Posted on 09/03/2014 1:11:14 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Recent experiments offer tentative support for time travel's feasibility—at least from a mathematical perspective. The study cuts to the core of our understanding of the universe, and the resolution of the possibility of time travel, far from being a topic worthy only of science fiction, would have profound implications for fundamental physics as well as for practical applications such as quantum cryptography and computing.
Closed timelike curves The source of time travel speculation lies in the fact that our best physical theories seem to contain no prohibitions on traveling backward through time. The feat should be possible based on Einstein's theory of general relativity, which describes gravity as the warping of spacetime by energy and matter. An extremely powerful gravitational field, such as that produced by a spinning black hole, could in principle profoundly warp the fabric of existence so that spacetime bends back on itself. This would create a "closed timelike curve," or CTC, a loop that could be traversed to travel back in time.
Hawking and many other physicists find CTCs abhorrent, because any macroscopic object traveling through one would inevitably create paradoxes where cause and effect break down. In a model proposed by the theorist David Deutsch in 1991, however, the paradoxes created by CTCs could be avoided at the quantum scale because of the behavior of fundamental particles, which follow only the fuzzy rules of probability rather than strict determinism. "It's intriguing that you've got general relativity predicting these paradoxes, but then you consider them in quantum mechanical terms and the paradoxes go away," says University of Queensland physicist Tim Ralph. "It makes you wonder whether this is important in terms of formulating a theory that unifies general relativity with quantum mechanics."
(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...
We’re stuck in the “Romney runs for president” CTC.
JUST.. WOW!! It worked!!
Since time is simply the movement from a higher energy state to a higher entropy state, this means we’ll soon be able to push water uphill and unring a bell.
None of this seems to resolve the problem that the fact we haven’t already seen time travelers seems to prove that we won’t ever travel in time. And no, UFOs wouldn’t explain this, since the person arriving in the past would have the SAME qualities as the person departing from the future, not some “quantum-shifted phase-inverted” (or whatever sci-fantasy mumbo jumbo) version of itself.
Of course, if the catch to time travel is that a receiving device needs to be built...
I’m going to make a fold in the space-time continuum to see where...
Blah blah blah. The bottom line is, this thing called “causality” rules. There are no paradoxes. Formulas and simulation notwithstanding.
Again, Scientific American leaves the world of science and stumbles into science fiction.
there was a 50 percent probability I would read this article
No. All the monkeys will scream and throw poo at him...
Marty! We need to get over to the O'Reilly autoparts and pick up a Flux Capacitor and a Mr. Fusion. The very fabric of the space time continuum is ours for the taking!
Sadly my time machine broke and now only works in forward at 1X speed. Sucks to be me, I know.
Sure can. But you still need 1.21 gigawatts of electricity.
The man is a genius.
One VERY good reason to time travel.
I opened the box I had my Flux Capacitor in and all I found was a dead/live cat.
Negative Z, I want to live those Reagan years again, those were the funnest ever. I’d sweat out the 60s and 70s all over again for those 8 glorious years when the country came back to center; of unabashed confrontation against the Evil Empire, the rise of the Cabbage Patch Kids...Ahhh the 80s.
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