Time travellers from the future 'could be here in weeks'

[Mark M. TCCoA VP]

Time travellers from the future 'could be here in weeks'
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 6:01pm GMT 06/02/2008




The first time travellers from the future could materialise on Earth within a few weeks.



Physicists around the world are excitedly awaiting the start up of the £4.65 billion Large Hadron Collider, LHC - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - which is supposed to shed new light on the particles and forces at work in the cosmos and reproduce conditions that date to near the Big Bang of creation.


1.21 gigawatts of electricity: Michael J Fox and Christopher Lloyd in the De Lorean time machine from Back to the Future
Prof Irina Aref'eva and Dr Igor Volovich, mathematical physicists at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow believe that the vast experiment at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, may turn out to be the world's first time machine, reports New Scientist.

The debut in early summer could provide a landmark because travelling into the past is only possible - if it is possible at all - as far back as the point of creation of the first time machine.

That means 2008 could become "Year Zero" for temporal travel, they argue.

Time travel was born when Albert Einstein's colleague, Kurt Gödel, used Einstein's theory of relativity to show that travel into the past was possible.

advertisementEver since he unveiled this idea in 1949, eminent physicists have argued against time travel because it undermines ideas of cause and effect to create paradoxes: a time traveller could go back to kill his grandfather so that he is never born in the first place.

But, sixty years later, there is still no fundamental reason why time travellers cannot put historians out of business.

But the Russians argue that when the energies of the LHC are concentrated into a subatomic particle - a trillionth the size of a mosquito - they can do strange things to the fabric of the universe, which is a blend of space and time that scientists called spacetime.

While Earth's gravity produces gentle distortions in spacetime the LHC energy can distort time so much that it loops back on itself. These loops are known to physicists as "closed timelike curves" and they ought, at least in theory, to allow us to revisit some past moment.

The scheme chimes with one laid out in 1988, when Prof Kip Thorne and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, showed that wormholes, or tunnels through spacetime, would allow time travel, a scheme popularised by Carl Sagan in his novel - made into a film - Contact.

Prof Aref'eva and Dr Volovich believe the LHC could create wormholes and so allow a form of time travel. "We realised that closed timelike curves and wormholes could also be a result of collisions of particles," Prof Aref'eva says.

There are still plenty of obstacles for the likes of Dr Who, however. Not least of them is the fact that these are mini wormholes, so only subatomic particles are small enough to travel through them.

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They tell The Daily Telegraph that whether subatomic time travel in the LHC would open the doors for human scale time travellers "is a deep and interesting question" but stress that "these problems, and many others as well, require further investigations."

Probably the best we can hope for is that the LHC may show a signature of the wormholes' existence, Dr Volovich says. If some of the energy from collisions in the LHC goes missing, it could be because the collisions created particles that have travelled into a wormhole and through time.

One sticking point until now for wormhole concepts is finding an exotic kind of material capable of keeping the maw of the wormhole open for time travel.

Dark energy - a mysterious antigravity force that is thought to pervade the universe - could, they say, be just what is needed to keep the entrance to a wormhole open, at least according to one family of ideas about its nature, where it is called phantom energy.

If a blend of colliding particles and phantom energy does create a wormhole in Geneva this year, an advanced civilisation could find it in their history books, pinpoint the moment, and take advantage of their technology to pay us a visit.

"The observational evidence still allows for phantom energy," says Robert Caldwell, a physicist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. "As for Aref'eva and Volovich's speculation that the LHC will produce the stuff of time machines - ugh!"

A leading scientist who believes that time travel may be possible, Prof David Deutsch of Oxford University, comments: "It's speculative in the extreme, but not cranky. For various reasons I don't think the mechanism they propose would work (i.e. provide a pathway for messages from the future) even if their speculations are true."

Dr Brian Cox of the University of Manchester adds: "The energies of billions of cosmic rays that have been hitting the Earth's atmosphere for five billion years far exceed those we will create at the LHC, so by this logic time travellers should be here already. If these wormholes appear I will personally eat the hat I was given for my first birthday before I received it."

[ThunderChecken]

I for one wish i could go back in time and change some things

[Grog6]

Originally Posted by Mark M. TCCoA VP

Dr Brian Cox of the University of Manchester adds: "The energies of billions of cosmic rays that have been hitting the Earth's atmosphere for five billion years far exceed those we will create at the LHC, so by this logic time travellers should be here already. If these wormholes appear I will personally eat the hat I was given for my first birthday before I received it."

I'm with this guy being right; the biggest cosmic ray event ever recorded was about the energy of the mass of a baseball...

The collider to run up a proton that far would be the size of an outer planet's orbit, if one could be made at all.

I think we'll be just fine.



And if I'm wrong, we all die in an instant, so we won't even notice...

[Splattered]

To say something is impossible is to sound like an archaic dinosaur, mysteries are explainable. This problem can get and will get solved because wouldn't you think the richest people/government on the planet think its worth solving, for however long it takes. You can always go back and get your money back by rewriting history. I'm not claiming its already happened but ya know some people just have a closed mind.

[Koole]

Construct additional pylons.

[alasich]

Originally Posted by Splattered

To say something is impossible is to sound like an archaic dinosaur, mysteries are explainable. This problem can get and will get solved because wouldn't you think the richest people/government on the planet think its worth solving, for however long it takes. You can always go back and get your money back by rewriting history. I'm not claiming its already happened but ya know some people just have a closed mind.

And the world is flat

[Toombs]

Originally Posted by Koole

Construct additional pylons.

Annhialate....Eradicate.

[Blade Runner]

Soooo, who has a spare DeLorean layin' around?

[greencurse]

you gotta be kiddin me... who comes up with these theories they must smoke stuff

[Grasshopper]

Here's a link to the webcam of the LHC.

[ThunderChecken]

lol Good one there Hopper !! Getting took in by the Blackhole

[Trunk Monkey]

Well, it looks like the people from the future or anybody planning on heading back in time are going to have to wait at least two more months. lol.

'Big bang machine' study halted for 2 months
Damage to $10 billion particle collider is worse than previously believed

[Grog6]

Originally Posted by Trunk Monkey

Well, it looks like the people from the future or anybody planning on heading back in time are going to have to wait at least two more months. lol.

'Big bang machine' study halted for 2 months
Damage to $10 billion particle collider is worse than previously believed

Yeah, the sad thing is that those magnets were made Here in the good ole US of A...

We are looking like asshats in the world scientific community about now.

These were made by Fermilab, the last American competitor to CERN...



Cracking the containment and leaking liquid helium everywhere is a really, really bad mistake in a design; evaporating too much is seen as 'poor engineering', and will get someone fired. (one of the groups I work with designs MR magnets...)

Sad day for American engineering, for sure.

[v8_superbirdy]

to travel back in time would ruin our economy...because evceryone would go back and withdrawl money and buy stocks when they went back it would just corrupt us in the end instead of us actually caring what we had done or care what needs to be done

[Gonzalo Duque]

You not only need a DeLorean, you need one of these:

[Grasshopper]

Looks like you wasted your time with that sign.

It's "Gigawatts".

[Gonzalo Duque]

You're absolutely correct on the spelling, but I didn't make the sign - I filched it from another site. I didn't have time to fix it in Photoshop!

[Koole]

Apparently you guys don't know where jigawatts comes from.

[MadMikeyL]

Shouldn't it be spelled Gigawatts?

[MikeRWK]

Originally Posted by Koole

Apparently you guys don't know where jigawatts comes from.

Jay-Z? :P

[Trunk Monkey]

Originally Posted by v8_superbirdy

to travel back in time would ruin our economy...because evceryone would go back and withdrawl money and buy stocks when they went back it would just corrupt us in the end instead of us actually caring what we had done or care what needs to be done

We don't need to travel back in time to ruin our economy! We can (and have) taken care of that right here and now!

[Johnny Cougar]

Originally Posted by Trunk Monkey

We don't need to travel back in time to ruin our economy! We can (and have) taken care of that right here and now!

Mabye the time travellers are here. Mabye that is what is happening....

[Mark M. TCCoA VP]

"Maybe the time travelers are here. Maybe that is what is happening..."


I just soiled myself



.

[Trunk Monkey]

Originally Posted by Johnny Cougar

Mabye the time travellers are here. Mabye that is what is happening....

Originally Posted by Mark M. TCCoA VP

"Maybe the time travelers are here. Maybe that is what is happening..."


I just soiled myself

.

lol. Great minds think alike!

[KewlBird]

Originally Posted by Johnny Cougar

Mabye the time travellers are here. Mabye that is what is happening....

If time travel was possible wouldn't they come to help solve the issues?, meaning we would see the time travelers from the future....unless the Russians have already done it and they want to frighten everyone by saying this will kill us all so they will be the only ones traveling through the time. Infact, they probably made some adjustments so that Bush gets elected in order to ruin US economy . It all makes sense now .

My theory is:
Time travelers of the future would have shown up at some point in our lives already if this was possible. Due to lack of time travelers I've come to the conclusion that the only thing we have done in the future is destroyed the earth. Either with the LHC, nukes or whatever else but we have done it somehow.

[95LX]

the Russians have already done it...Infact, they probably made some adjustments in order to ruin US economy. It all makes sense now.

Hey now, I didn't travel here from the future just to be blamed for our current economic status! I just so happen to be a Russian and chose this particular time to make a quick buck playing the stock market last week.
Wouldn't you do the same if you had the opportunity? Ok, gotta go now. And please don't ask me who the next President will be, you'll have to wait and see. Oh, and don't forget to get out there and VOTE!

[cobrajoe]

Originally Posted by KewlBird

If time travel was possible wouldn't they come to help solve the issues?, meaning we would see the time travelers from the future....unless the Russians have already done it and they want to frighten everyone by saying this will kill us all so they will be the only ones traveling through the time. Infact, they probably made some adjustments so that Bush gets elected in order to ruin US economy . It all makes sense now .

My theory is:
Time travelers of the future would have shown up at some point in our lives already if this was possible. Due to lack of time travelers I've come to the conclusion that the only thing we have done in the future is destroyed the earth. Either with the LHC, nukes or whatever else but we have done it somehow.

Well Sir, I disagree with you...

We are not going to destroy the earth, we are going to destroy ourselves. Something will live on this planet after we are gone, but it will probably be adapted to live in the environment we left.

Unless, of course, Dr Evil sends a nuke to the core of the earth...

Either way, We're screwed

[joshbea6]

Originally Posted by KewlBird

If time travel was possible wouldn't they come to help solve the issues?, meaning we would see the time travelers from the future....unless the Russians have already done it and they want to frighten everyone by saying this will kill us all so they will be the only ones traveling through the time. Infact, they probably made some adjustments so that Bush gets elected in order to ruin US economy . It all makes sense now .

My theory is:
Time travelers of the future would have shown up at some point in our lives already if this was possible. Due to lack of time travelers I've come to the conclusion that the only thing we have done in the future is destroyed the earth. Either with the LHC, nukes or whatever else but we have done it somehow.

Dude......

The MATRIX has you............



Just remember.....all I'm offering you is the TRUTH...

[KewlBird]

Originally Posted by joshbea6

Dude......

The MATRIX has you............


Just remember.....all I'm offering you is the TRUTH...

Hmmm, I've never seen Matrix. It might be good time to....

[Mark M. TCCoA VP]

Originally Posted by cobrajoe

Well Sir, I disagree with you...

We are not going to destroy the earth, we are going to destroy ourselves. Something will live on this planet after we are gone, but it will probably be adapted to live in the environment we left.

Unless, of course, Dr Evil sends a nuke to the core of the earth...

Either way, We're screwed

Maybe we are already dead