Tag Archives: time travel

Multiple overlapping clock faces with various times, creating a surreal and abstract time concept in blue tones.

Do Time Travel Paradoxes Negate the Possibility of Time Travel?

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Do time travel paradoxes spell doom to time travel? The short answer is no. Many in the scientific community do not think time travel paradoxes present an insurmountable barrier to time travel. Many physicists have suggested solutions to time travel paradoxes. In fact, discussing them all would result in a book. I will discuss the major ones. For the sake of convenience, I have divided them into four categories:

  1. Multiverse hypothesis—The multiverse hypothesis argues that time travel paradoxes are real, but they lead to alternate realities. The most famous theory in this category is American physicist Hugh Everett’s many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. According to Everett (1930–1982), certain observations in reality are not predictable absolutely by quantum mechanics. Instead, there is a range of possible observations associated with physical phenomena, and each is associated with a different probability. Everett’s interpretation is that each possible observation corresponds to a different universe, hence the name “many-worlds.”  Let us consider a simple example. If you toss a coin in the air, it can come down heads or tails. The probability of getting heads is equal to the probability of getting tails. If you toss the coin, and it comes down heads, then there is another you, in another universe, who observes tails. This sounds like science fiction. However, according to a poll published in The Physics of Immortality (1994), 58% of scientists believe the many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, 13% are on the fence (undecided), 11% have no opinion, and 18% do not believe it. Among the believers are Nobel laureates Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman, and world-famous physicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking. In our everyday reality, many of us would reject the many-world interpretation of quantum mechanics because we do not experience it directly. However, let me point out, we do not experience the individual atoms of a book when we hold it. Yet, we know from sophisticated experimental analysis that the book is a collection of atoms. Unfortunately, in the strange world of quantum mechanics, our intuition and experience rarely serve us. I leave it to you to formulate your own conclusions.
  2. Timeline-protection hypothesis—The timeline-protection hypothesis asserts that it is impossible to create a time travel paradox. For example, if you travel back in time and attempt to prevent your grandfather from meeting your grandmother, you fail every time. If you attempt to shoot yourself through a wormhole, the gun jams, or something else happens, which prevents you from changing the past. Several other paradox resolutions fit under this category. They are:
    • The Novikov self-consistency principle, suggested by Russian physicist Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov in the mid-1980s, which asserts anything a time traveler does remains consistent with history. For example, if you travel to the past and attempt to keep your grandfather from meeting your grandmother, something interferes with any attempt you make, causing you to fail in the attempt. In other words, the time traveler is unable to change history.
    • The self-healing hypothesis theory, which states that whatever a time traveler does to alter the present by traveling to the past sets off another set of events to cause the present to remain unchanged. For example, if you attempt to prevent Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, you may succeed in preventing John Wilkes Booth from carrying out the assassination only to find someone else assassinated Lincoln. In essence, time heals itself.
  3. Timeline-corruption hypothesis—The timeline-corruption hypothesis suggests that time paradoxes are inevitable and unavoidable. Any time travel to the past creates minute effects that inevitably alter the timeline and cause the future to change. For example, if you inadvertently step on an ant in the past, it changes the future. Popular science fiction literature calls this the “butterfly effect,” namely, that the flutter of a butterfly’s wings in Africa can cause a hurricane in North America. Under this theory, anything you do will have a consequence. It may be small and benign. Alternatively, it may be large and disastrous. The destruction-resolution hypothesis fits in this category. It holds that anything a time traveler does resulting in a paradox destroys the timeline, and even the universe. Obviously, if the destruction-resolution hypothesis is true, any time travel would be disastrous. However, I doubt the validity of the destruction-resolution hypothesis, since we are able to perform time dilation (i.e., forward time travel) experiments with subatomic particles using particle accelerators.
  4. Choice timeline hypothesis—The choice timeline hypothesis holds that if you choose to travel in time, it is predestined, and history instantly changes. This implies you can time travel to the future and leave an item there that you will need sometime in the future. It will be there for you when the future becomes the present. For example, assume you are in New York City, and someone is about to assault you. You have no escape or means of protection. According to the choice timeline hypothesis, you can use your time machine to travel to the future. You hide a gun near the place where the assault is about to occur. When the assault occurs, you retrieve the hidden gun and scare off the attacker.

There are numerous other time-paradox resolution hypotheses. Most fall under one of the above categories, or are not as popular as the above. I left them out in the interest of clarity and brevity. The four categories above give us a reasonable framework to understand the major time-paradox resolution theories, and the current thinking regarding their impact on the timeline.

The majority of the scientific community does not think time paradoxes inhibit time travel. For example, Kip Thorne, an American theoretical physicist and professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology until 2009, argues that time paradoxes are imprecise thought experiments which can be resolved by numerous consistent solutions. The scientific consensus appears to be that time paradoxes may or may not occur, but they do not exclude the possibility of time travel. This position appears validated by the time dilation (i.e., forward time travel) experiments routinely performed using particle accelerators.

This post is based on my book, How to Time Travel (2013)

Multiple overlapping clock faces with various times, creating a surreal and abstract time concept in blue tones.

What Is the Science of Time Travel?

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The science of time travel is real. There is experimental evidence that proves time travel is real. Yet, with but a few exceptions, most of my colleagues in the scientific community avoid discussing or doing serious time travel research. Why is this?

The theory regarding time travel is relatively easy to understand on a technical basis if you have or are pursuing a degree in the physical sciences, or on a conceptual basis, for the layperson. For example, professors teach time dilation (i.e., forward time travel) in undergraduate physics classes. Professors also teach general relativity in both undergraduate and graduate physics classes. The general theory of relativity embodies, along with Einstein’s theory of gravity, the science of time travel to the past. Both the special and general theories of relativity are easy to grasp for a person with the proper scientific background. However, designing and engineering experiments to demonstrate time travel is an extremely difficult task. In fact, building particle accelerators capable of demonstrating even the simplest form of time travel, time dilation, requires the participation of numerous institutions, numerous nations, and a huge financial investment. An example of this is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is the world’s largest high-energy particle accelerator. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), a collaboration of ten thousand scientists and engineers from over one hundred countries, built the LHC over a ten-year period, 1998 to 2008, at an estimated cost of $9 billion. Scientists hail it as one of the greatest scientific achievements. It is able to perform time dilation experiments, among many other important scientific tasks. However, even with highly sophisticated scientific instruments, research regarding particle acceleration and detection is a difficult endeavor. For example, in 2011, scientists using the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) reported accelerating neutrinos faster than the speed of light, which later proved incorrect and due to faulty cable connections.  The main point is that the apparatus proposed to perform time travel research, even using subatomic particles, is extraordinarily expensive, difficult to build, and difficult to use. The energy required, even when dealing with subatomic particles, is enormous.

In summary, here are the salient elements of the science of time travel:

  • Einstein’s special theory of relativity provides a strong theoretical foundation for forward time travel, which is termed “time dilation.”
  • There is a wealth of scientific data proving time dilation is real and can occur when a frame of reference accelerates near the speed of light, or when a frame of reference is in a strong gravitational field.
  • Even though there is general agreement regarding time dilation, no one has built a machine that enables a human to experience significant time dilation. It is true, however, that people traveling at high speeds, like astronauts, experience some time dilation. To date, the amount of time dilation experienced by any humans is only a small fraction of a second, and not noticeable to the humans involved.
  • Particle accelerators, such as the Large Hadron Collider, are able to accelerate subatomic particles near the speed of light, and time dilation is a measurable effect.
  • Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts gravitational time dilation. The scientific community generally agrees time dilation occurs in strong gravitational fields.
  • Some solutions to Einstein’s equation of general relativity result in closed timelike curves, which theoretically suggest backward time travel.
  • The scientific community is not in agreement regarding the practicality and reality of backward time travel. In fact, the entire subject of backward time travel is contentious.

The above material is based on my critically acclaimed new book, How to Time Travel, available at Amazon.com.

 

A black hole in space surrounded by stars and a glowing gravitational lensing effect.

Using a Black Hole to Time Travel!

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Using a black hole to time travel!

What is a black hole? A black hole is a point in space where gravity pulls so much that not even light can escape. We cannot see black holes, but we can infer their existence by how they influence stars around them.

There are numerous types of black holes. Some are small, about the size of an atom. Yet, they can have a mass equal to a mountain. Some are supermassive, like the black hole theorized to exist at the center of our galaxy, a mere twenty-six thousand light-years from us. It is the single heaviest object in our galaxy. In between the atom-size black holes and the supermassive black holes are the “stellar” black holes. They are roughly up to twenty times the mass of our sun.

You may wonder: How do black holes form? Physicists think that the atom-size black holes formed during the early stages of the big bang, and that the supermassive black holes formed when the galaxies formed. Physicists also think the stellar black holes form when a star dies and collapses on itself.

What makes a black hole interesting from the standpoint of time travel is that the gravitational attraction is so great that time dilation due to gravity (as predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity) would be enormous. In fact, a supermassive black hole, like the one at the center of our galaxy, would slow down time far more than anything else in the galaxy would. This makes a black hole a natural type of time machine.

You may worry that a black hole may swallow the Earth. However, I have good news for you. Black holes do not move around, and there are none close to the Earth. In short, we do not have to worry about being swallowed by a black hole.

Is there any practical way to use a black hole as a time machine? The answer is no, not via today’s science. The scientists at CERN using the Large Hadron Collider are attempting to make small black holes. Perhaps, in time, they will succeed, and we will be able to use its properties as a time machine. This, however, is speculation.

This material is from my new book, How to time Travel (2013).

A black and white image of a clock face with a spiral effect distorting the numbers and hands.

The Mallett Time Machine – Time Travel to the Past May Become Possible!

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Thanks to particle accelerators, like the Large Hadron Collider (LCH) 175 meters (574 ft) beneath the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland, physicist have been able to routinely demonstrate forward time travel (i.e., time dilation) using subatomic particles. In a sense, you can think of the Large Hadron Collider as a time machine. It is capable of sending subatomic particles to the future. Unfortunately, we do not have a similar machine that can send subatomic particles to the past. However, Dr. Ronald Mallett is attempting to change that.

Dr. Ronald Mallett is an American theoretical physicist and the author of Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality (2007). Dr. Mallett is a full professor at the University of Connecticut, where he has taught physics since 1975.

Dr. Mallett is attempting to twist spacetime using a ring laser (i.e., a laser that rotates in a circle) by passing it through a through a photonic crystal (i.e., a crystal that only allows photons of a specific wavelength to pass through it). The concept behind spacetime twisting by light (STL) is that by twisting space via the laser, closed timelike curves will result (i.e., time will also be twisted). In this way, Dr. Mallett hopes to observe a violation of causality when a neutron is passed through the twisted spacetime. Dr. Mallett also believes he will be able to send communication by sending subatomic particles that have spin up and spin down. Note, the spin of a subatomic particle is part of the particle’s quantum description. As a simple example, we can consider spin up equal to 1 and spin down equal to 0. Using this technique, Dr. Mallett can send a binary code, similar to the binary codes used in computing.

Few scientists openly discuss their work on time machines. They fear ridicule. In this regard, Dr. Mallett is a pioneer. When Dr. Mallett was ten years old, his father died at age thirty-three from a heart attack. Dr. Mallett has shared that his initial drive to invent a time machine was to go back in time and visit with his father. Unfortunately, the science of time travel only allows a person to go back in time to the point when the time machine is first turned on. Dr. Mallett acknowledges this, but continues his quest.

Dr. Mallett’s concept of twisting space is close to the concept of creating a wormhole, as discussed in my last post. Dr. Mallett is using laser light as means of creating the mouth of the wormhole. In a publication (R. L. Mallett, “The Gravitational Field of a Circulating Light Beam,” Foundations of Physics 33, 1307–2003), Dr. Mallett argued that with sufficient energies, the circulating light beam might produce closed timelike lines (i.e., time travel to the past).

Is Dr. Mallett’s theoretical foundation solid? According to physicists Dr. Olum and Dr. Everett, it is fatally flawed. In a paper published in 2005 (Ken D. Olum and Allen Everett, 2005, “Can a Circulating Light Beam Produce a Time Machine?”, Foundations of Physics Letters 18 (4): 379–385), they argue three points:

  1. Dr. Mallett’s analysis contains unusual spacetime (i.e., mathematical) issues, even when the power to the machine is off.
  2. The energy required to twist spacetime would need to be much greater than lasers available to today’s science.
  3. They note a theorem proven by Stephen Hawking (chronology protection conjecture—1992), namely, it is impossible to create closed timelike curves in a finite region without using negative energy.

Although Dr. Mallett did not address their criticism in a formal publication, he did argue in his book, Time Traveler, that he was forced to simplify the analysis due to difficulties in modeling the photonic crystal. This, however, is far from a complete response.

Who is right? In the physical sciences, we are judged by the weakest link in our theories. If I use this criterion, I would say the argument favors Dr. Mallett, since the chronology protection conjecture, which we will discuss in the next chapter, has come under serious criticism, and it is not clear that it presents a valid challenge. Nonetheless, Dr. Olum and Dr. Everett are highly regarded physicists. Therefore, at this point, it is hard to know who is right, and right about what. Perhaps the mathematical analysis is flawed, and the approach published by Dr. Mallett requires more energy than is available via today’s technology. However, we are witnessing a significant event in science. A respected physicist, Dr. Mallett, is openly publishing his work on building a backward time travel machine. Other respected physicists, Dr. Olum and Dr. Everett, are entering into a scientific debate regarding Dr. Mallett’s theoretical basis. From my point of view, this is how it should be in science. The debate is healthy. As a theoretical physicist, I know that the debate will end only when either:

  1. The Mallett time machine works, or
  2. The Mallett time machine enters the rubbish pile of scientific failures, along with astronomer Ptolemy’s Earth-centered model of the solar system and the flat Earth theories.

This material is based on my new book, How to Time Travel.

A digital tunnel formed by cascading blue binary code creating a futuristic data flow effect.

Traversable Wormholes – Time Travel to the Past May Be Possible!

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Traversable wormholes may enable time travel to the past. This post is based on material from my new book, How to Time Travel.

Let us begin our discussion by understanding the scientific meaning of a “wormhole.” There are valid solutions to Einstein’s equations of general relativity that suggest it is possible to have a “shortcut” through spacetime. To picture this, consider a piece of paper with a dot at opposite corners. In Euclidean geometry, normally taught in high school, we learn that the shortest distance between the two points is a straight line. However, valid solutions to Einstein’s general relativity equations suggest that the two points on the paper are connectable by an even shorter path, a wormhole. To visualize this, simply fold the opposite corners of the paper with the dots, such that the dots touch. You have created a representation of a wormhole. You have manipulated the space between the dots by folding the paper to allow them to touch.

Unfortunately, there is no scientific evidence that wormholes exist in reality. However, the strong theoretical foundation suggesting wormholes (i.e., valid solutions to Einstein’s equations of general relativity) makes their potential existence impossible to ignore.

The first type of wormhole solution to Einstein’s equations of general relativity was the Schwarzschild wormhole, developed by German physicist Karl Schwarzschild (1873–1916). Unfortunately, although the Schwarzschild mathematical solution was valid, it resulted in an unstable black hole. The unstable nature of the Schwarzschild wormhole suggested it would collapse on itself. It also suggested that the wormhole would only allow passage in one direction. This brought to light an important new concept. Faced with the unstable nature of Schwarzschild wormholes, American theoretical physicist Kip Thorne and his graduate student Mike Morris demonstrated a general relativity “traversable wormhole” in a 1988 paper. In this mathematical context, a traversable wormhole would be both stable and allow information, objects, and even humans to pass through in either direction and remain stable (i.e., would not collapse on itself). As is often the case in science, one discovery leads to another. Numerous other wormhole solutions to the equations of general relativity began to surface, including one in 1989 by mathematician Matt Visser that did not require negative energy to stabilize it.

As discussed above, traversable wormholes may require negative energy to sustain them. Several prominent physicists, including Kip Thorne and British theoretical physicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking, believe the Casimir effect proves negative energy densities are possible in nature. Currently, physicists are using the Casimir effect in an effort to create negative energy. Obviously, if successful, the amounts of negative energy will likely be small. Because of the amount of negative energy that may result, I suspect the first wormholes developed will be at the quantum level (i.e., the level of atoms and subatomic particles).

We have merely scratched the surface regarding the science of wormholes, but we did accomplish one important objective. We have described how a traversable wormhole would allow spacetime travel via shortcuts in spacetime. This means we could connect two points in time or two points in space via a traversable wormhole. However, there is a hitch regarding time travel to the past. According to the theory of relativity, we cannot go back to a time before the wormhole existed. This means that if we discover how to make a traversable wormhole today, a year from now we can go back to today.

You may wonder why a wormhole constructed today would not allow us to go back to yesterday. To understand this conundrum, we need to understand just how a wormhole works as a time machine. Here is one scenario. Imagine you are able to accelerate one end of a wormhole to a significant fraction of the speed of light. Perhaps you could use a high-energy ring laser (i.e., a laser than rotates in a circle). As you twist the space, you create the “mouth” of the wormhole, something like a tunnel. After you enter the mouth of the wormhole, you are now somewhere in the wormhole’s “throat.” A “tunnel” is a good analogy to what is occurring. Now imagine you are able to take the other entrance of the tunnel, which is at rest and called the “fixed end,” and bring it back close to the origin. Time dilation causes the mouth to age less than the fixed end. A clock at the mouth of the wormhole, where spacetime accelerates near the speed of light, will move slower than a clock at the fixed end.

Given the above understanding of how a wormhole acts as a time machine, let us address why it is only possible to go back to the time of the wormhole’s construction. Imagine you have two synchronized clocks. If you place one clock at the mouth, and you place the other clock at the fixed end, they will initially read exactly the same time, for example, the year 2013. However, the clock at the mouth, influenced by the twisted space, is going to experience time dilation, and therefore move slower than the clock at the fixed end. Let us consider the case where the clock at mouth of the wormhole moves, based on the rate of twisting spacetime, one thousand times slower than the clock at the fixed end. In one hundred years, the clock at the fixed end, which experiences no time dilation, will read 2113. The clock at the mouth will still read 2013; only one tenth of one year will have passed due to time dilation at the mouth of the wormhole. From the fixed end, where no time dilation is occurring (i.e., the clock reads 2113), you can walk back to the mouth of the wormhole, where the clock still reads 2013. You will have walked one hundred years into the past. Notice, though, you cannot go back beyond the time of the traversable wormhole’s construction.

This post is based on material from my new book, How to Time Travel. Click How to Time Travel to browse the book free on Amazon.

Black and white photo of a large crowd of people gathered outdoors, many wearing hats and coats.

Is This Photographic Evidence of a Time Traveler?

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Is This Photographic Evidence of a Time Traveler? This post is based on material from chapter 2 of my new book, How to Time Travel.

If you do an Internet search with Google using the keyword phase “time travel evidence” (without the quotes), you will get about 258,000,000 search returns. Most of the “evidence” is not scientific evidence. It is anecdotal. However, the sheer volume of time travel anecdotal evidence on the internet makes it hard to ignore.

One category of evidence is old photographs. Many sites include old photographs that show people out of context, for example, wearing clothing that does not fit the time, such as modern sunglasses, or using devices, such as a 35mm camera, that did not exist at the time the photograph was taken. To see these results do a Google search using the phrase “time travel photo evidence” (without the quotes). You can find several websites that have a number of good examples such as the 1941 photograph of a person with Ray-Ban sunglasses,  a screen-print T-shirt and a 35mm camera (below).

10-18-2013 11-25-53 AM photo evidence

Let us  examine some of the photographic evidence. I have made two observations:

  1. Many of the old photographs are fuzzy. This is typical of old photographs, since cameras in the early part of the twentieth century were crude.
  2. The claims that something or someone is “out of context” are a bit of a stretch. For example, consider the man in the 1941 photograph. Some suggest he is wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses and a screen-print T-shirt, and holding a modern 35mm camera. I think the photograph is too fuzzy to make a solid case for these assertions, but that is just my opinion. I suggest you view the photograph and draw your own conclusion.

In addition, with today’s computer technology and state-of-the-art photograph-editing programs, such as Photoshop, it is possible to manipulate a photograph and have Elvis shaking hands with Albert Einstein. Only a highly trained computer photographic expert would be able to determine that the photograph is a computer-generated manipulation of pixels—in other words, a fake. The technology is that good. This makes me suspicious of all photographic evidence that has not been analyzed by a highly trained expert.

Although the photograph is intriguing, it is not conclusive. Therefore, you will have to be the judge. Is this photograph evidence of a time traveler?

 

Black and white image of people in vintage clothing, one person wearing a patterned outfit and a hat.

Time Travel Anecdotal Evidence from the Internet

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This post is based on material from chapter 2 of my new book, How to Time Travel.

Let us start with a word of caution. Anecdotal evidence is not scientific evidence. It may be bogus, and all anecdotal evidence should be treated with skepticism. However, the sheer volume of time travel anecdotal evidence on the internet makes it hard to ignore. For example, if you do an Internet search with Google using the keyword phase “time travel evidence” (without the quotes), you will get about 258,000,000 search returns. Most of the evidence falls into three categories:

  1. Old movie clips: There are a number of YouTube videos of old movies showing people using devices, such as a cell phone, that would not have existed when the movie was made.
  1. Old photographs: Many sites include old photographs that show people out of context, for example, wearing clothing that does not fit the time, such as modern sunglasses, or using devices, such as a 35mm camera, that did not exist at the time the photograph was taken.
  1. Archaeological finds: There are archaeological finds of modern devices, such as a one-hundred-year-old Swiss-made watch found in a four-hundred-year-old Ming dynasty tomb in Shangsi County, Guangxi, in southern China.

Let us examine one piece of anecdotal evidence, from category 1, old movie clips. One example that comes up numerous times is Charlie Chaplin’s 1928 film The Circus, featuring a woman who appears to be talking on her cell phone. Just do a YouTube search using the keyword phrase “time travel evidence Chaplin film” (without the quotes). You will get back about a 100,000 search returns. The first page or two of search results have clips of this video, typically with some commentary.

Debunkers argue that the woman was just holding a primitive hearing aid known as an ear trumpet. Surprisingly, a 1928-ear trumpet looks like a cell phone from a distance. Proponents dismiss this as an explanation because the woman is talking into it. However, you see some people talking aloud to themselves all the time. This does not mean they are crazy. This is just how they process information and think. Almost all of us talk to ourselves privately in our minds. It is called thinking. Does this explain the film clip? Obviously, this explanation does not satisfy everyone.

Where does this leave us regarding time travel evidence from the Internet? In a phrase, it leaves us on “shaky ground.” I examined only one of the most popular pieces of time travel evidence on the Internet, and it is far from conclusive. Evidence that is more conclusive may lie buried in the 258,000,000 Google search returns for the keyword phrase “time travel evidence.” The challenge is finding it. A true scholarly effort would likely take a lifetime. However, in my opinion, the real world, and the universe, is stranger than any work of fiction. Therefore, I am keeping an open mind.

Remember, at the beginning of this article I clearly stated that anecdotal evidence is not scientific evidence. However, I also stated the sheer volume of time travel anecdotal evidence on the internet makes it hard to ignore. Is this an example of real time travel evidence caught on film? I suggest you do the Google search, view the clip and make up your own mind.

A silhouette of a person with a blank face in front of a large clock, set against a swirling cosmic background.

How to Time Travel: Explore the Science, Paradoxes, and Evidence

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Here is the entire introduction from my new book, How to Time Travel. Enjoy!

Introduction

Few subjects evoke more emotion than time travel, the concept of moving between different points in time in a manner analogous to moving between different points in space. Humankind’s fascination with time travel dates back thousands of years. Although there is no consensus recognizing which written work was the first to discuss time travel, many scholars argue that the Mahabharata, from Hindu mythology, is the first, dating between 700 BCE (Before the Common/Current/Christian Era) and 300 CE (Common/Current/Christian Era). The Mahabharata, which is one of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, relates the story of King Revaita, who travels to heaven to meet the deity Brahma. When King Revaita returns to Earth, he is shocked to learn that many ages have passed. In today’s science, we would assert King Revaita experienced time dilation.

What is time dilation? It is a scientific fact that time moves slower for any mass accelerated near the speed of light. If that mass were a clock, for example, the hands of the clock would appear to be moving slower than a clock in the hand of an observer at rest. That phenomenon is termed time dilation. If King Revaita used a spaceship capable of speeds near the speed of light to visit Brahma, a roundtrip journey that would appear to King Revaita to take one year would result in a time passage of thirty years on Earth. This may seem like science fiction, but time dilation is a well-established, experimentally verified aspect of Einstein’s special theory of relativity; more about this later.

Arguably, the greatest single written work that laid the foundation to fire the imagination of today’s generation regarding time travel is H. G. Wells’s classic novel, The Time Machine, published in 1895. It has inspired numerous popular movies, television programs, novels, and short stories. Why are we humans so obsessed with time travel? It appears to be an innate longing. How many times have you wished that you could go back to a specific point in time and select a different action? We all do it. Consider the number of times you have replayed a specific situation in your mind. Psychologists tell us we replay an event in our minds when the outcome is not finished to our satisfaction. This has accounted for numerous nights of tossing and turning. Another common need is to seek answers to important questions from a firsthand perspective. Perhaps you would like to be a witness during the resurrection of Christ, or be a witness behind the grassy knoll during the Kennedy assassination. Perhaps you miss a loved one who has passed on, and you would like to go back in time to embrace that loved one again.

Some of us also dream about time travel to the future. What outcomes will result from our decisions? Imagine the prosperity and happiness that could be ours if we were able to travel to the future. We would be able to witness the outcome of any decision, return to the present, and guide our lives accordingly. Picking the right profession or choosing the right mate would be a certainty. We could ensure there would be no missteps in our life. A life of leisure and prosperity would be ours for the taking.

It is little wonder that many people ask this deceptively simple question: Is time travel possible? The majority of the scientific community, including myself, says a resounding yes. The theoretical foundation for time travel, based on the solutions to Einstein’s equations of relativity, is widely accepted by the scientific community. The next question, which is the most popular question, is how to time travel. Of all the questions in science, the keyword phrase “how to time travel” is close to the top of Internet search engine searches. According to Google, the largest search engine in the world, there are 2,240,000 worldwide monthly searches for the keyword phrase “how to time travel,” as of this writing. Unfortunately, it is the most difficult question to answer.

Obviously, interest in time travel is high, and what people want to know most is how to time travel. This high interest, combined with the intriguing real science behind time travel, is what inspired me to write this book.

At this point, I would like to set your expectations. We are going to embark on a marvelous journey. We will examine the real science of time travel, the theoretical foundation that has most of the scientific community united that time travel is possible. We will also examine the obstacles to time travel, and there are many. However, even in the face of all the obstacles, most of the scientific community agrees it is theoretically possible to time travel. The largest issue in time travel is not the theoretical science. It is the engineering. Highly trained theoretical physicists understand the theoretical science of time travel. However, taking the theory and building a time machine capable of human time travel has proved a formidable engineering task. It has not been done, but we are amazingly close. We have already built time machines capable of sending subatomic particles into the future. If you will pardon the pun, it is just a matter of time before we engineer our way through the time travel barrier and enable human time travel.

In setting your expectations, I promise you significant insight into the real science of time travel and an equally incredible insight into the obstacles to time travel. I cannot promise that with this knowledge you will be able to overcome the obstacles and engineer how to time travel. However, you may be the one person destined to harness the science, glean the engineering simplicity, and journey in time. There is only one way to find out, namely, read on.

To browse the book free on Amazon, click this link: http://amzn.to/1dWyEkp

A black and white clock face with a spiral effect distorting the numbers inward.

What Is Time? – The Existence Equation Conjecture – Part 2/3

Categories, Universe Mysteries, , , , ,

This three part post is based on original theoretical research presented in my book, Unraveling the Universe’s Mysteries, 2012, Louis A. Del Monte (available at Amazon http://amzn.to/Zo1TGn)

The empirical evidence demonstrates that time dilates, slows down, by adding kinetic energy or gravitational energy. Does this help us interpret the Existence Equation Conjecture we have developed to determine the kinetic energy of a mass as it moves in the fourth dimension? Yes! However, the interpretation is going to be speculative and imaginative. With this caveat, here is one interpretation: Movement in the fourth dimension is associated with existence, and requires negative kinetic energy. This is similar to the positive kinetic energy required for movement in the typical three spatial dimensions. The difference is movement in the three spatial coordinates requires positive kinetic energy, while movement in the fourth spatial coordinate (existence) requires enormous negative energy, as suggested by the Existence Equation Conjecture (KEX4 = -.3mc2). When we add kinetic energy or gravitational energy to a particle, we feed the negative energy that it requires to exist with the positive kinetic energy or gravitational energy. The negative kinetic energy of existence may be syphoning a portion of its energy from the particle. For a relatively small unstable particle at rest, such as a muon, we describe this existence as the expected life of the particle. If we add kinetic or gravitational energy to the particle, the negative kinetic energy of existence consumes less of the particle. Therefore, it increases its life.

This theoretical interpretation appears to fit the evidence presented regarding time dilation. For example, a muon at rest has an expected life in the order of 10-6 seconds. However, when muons naturally form via comic-ray collisions with our atmosphere, the resultant muon travels at speeds close to the speed of light before it reaches the ground. Therefore, its kinetic energy (KE) becomes extremely high. According to this interpretation, this high kinetic energy is providing the muon a portion of the energy required to exist. Therefore, it is increasing its expected life. This is consistent with the Rossi and Hall experiment performed in 1941, and the 1963 Frisch and Smith confirmation of their findings.

What does this suggest about the nature of time? According to our interpretation above, time is a measure of existence—and existence requires negative kinetic energy. Therefore, a relationship between time and energy exists. Is this too far out to be believable? I agree it stretches credibility to the limit. However, although the special theory of relativity has provided excellent equations to calculate time dilation, insight into the physical process behind time dilation remains elusive. The Existence Equation Conjecture may provide a framework to understand the actual physics behind time dilation.

It’s still a dilemma. Where does the energy come from if existence requires negative energy? A simple examination of the Existence Equation Conjecture suggests the energy required for even a small mass, like an apple, to exist, would be equivalent to a nuclear bomb. In addition to that dilemma, the Existence Equation Conjecture suggests the energy expended to exist is negative. Theoretical physics has postulated the existence of negative energy. In 1930, the Dirac sea was postulated to reconcile the negative-energy quantum states, as predicted by Dirac in his mathematical modeling of electrons. However, science has not found a way to create negative energy. Currently, scientists are exploring the Casimir-Polder effect as a potential generator for negative energy. This may eventually yield fruitful results. This leaves us with a significant unanswered question. Where does the enormous negative energy required for existence come from?

Stay tuned for part 3 (conclusion).

science of time & time dilation

The Philosophy of Time and Time Travel – Part 2/2 (Conclusion)

Categories, Time Travel, , , , ,

This is taken from Appendix 4 of my new book, How to Time Travel, to be published by early September 2013.

Let us examine the three major philosophical schools on the nature of time and their implications regarding time travel.

1. Presentism theory of time

The presentism theory of time holds that only the present is real. The past is over. Therefore, it is no longer real. The future has yet to occur. Therefore, the future is not real. Presentists argue that our mind remembers a past and anticipates a future, but neither is real. They are mental constructs.

Arguably, the most famous presentist is Augustine of Hippo (a.k.a. St. Augustine), who compared time to a knife edge. The present represents a knife edge cutting between the past and future. Ironically, this means Augustine of Hippo is not real, since he lived and died in the past. Therefore, should we study Augustine of Hippo, who, by his own philosophy, is not real? Of course, I am only being contentious to make a point.

Presentism has a large following, especially among Buddhists. Fyodor Shcherbatskoy (1866–1942), often referred to as the foremost Western authority on Buddhist philosophy, summed up the Buddhist view of presentism with these few words: “Everything past is unreal, everything future is unreal, everything imagined, absent, mental…is unreal…Ultimately real is only the present moment of physical efficiency.” Uncountable millions of Buddhists still ascribe to this view of time and reality.

A cogent philosophical argument can be made for presentism, but presentism is problematic from a scientific viewpoint. When we discussed the special theory of relativity, we learned that the present is a function of the position and speed of the observer. Therefore, what is the present to one observer may be the past to another.

From the standpoint of time travel, presentism renders the question “how to time travel” moot. If we embrace presentism, there is no past or future, and time travel is meaningless. Fortunately, though, other philosophies of time open the door to time travel. Let us examine the next one.

2. Growing universe theory of time

This theory of time is also referred to as “growing block universe” and “the growing block view.” However, regardless of the name, they all hold the same philosophy of time. The past is real, and the present is real. The future is not real. The logic goes something like this: The past is real because it actually happened. We experience it, and we document it. We call it history. The present is real because we experience it. We often share the present with others. The future is not real because it has not occurred.

Why do all the names for this theory of time start with the word “growing”? The concept is that the passage of time continually expands the history of the universe. Actually, this is logical. The history of the world, and the universe, continues to expand with the passage of time. The history section of any library is destined to grow with time.

In this philosophy of time, only time travel to the past makes sense, since for growing-universe philosophers, the past is real. We cannot time travel to the future, since the future has yet to occur. Therefore, it is not real.

As logical as this theory of time may appear, there is scientific evidence that the future is real and can influence the present. We discussed this evidence in the section titled “Twisting the arrow of time” in chapter 1. Now, let us examine the last significant philosophy of time.

3. Eternalism theory of time

The eternalism theory of time holds that the past, present, and future are real. The philosophy of this theory rests on Einstein’s special theory of relativity. Essentially, the special theory of relativity holds that the past, present, and future are functions of the speed and position of an observer.

While Einstein never equated time with the fourth dimension, Minkowski’s geometric interpretation of Einstein’s special theory of relativity gave birth to four-dimensional space, with time as part of the fourth dimension. In Minkowski’s interpretation, often termed “Minkowski space” or “Minkowski spacetime,” the fourth dimension includes time and is on equal footing with the normal three-dimensional space we currently encounter. However, Minkowski’s fourth dimension borders on the strange. In Minkowski spacetime, the fourth dimension, X4, is equal to ict, where i = √-1, an imaginary number, c is the speed of light in a vacuum, and t is time as measured by clocks. The mathematical expression ict is dimensionally correct, meaning that it is a spatial coordinate, not a temporal coordinate, but is essentially impossible to visualize, since it includes an imaginary number. What is an imaginary number? It is a number that when squared (multiplied by itself) gives a negative number. This is not possible to do with real numbers. If you multiply any real number, even a negative real number like minus one, by itself, you always get a positive number. Therefore, it is impossible to solve for the square root of minus one.

Although we can express it mathematically as √-1, it has no solution, and it is termed an imaginary number. Does that mean Minkowski was wrong about the fourth dimension? Actually, it does not. It does say that it is a mathematical construct, and intuitively, for most of us, impossible to visualize. However, the special theory of relativity continues to be taught using Minkowski spacetime, which the bulk of the scientific community considers a valid geometric interpretation. In either its algebraic form, as first presented by Einstein, or its geometric form, as interpreted by Minkowski, the majority of the scientific community considers the special theory of relativity the single most successful theory in science. It has withstood over a century of experimental investigation, and it is widely considered verified.

Because of its scientific underpinnings, the eternalism theory of time is widely accepted in the scientific community. If we adopt the eternalism theory of time, then time travel to the past or future becomes equally valid. In addition, no scientific theory contradicts or prohibits time travel. Said more positively, based on Einstein’s theories of relativity, which lay a theoretical foundation for time dilation (i.e., time travel to the future) and closed timelike curves (i.e., time travel to the past), most of the scientific community would support the scientific possibility of time travel.