Tag Archives: time travel to the future

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Is Time Travel Possible?

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Few topics in science capture the imagination like time travel. Science fiction, like H. G. Wells’ classic novel, The Time Machine, published in 1895, and science fact, like time dilation, continues to fuel interest in time travel. Let us start with the most important question: Is time travel possible?

Of course, time travel is possible. We are already doing it. At this point, I know my answer may come across a bit flippant. However, my answer has a kernel of truth. We are traveling in time. We continually travel from the present to the future. This is what philosophers refer to as the arrow of time. In our everyday experience, it moves in one direction, from the present to the future. I think, though, on a more serious note, what people want to know is can we travel back in time—or to a future date in time.

In theory, it is possible. Indeed, numerous solutions to Einstein’s special and general relativity equations predict time travel is possible. In general, no law of physics prohibits time travel. We will begin by considering two methods science proposes to travel in time .

Method 1: Time Travel to the Future – Faster-than-light (FTL)

Using faster than light or near the speed of light, time travel appears to offer methodologies grounded in science fact. Consider two examples:

1) Assume you build a spaceship capable of traveling near the speed of light. With such a spaceship, you literally can travel into the future. This may sound like science fiction, but it is widely accepted as scientific fact. Particle accelerators confirm it. We discussed it when we discussed time dilation and the twin paradox. All you need is the spaceship, and an enormous amount of energy to accelerate it near the speed of light. However, this is an enormous problem. From Einstein’s special theory of relativity, we know that as we begin to accelerate a mass close to the speed of light, it becomes more massive, and approaches infinity. Thus, to accelerate it close to the speed of light, we need an energy source that approaches infinity. Perhaps we would have to learn how to harness the energy of a star, or routinely create matter-antimatter annihilations to create energy. Today’s science is nowhere near that level of sophistication.

2) Assume you can move information (like a signal) faster than light. Theoretically, if we could send a signal from point A to point B faster than the speed of light, it would represent a form of time travel. However, a significant paradox occurs. Here is an example.
An observer A in an inertial frame A sends a signal to an observer B in an inertial frame B. When B receives the signal, B replies and sends a signal back to A faster than the speed of light. Observer A receives the reply before sending the first signal.

In 1907, Albert Einstein described this paradox in a thought experiment to demonstrate that faster-than-light communications can violate causality (the effect occurs before the cause). Albert Einstein and Arnold Sommerfeld in 1910 described a thought experiment using a faster-than-light telegraph to send a signal back in time. In 1910, no faster-than-light signal communication device existed. It still does not exist, but the possibility of its development is increasing. From quantum physics, it appears that certain quantum effects “transmit” instantaneously and, therefore, appear to transmit faster than the speed of light in empty space. One example of this is the quantum states of two “entangled” particles (particles that have physically interacted, and later separated). In quantum physics, the quantum state is the set of mathematical variables that fully describes the physical aspects of a particle at the atomic level. When two particles interact with each other, they appear to form an invisible bond between them. When this happens, they become “entangled.” If we take one of the particles, and separate it from the other, they remain entangled (invisibly connected). If we change the atomic state of one of the entangled particles, the other particle instantaneously changes its state to maintain quantum-state harmony with the other entangled particle. Significant experimental evidence indicates that separated entangled particles can instantaneously transmit information to each other over distances that suggest the information exchange exceeds the speed of light. Initially, scientists criticized the theory of particle entanglement. After its experimental verification, science recognizes entanglement as a valid, fundamental feature of quantum mechanics. Today the focus of the research has changed to utilize its properties as a resource for communication and computation.

Method 2: Time Travel to the Past – Using Wormholes

Scientists have proposed using “wormholes” as a time machine. A wormhole is a theoretical entity in which space-time curvature connects two distant locations (or times). Although we do not have any concrete evidence that wormholes exist, we can infer their existence from Einstein’s general theory of relativity. However, we need more than a wormhole. We need a traversable wormhole. A traversable wormhole is exactly what the name implies. We can move through or send information through it.

If you would like to visualize what a wormhole does, imagine having a piece of paper whose two-dimensional surface represents four-dimensional space-time. Imagine folding the paper so that two points on the surface are connected. I understand that this is a highly simplified representation. In reality, we cannot visualize an actual wormhole. It might even exist in more than four dimensions.

How do we create a traversable wormhole? No one knows, but most scientists believe it would require enormous negative energy. A number of scientists believe the creation of negative energy is possible, based on the study of virtual particles and the Casimir effect.

Assuming we learn how to create a traversable wormhole, how would we use it to travel in time? The traversable wormhole theoretically connects two points in space-time, which implies we could use it to travel in time, as well as space. However, according to the theory of general relativity, it would not be possible to go back in time prior to the creation of the traversable wormhole. This is how physicists like Stephen Hawking explain why we do not see visitors from the future. The reason: the traversable wormhole does not exist yet.

Hard as it may be to believe, most of the scientific community acknowledges that time travel is theoretically possible. If fact, time dilation of subatomic particles provides experimental evidence that time travel to the future is possible, at least for subatomic particle accelerated close to the speed of light. Real science is sometimes stranger than fiction. What do you believe?

 

Aliens and UFOs

Warp Drive – Time Travel to the Future – Science or Science Fiction?

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Is a warp drive spaceship feasible? Mexican theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre thinks it is.

In 1994, Dr. Alcubierre published a 1994 paper, “The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity,” in the science journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.

The Alcubierre drive appears to allow a spaceship to travel faster than light, but it requires the existence of negative mass to make the Alcubierre drive work. In principle, the drive works by contracting the space in front of the spaceship and expanding the space behind the spaceship faster than the speed of light. In this fashion, the spaceship rides like a surfer on a wave. As the space behind the spaceship expands faster than the speed of light, the spaceship appears to move faster than the speed of light. However, it does not. Only the space behind the ship is expanding faster than the speed of light. In this way, Dr. Alcubierre avoids violating the laws of special relativity, namely, that no mass can exceed the speed of light.

There is no law in physics that prohibits space from expanding faster than the speed of light. From this viewpoint, the Alcubierre drive has merit. The Alcubierre drive is a mathematically valid solution to Einstein’s field equations. However, requiring negative mass as part of the mechanism for the Alcubierre drive makes the theory highly speculative and, once again, beyond the reach of today’s science. As a side note, Dr. Alcubierre got this idea by watching Star Trek and its use of the warp drive.

Often today’s science fiction becomes tomorrow’s science fact.

This post is based on my new book, How to Time Travel (2013), Louis A. Del Monte.

Interior view of the Fermi particle accelerator with its large orange beamline and surrounding machinery.

Evidence of time travel to the future (time dilation)

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When we talk about time travel to the future, in scientific terms we are talking about 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. Below are the classic experiments that have demonstrated time travel to the future (time dilation) is real.

Velocity time dilation experimental evidence:

Rossi and Hall (1941) compared the population of cosmic-ray-produced muons at the top of a six-thousand-foot-high mountain to muons observed at sea level. A muon is a subatomic particle with a negative charge and about two hundred times more massive than an electron. Muons occur naturally when cosmic rays (energetic-charged subatomic particles, like protons, originating in outer space) interact with the atmosphere. Muons, at rest, disintegrate in about 2 x 10-6 seconds. The mountain chosen by Rossi and Hall was high. The muons should have mostly disintegrated before they reached the ground. Therefore, extremely few muons should have been detected at ground level, versus the top of the mountain. However, their experimental results indicated the muon sample at the base experienced only a moderate reduction. The muons were decaying approximately ten times slower than if they were at rest. They made use of Einstein’s time dilation effect to explain this discrepancy. They attributed the muon’s high speed, with its associated high kinetic energy, to be dilating time.

In 1963, Frisch and Smith once again confirmed the Rossi and Hall experiment, proving beyond doubt that extremely high kinetic energy prolongs a particle’s life.

With the advent of particle accelerators that are capable of moving particles at near light speed, the confirmation of time dilation has become routine. A particle accelerator is a scientific apparatus for accelerating subatomic particles to high velocities by using electric or electromagnetic fields. The largest particle accelerator is the Large Hadron Collider, completed in 2008.

In 1977, J. Bailey and CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) colleagues accelerated muons to within 0.9994% of the speed of light and found their lifetime had been extended by 29.3 times their corresponding rest mass lifetime. (Reference: Bailey, J., et al., Nature 268, 301 [1977] on muon lifetimes and time dilation.) This experiment confirmed the “twin paradox,” whereby a twin makes a journey into space in a near-speed-of-light spaceship and returns home to find he has aged less than his identical twin who stayed on Earth. This means that clocks sent away at near the speed of light and returned near the speed of light to their initial position demonstrate retardation (record less time) with respect to a resting clock.

Gravitational time dilation experimental evidence:

In 1959, Pound and Rebka measured a slight redshift in the frequency of light emitted close to the Earth’s surface (where Earth’s gravitational field is higher), versus the frequency of light emitted at a distance farther from the Earth’s surface. The results they measured were within 10% of those predicted by the gravitational time dilation of general relativity.

In 1964, Pound and Snider performed a similar experiment, and their measurements were within 1% predicted by general relativity.

In 1980, the team of Vessot, Levine, Mattison, Blomberg, Hoffman, Nystrom, Farrel, Decher, Eby, Baugher, Watts, Teuber, and Wills published “Test of Relativistic Gravitation with a Space-Borne Hydrogen Maser,” and increased the accuracy of measurement to about 0.01%. In 2010, Chou, Hume, Rosenband, and Wineland published “Optical Clocks and Relativity.” This experiment confirmed gravitational time dilation at a height difference of one meter using optical atomic clocks, which are considered the most accurate types of clocks.

This information is from my new book, How to Time Travel, available in both a Kindle and paperback edition on Amazon. To browse the book free and read the reviews click here: How to Time Travel.

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

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

Is Humankind Ready for Time Travel?

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There is a high probability that scientists will unlock the secrets to human time travel before the end of this century. The technologies needed to develop a real time machine are already coming together.

Let us consider forward time travel, also known as “time dilation”. Particle colliders, like the CERN Large Hadron Collider, are routinely able to accelerate subatomic particles, like a muon (i.e. a negatively charged particle about two hundred times heavier than an electron), and cause time dilation (i.e. extend the life span of the particle by a factor of ten or more). How does this relate to human time travel?

It is a scientific fact that humans within a spacecraft traveling at a velocity near the speed of light would experience time dilation (i.e. forward time travel). A one-year journey, measured on a clock onboard the spacecraft, would be equivalent to decades on Earth. One technology envisioned to power such a spacecraft is a matter-antimatter propulsion engine. CERN scientists, using the Large Hadron Collider, are able to produce and store small quantities of antimatter. The United States Air Force has been funding antimatter research since the early 1960’s. If this research is successful, it could result in a spacecraft with a matter-antimatter propulsion engine, capable of velocities we can only read about in science fiction.

Time travel to the past may be just a decade away, according to Dr. Ronald Mallett, an American theoretical physicist, author, and full professor at University of Connecticut. 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” is that by twisting space, via the laser, closed timelike curves will result (i.e. time will also be twisted). A closed timelike curve means that an object, like a neutron (i.e. a subatomic particle), will be able to travel backward in time. Dr. Mallett’s work is still in the research stage, but it represents serious time travel research by a solid member of the scientific community.

While all signs point to humankind having the ability to travel in time by the end of this century, will humankind be ready for time travel?

Most people think of time travel as either science fiction or just another frontier of science. Few realize the weapon potential of time travel. However, it is the ultimate weapon. Any government capable of enabling human time travel can dominate the world. That government can control history. If they can control history, they can control their future. The government’s agents, the time travelers, can intervene and change the past. Similarly, time traveling agents to the future will know with certainty the outcome of any event. The need for spies, secret agents, spy satellites, and the like, will become obsolete. The time machine will be the ultimate weapon, time travelers the ultimate soldiers.

If the capability to time travel is acquired by more than one government, wars as we know them will likely cease. In their place, governments will fight over “history”. Each government will seek to write its own history, and assure its future success. The “world line” (i.e. the four-dimensional path each reality traces in spacetime) will bend and twist to the will of the time machine.

The potential of using time travel as a weapon is real, and we do not know if humankind will be able to control it. If we look to history, humankind has deployed weapons, like nuclear bombs, without knowing the full long-term impact. For example, the Fat Man nuclear bomb detonated above the city of Nagasaki, not only killed 60,000 – 80,000 people in the first four months, but the long-term effects included a 25% increase in the cancer rate of survivors during their lifetime.

There is hope. Humankind recognized the uncontrollable nature of biological weapons before deploying them as weapons of mass destruction. In a 1969 press conference, United States President Richard M. Nixon stated, “Biological weapons have massive, unpredictable, and potentially uncontrollable consequences.” He added, “They may produce global epidemics and impair the health of future generations.” In 1972, President Nixon submitted the Biological Weapons Convention to the U.S. Senate: “I am transmitting herewith, for the advice and consent of the Senate to ratification, the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons, and on their Destruction, opened for signature at Washington, London and Moscow on April 10, 1972. The text of this Convention is the result of some three years of intensive debate and negotiation at the Conference of the Committee on Disarmament at Geneva and at the United Nations. It provides that the Parties undertake not to develop, produce, stockpile, acquire or retain biological agents or toxins, of types and in quantities that have no justification for peaceful purposes, as well as weapons, equipment and means of delivery designed to use such agents or toxins for hostile purposes or in armed conflict.”

Will humankind be able to control time travel in a similar fashion to biological weapons? If the answer is yes, then time travel and the associated technologies may serve humankind, assuring humankind’s survival. If the answer is no, the world line may become the new battleground, as each nation seeks to rewrite their history. Would it be possible to twist the world line beyond recognition? Will time itself fall victim to humankind’s carelessness?

With nuclear weapons, the doctrine of nuclear deterrence kept humankind from destroying itself. With time travel, we need a similar doctrine. I submit for your consideration that doctrine needs to be: Preserver the World Line.

Lou Del Monte’s new book, How to Time Travel, is expected to be released on Amazon in early September 2013.

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Check Out My Huff Post Blog Article, “Time Travel to the Future Is Real”

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Click on the link below to read the Huff Post Science Article:

“Time Travel to the Future Is Real”

– Physicist Louis Del Monte discusses time travel to the future, including time dilation and time travel experimental evidence in this Huffington Post article.