OMG! Time Travel is Possible! (Update: Video Added)
[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]
Update: Here’s some tangentially related (and funny!) video from Futurama. In this clip, Fry is back in time (in the year 1947, I believe) and he had met two people be believed were his own grandmother and grandfather. And then he accidentally gets his possible grandfather killed. So then he attempts to console his possible grandmother and things go horribly/hilariously wrong:
| Futurama | ||||
| Grandma Paradox | ||||
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You know for a long time I have felt that much of physics has gone into dubious territory. Take quantum physics, for instance. According to them, nothing happens until it is observed. So, um, how exactly do you prove that? Science involves observable phenomenon. Talking about the non-observable strikes me as more akin to religion than science, given there is literally no way to verify the theory.
And likewise, this latest bit from some of the scientists working on the Hadron Collider is extremely dubious:
Large Hadron Collider Could Be World’s First Time Machine, Researchers’ Theory Suggests
If the latest theory of Tom Weiler and Chui Man Ho is right, the Large Hadron Collider — the world’s largest atom smasher that started regular operation last year — could be the first machine capable of causing matter to travel backwards in time.
“Our theory is a long shot,” admitted Weiler, who is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University…
Okay, stop right here. If it is very unlikely to be right, it’s not a theory. It’s a hypothesis. In science, a theory is a hypothesis backed up by a lot of experimental evidence and observation (there’s that word again).
…”but it doesn’t violate any laws of physics or experimental constraints.”
One of the major goals of the collider is to find the elusive Higgs boson: the particle that physicists invoke to explain why particles like protons, neutrons and electrons have mass. If the collider succeeds in producing the Higgs boson, some scientists predict that it will create a second particle, called the Higgs singlet, at the same time.
According to Weiler and Ho’s theory, these singlets should have the ability to jump into an extra, fifth dimension where they can move either forward or backward in time and reappear in the future or past.
“One of the attractive things about this approach to time travel is that it avoids all the big paradoxes,” Weiler said. “Because time travel is limited to these special particles, it is not possible for a man to travel back in time and murder one of his parents before he himself is born, for example. However, if scientists could control the production of Higgs singlets, they might be able to send messages to the past or future.”
And there is where he loses all credibility with me. You solved the paradox problem? Really?
Well, let’s try to imagine a scenario. Now obviously a person would have to build a receiver for these messages. So we would be unlikely to be able to change our past. But suppose Tom Weiler, above, decided to give it a try anyway. So he sends a message tomorrow going back in time that says the following: “Adolf Hilter, born April 20, 1889, in Austria. He will murder millions of innocents and plunge the entire world into war. Kill him, please.” So by some fantastic set of circumstances it turns out that that Nikola Tesla was even smarter than we realized and in 1888 he built a machine capable of receiving those messages and hears it. And imagine further that Tesla decides to act on it, and goes over to Austria and kills baby Hitler, and no one is the wiser that he did it or the consequences of that action. Okay, so then the holocaust doesn’t happen and so on… so time proceeds forward until 2011, and Tom Weiler figures out how to build a time-messenger machine as described here. But why on Earth would he send a message back in time to stop an event that never occurred in his timeline? But if he doesn’t send that message back, then how did Tesla receive the message? Gee, sounds like a paradox, to me.
But it gets even worse, because as surely our sharp readers realized, if you change something that big in history, you might make it so the future is so radically different that Tom Weiler might not have been born, or might not have been a physicist. For instance, perhaps by killing Hitler, Tesla paved the way for a major world war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in which Weiler’s ancestor ends up dying, while in the original timeline that ancestor lived. Then there is no Weiler to send back the message to prevent the holocaust which paved the way in part for Weiler’s birth.
And of course you might say it is far-fetched to imagine that even someone as bright as Tesla in the past could receive this message. And I would agree. I only used Hitler as a shorthand example of how a small change in the timeline could make a big difference. But Weiler and his partner are paving the way for someone in the future to build that time-messenger machine. So suppose Weiler builds the machine tomorrow and instantly receives a message from the future: “Ivan Gregor, born 12/12/11, in Pennsylvania. He will murder millions of innocents and plunge the entire world into war. Kill him, please.” (Note to the slow: I am making up this name to create a hypothetical. Do not hurt anyone who might happen to have this name.) If Weiler does as suggested, he could create the same problems, depending on just how pivotal this Gregor person was. If Gregor was meant to be as significant in history as Hitler, killing him would be very likely to create a paradoxes in ways similar to the Hitler/Tesla scenario outlined above.
Now I won’t pretend to understand this particle physics well enough to refute them, though I suspect some of our commenters could. But I can refute them about the possibility of paradoxes, and whenI see scientists get the easy stuff wrong, it undermines my confidence that they are right about the hard stuff.
By the way, for a take on time travel that deals with some of these heady questions, I highly recommend Orson Scott Card’s Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus.
[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]
If time travel were possible and happened in such a way that it altered past and future events, then our world would be constantly shifting and unrecognizable.
Persons from our future would already have visited our past and present and we’d be living with the evidence and consequences. That we have never witnessed such an event seems proof enough that time travel — if at all possible — doesn’t work as portrayed in the movies.
KGB (ec99cf) — 3/17/2011 @ 5:48 amCricton tackled this, in his novel you create an alternate history, to the one you came from. You’re timeline doesn’t change, but you don”t return to it.
narciso (a3a9aa) — 3/17/2011 @ 5:52 amAaron, I’m happy to walk you through the Gardens of Nerdvana if you like.
Lots of thinkers and writers have discussed causality violations due to time travel.
Simon Jester (4c7374) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:07 amtime travel is a useful plot device in space adventures in real life it would play hell on the ability of companies to raise prices
happyfeet (ab5779) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:08 amI think some time travel involved because the second run, of Futurama was much worse than the first.
narciso (a3a9aa) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:10 amSimon
well, for the love of God, feel free to nerd out.
The issue to me isn’t solving the paradox issue, so much as noting that making it “only messages” doesn’t solve it.
Aaron Worthing (e7d72e) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:12 amI’ve been doing a lot of black out drinking. Or, as I like to call it, “time travel.” – Dave Attel
TimesDisliker (965a3d) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:16 amGreat, go back in time and kill Hitler so the much more capable Bormann or Hess are in charge and they decide to keep bombing the RAF bases instead of switching to bombing london and Nazi Germany invades and knocks most of the empire out of the war making the full forces of the war machine to invade russia earlier and at will
Yeah – leave the Hitler Baby alone
Mr Collider guy
EricPWJohnson (b12494) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:24 amThe only paradoxs are the shoes on Aarons feet
EricPWJohnson (b12494) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:25 amHITLER BABY LIVES!
happyfeet (ab5779) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:27 amThe big question: will I get a blue box that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?
Also, will Karen Gillan be joining me because it’ll be awful lonely travelling time and space by myself.
EC (dda60e) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:28 amNot true, KGB. The past you remember is PART OF the world, not separate from it. We would always recognize the world no matter how often the timestream shifted, because we would always be of it.
Aaron…always glad to see a shout-out to Pastwatch.
Demosthenes (ee734a) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:28 amI’m touring Fermilab next month. I’m going to buy some tachyons at the gift shop, put them in my gas tank, and see if I can turn the gasoline back into dinosaurs. I’ll keep you posted.
gp (72be5d) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:53 amThe movie Being There shows that time travel exists. How could the author have come up with this plot if he had not witnessed the Obama phenomenon?
nohype (197901) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:54 amOkay, confession time.
I am a time traveler. So i know exactly how to fix the paradox problem.
I also know all of your futures. For instance, i know kman dies of auto-erotic asphyxiation, next week. i was sent back here to intervene in his favor.
And in my future, we put a fifth head on Mt. Rushmore, our greatest President ever… Sarah Christie. that is right, Sarah Palin and Chris Christie decided that for the good of this nation–nay, humanity–to have Palin artifiically inseminated by Christie and that was the result. She was so perfect, they changed the constitution to make her able to be president at 15 and then she actually balanced the budget, freed the middle east and china and returned our government to constitutional principles.
Aaron Worthing (e7d72e) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:58 am“In science, a theory is a hypothesis backed up by a lot of experimental evidence and observation”
So Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity was really Einstein’s Special Hypothesis of Relativity?
At what point was there enough “evidence and observation” for the name to change? He was working as a patent clerk and his theory/hypothesis was based on mind experiments and speculation as he had no laboratory facilities, and he was certainly not verified by conventional science as he knocked that into the closet, showing that what science thought were universal laws only applied in a small and limited set of circumstances.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 6:59 amIf it were possible to go back in time and perform an abortion on Mrs. Hitler, thus vacuuming any traces of Adolph, would that be moral? And what if she did not have health insurance, would it be right for the Weimar Republic to pay for this?
Just askin’…
TimesDisliker (965a3d) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:01 amThe paradox is easily avoidable if you assume that humans would be unable to control these Higgs singlets, and therefore his suggestion of sending messages (which he did preface with the word “if”–and as Touchstone said, there’s much virtue in an if)would be unworkable. Producing the Higgs singlets is one thing; arranging for them to arrive at a particular moment in space-time in a particular pattern (which is what would be required to send messages) is another thing.
Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Ay, but will they come when you call them?
I seem to be on a Shakespeare roll this morning.
kishnevi (fb9343) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:04 ammachinest
i think they did bend the rules for einstein. but we shouldn’t encourage more of that.
and i am not sure where it crosses the line into theory, but my understanding is it is at a point when the evidence is pretty strong over a number of years. i think simon might be able to add to that. but a guess that you admit is unlikely to be right certainly doesn’t count.
Aaron Worthing (e7d72e) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:12 amkishnevi,
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:13 amEarly wireless sets simply sent out pulses of energy in all directions but they could be used to transmit information to anyone who set up a receiver, deliberate or not (think of stories of clotheslines acting as antennae and giving unsuspecting mothers shocks from induction).
Aaron,
Why was an exception made for Einstein back then? He was not famous or well known to but a handful of people then. We are talking pre WW1.
And Darwin’s Hypothesis of Evolution?
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:19 amSo are Space Cadets –
just sayin
EricPWJohnson (b12494) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:20 amWell, in the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory, there is no single future, all possible futures exist equally. The past is certain ONLY from the point at which you observe, since the other branches are no longer available (although they exist and are just as real as your own).
Go back in time and that “future” you came from is again just one of many co-existing branches. Kill baby Hitler and you just move into some other path, but do NOT affect those other futures that followed from baby Hitler growing up; they they are just closed off to you now (unless you come back to the past).
There are no paradoxes.
Oh, yes, Many Worlds is a “theory” since it actually explains data better than the classic interpretation.
Kevin M (298030) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:24 amEinstein was pretty well known to scientists after 1905, when he published three amazing papers, any one of which was worth a Nobel Prize (he got it in 1921 for the photoelectric effect, but special relativity or the explanation of Brownian motion would have done).
Kevin M (298030) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:28 amSo the fact that we’re all discussing our shared knowledge of Hitler and that we all know this version of history to have always been is just illusory? A moment from now I may live in a completely different reality based on some other disruption in the timestream, and I wouldn’t know the difference?
Sorry, but that seems highly unlikely since the past in our timestream would be changing on an almost constant basis thus the present would essentially cease to exist.
KGB (ec99cf) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:32 amRe Einstein: If memory serves, some careful analysis of Mercury’s orbital data showed discrepancies with Newton’s theories, but were explained by Special Relativity. Some other examples:
Time contraction has been tested in earth orbit (with atomic clocks, you can find the effect at airliner speeds, and this was done several years ago).
Particle physics also show time effects at really high speeds. You can get to 10% of the speed of light, and this will show relativity effects nicely.
Spectrum observations of distant stars (red-shifting lines in the spectrum) were early bits of confirmation. I guess it qualifies as a theory.
On the nerd front, Heinlein’s “All you Zombies” is my take on the classic time travel story. Being Heinlein, a sex change is key, too. Lends a whole new meaning to “Who’s your daddy?” 🙂
Red County Pete (a7ef01) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:43 amBut what if, in time travel, there is a phase shift (ala ST:TNG)? You don’t interact (and thus can’t influence or interfere), but can only observe?
This would make history courses alot more fun.
Paul (38c35b) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:45 amYeah back in the day, when aaron was a kid – the athletic kids were fed cheerios, the rich kids ate Life, the ADHD kids were smackin the cap’in crunch – But Aaron, naw he was whistfully pinning over a sugar laden bowl of Quisp
EricPWJohnson (b12494) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:46 amThe biggest problem with time-travel is that it violates the conservation of mass-energy. Transferring either mass or energy to a different time changes the total mass-energy of the universe; it reduces the mass-energy of the present and increases it at the destination.
But hey, I’m practicing physics without a license, better call the out the science police!
Jeff Crump (f9f615) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:55 americ
for the record, i have always eaten cheerios. but i am not exactly athletic.
Aaron Worthing (e7d72e) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:57 amI’m my own Grandpa.
Bigfoot (8096f2) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:58 am“I once performed at a comedy club in the Deep South, called ‘I Don’t Get It’s.’ I met guys there that were their own fathers.” – Dennis Miller
Aaron, ‘Sarah Christie’…awesome.:-)
TimesDisliker (965a3d) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:04 amA few years ago I was involved in an online discussion regarding the September 11th terrorist attacks. I said that if I found myself back in time — say on September 10, 2001, I would not seek to prevent all of the four hijackings. I would notify the authorities about AA 77 (Pentagon) and UA 93, but not the two flights that would hit the Twin Towers. I would seek to notify the authorities to evacuate the Twin Towers. In that way the number of casualties would be greatly reduced, but the shock of the attack would still cause the United States to wake up to the fact that we are at war.
I was criticised as heartless and uncaring for the passengers and crew who would still die under this scenario. However, I’m looking at the Law of Unintended Consequences. If the plot had failed, our nation would remained blissfully unaware of the terrorist problem. Al Qaida might have been able later to develop an even bigger attack, perhaps acquire a nuclear bomb.
aunursa (a2a019) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:18 amyeah, Aaron, we ALL ate cheerios…
EricPWJohnson (b12494) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:18 amYou don’t have to come up with such a fantastic example to create a paradox. If they are correct about being able to send a message back, it could be something as simple as a winning lottery ticket number, and it doesn’t have to involve dates going back decades. In fact, it could be dates that are in the future (relative to where we are now). If two years from now, on 3/17/13, he sends a message back to his 1/17/13 self, about the winning number for 2/17/13, he will be able to use that info to buy the winning ticket, and alter the past (relative to his 3/17/13 self). Paradox accomplished.
Anon Y. Mous (1fed27) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:19 amHow do you know, that would have led to the right result, or that the authorities would have followed up,
narciso (a3a9aa) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:24 amEvery time travel episode of Star Trek, Star Trek TNG, Star Trek DS9, Star Trek Voyager, and Enterprise sucked. Sucked Yoda’s nads.
SPQR (26be8b) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:32 amOh, and James Cromwell as Zephraim Cochran? More vacuum on Yoda’s nads.
SPQR (26be8b) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:32 amSPQR,
but they were marginally better than the land of the lost, marginally,
still if I found a working tricorder I wouldnt throw it away
EricPWJohnson (b12494) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:36 amSadly, you learned that he was a massive dick, and so have decided to just let it ride.
Scott Jacobs (d027b8) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:36 am“I did do the nasty in the pasty…”
Scott Jacobs (d027b8) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:39 amComment by Red County Pete — 3/17/2011 @ 7:43 am,
Science has been and still is testing and confirming Einstein’s theory but I believe it has been called a theory from it’s publication. My question was, if it was not a theory then, at what point did it become one?
I think a hypothesis is an idea or suggestion, possibly based on a postulate, like Einstein asking “What if the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant?”
I think when the details of how it relates to it’s science and how it can be used to make a prediction that can be tested and verified, then it becomes a theory.
Manmade global warming is a hypothesis. It seems to make no testable or falsifying predictions that can confirm or deny it’s truth or accuracy. The observed data seems to deny it but any result is claimed to be compatible with it.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:43 amAnd it did save the earth from the brain creatures so there is that; ‘city on the edge of forever’ was good, as was the one with the air force pilot, but I do agree most of them, were substandard.
narciso (a3a9aa) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:48 amEinstein worked out the details and math of his idea and suggested a number of predictions and tests we could do as out science became good enough. We are still doing this. That, I would suggest, is a theory.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:49 amI am sorry, but if we are talking definitions here then the whole Star Trek franchise was science fantasy, not science fiction.
Larry Niven’s magic fantasy is more science fiction than Star Trek’s science fantasy is.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:53 am36.How do you know, that would have led to the right result, or that the authorities would have followed up,
Comment by narciso — 3/17/2011 @ 8:24 am
That’s the thing. I don’t know if it would have worked. I could only do what I could do. And I wouldn’t know if it would lead to the right result. Perhaps as a result of my actions, the authorities would suspect me of being involved in the plot.* Perhaps the terrorists would come after me and my family. There are countless other scenarios that could result. Playing with the Space-Time Continuum can be tricky business.
* A similar theme happened in Running Against Time, a 1990 movie starring Robert Hays (Airplane!) and Catherine Hicks. After the time-traveler struggles with Oswald, the police think he’s the assassin.
aunursa (a2a019) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:55 am37.Every time travel episode of Star Trek, Star Trek TNG, Star Trek DS9, Star Trek Voyager
My favorite line was at the end of one Voyager episode, the “Galactic Time Police” warned Captain Janeway to stop time traveling so often.
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Relativity_(episode)
List of Star Trek episodes involving time travel:
aunursa (a2a019) — 3/17/2011 @ 8:59 amhttp://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Time_travel_episodes
‘The biggest problem with time-travel is that it violates the conservation of mass-energy. Transferring either mass or energy to a different time changes the total mass-energy of the universe; it reduces the mass-energy of the present and increases it at the destination.
But hey, I’m practicing physics without a license, better call the out the science police!
Comment by Jeff Crump — 3/17/2011 @ 7:55 am”
It’s amazing what you can learn from this blog. Physics is a branch of accounting! Thanks for confirming my belief that among his attributes God is an accountant. That for every credit there is a debit.
cubanbob (409ac2) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:00 amThe DS9 ep “Visionary” will always be my favorite trekie time travel ep.
“I hate temporal mechanics…”
Scott Jacobs (d027b8) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:07 amThen there is Niven’s Law, which asserts the ultimate result of paradoxes:
“If the universe of discourse permits the possibility of time travel and of changing the past, then no time machine will be invented in that universe.”
Because, of course, if one was invented, the past would be changed until it wasn’t.
Kevin M (73dcc9) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:15 amYou can not make a particle of matter from energy. You make a particle and it’s antimatter counterpart, such as a proton and an anti-proton. Likewise you don’t destroy a proton with anti-electrons (positrons), you must combine a proton and an anti-proton. Perhaps the time traveling particle has an anti-particle that travels the other direction in time to maintain the balance?
By the way, the conservation law also applies to spin. When an electron and positron annihilate each other you get two photons of energy and two neutrinos to conserve spin (anti-particles have the same mass but opposite charge and spin.) The sun generates energy this way and 4% of it’s radiation is in the form of neutrinos.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:15 amThree things:
1) The last Star Trek Voyager episode was wild, wasn’t it?!?!
2) The Hadron Collider serves up a lot of items for speculation. One thing they propose to do is create a “mini-black hole” for some incredibly small amount of time so they can get a glimpse of one without it self-propogating and sucking us all into it. But a few of the people who proposed the experiment have said, “Ummm, it looks like our calculations are off…maybe it will live long enough to self propogate…” At least the end will be quick.
3)Somehow my computer time travelled without me last night. I was having trouble logging into my email and such this morning, and eventually stumbled onto the fact that my computer said it was October 17, 2057 in the evening (hence some web site security time stamps “weren’t up to date”).
Not sure how that happened. I ran Malwarebytes and Avira Antivir and didn’t find anything. The cats had access to the computer last night…
More seriously, I can fathom existence outside of time looking in, and I remember long ago reading about the possibility of particles that move faster than light going back through time, but “they had always been that way” (“Tachyons”, I believe?)
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:31 amThe sun generates energy this way and 4% of it’s radiation is in the form of neutrinos.
Comment by Machinist
What kind of sun block works for those?
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:33 amYeah, folks say that, but do you ever get the feelin’ you’re only going with girls ’cause you’re supposed to?
East Coast Chris (c31a9b) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:35 am1) The last Star Trek Voyager episode was wild, wasn’t it?!?
I didn’t apreciate it. After all their efforts, successes, failures, it felt deus ex machina to have a future Janeway cause their successful return to the Alpha Quadrant. I felt cheated.
aunursa (a2a019) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:41 amMD in Philly,
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:47 amEvery square inch of our bodies is hit by thousands of them each second but the average person only absorbs one in their lifetime. It takes the energy released in the sun’s core about a million years to work it’s way to the surface but neutrinos take only seconds, this is the key to some supernova explosions. If you find that shield, please let us know!!!
Well I did say that I was practicing physics without a license.
I was coming from the conservation of energy; energy is neither created nor destroyed only transformed.
But consider what it would mean if the universe, or membranes if you’re so inclined, allowed for transferring mass-energy from one time to another. It would be the ultimate in “Robbing Peter to pay Paul”.
If mass-energy could be sent back in time, then it would appear in the past as if it were being created out of nothing. Future points could also send back mass-energy making the past even bigger, and the present even smaller. And eventually the same mass-energy in the past could be relayed backward in time even farther.
Could it be that the big-bang is nothing more than some future universe moving everything back as far as possible? All that mass-energy in the non-existent space-time of the beginning?
I am glad that today’s St. Patrick’s Day, I’m going to need a lot of green beer to choke this one down.
Jeff Crump (f9f615) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:47 amI have some twelve year old Irish whiskey and some of it may not get any older than tonight.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:49 am“At least the end will be quick.”
Not really, unless you mean on a cosmic time scale. The event horizon of such a small black hole would be very small for a long time so it would eat slowly.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:52 amThis exact situation was dealt with in the novel “Thrice Upon a Time” by James P. Hogan. Part of the plot deals with the paradox of sending messages back in time and the author reasonably explains a way out.
Count de Money (da7956) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:56 amComment by aunursa
I guess my imagination is more easily pacified than yours.
If we could do time travel, the most practical application would be to go back in time and buy appliances made to last- black market speculation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704662604576202212717670514.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/17/2011 @ 9:57 amMachinist-
Sorry, my neutrino comment was more tongue in cheek- but since you bring it up, am I correct in thinking/remembering that neutrinos have virtually no mass so they just go through things?
A black hole would “eat slowly”. What does that mean? I’m thinking that something so dense that it’s gravitational pull will not even let light escape would suck in surrounding material pretty quick. I guess it might be “slow” while incredibly small, but I would think that a baseball sized black hole would not exist with an earth surrounding it very long (or rather an earth would not survive next to a baseball sized black hole).
Maybe I should stick to biochemistry…
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/17/2011 @ 10:06 amif this guy could go back in time I feel in my heart that he would make better choices
happyfeet (a55ba0) — 3/17/2011 @ 10:23 amNeutrinos are so small the space in matter is huge and as they have no charge they just slip through the very large cracks between particles. Most slip through the earth without coming close to another particle.
A baseball sized black hole would be quite massive. The one produced in an accelerator would be extremely small and would absorb the odd particle or atom as it encountered it. The key to a black hole is the high surface gravity which is related to density, not total mass. A milligram of matter has a very small gravitational field but if you pack it densely enough the surface gravity will be high enough that the escape velocity will exceed the speed of light. It is still only a milligram of mass though and it will not suck matter in any more than a grain of dust the same mass. Such a small black hole will not normally form by itself, it would take a mass more than 1.8 times the mass of our sun to do that. In the high energy environment they are creating, these things might be possible. I don’t have the science to speculate about the stability of such a small black hole.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 10:24 amThe mass-energy problem goes away if there is always some kind of universal “now”, and that time is an illusion. Immanuel Kant sure has a lot to answer for! Damn it!
Where is that bottle of Glenlivet I had here last week?
Jeff Crump (f9f615) — 3/17/2011 @ 10:24 amI’ve been time-traveling since tomorrow; no big deal.
ras (ceba62) — 3/17/2011 @ 11:56 amI don’t have the science to speculate about the stability of such a small black hole.
Comment by Machinist — 3/17/2011
When “push comes to shove”, neither do the geniuses who want to find out.
The key to a black hole is the high surface gravity which is related to density, not total mass.
So, at the surface of the black hole, light cannot escape, but gravitational pull 1 mm away from the surface would be dependent on the total mass of the object, which is incredibly small, so growth in mass of the black “holito” would essentially be dependent, initially, on whatever atoms or other particles essentially ran into it, am I correct in looking at it that way?
Newton had it so easy…but he was still a genius.
MD in Philly (3d3f72) — 3/17/2011 @ 12:17 pmIf you take Kevin M’s posts to their logical conclusion, it seems time travel does exist in other realities but it doesn’t exist in ours not because it hasn’t happened in the past or future, but because it it is not happening right now.
Ag80 (efea1d) — 3/17/2011 @ 12:49 pmGoodness, of course time travel is possible and has been used extensively. People complain about Hitler but don;t ealize that without Hitler the Communist War would have been a nuclear confrontation and the radiation would still keep Europe uncolonizable in 2200, Levi’s Germany would have been far worse for the world. People should understand that this is the worst reality*, except for all the others which have been tried.
*except for the Cubs, it probably would be a much better reality if it weren’t prohibited to let the Cubs win the World Series. no explanation either on why the Cubs cannot win.
max (2f2a28) — 3/17/2011 @ 12:50 pmAs I asked on another site yesterday… would this make it possible to send a PC and printer back to the 1960s? Because we may owe Dan Rather an apology.
And how much power does it take to do this, anyway? 1.21 GW?
Every time travel episode of Star Trek, Star Trek TNG, Star Trek DS9, Star Trek Voyager, and Enterprise sucked.
Except the DS9 “Trouble with Tribbles” crossover. Terry Farrell in a TOS miniskirt allows much to be forgiven.
yeah, Aaron, we ALL ate cheerios…
Well, because of a time-travelling message from the future, I was eating the breakfsat of choice of Olympic Decathlon winner John Belushi… “Little Chocolate Donuts”.
Unfortunately, the message didn’t let us know that it was an SNL skit, and Belushi wasn’t really an Olympic champion…
malclave (1db6c5) — 3/17/2011 @ 1:11 pmmal
every episode with terry farrell was that much better for her inclusion.
i mean joking aside, she was a surprisingly good actress, too.
Aaron Worthing (e7d72e) — 3/17/2011 @ 1:13 pmNo, they sucked. Period.
SPQR (26be8b) — 3/17/2011 @ 1:22 pmIf obama turns us into another argentina we are screwed.
DohBiden (984d23) — 3/17/2011 @ 1:23 pmWell as compared to Sabrina deBoer, who one critic dubbed ‘Sally McTrill’, how about Time Trax
narciso (a3a9aa) — 3/17/2011 @ 1:24 pmWho is Sabrina deBoer?
DohBiden (984d23) — 3/17/2011 @ 1:36 pmSorry Nicole de Boer,http://www.nicoledeboer.com/
narciso (a3a9aa) — 3/17/2011 @ 1:41 pmComment by MD in Philly — 3/17/2011 @ 12:17 pm,
Basically, yes. The gravitational pull an inch from a milligram black hole is the same as the pull from a milligram speck of dust. The surface gravity gets higher as the mass contracts and becomes denser. We don’t really know the size of a black hole itself, I think it works out as a point source. What we observe is the event horizon, the area encompassed by the radius where the escape velocity equals the speed of light. We can test or observe nothing inside this as nothing escapes (probably). As more matter is absorbed the mass will increase and the event horizon will grow but any black hole produced in an accelerator will be subatomic sized and very tiny. As you say, it will almost have to collide with particles to “eat” them for a long time and matter is mostly empty space. In normal matter the atoms travel over 200 times their diameter before “bouncing” off other atoms and the atoms themselves are mostly empty space. Take a star the mass of the sun and compress it down until the electrons are pressed together and it is the size of the planet Uranus, press it down until it is neutrons pressed together and it would be less than twenty miles in diameter. That is a lot of empty space to knock about in. As it does grow then things would move faster.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 2:14 pmA flaw in thinking that time traveling particles mean we can send people or objects through time miss one problem. We can send a man across the country over a copper wire but he will not come out the other end as anything we would recognize as a man since we would have to destroy him in the process of converting him into electricity to sent him over the wire. We have no reason to think we will ever be able to turn that electrical energy back into a living man.
Many time travel stories postulate black holes being wormholes through time. The problem with diving the ship through a black hole to travel through time or space is that any matter is torn to subatomic shreds by tidal forces before it reaches the event horizon. Where ever it came out it would be raw energy or basic particles, not living men or a space ship. We can’t see a black hole itself but the when matter falls into a black hole it is a cosmic light show.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/17/2011 @ 2:22 pmLook, to belabor my point and Aaron’s we can’t time travel in our excistence simply because it has not happened. From a quantum physics level, it may be true in other timelines, but not in ours. It can’t happen because it has never happened, now or in the future. Otherwise we would know. Unless of course this post changes the future. Or the past. Then all bets are off.
Finding a bridge to a timeline where it is possible could be interesting, though.
Nothing, yet.
Ag80 (efea1d) — 3/17/2011 @ 7:25 pm#32 Machinist:
Away from keyboard most of yesterday–had to pay taxes and other mood elevating things. /sarc
I just looked up the classic speed-of-light experiment, the Michelson-Morley test. Channeling my physics TA, it was to prove or disprove the ‘ether’ hypothesis–that light traveled as a displacement of ‘ether’ and would therefor have a different speed in one direction versus another. To no surprise (now) the speed of light was constant over (iirc) two directions. This experiment was done in 1867.
I’d assume that Einstein knew of this when he was working on his hypothesis/theory.
Not sure on the timing of the spectrum-shifting discoveries in astronomy. Astronomical redshifting was discovered circa 1848(!), so this should also have helped develop the theory.
The general-relativity stuff (gravitational lensing) has been checked out more recently, especially with data from the Hubble.
Maybe it really qualified as a theory when published. I’ll skip the snark about consensus. 🙂
Red County Pete (de967e) — 3/18/2011 @ 8:30 amOops, to clarify, MM was using the movement of the earth through the ‘ether’ as a source. I believe they used a few mountain-tops for the mirrors and equipment. The Physics 108 TA used a He-Ne laser (circa 1971) to reproduce the test in a classroom.
Red County Pete (de967e) — 3/18/2011 @ 8:33 amHere ya go sparky’s …. didn’t read the post. But still though ya might enjoy the linked vid (me, embedded it over at my lil backwater shack (ok, it’s a tent). In a post a couple weeks back (but only as a lighter gestaltic reference to skeery ongoing world events).
Enjoy
Elmo (1e59af) — 3/18/2011 @ 9:07 amHilarious video clip. But in all seriousness, on the topic of time travel, I thought I would share this video interview that I stumbled upon a few days ago. Ron Mallett is a renowned scientist who believes he has the skills to create a working time machine over the next 10/15 years. He backs up his ideas using Einstein’s theories of Relativity… check it out and let me know what you think!
Ron Mallett Time Travel
Carrie (4d4da2) — 3/18/2011 @ 10:43 amBTW, does bringing Baby Hitler into the argument violate Godwin’s Law?
Kevin M (73dcc9) — 3/18/2011 @ 4:41 pm#80,Comment by Red County Pete — 3/18/2011 @ 8:30 am,
Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity was not that the speed of light was constant. This was just his postulate on which the theory was built and as you say there was evidence to support it. The theory itself described the relativistic effects of speeds close to that of light on length, mass, and time and gave the equation that described it. These showed that Newtons laws were not the universal laws scientists thought they were and in fact only applied in limited local areas where nothing was very far away, very massive, or going very fast. It completely turned science on it’s head and I don’t think there was any suggestion of it in earlier work, though I admit I am not a historian. What made it qualify as a theory vs a hypothesis in my opinion was that it was worked out including the equations to test and verify it. Had he simply suggested that these things might happen and why or how then it would have been a hypothesis. Einstein showed the math so it could be checked and verified. We have been and are still doing that.
Machinist (b6f7da) — 3/19/2011 @ 5:49 pm