If Einstein succeeded in transforming time into space, Gödel would perform a trick yet more magical: He would make time disappear. ..it turned out that the space-time structure is so greatly warped or curved by the distribution of matter that there exist timelike, future-directed paths...
Didn't Hawking change his mind about time travel a few years back?
Are you referring to Hawking's recent re-canting of his view that material sucked into a black hole could re-emerge into another universe (thus violating the principle of the conservation of information)? Here's a link for that story:
Hawking proves a good sport when it comes to settling bets
The link is to Preskill's webpage, Preskill being the guy who won the bet with Hawking.
You wrote:
Also, doesn't the following sound like a weapon in waiting?
If Einstein succeeded in transforming time into space, Gödel would perform a trick yet more magical: He would make time disappear. ..it turned out that the space-time structure is so greatly warped or curved by the distribution of matter that there exist timelike, future-directed paths...
Unless we can figure out a way to spin the entire cosmos like a top, we won't be able to use Gödel's solutions of Einstein's field equations to produce a weapon. I found the following using Google (it's by Stephen Speicher and may be found here):
Kurt Goedel was the first to demonstrate the existence of closed timelike curves (CTCs) in an exact solution to the Einstein field equations of general relativity ("An Example of a New Type of Cosmological Solutions of Einstein's Field Equations of Gravitation," _Reviews of Modern Physics_, 21: pp. 447-450, 1949). Goedel himself interpreted the CTCs as demonstrating that any objective lapse of time is an illusion: "...that for _every_ possible definition of a world time one could travel into regions of the universe _which are passed_ according to that definition. This again shows that to assume an objective lapse of time would lose every justification in these worlds."In Goedel's universe one can travel to the past, and, as Goedel said in one of his later manuscripts, "in whatever way one may [try to] introduce an absolute 'before,' there always exist either temporally incomparable events or cyclically ordered events." It was Goedel's contention, and echoed later by physicists such as Roger Penrose, that our ordinary perceptions of time as past, present, and future is obviated by the very existence of closed timelike curves. The idea being that physics treats time as it does the spatial dimensions, and the "flow of time" is just an illusion. The closed timelike curve in the Goedel universe permits one to travel towards one's causal future, but eventually wind up at one's local past.
Einstein acknowledged Goedel's work here as being
"an important contribution to the general theory of relatvity, especially to the analysis of the concept of time. The problem here involved disturbed me already at the time of the building up of the general theory of relativity, without my having succeeded in clarifying it." [1]And Einstein explicated the issue:
"...and if the series is closed in itself. In that case the distinction 'earlier-later' is abandoned for world-points which lie far apart in the cosmological sense, and those paradoxes, regarding the _direction_ of the causal connection, arise, of which Mr. Goedel has spoken." [2]Like Stephen Hawking, Einstein also questioned Goedel's solution on physical grounds: "It will be interesting to weigh whether these are not to be excluded on physical grounds." And, Hawking says: "This suggests that the solution is not very physical." And, indeed, Goedel's rotating universe was later understood not to be the universe in which we live. However, the Goedel solution is certainly of interest, and one will find it discussed in many advanced texts on relativity (for instance, in Hawking & Ellis, "The Large Scale Structure of Space-time," and Ciufolini & Wheeler, "Gravitation and Inertia").
There are other perspectives from other theorists, but, I think it fair to say that the modern perspective in general relativity is to treat the spacetime manifold as an abstraction within which we analyze in order to make real-world predictions of actual events.
[1] "Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist," Edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, _MJF Books_, p. 687, 1949/1970.
[2] Ibid. p. 688.
You don't get it, do you? How do you think we "defeated" the Soviet Union? In the 1970s and '80s, when the commies were on a roll, it was often asked aloud if the US would be able to survive. And here we are, just a few years later, having waged no war against the foe, yet they're gone and we're Number One.
Even a casual observer must agree that we live in the most improbable of times. Do you think it happened by accident?
</Fiction mode>