Orpington Astronomical Society

Astronomy => In the Media... => Topic started by: Fay on Jul 28, 2007, 10:51:11

Title: Time Travel
Post by: Fay on Jul 28, 2007, 10:51:11
An American physicist thinks that he has found out how to reverse time by using a circulating laser beam of light. He was spurred on by Albert Einstein's theory that time & space were different aspects of the same thing, spacetime.

He believes that it is possible by using a series of four circulating laser beams to create a vortex in spacetime. They would swirl spacetime around like a "spoon stirring milk into coffee".

If you walked into this "time-tunnel", which would resemble a large vortex of light a few feet across, you could emerge at some time in the past. It would only be possible to travel back in timeto a point after the machine was first switched on.

So, if you turned the machine on 1st January & left it running, and entered on March 1st, you could only travel back to Jan 1st.

Trouble could be, that, if you met yourself, you would wonder who you were. If you killed your past self, would both versions die at the same time?
Stephen Hawking's 'chrononology protection conjecture'  says that quantum effects may conspire to prevent the possibility of a time machine. 


Fay

Title: Re: Time Travel
Post by: Tony G on Jul 28, 2007, 15:21:58
I found this out before the American physicist.That's what happens to me when I have 6 bottles of Cider, time seems to go haywire and I seem to wake in the same place (usually Bromley Police station) and always on a Saturday morning. Could this be the starting point of the "time tunnel" you were on about.
Strange that? I've never noticed any lasers though. :)

Tony G
Title: Re: Time Travel
Post by: Fay on Jul 28, 2007, 15:47:11
Tony, I think you are probably always too blotto to see the lasers!

fay