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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.
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.
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."
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According to the quote in the article there is a big flaw in the plan"If his idea pans out, won't there be a host of potential paradoxes, such as time travelers killing their parents and making it impossible for them to exist? No, he says, explaining that those travelers would continue to exist in a ''parallel universe.''
In other words, anyone or anything sent into the past create some sort of parallel universe. Which means we will never see any evidence that the time machine works. At best he'll be able to create an effect where you toss something in and it disappears. Sounds to me like a great way to get rid of garbage but a less than ideal way to travel.
Of course there should also be plenty of parallel universes where stray neutrons, lab rats, and grad students will appear out of no where. THOSE timelines will have proof time travel works. But unless that happens I'm not getting into any so called time machine.
One of us has got to dress up like Ronald Mallett-- all out, with a mask and everything, plus a scorched labcoat and frizzy hair-- and show up at his doorstep.
Slashdotter: Ron! Ron, it's me, your future self! You must listen to me!
Ronald Mallett: Who... who are you? You look like me!
RM: How do I know you're really me, and not a robot imposter from the future?
etc.
Better yet, we can send him an "aged" letter from himself postmarked April 6th, 1843. *evil grin*
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.
Well, it could be the machine, but that means you can only go back to the moment when the machine started funtioning. So I don't really buy the father thing. (April 1st joke, I guess)
Vlad
The Raven
That the professor is a time traveller?
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
"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...
"Derp de derp."
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.
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Fact: Knowledge or information based on real occurrences
Theory: A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomenon
You cannot base a fact on a theory, but rather it's the other way around, basing a theory on a fact. Superstring theory is just that, a theory We have, at this point, no practical way to determine the results of time travel since we have no way to time travel (with the possible exception of sitting here and waiting a while).
While I tend to think superstring theory, from what I understand of it, makes sense, lets not go suggesting that it is in any way a fact. Hopefully in time we will find enough facts to suggest whether it is the correct theory or not.
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As we all know, Slashdot is mostly about a bunch of geeks arguing about topics they don't really know about but claim to be experts on. (And yes, I include myself in that group for most values of "topic".)
This article is about time travel. None of us are in the field. None of us have done it. None of us have seen anyone else do it. Few, if any, of us have read a single front-to-back thesis on which the proto-science is based, or anything else more detailed than SciAm. Yet the thread now has SEVEN HUNDRED COMMENTS, filled with the usual "I hate to introduce facts into the conversation" and "No, no, you just don't get how it works!"
It doesn't get any better than this.