibrate at astronomically high frequencies. Very difficult to detect.”
“OK.”
“And the particle that we’re interested in when we speak of time travel, of course, is the tachyon. We’ve calculated mathematically that it’s wavelength should be about 4.547718 times 10 to the negative 184, meters.”
“Yeow.” Geoff’s mind boggled. “That’s like... a bazillion Hertz.” Geoff blushed. “I mean, like, it’s such a huge number.”
“Oh, yes, don’t be embarrassed. Really, the mind can’t grasp it. Of course, we don’t have instruments that can measure such high frequencies, but, it turns out we don’t have to.”
Geoff thought for a moment. “Why not?” he asked.
“Well, the dimension that is determined by a tachyon, of course, is time. And as a tachyon vibrates, it moves back and forth through time. With each complete wave, the particle moves from the beginning of time, to the present, then continues on to the end of time, which is really the beginning again. It keeps doing this, with each and every vibration.” He paused, Geoff remained silent, and he went on. “Well, we exist in one timeline, so if we look at a tachyon, we only see it at the instants it exists within our own time, and that’s always at the same point in the wave. It actually flashes in and out of existence a bazillion times a second, but to us, it appears that the tachyon isn’t vibrating at all.”
“But,” Geoff began, “we are moving through time, if the tachyon appears in one oscillation, and then appears again in the next oscillation, we should observe it at different points on the wave!”
“Yes, well, that’s called aliasing. Yes. But consider that each oscillation brings the tachyon all the way from the beginning of time, to the end of time. And we don’t know how long that is, but the universe is at least around 12 to 16 billion years old, so far. For all intents and purposes, the tachyon is completely motionless. What’s good about that is that while with other particles, we can’t detect their actual frequency, but we CAN tell that they are vibrating. The tachyon is the only particle that appears to be completely motionless, so it’s easy to detect.”
“Ah, and that’s your demonstration?” Geoff was pleased with himself.
“Well, no. Let me continue.” He indicated a console built into one wall of the room. “Yes, we’ve been able to detect tachyons for some time, but your question was about time travel.”
“You see, tachyons are present in all matter, in each of the larger subatomic particles. The tachyon gives each particle its location in time.”
Geoff brightened again. “So if you can convince the tachyon to move through time, it will take the particle with it?”
“Well, yes, but that would be very difficult. You see, tachyons vibrate sympathetically to each other, like the strings in a piano. When any two tachyons are in near proximity to each other, they vibrate together, so they always exist at the same time. This is actually what gives us the appearance of time. Since all the particles in our timeline existed relatively near each other at a point early in time, all our tachyons are synchronized, so we all travel through time together.”
“But an individual tachyon doesn’t have to stay synchronized, if you isolate a tachyon, say by putting it into a perfect vacuum, its frequency kind of wobbles, actually, it’s similar to the precession of the equinoxes. You understand?”
“So it would seem to disappear, from our perspective?” Geoff felt quite proud of himself. After all, he was a visitor here, and this was heady stuff.
“Yes exactly. And we’ve known for years that particles do just exactly that. In a perfect vacuum, particles disappear. And appear.” He motioned toward the console.
“This is pretty much an ordinary oscilloscope, but it’s tied to a detector that monitors a particular location in our vacuum chamber. Now, particles appear and disappear all the time in the chamber, but the chances of a particle appearing at the sensor at a given time are about, well,... a bazillion to one.”
Geoff grinned.
“Now here,” and he indicated a digital display on the console, “is a timer. Whenever a particle is detected by the sensor, like this.” A flash occurred on the oscilloscope. “The timer begins counting down, from five seconds.” As the timer counted down, he reached out and pressed a button on the console, just as the timer reached ‘zero.’”
“Now, wait,” said Geoff, “you said the chances of a particle appearing at any particular time were a bazillion to one, and yet that one appeared just as you said it would.”
“Yes, well, that’s the trick, you see, we have the chamber set up so that we can shoot an electron near to the detector. An electron has several tachyons in it, so they all vibrate sympathetically, and since it comes from our timeline, it stays there. But if a particle with only one tachyon, usually just the tachyon by itself, exists in a different time, it is drawn into the vibration pattern of the electron, and suddenly it exists in our time, so the detector sees it.”
“So when you said a particle would be detected, you triggered the electron gun, and then the tachyon appeared?”
“No. You see, the shape of a tachyon can be altered by forces from a nearby object, and the mass of the electron distorted the tachyon’s shape, momentarily. Since the period of the tachyon’s wave is so long, from our perspective, even a very small distortion, like from the gravitational tug of the electron, which is extremely small, will cause the shape of the waveform to be just a little different, and it will exist just slightly offset in time. As it turns out, about negative five seconds.”
Geoff’s face twisted into an uncomfortable expression. “You lost me.” He said.
“Here, it’s better if you just try it out. Go ahead and push the button when the timer reaches ‘one.’”
The oscilloscope flashed, and the timer began. Dutifully, Geoff waited until it read ‘zero’, and pushed the button.
“Now wait.” Geoff said. “No. This is a bad joke, you trigger the thing remotely, and then you’re going to tell, me...” He stopped. “So I waited until it reached zero, big deal.”
“It’s ok, Geoff, really, it’s very hard to grasp, but it’s really very sound science.”
“No, it’s not.” Geoff said. “It’s cold fusion. This is bullshit.”
“Look, Geoff, you do it yourself. I won’t say a word.”
They stared at the console for some time, and nothing happened.
“Nothings happening.” Geoff said.
“That’s because you aren’t going to push the button. You have to really plan to push the button.”
“So it will flash five seconds BEFORE I push the button, that’s it?”
“It works Geoff, just do it.”
The oscilloscope flashed, the timer started, and Geoff reached out and pushed the button, just as the timer reached “zero.”
“This isn’t quantum physics, this is a psychology experiment. You’re treating me like a trained rat! This is bullshit.” Geoff repeated. “I’m not going to play your damned games.”
“Look. I’m not playing games, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. But if you don’t believe me, try this. Press the button when the counter reaches 3, or 2 or whatever.”
Geoff’s face looked genuinely pained. For some time nothing happened. Then the oscilloscope flashed, and Geoff quickly reached for the button. He paused, and the counter ticked down. Three, two, one. He hit the button.
“Why don’t you try it again?”
“NO.” Geoff said.
“Go ahead, it’s just a simple demonstration.”
A look of fear gripped Geoff’s face. He reached out with one hand and rested it against the wall of the lab, and keeping his eyes on the console, he began to back up. With one hand on the wall, and the other waving aimlessly in the air behind him, he backed up blindly, still staring at the console, until he reached the door of the lab. In another instant, he whirled, and ran out the door.
Copyright Glenn Arnold, 2001
[ October 17, 2009, 01:34 PM: Message edited by: Glenn Arnold ]
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Well, there were spaces between the paragraphs in the original document, but forum didn't like them. Should be better now.
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In concept, it reminded me a little of a short story by Ken MacLeod called "iThink, therefore I am", although that story was not about tachyons, but was about Libet's experiment.
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I posted this in response to the "would coal cut it if we didn't use iron" thread. No doubt anyone with real background in physics or string theory could shred the story, but that's not the point.
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Oh, and I've also been made aware of Asimov's "The endochronic properties of resublimated thiotimoline." But I hadn't heard of it when I wrote the story.
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