Topic: Fascinating: Documentary on time travel (Read 11576 times)

Stormbringer · « **on:** December 03, 2003, 09:59:53 pm »

On the learning channel but originally from the science channel. Explains how lasers can be used to twist space and hence time into loops rather than straight lines as we normally percieve it. It replicates a spinning blackhole. Key technical challenge: lasers. The lasers need to be extraordinarily powerful. [But not the cosmic levels of power called for for many such FTL or time travel tricks] Caveat; it will only create time loops starting the moment it was turned on. But it will prove time travel is possible with out paradoxes. The experiment would use particles as the time traveller subject.

The lasers are actually hugely more efficient at creating rotational frame dragging of space/time than the rotating mass of a black hole. Astonishing. Credible scientists and engineers are seriously discussing this experiment rather than fringer nuts.
The machine is being constructed even as I am describing it.

Stormbringer · « **Reply #1 on:** December 03, 2003, 10:26:29 pm »

The show was finishing as I typed. Perhaps it will repeat.

Rat_Boy · « **Reply #2 on:** December 03, 2003, 10:29:01 pm »

The Vulcan Science Directorate has declared that time travel is impossible. And that's good enough for me.

Stormbringer · « **Reply #3 on:** December 03, 2003, 10:35:59 pm »

But the vulcans are a bunch of stuffed shirts who wouldn't know how to have fun at a party if they read a manual on it.

Strafer · « **Reply #4 on:** December 04, 2003, 12:57:28 am »

I wouldn't know, I lost my manual...

(and thus this thread is condemned to the horsey graveyard)

Toasty0 · « **Reply #5 on:** December 04, 2003, 01:25:41 am »

Quote:

The show was finishing as I typed. Perhaps it will repeat.

I caught it on the west coast. I like the theory of frame dragging. From my seriously deficient laymen's perspective it seems to hold a lot of promise,

And thus we have brought this thread back on topic.

Best,
Jerry

Corbomite · « **Reply #6 on:** December 04, 2003, 01:37:19 am »

I was simply amazed by this program. I knew about the frame dragging, but never even thought lasers could be structured in that way to produce the same effect. That dimensional theory was very interesting too. If true it would explain a lot about particle physics. Of course our hopes for prediction on that level would also go out the door unless a way to perceive the other dimension(s) was developed.

Atrahasis · « **Reply #7 on:** December 04, 2003, 03:43:30 am »

Did America get this program late or something? I saw this documentary or something very much like it I think on the BBC last year.

Stormbringer · « **Reply #8 on:** December 04, 2003, 03:44:53 am »

I think the way they illustrated it was on par with Sagan's explanation of mass warping space using a bowling ball and a trampoline along with a smaller ball. It really cleared up a few things from the diminsional theory to frame dragging. But I did not get to see it all the way through. each time I just caught the last twenty minutes or so. darn it.

jualdeaux · « **Reply #9 on:** December 04, 2003, 02:12:47 pm »

People really like to complicate things. i mean come one, I made a ship with a drive that can take you anywhere you want to go. All I needed for the drive was a paper clip a rubber band and a brownian motion source.

Stormbringer · « **Reply #11 on:** December 04, 2003, 06:22:36 pm »

All right, thats it! I hearby accuse some of you of being members of the illuminati conspiracy to keep humanity from the stars!
You know who you ar----(Urrrrrrrk!! Thump!)

Dash Jones · « **Reply #12 on:** December 04, 2003, 06:53:06 pm »

Haven't seen it. Enlighten me...

How are they going to be able to measure whether they've made a time loop or not without being able to go back in time themselves?

If they are able to do this, would they be able to send messages backwards in time to themselves via the loop, hence able to change the past and the future?

Corbomite · « **Reply #13 on:** December 04, 2003, 07:11:20 pm »

They assume that once the machine is turned on and kept on, they would start to receive messages from themselves in the future. Things will only be able to travel back in time to the point the machine was turned on so it's not like they can go back to ancient Rome or anything. At this point they are only discussing using subatomic particles.

The dimensional theory they discussed showed how even if you could go back and try to change something significant you couldn't because it has happened for you and can't be changed. The differences you experience would be in another dimension where those events were supposed to happen that way.

Corbomite · « **Reply #14 on:** December 04, 2003, 07:17:44 pm »

Here are some links to related articles. The man's name is Professor Ronald Mallet.

Link

Link II

Stormbringer · « **Reply #15 on:** December 04, 2003, 07:32:14 pm »

I think at first they plan on using particles as the guinea pigs. If radioactive nuclei are used the discrepancies will show up in decay rates. There may be ways to measure the effects via an atomic clock. Anyway theory that Einstein developed predicted frame dragging and the subsequent consequences including "time loops." It stands to reason that the theory predicts the results of such things and that suggests ways to test if the theory is correct. I.E; did the time loop happen or not? as dash asked.

Atrahasis · « **Reply #17 on:** December 05, 2003, 03:18:13 am »

I give it until 2012 for the first machine to be created.

Stormbringer · « **Reply #18 on:** December 05, 2003, 03:28:08 am »

If the show was a year old as you say then the test articles should be done by now and experiments underway. Of course from the looks of it in the show they already had some sort of experimental set up unless they were using a mock up laser system. So are you saying that they will have a human scaled machine by 2012? Or are you saying they will have a full scale particle test machine at that time?

Stormbringer · « **Reply #19 on:** December 05, 2003, 03:31:45 am »

On that note: if the frame dragging is as intense as a black hole, I wonder if the thing could act as a synthetic blackhole that one could dump matter into to provide more energy than consumed by the lasers? (like the fictional Romulans power system.) Not very likely due to thermodynamics but if the frame dragging really is all that then it might be. I shall have to study frame dragging som more.

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Topic: Fascinating: Documentary on time travel (Read 11576 times)