First time travel machine to be built?

[SuperCheetah]

First time travel machine to be built

Found this little article claiming a UCONN professor is planning on building a working time travel machine. Worth a look IMO as time travel has always fascinated me.

By David Abel, Globe Staff, 4/5/2002
http://www.advance.uconn.edu/01091012.htm

UConn physicist Ronald Mallett has plans to build a machine to transport a subatomic particle through time. Mallett's experiment will be based ideas introduced in Einstein's theory of gravity, and he hopes to use rotating lasers to warp the space around a particle such as a neutron so that a second neutron from the future would appear.


"I'm not a nut.... I hope to have a working mockup and start experiments this fall," says Mallett, who will detail his ideas about time travel tonight at Boston's Museum of Science. "I would think I was a crackpot, too, if there weren't other colleagues I knew who were working on it. This isn't Ron Mallett's theory of matter; it's Einstein's theory of relativity. I'm not pulling things out of the known laws of physics."
...
Another physicist, Stanley Deser, a professor at Brandeis University who recently co-authored a paper titled "Time Travel?," says the problem is not the physics, it's the feasibility of making time travel work. "This is about trying to amass all the matter of the universe in a very small region," he says. "Good luck."

Mallett says that sending larger objects through time would require far more energy than what's available to physicists right now, but that's only "an engineering problem" in his eyes. Here's hoping 1.21 gigawatts will be enough to transport something significant.

Thanks uncleel for the working link, not quite sure why the other one didn't work though???

 

[uncleel]

Advance UConn's weekly newpaper.
Mallet Hopes to Use Laser Technology to Develop Time Machine
http://www.advance.uconn.edu/01091012.htm

 

[boeingfixer]

Super, the link is broken. But if you wanna go back will you put a $1000 on Bass Clef to come in second at the 1961 Kentucky Derby ??

 

[SuperCheetah]

Try the link Uncleel gave me, it is more indepth anyway.

Ahhh yes...if I only knew what the winning lottery numbers are going to be tomorrow I would be set for life...

 

[DogStar]

I remember a post at the old forums (think Phantasm66 was threader) about "if I had a time machine". Can't seem to find it but...

 

[Arris]

Originally posted by DogStar
I remember a post at the old forums (think Phantasm66 was threader) about "if I had a time machine". Can't seem to find it but...

If I had a time machine... posted by Ai Hate in the Old 3ds forums.

 

[DogStar]

That's the 1

Good job Arris.:grinthumb

A good book to read is by Tim Allen (the toolman) named "I'm not really here", (from memeory that's what it is called).
From a standup comedian this book gets quite indepth at the end.But it's about the same principle from Einstein if my memory serves me. I must get to the other house and ask the ex where it is & give it another read.

 

[Phantasm66]

Re: That's the 1

Originally posted by Phantasm66
nearly every time someone is asked "what would they do if they had a time machine?" their answer nearly is always based on some sort of financial gain, emotional or sexual satisfaction, gratification of some sort.

others (seldom, but sometimes) talk about visiting the earth's future, or its past... experiencing first hand historical events, finding out what happened to the marie celeste, etc...

sci-fi series such as "Star Trek", "Doctor Who", etc.. explore deeply what we fictiously believe would be the consequences of time travel. most of the time these are excuses to make period dramas, or to explore philosphical or temporal paradoxes that are totally illogical and stupid when you really think about them.... "I went back in time and met myself...." "I slipped on a banana skin in the street and winded up changing the course of World War II".... etc...

the truth is, no one really knows what it would be like to travel in time. i imagine that, if this were possible, firstly time travel into the future would be completely impossible. that in itself is a philosphical and logical impossibility. the future has not happened yet, therefore there is no future to travel into.

and if one travelled into the past.... well, i imagine that it would be necessary to be TOTALLY an observer; that it would be impossible to interact in any way with the past you were visiting. if you disturbed even a microbe it would very likely destroy the present as you knew it.

human beings see time as linear. there is a past, a present, and a future. to a great extent, this perception is largely due to our own mortality.... we are born, we grow up, we die...

to a being like God, though, time is probably not linear. it is perhaps round, or spherical. i expect that time travel would alter our perception of time as being linear, and we would likely go insane as a result. we might start to think that we are immortal, or God, or something similar.

i dare say that, if anyone DOES ever travel in time, it will probably go down in history as one of our biggest mistakes...

 

[TS | Thomas]

I completely hate the concept of time travel. It just doesn't make sense & just breaks my head up whenever I think about it.
I mean for one thing, if you go back to the past how do you get back? The future doesn't exist then.
If you go into the future you should be able to get back because it did exist, but seeing that "now" the future doesn't exist yet how can you?

I just don't see the point of it. There's absolutely nothing to be gained from it. They'd be far better off working on a teleporter, which WOULD be significantly more useful. Though according to some of my engineering friends they already do have a working one which can do some minor teleporting (like molecules or something).

 

[SuperCheetah]

I see where your coming from 3DSThomas, but lately I've been hearing alot about a concept that involves different futures and pasts instead of the one we live in now. Think of time as a river that forks out into many tributaries. Now imagine that we are in only one of the tributaries and there are infinite amounts of tributaries. What scientists are now saying is that we could be able to "flow" down some of the other tributaries into other possible futures of the human race. In theory, we would be exploring other futures and pasts that have already happened instead of our one, which has not.

Here is a little article to tweak your mind:

http://www.mkaku.org/time_travel.htm

This guy is the one talking about the "rivers" and whatnot and is a leading scientists in the Theoretical Physics field.

 

[TS | Thomas]

Originally posted by SuperCheetah
Here is a little article to tweak your mind:

http://www.mkaku.org/time_travel.htm

Heh, getting a bit like Sliders now. I still don't see the point of that anyway though. If you go back to an "alternative" past & change the future of that then what future do you return to? Are you returning to "your" future or the one in which you altered. What could be learned by going back to an alternate, different one, anyway?

Not too sure about Hawkings point though. If we did have a time traveller come back then how would we know they had changed something? E.g. we have the old "Kill hitler" arguement. If someone did go back & do it, how would we know?

Dunno, we'd be best off sticking to something that's useful anyway. As they say, you cannot observe something without changing it.

 

[SuperCheetah]

Very well said 3DSThomas, but one thing I want you to think about for a little bit and get back to me on is: What is time? Time is a figment of our "human" imagination. We base time on light and light isn't necessarily the fastest thing in our universe.

So if we can go faster than light hence we are in the past, although I agree with you that we can't change anything. But if we are near a black hole then time almost comes to a stop because light waves are not emitted. This, I believe, is what we define as time travel in the future, but in reality it is just slowing our perception of time down and letting normal time keep going at is own pace. So if I'm near a black hole and stay there for a year, yet time here on Earth passes by 1000 years then in my mind I would have traveled into the future. But, I can't get back to the past like you say and live a normal life, so that is the predicament.

Just remember, there are so many things that we do not know and can't even fathom. I believe Einstein's theory is wrong, and will be proven wrong relatively shortly. I personally think there are things in the universe that once we figure out will open up infinite possibilities never thought of before.

To reiterate, ask yourself this: What is time???

 

[Phantasm66]

Originally posted by 3DSThomas

Heh, getting a bit like Sliders now. I still don't see the point of that anyway though. If you go back to an "alternative" past & change the future of that then what future do you return to? Are you returning to "your" future or the one in which you altered. What could be learned by going back to an alternate, different one, anyway?

Not too sure about Hawkings point though. If we did have a time traveller come back then how would we know they had changed something? E.g. we have the old "Kill hitler" arguement. If someone did go back & do it, how would we know?

Dunno, we'd be best off sticking to something that's useful anyway. As they say, you cannot observe something without changing it.

I would not bother concerning yourself with any of that crap. These things are largely logical and philosophical impossibilities. They are amusing for some people to think about in the same sense that "if a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?" type mind bending rubbish is amusing to some people. The vast majority of these sci-fi concepts are more or less never going to make it out of sci-fi and into sci-fact ever.

Originally posted by SuperCheetah
What is time???

My best attempt without cheating and reading some encyclopedia is:

A measurement of the quantity of universal linear existence, as seen to stretch from the singular moment of the beginning of the cosmos' state of being until the singular moment of its end.

I believe I deserve to win the 3DS contest for that one . I promise these are my own words and not taken from some book.

Originally posted by SuperCheetah
I believe Einstein's theory is wrong, and will be proven wrong relatively shortly. I personally think there are things in the universe that once we figure out will open up infinite possibilities never thought of before.

Its not so much a case of finding Einstein's theories to be wrong, its more marrying what model of the universe we derive from them (i.e. a block type model of the cosmos, where there is a past and present a future and a "space" in which this all happens), with what we have since we started looking at things on a much smaller level, that of quantum mechanics, where you can't even predict what is going to happen in the next nanosecond (so you certainly can't talk about there being some kind of "future" out there in space / time ) and when you start looking you change the nature of the test environment anyway....


Basically, we are talking about taking the building blocks of the universe apart and studying them. This can be used as a force for evil as well as good, as we saw when Einstein confirmed that the construction of a device like a nuclear bomb was indeed possible in practical terms....

My contention is that a "time machine" of sorts may go down in history as being something more akin to a nuclear bomb than something like the light bulb, the small pox vaccination, fire.

Its nice to think that a time machine might be like some kind of a TARDIS...

....where you can pop around here and there in the space time continuum finding out whether Jesus really did turn water into wine and what colour Julius Caesar's hair was, but the truth is, surely, a time machine would most likely be some kind of weapon....

 

[SuperCheetah]

Originally posted by Phantasm66

My contention is that a "time machine" of sorts may go down in history as being something more akin to a nuclear bomb than something like the light bulb, the small pox vaccination, fire.

I agree that if a valid time machine was ever built that it would more than likely be used for destruction rather than for the good of man. It is sad to think about just how selfish and unoriginal some people are to think of the immediate impacts and not the possibilities of their actions even after all our prior history with these sorts of situations. The nuclear bomb is the perfect example. Instead of using such technology for a good cause, the first thing we do is use it to murder hundreds of thousands of our own lives.

I guess my basic point is that humans are even close to being able to harbor such technological capabilities with our current knowledge and outlook towards our actions and their consequences. We would use it no doubt for our own no good rather than trying to improve upon the world as a whole. By our own own good I mean the person in the time machine or the first country to develop it or whatnot.

 

[Phantasm66]

Originally posted by SuperCheetah
It is sad to think about just how selfish and unoriginal some people are to think of the immediate impacts and not the possibilities of their actions even after all our prior history with these sorts of situations.

We poison the Earth with polution without even thinking too much about how it will effect people in 1000 years from now. We use up all of the fossil fuels. We burn down rainforests....

This is hardly something akin to the cosmic and universal thinking of a race who should have access to something that can travel through time.

Again I put forward the notion, a time machine would most likely be some kind of weapon.

We do not deserve to be able to travel through time. You are talking about a race that is killing its own world and stockpiles enough nuclear weapons to destroy the Earth hundreds of times..... Is that a race that's truly thinking about the past, the present and the future???

 

[Phantasm66]

He who does not learn from history, is doomed to repeat the mistakes made in history.

And we repeat the the mistakes of history constantly.

Until we can achieve a state of perfect being in the present, morally, spiritually and philosophically, we do not deserve to travel into the future or the past.

 

[SuperCheetah]

Originally posted by Phantasm66
And we repeat the the mistakes of history constantly.

Until we can achieve a state of perfect being in the present, morally, spiritually and philosophically, do we deserve to travel into the future or the past.

Agreed Phantasm66. We can't and will not use time travel for the good of humanity, rather for the good of oneself. Time travel is for a much more sophisticated and complex being that actually takes into account his or her actions on the society as a whole instead of the immediate consequences on himself or herself. Until that day comes (not in my lifetime) I stand against using a time travel machine, no matter how beneficial it might be.