Time Travel

Almost Anonymous writes "Ronald Mallett, a physicist at the University of Connecticut, believes he knows how to build a time machine - an actual device that could send something or someone from the future to the past, or vice versa. He plans to have a working mockup this fall. For all those doubters, he assures people that "I'm not a nut"." Uh-huh.

Comments

Poignant.

[Lemmy Caution]

Whatever the viability of his claim, his motives are poignant - he wants to go back in time and warn his father, who died of cancer when he was 10, of the danger of cigarettes.

I have no idea how physicists approach the question of the creation of a contrafactual timeline which removes its own motive for existing (if his father lived, then he wouldn't create the time machine, and thus etc. etc.) But I think this is more interesting, if tragic, as a story of a man who still misses his father than as a viable line of research.

We should be encouraging these people

[Anonymous DWord]

For most of his career, however, Mallett kept secret that his desire for time travel had drawn him to become a physicist. It wasn't until a few years ago, when he began researching a book on the topic, that he arrived at his idea of how to build a time machine.

Seems to me that's a great reason to become a physicist. Imagine what kind of creativity we could produce if the reply to something like that was "Cool! Here's some books to help you," rather than "You're crazy. That can't happen, so go do something else."

He really isn't a nut

[wickidpisa]

Time travel isn't that big a deal, I mean come on, when you can get a book on How To Build a Time Machine at your local bookstore why are people so amazed at this? The book is real, and it is a serious book (it is not to be confused with the children's book with the same title published previously). The author explains that we know how to travel through time, it is just really expensive at this point. It is a budgetry problem, not a science problem.

Re:He really isn't a nut

[anshil]

Travelling into the future is no big deal, only technical. theoretically just jump to near light speed a short while, jump back and thousend years will have passed on earth.

However travelling into the past _is_ a big deal, as it questions a lot of physical fundamentals. What about energy conservation? Would the energy of the matter vanish out of the present? Would it pop out in the past. The particle of course already existed in the past, will exist then twice there? As I've now in the past two times the enery of the particle, have I created new energy?

Simply take a machine that transports a neuron back a second in time, 2 Neurons will exist then in a second before, put the time machine will still run there "a second time", so 3 Neuron will exist a second before, a second later the time machine will again send a neuron back a secnd. 4 Neurons will exist, so on and so on.

Is the ener

Umm particles from the future?

[NanoGator]

"The second particle would be the first one visiting itself from the future."

I see two problems with this:

1.) What would keep the particle appearing in the future from appearing in the same spot? Seems like they'd try to occupy the same space..

2.) how will they know it's the same particle? Guage it's spin maybe?

Im concerned that the experiment could produce positive results, but not positively. Kind of like that fusion bubbles thing not too long ago.

Here's a question though: Is it possible this could be a new way to harness energy? Imagine reclaiming energy from the past...

Ill explain

[HanzoSan]

When you go to the past, this is assuming time travel to the past is actually possible, it modifies the future, the future is no longer the same. You are now in a totally diffrent dimension, a diffrent reality, one which you created when you entered the time machine.

Time travel is something our minds do on a daily basis, you can imagine future events, sometimes you are right and sometimes you are wrong, traveling into the future allows you to travel into a POSSIBLE future, but no future is THE absolute future,

Time is not mapped, its dynamic, it works like this, everything that can happening, is happening if not in this reality in another.

Its more like sliders than likee the time machine movie, you travel through realities, or mirror universes, according to current theory, its believed theres infinite mirror worlds

A time machine actually isnt a time machine in that sense, its a machine which allows you to go into any reality you want, or create your own reality by modifying the past.

We all create our own reality anyway, the diffrence is with a time machine, YOU have an advantage, you can not only imagine a new reality but literally control the future by modifying the past.

Its like gambling but cheating.

A time machine allows you to essentially cheat.

The reason we dont see anyone coming from the future is, when you travel to the future, the past changes, you can never go back to the original past, if you do go back to the past its a new past thats a mirror of the original one.

I'm convinced anyone who will time travel into the future will never return, basically they'll vanish forever and all will vanish with them

Anyone who travels to the past will vanish forever from our reality

basically time travel is a one way trip.