Physicists Are Looking At How We Might Take A Trip Through Time

Wall Street Journal ^ | 21 November 2003 | SHARON BEGLEY

[PatrickHenry]

Ronald Mallett hadn't even heard of physics when he read H.G. Wells' 1895 classic, "The Time Machine," just a few months after his father died at age 33.

The 10-year old assumed that to build such a device, and see his father again, he should go into electronics, his dad's field. It was only during his stint at the Strategic Air Command that he learned that it was physicists who were discovering seeming impossibilities: that space can bend, time can slow, particles can be waves and waves, particles. It was physics, he realized, that offered the hope of making Wells' fiction -- and his boyhood hope -- a reality.

[boris]

I sent him a long list of questions--after reading his book twice. Some were similar to yours. I think a 'bot replied: "The questions you pose are deep. I hope soon to have time to begin to answer them."

If I'd said that time is made of green cheese and melons, it would have said: "The questions you pose are deep..."

--Boris

[longshadow]

dead turkey placemarker

[PatrickHenry]

Gobble this! Placemarker.

[longshadow]

Gobble this! Placemarker.

Hey; go easy with the Michael Jackson impressions!

[Heatseeker]

I just got back from seeing "Timeline". Their time machine involves mirrors of some kind, and when activated, smoke appears. I successfully resisted the urge to sprout lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Blackadder, but only barely.

Another thing. Why is it that black holes and time travel often seem to involve French chicks? You'd think that if they had time-travel technology, they would have made some major adjustments to the history of the 14th century, to say nothing of the 19th and 20th.

[PatrickHenry]

Thanksgiving placemarker.
PatrickHenry