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.

[PatrickHenry]

The link may not work because the Journal requires a subscription; but I've copied the entire article.

[PatrickHenry]

PING. [This ping list is for the evolution side of evolution threads, and sometimes for other science topics. FReepmail me to be added or dropped.]

[freedom44]

bump for later reading

[Senator Pardek]

Anchor one mouth in the present -- say, Nov. 21, 2010. Drag the other mouth through space at nearly the speed of light, until Nov. 21, 2011. Moving objects age more slowly than stationary ones, according to relativity. If you hop inside the wormhole, therefore, you could travel to any point in time in-between, back to 2010.

What would prevent one from grabbing another from the "future", and making a return trip to the "past"?

[PatrickHenry]

What would prevent one from grabbing another from the "future", and making a return trip to the "past"?

Nothing. Once the hole is open, I assume it's a two-way street. Wanna go back to the Clinton years? If someone back then was setting up a wormhole, you may get your chance.

[lavrenti]

I'd love to travel back to 1979 and have a "come to Jesus" conference with my 17-year-old self.

Too bad I can't.

[zencycler]

bump for EARLIER reading

[Senator Pardek]

Time travelers could never reach a time earlier than when a wormhole was engineered. No wonder none have visited us.

I see - so no backwards time travel can occur before the date of the first forwards time travel. That would take care of the "grandfather paradox", no?

[Pharmboy]

Wouldn't we all...

[blam]

"I'd love to travel back to 1979 and have a "come to Jesus" conference with my 17-year-old self."

I have to go back to 1960, maybe I could warn JFK while I was there, eh.

[Joe 6-pack]

Duplicate post....This was already posted in February, 2011.

[PatrickHenry]

That would take care of the "grandfather paradox", no?

It's still available. Not for you, if you're around when the first wormhole is established. But someone other than you, from the future, could jump back here and kill an ancestor. But you'd be "grandfathered in," so to speak.

[Godfollow]

Here's something to think about... If you could spin a light source, say a lazar light source, at the speed of light, what would happen to the beam of light?

[putupon]

If I knew then what I know now......

[PatrickHenry]

If you could spin a light source, say a lazar light source, at the speed of light, what would happen to the beam of light?

You couldn't spin anything at the speed of light. Except light.

[JoeSixPack1]

So if they create an anchored time/wormhole today, we could at any time in the future return to what we now consider the present. And if we continue making anchored wormholes for future use, say one a week, will they all be nullified if someone returns to the first one and pulls the plug?

[martin_fierro]

Paging Wesley Clark.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[PatrickHenry]

... will they all be nullified if someone returns to the first one and pulls the plug?

I think each one would be a stand-alone wormhole. The first one is just the earliest time you could get back to, while it existed. (That's what I get from the article.)

[Condorman]

Kip Thorne has written a couple of books. A couple of months ago I finished Black Holes and Time Warps. Thorne, like Hawking, does a good job of making the high-level theoretical physics accessible to the layperson.

He also relates some of his personal experiences with the Russian-American physics race a couple of decades ago.

Really fascinating stuff.