Physicist won't backpedal; says time travel possible

[Dover]

and back to this question again...


Physicist won't backpedal; says time travel possible

MICHELLE LEFORT
USA TODAY

What do you get when you join a 1981 DeLorean, a "flux capacitor" and a digital dial set to Nov. 5, 1955? If you're the character of Dr. Emmett Brown in the 1985 movie "Back to the Future," you've created a time machine.
The possibility of time travel has occupied the fantasies of philosophers, authors, children and directors. But to some physicists, it's more than pure fancy.

In the July issue of Physical Review Letters, Amos Ori, professor of physics at the Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, argues that the laws of physics don't stand in the way of building a time machine.

Ori hasn't created, or even designed, a physical time machine. He instead constructed a situation - a mathematical model - in which the laws of physics will make one for him.

"I write (the situation) mathematically," he says.

"That doesn't mean that I know how to implement it practically."

He adds that if inhabitants of some highly advanced civilization could set up the conditions he describes, they might be able to travel in time...cont'd

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Philedelphia+%2C+time+travel&btnG=Search


Philedelphia experiment?

[cornermouse]

1. Hmmm......

Before November 4, 1999. The possibility of stopping the theft of a nation. Hmmm....

[Ian David]

2. If they do manage to travel through time, we'll know where to find them

Last call for partying time travelers
MIT student makes a date for visitors from future

By Michael Kunzelman
The Associated Press
Updated: 1:52 p.m. ET May 6, 2005

BOSTON - Attention, time travelers: Amal Dorai hopes you enjoyed the party he’s throwing this weekend.

Dorai, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is hosting a Time Traveler Convention on campus this Saturday. Make plans now, because it’s the last such party.

“You only need one,” he said. “The chance that anybody shows up is small, but if it happens it will be one of the biggest events in human history.”

There’s no dress code. No need to R.S.V.P. Refreshments (chips and dip) will be provided.

Dorai only asks his guests to show proof they come from the future: Bringing the cure for cancer, a solution for global poverty or a cold fusion reactor would suffice.

In case MIT is long gone by the time a time machine is invented, Dorai’s invitation includes geographic coordinates for the East Campus Courtyard (42:21:36.025 degrees north, 71:05:16.332 degrees west).

More:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7760879/

[Ian David]

3. The first thing through a time machine will be a bomb

Given an infinite amount of time in the future, terrorists will have an infinite number of opportunities to attack a time machine.

They need to succeed only once.

And when they do, they will send a bomb to destroy the inventor.

Thus, time travel will never be invented.

[Desertrose]

4. wow...so many time periods to choose from....

how to decide.......


and like Fry on Futurama....could you really be your own grandfather?

[China_cat]

5. OF COURSE time travel is possible.

One day at a time into the future.

[shraby]

6. Apparently no one in the future has invented

a time machine because we haven't had any visitors from the future.

[nashville_brook]

7. fyi

http://www.johntitor.com/

[shraby]

10. I read about him, but I have my doubts.

[Desertrose]

8. How do you know we haven't had any??

Like they w ould come out & brag about and then change the future??

Ahhh, the paradox of time travel :evilgrin:

[fasttense]

9. Or have we?????? n/t

[Ian David]

11. It would explain Bush

He could be doing inexplicable and seemingly wrong things just so he can avert a single calamity in the future.

Avert it... or cause it...

[Tesha]

12. ...Because all they know about the Earth is that it's "Mostly Harmless"...

We need a better blurb in their travel guide before the alien visitor
crowd starts rolling in.

Tesha

[greyl]

13. Here's a link to the full Lefort article

here

And another article about Ori's research:

"One of the major difficulties of travelling backwards in time has just been solved, according to an Israeli theoretical physicist. And the solution, he says, is doughnut-shaped.

Trips in time have been theoretically possible ever since Einstein worked out that heavy masses can warp both time and space, and that objects travelling close to the speed of light tend to experience the passage of time more slowly.

Moving forwards in time is therefore easy. Certain short-lived cosmic particles, for example, can be seen on Earth. Their journey looks to us as if it has taken thousands of years, but the particle feels as though it has whipped across space in just a few minutes, and arrives on Earth before it has had time to decay. In effect, the particle has travelled into the future, living beyond its years."

[Celebration]

14. Hawking on board now?

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/mysteries/html/kaku1-1.htmlS

Stephen Hawking once opposed the idea of time travel. He even claimed he had “empirical” evidence against it. If time travel existed, he said, then we would have been visited by tourists from the future. Yet we see no tourists from the future. Ergo: time travel is not possible.

Because of the enormous amount of work done by theoretical physicists within the last five years or so, Hawking has since changed his mind, and now believes that time travel is possible (although not necessarily practical). Furthermore, perhaps we are simply not very interesting to these tourists from the future. Anyone who can harness the power of a star would consider us to be very primitive. Imagine your friends coming across an ant hill. Would they bend down to the ants and give them trinkets, books, medicine, and power? Or would some of your friends have the strange urge to step on a few of them?

In conclusion, don’t turn someone away who knocks at your door one day and claims to be your future great-great-great-granddaughter. She may be right.