Not much is happening economically speaking this Sunday evening so let’s ponder the ability to travel back in time such that the future can change the past.
Please consider Physicists send particles of light into the past, prove time travel is possible.
Scientists from the University of Queensland, Australia, have used single particles of light (photons) to simulate quantum particles traveling through time. They showed that one photon can pass through a wormhole and then interact with its older self. Their findings were published in Nature Communications.
The source of this time travel conundrum comes from what are called “closed time-like curves” (CTC). CTCs are used to simulate extremely powerful gravitational fields, like the ones produced by a spinning black hole, and could, theoretically (based on Einstein’s theory of general relativity), warp the fabric of existence so that space-time bends back on itself – thus creating a CTC, almost like a path that could be used to travel back in time.
Think in terms of the ‘grandfather paradox,’ a hypothetical scenario where someone uses a CTC to travel back through time to cause harm to their grandfather, thus preventing their later birth. Now imagine a particle going back in time to flip a switch on the particle-generating machine that created it – this is a possibility that these physicists say they have shown through their simulation.
In my opinion, there is no doubt time travel is possible. Why do I believe this? Well, it’s because we know one hundred percent that superposition is real on a quantum scale.
In 2007 (Science 315, 966, 2007), scientists in France shot photons into an apparatus and showed that their actions could retroactively change something which had already happened.
This particular experiment illustrates how what happens in the present can change what happened in the past. It also shows how time can go backwards, how cause and effect can be reversed, and how the future caused the past.
In 2012, physicists David Wineland and Serge Haroche received the Nobel Prize in physics for demonstrating how “quantum weirdness” could not only exist at the subatomic micro-world level, but also show itself in the macro-world.
Back to the Future
If a subatomic particle can travel back in time, does that mean a person can?
If so, something like the movie Back to the Future is quite possible.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
If it’s possible for human to travel to the past then why don’t we see a time traveler now? I guess they don’t tell us what they are. mnnnn.
We see them all the time. They are in DC. And when they are only amongst themselves, they transform back into lizards.
Because we are the leading edge and still have to get to the future to come back and visit ourselves. So you just have to wait till we get there.
All I can do is offer you a taste of the experience – if you sit very very still looking out a window without blinking you will see the future occuring before your very eyes. Then look back into the room and you will find you are right back where you started. Neat eh?
Actually that’s not true. There is strong evidence that time does not “flow”, but rather the past, present and future all coexist.
The perception of change by juxtaposition and extrapolation of events is very real and a higher representation of any static physical reality, which will always be timeless. Because that perception is created of the physical world, that is to say that the perceiver is also a physical construct, it follows that that perception is also physical law .
So whether the flow of time is an illusion or a higher representation/understanding of what the physical world is, I leave to anyone’s imagination. Its perception does allow results/influence to take place in the physical world though, affect the base physical world, and so is undoubtedly real in physical terms. It could even be extended to the claim of being the access to a higher understanding of what guides physical reality…but we are into subjectivity and outside of the nicely confined objective world of physics….which is itself…. subjective…”empirically”.
I believe it’s possible to send information back in time. It may amount to only one bit per event.
The future may have the necessary “transmitters” and corresponding “receivers”. We don’t have, or aren’t aware of having, the “receivers”.
Scientists are still divided as to whether BTTF or Terminator rules apply.
Proof has been before us for a long time, it is called the Fed.
Tempting. You build a detector for arrival of a photon from the future. If detection is positive you send another photon into the past. If that’s detected another, and so on. The final detector a few milliseconds in the past executes a robotrade but only if told to do so by future photon sending you. Of course you only sent the future photon if the trade is a winner. Not long after you start this system you own the planet. Sweet. I always wanted to own a planet.
The article says the researchers only did a mathematical simulation — they did **NOT** actually make a photon travel through time. Its just an unproven theory, with no more scientific validity than the “Back to the Future” movie trilogy.
And their math simulation is based on the unproven assumption that quantum physics is a correct description of the universe (everything is actually a just wave of energy, no particles exist) — something physicists do not all agree on.
JPMorgan did a math simulation that their hedges worked. Turned out the math simulation had a flawed copy and paste error… but even if they fixed that, it relies on the assumption that correlations between asset classes is an approximate constant. That assumption is not universally accepted (actually the assumption breaks down right when the hedger really wishes it would hold).
Its embarrassing that this sort of theoretical mind dump somehow gets passed off as science.
+1
The ironic part is the article quotes Feynman via a bastardized quote. He was notoriously skeptical of the movement to replace experimentation with Math.
I guess someone’s grant was coming up for renewal and they thought ‘i know time travel’
@steve:
Excellent point!
“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts” – Richard Feynman
Unproven or untested? E=MC2….The most famous part of Einstein’s theory of relativity was created in Albert’s head, without any empirical evidence. It has taken physicist decades to build instruments and make observations to test his theory’s.
Absolutely false! The theory of relativity was developed to explain, among other things, numerous anomalies in observed physical data which could not be explained by the prevailing Newtonian physics principles.
–> “Unproven or untested? E=MC2….The most famous part of Einstein’s theory of relativity was created in Albert’s head, without any empirical evidence.”
More proof that public schools are failing.
Einstein theorized that formula in an effort to explain anomolies in real world experimental data. Real world experiments that had already been performed that showed the traditional newtonian physics to be wrong (or perhaps incomplete). Einstein was proposing an explanation that fit new observed data without violating newtonian explanations. He wasn’t making up a stupid “model” out of thin air.
These quacks in Australia did not observe time travel and then come up with a possible explanation. They were daydreaming about something no one has observed, and then imagined a “formula” that in pretend-land might explain their fantasy.
This is called imagination. Its great for writing Harry Potter books or Back to the Future movies or Star Wars — its great for writing fiction, but its not science.
Teachers all over the world should be embarrassed that these alleged “scientists” can’t tell Harry Potter’s world apart from the real world. Just embarrassing
Why can’t they focus on something much more valuable. Like how to take guns away from drug dealers who’s business can’t exist without guns. There is a real paradox.
Not really a paradox at all, just ask the CIA, who supplies those drug dealers.
Beat me to it. It was just a mathematical simulation. However, see my linked videos below.
A closed loop paradox is considered a paradox due to properties of physical matter that tends to degrade over time. So if a loop were to occur, that is, if your future self gave your present self something that he initially got from his future self, then the item in question would essentially begin to exist forever in that closed loop. However, since matter tends to degrade, the item would’ve vanished, having passed through the loop – dissolved into energy after a couple trillion runs. One theory believes that this is how time essentially heals itself if and when irregularities occur.
That, however does not apply to information or elementary particles that are considered non-degrading.
So yes, time travel is possible and closed loop paradox only applies to complex matter. Energy and information which aren’t subject to degradation are not prohibited from interacting with themselves from another time. Information can be infinitely duplicated, just like files on a computer. The universe doesn’t destroy itself each time you copy/paste a word, even though in material terms it would be considered a paradox.
While it is unlikely that a physical object will ever travel though time and emerge on the other side of the proverbial wormhole intact, there is nothing preventing your future self merely “telling” your past self something through the use of elementary particles or by altering the sate of matter with energy.
Hey buster. That’s my idea and this planet’s mine. Go find your own planet to own.
“The universe doesn’t destroy itself each time you copy/paste a word…”
Be careful what you are saying there, or some patent troll may sponsor a resolution having you declared an anarchistic terrorist that should be shipped off to Gitmo….
Have to prove time exists first.
My bank insists time does not exist and therefore pays zero interest on funds deposited to my account no matter how long those funds stay on deposit.
I guess they tell you you already spent any profits sometime in the future so they are just making sure the books balance?
I voted no. My knowledge of special relativity is limited but, while traveling forward in time is possible, I don’t think backwards would work to the extent of changing the past.
Even if you went to the same time-space coordinates as an ‘earlier’ time, does that mean you would see the same objects? If objects can move in space, i.e., change spatial coordinates, why can’t they also be located in different time coordinates? Do the same events have to occur at the same time-space coordinates if one returns to an ‘earlier’ time at same location?
Our consciousness moves along time but which way does it go? Forward or backward? Does ‘forward’ mean one direction along the time axis while ‘backward’ means the opposite direction?
Some African tribes believed that time moved backwards, by assuming that present is real, future is not yet existing, but past already solidified. You never get “more future”, but you always accumulate past. Their logical conclusion was that since time was extending backwards, it was also moving backwards and away from the present.
Maybe you cannot interpret the future without relying completely on the past to try to. There is no absolute that says the laws of physics as we know them might not simply change. So really we are at the mercy of a greater fate, able to coordinate existing cause and effect to a degree that serves whatever purpose… or think we are… equally that experience is pre-ordained and we just participate in it on a different level as a truer reality of what existence is.
Anyway, I thought this article would be interesting for some… a bit of time travel :
http://oldestcoins.reidgold.com/article.html
“Forward or backward? ”
How about up and down? Time is vertical and orthogonal to a given space.
Hey, I am NOT mathematician, nor physicist; however most us would just be happy with an reversal of aging.
What if the afterlife involves going back in time and having to watch your whole life like a fly on the wall. Ugh…. can you imagine going back in time and having to watch yourself watch Gillian’s Island? That would be hell. Lol.
There are a LOT of shows today that are worse than Gilligan’s Island. But I would definitely not want to come back and be a fly, or any other insect.
If you return as a fly, then you are going to have to develop a taste for eating crap.
Gee Mish, you just gave E. Musk another project . He might abandon his Puerto Rico endeavors.
shhhhh do not give him any more ideas.
So *that’s* how the Russians did it……….
Please Tim, don’t tell Mueller. He’s wasting enough of our money making his appointed lawyer buddies rich already.
Time for me to make smart aleki commnet: good! Let them be busy with particles they may forget glowal warming thingie…
All I want from the future are lottery numbers.
The strongest proof of the impossibility of time travel is the complete absence of time travelers.
Considering that earth does a turn every 24 hours, then it turns around the sun every 365 days and the entire solar system is speeding away from the center of the galaxy at 240k miles an hour, traveling forward or back by just a second would land you somewhere far far away. There may be dozens of time travelers floating around somewhere. We just don’t know it.
If you want to travel though time, you have to have the means of traveling through space as well.
UK sci-fi show “Red Dwarf” had an episode on that.
“The strongest proof of the impossibility of time travel is the complete absence of time travelers.”
If they were here right now, would they necessarily know it?
If their future selves were in our present (i.e. their past) it might preclude them from knowing their future since it was predicated on whatever happened in their past, which has yet to occur.
If it could be done, experimental trials should first consist of small leaps in time. Try to go back to yesterday or last Thursday. Going back 500 years is where it becomes too much Sci-Fi.
The second strongest proof that time travel is impossible is the perpetual neccessity of using the conditional when discussing time travel.
What is the time value of money if you can time travel? Assuming they can eventually perfect human time travel, do you prepay or pay on arrival?
Time travel is REAL!
++++
Man who claims he traveled back in time to warn people of an alien invasion arrested for public intoxication
http://myfox8.com/2017/10/07/man-who-claims-he-traveled-back-in-time-to-warn-people-of-an-alien-invasion-arrested-for-public-intoxication/
Sure people can go back in time but when they do so, it changes the future, which happens dynamically, so you never know that the past was actually changed!
The probabilities of time travel are slightly less than our economists predictions being accurate.
Ah, great HF stock trading meets its match.
No because if time travel exists it means that the future also exists therefore with all the future in front of us someone in that infinite future would have come back to show us..
There is only the moment now.
I sometimes have premonitions of the future, enough so that I take note and sometimes change the direction of my actions. now who and what is sending me the thoughts I can’t tell you you.
I suspect time is like a movie. you can rewind or fast fwd.
just most of us don’t have the understanding to do so, so we stay in play mode.
This does not bode well for the future of mankind… if time travel is possible, then we should have seen actual proof over history ( some future tech or similar anachronistic item or individual’s behavior, not a computer simulation… that’s not proof). The fact that we haven’t any proof means it is either not possible, or we as a species do not make it to a point at which we develop the ability to send information (or “things”) back. )-;
“Ah – Ye canna break the laws o’ Phusics, Jum!” https://youtu.be/FCARADb9asE
As soon as someone uses the word ‘proof’ in science, it indicates to me that they don’t truly understand science. As one professor pointed out to me early in my university education, “Proof is only relevant in mathematics and jurisprudence.” Science, as practised and written deals in statistical probabilities, not proof. There can be overwhelming consensus based on a significant amount of evidence but a particular theory cannot be proven. As Karl Popper has stated: “In the empirical sciences, which alone can furnish us with information about the world we live in, proofs do not occur, if we mean by ‘proof’ an argument which establishes once and for ever the truth of a theory,”
Who needs time travel when History repeats itself?
“Perhaps this thing we call ‘observation’ is just (quantum) entaglement between the observer and the experient.”
Which is used as one of the supporting arguments for this:
Wood frogs traveling forward in time, yes:
http://blog.nwf.org/2015/01/frogs-that-freeze-solid/
Corporeal entities traveling backward in time, no.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreversible_process
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics
I appreciate mathematical models more when they are used to predict what we observe in nature rather than when those models are used to hypothesize what may or may not be observed in nature (e.g. Anthropogenic Climate Change predicted by climate models, Global Warming Potential of manmade gases extrapolated from laboratory measurements, traveling backward in time, etc).
I have already been Back to the Future, as i have been at the very mall featured in the movie, as well as the clock tower back lot set on the Universal Studios lot.
There is no time. It is all happening Now, for “always”. The illusion of “moving” in time is “real” in the the observable Universe, that is all that is happening.
Your poll is misguided. If I don’t believe time travel is possible does not mean that I believe it is impossible, I just don’t know.
One of the best S.F. stories on this I ever read was By His Bootstraps, by Robert A. Heinlein. A contemporary man is brought forward in time by his future self, who got there by being brought forward as a currently contemporary man brought forward…. Really wel done example of the Grandfather paradox in a different context. 34 page PDF can be downloaded
here. http://pot.home.xs4all.nl/scifi/byhisbootstraps.pdf Originally published in 1941, it’s still one of the best time travel stories going.
Does that mean I can have my cake and eat it too.
I found it extremely irritating speaking with the Time Traveler’s Reservation Desk…
regardless of the destination, they insisted that I had “already been there/done that”…
I don’t think they really knew if I was even coming or going.