One of the theories among common people is that traveling faster than the speed of light will allow you to go back in time. I believe that not only is it physically impossible for anything to travel faster than the speed of light, but I argue that even if we could, it would not be going back in time! Take a look again at Dr. Hawking's fabulous light cones diagram.
As we look at the light cone, over time, light travels farther and farther. An object slower than light can only travel inside the boundaries of the light cone. However, something faster than light can go outside the light cone. Here's the problem. Even though you are going outside the light cone, you are still going forward in time. No matter how fast you get, you cannot go so fast that you go back in time. In fact, the only way to move downwards on the time axis is to travel at a negative speed! That means you would have to travel a negative distance over time (which is impossible) or that you would have to travel a distance in negative time (which is the item being disputed). Nothing can go anywhere in a negative amount of time though.Something that is also missing in this example is that if you were going backwards in time, what makes you think you can go forward again? So now there is this idea that you can switch between negative and positive speeds at any time, traveling negative or positive distances at will! I highly doubt this is possible, and I would like to hear someone tell me how to travel at a negative speed!
I think that theory is pretty much destroyed in my mind. However, there are many more interesting theories out there. One such theory is that of a wormhole, and wormholes are becoming a more popular theory. Wormholes connect two areas in space time in a shorter distance than three dimensions allow. Space time is said to be curved, and wormholes supposedly could connect two portions of spacetime as shown in this diagram.
The wormhole can take you to somewhere before many events have happened there! Here's the problem. A wormhole also moves you somewhere else in space. So, congratulations! You went back in time! But now you are stuck somewhere else in an earlier time period. Since light shows us what happens somewhere else, you may be going back i time, but you cannot change the past. You are actually still affecting the future of your previous location from your current location! Here's an attempt at a better explanation. Say I am on Earth right now on April 22, 2010. I am sucked through a wormhole and end up on the sun on April 14, 2010. If it takes light 8 days to get to the Earth, I am still technically only able to affect the "present" or the "future". I am not greatly familiar with wormholes, but what if this was the case? What if wormholes were still only able to take you back relatively, but not in actuality? This scenario I doubt has ever been examined. If wormholes can take you back in time, is it back far enough? Further research is required to answer that question.Where are these wormholes? There are supposed to be microscopic wormholes that allow small particles of matter and antimatter to enter and leave our existence. This involves quantum mechanics, which is a very uncertain science. Experiments have shown particles to appear and disappear in a vacuum tube (that means no matter was inside, and no matter could get in or out through physical means!). Where do these particles come from? Scientists believe wormholes may be the answer, allowing particles to jump in and out of space and time. One key question. How come we do not do the same? Why don't wormholes appear in a person's brain and cause his memory cells to be whisked away to some other time period, resulting in the man forgetting where he left his house key? I suppose wormholes can only occur under certain conditions. One condition is thought to be in a black hole.
A black hole is a very complex system. Black holes will be covered more in depth in a later post, but for now, you only need to know the basics of a black hole. Black holes form when a star of a very large mass collapses on itself, creating a ton of gravitational force, forces so great, that even light cannot escape. This massive amount of gravity bends space time so much that it is said to create a singularity, or a point in which the laws of general relativity cannot mathematically explain the result. This is because according to relativity, the space time curvature would be infinite. Scientists believe this radical conclusion can be solved by entering wormholes. The problem with that is that the gravity would crush matter drastically, and you would have to travel faster than the speed of light to get through the wormhole.
Allow me to further explain why you cannot go faster than the speed of light. According to our current laws of physics (which I believe are very much correct) energy and mass are proportional. If you have two masses, one of 10 grams and one of 5 grams, the 10 gram mass will have more energy. Speed and mass are also related. The faster an object is traveling, the greater amount of mass an object has. Finally, speed and energy are related, because to move an object of any mass requires energy. As explained by Dr. Hawking, as an object picks up speed, it acquires more mass. As it picks up mass, the object needs more energy to increase its speed. As you get closer to the speed of light, the object needs more and more energy to speed it up because it is accumulating more and more mass. An object of any mass cannot reach the speed of light because an object would acquire an infinite amount of mass in the process, requiring an infinite amount of energy to make the object go faster. The only thing that can travel as fast as light is something with no mass, such as a particle of light (amazing!).
That, however, does provide evidence as to why wormholes only affect small particles! Because only a small particle of no mass can travel fast enough to go through a wormhole! However, this also shows that humans cannot physically travel time through a wormhole (sad face). Humans have mass, so that ends that! Also, a human would be absolutely destroyed in a black hole! The intense amount of gravity would rip a human being to shreds! Say goodbye to wormhole time travel (for humans, anyway).
A few final thoughts. If we could travel time, then how come we haven't seen any beings appear? Or, even more intriguing, are history professors of the future among us, learning what they can about us to tell their students in the future? Are they the aliens that we supposedly see? Are they what we interpret as ghosts? How come we aren't all destroyed? Most likely if we could travel time, someone would ruin it for everyone and destroy the world with nukes before humans even existed! Dr. Hawking makes a point that there could be multiple histories, and if you go back in time, you are creating another history. However, that would mean you live more than once, or if time travel occurred in the new histories, you would live infinitely many times! I find that ridiculous! Therefore, I believe time travel is impossible for certain for a human being, and even if microscopic particles could travel time, it would have very little effect on humans. That is my current stand. If you have any other time travel theories or protest my reasoning for any of the above mentioned theories, comment and I may or may not respond.
I am amazed at how much space this single post takes up! I hope that all this thought is appreciated by someone!
ReplyDeleteIt certainly is appreciated. I just don't understand how you said only things with no mass can achieve light speed. Doesn't e=mc^2 mean that energy (light) has mass?
ReplyDeleteAlso, how are wormholes created?
Light actually does not have mass. That is why it can reach such a high speed! There is a difference between having energy and actually being energy! Because light is energy, it does not "have" energy, so the equation still holds true.
ReplyDeleteAs far as how wormholes are created, I am not sure, other than that they may form in the center of black holes. I will comment later if I find anything.
In fact, according to Dr. Hawking's A Brief History of Time, no energy particles have mass, including light. Matter particles, on the other hand, do. Also, waves and particles are considered one and the same. Therefore, a light particle and a light wave are the same. Gravity also works along these lines, in the form of particles called gravitons. Gravity does not have mass, now does it? It however, is gravitational energy. Therefore, particles do not have to have mass if they are energy particles or waves. This kind of science involves a lot of quantum mechanics, a science that deals with the structure and properties of particles and waves.
ReplyDeleteI hate to disagree with the work of Stephen Hawking,I don't even know if I am or not, but I have decided that our universe is spherical and will and does come together at the "poles" before turning around and going back(big bang when they seperate crunch when they colide). Fractile Geometry states that this should happen in smaller things as well, such as particles and Anti-particles. + and - = 0.
ReplyDeleteWhen they come together they 'dissappear', as Dr. Hawking put it, and reappear when they seperate. The particles are always mirrored across the 4D axis. That theory abolishes the idea of worm holes, and therefore time travel through them all together. Not to mension, sinse everything has an anti-particle figure of itself(going in reverse order,(the example with the glass of water unspilling)) the same works for us. That explains the Big bang theory and making everything out of nothing.
If this hasn't confused you enough already, I also believe that complex life (complex meaning people, or the equivelent of us in smaller/larger demensions)can exists in the real particles when time is traveling forward and in the anti-particles when time goes backward. This is explained better by Dr. Hawking, he just didn't add complex life in anti-particles as I understood it. So in effect, being that we don't exactly know if we are real or anti-particles, we are going back in time(real or anti-, the opposite of what we are) right now. The only problem is that whatever happened before at this location was distroyed at the closure of the last 'era' and the beginning of this one, so we'll never know.
Shannon, I agree that the universe is spherical for one very important reason. If there was a big bang, matter would go out in all directions, most likely at the same speed in any direction. Our universe may not be a perfect sphere due to disruption of some sort, but at least in our 3D view spherical nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that there are antiparticles does not abolish the idea of wormholes for this key reason. How come matter defeated anti-matter? We may have just gotten lucky, but as far as we know, matter won! There are no anti-complex beings to our knowledge. Where did all the antiparticles go then?
In the ball in the tube experiment, where for those who are not familiar with this experiment, a ball was placed in an otherwise complete vacuum tube and it was discovered that the ball began to move even though it was stationary. If I have gone wrong someone please correct me. Scientists came to the conclusion that since it takes energy to move the ball, there must have been other matter. Where did it come from? A wormhole could have been the solution, but in quantum mechanics, it is believed that particles will randomly appear and disappear with their antiparticle counterparts. Therefore I pose one question; was there antimatter in that tube as well as matter? If so, then it is likely that quantum mechanics is correct. If not, then perhaps it is a wormhole.
If Antimatter is the reverse direction of matter, in both space and time, then that means the universe is symmetrical in all ways, including Big Bang and Big Crunch. Also, halfway through the existence of the universe, the universe will start to contract.
You say we are going back in time because we are going the opposite direction of the opposite of us. Is it not easier to say that we are just going forward? It is much more stable for matter to sustain life than for antimatter to do so. Complex life would not be able to thrive if it went in the reverse direction. You would be stuck with whatever happened before, losing all free will to do anything. It is best that matter is what complex life is made out of.
Actually, if antiparticles were the exact opposite of us, then we have no free will. Only what we believe to be our free will. This because antiparticles are doing the exact opposite of what we are doing according to you. This idea haunts me. The fact that our future has already been played out through antiparticles. Therefore, I believe that if complex life has any free will at all, that antiparticles must not be going opposite of us in time.
I was more referring to the time arrows. The psycological arrow and the thermodynamic arrow have to be pointing the same direction for civilization. Therefore when the thermodynamic arrow goes forwards the psycological arrow must also. The thermodynamic arrow changes direction at every big bang for I believe that ours was not the first. If both were pointing backwards it would appear to go from being ordered to disorderred, as we see it. We might be in the reverse or exact opposite world that we think we are in.
ReplyDeleteThen I was stating that if we were travelling negatively on the thermodynamic arrow, we would be going "back" in forward moving time and also true for the opposite. That might make more since if I mentioned that I think we are in a time loop but enstead of skipping back to the beginning, we took the same path as the one to get to the end of the loop, but backwards of coarse.
That is why it made more since to me to have the forward moving particles be real and the backwards moving particles be anti-particles. both exist at the same time, but (also another crazy idea) the psycological arrow doesn't change directions, the logical direction of development to keep ordered matter first changes particles. I am glad that idea haunts you.
I have now changed my Idea of the shape of our universe(there are multiple of those too) to look similar to that of Earth's magnetic feild. The Anti-matter is on the opposite side. If the earth developped on the north side on the pime merridean It's anti-earth would be on the south side on the international date line(if they were "straight" that is) They seperate completely oblivious to each other until they come back together at the "core". Seperated they both have charge and we can identify them as matter until they "annihilate" each other becoming nutral. like positive and negative Ions.
Finally I think that the cosmological arrow of time is completely indepentent to the thermodynamic arrow because anti-matter(assuming we live in real) is currently going backwards on the cosmological arrow to what it is supposed to according to Hawking.
I appologize for any distruction I may have caused to your brain or way of living. Especially religious beliefs, it is such a touchy subject.
In the time loop you speak of, are we on the forward or backward route, or does it matter(No pun intended...)?
ReplyDeleteBasically, you believe there is a mirror image of everything across the galaxy? If that is true, then the time arrows could not be opposite! Because if we are on opposite sides, and we have to collide at the core, wouldn't we both be going forward in time, just in opposite views? Doesn't it make more sense for both matter and antimatter to be going forward in time, just with mirror images, that way what is happening now is happening in anti-world as well?
I think this version of your theory makes more sense. However, there is still one problem. In the ball and the vacuum tube experiment, the matter and anti-matter particles supposedly appeared in the tube. Now you and I both know that it is most unlikely that that spot in the entire universe is the core! So, how come those particles were appearing there?
To answer to the final paragraph, I find all of this thought more of brain construction rather than destruction, and if my way of living is being destroyed for this, then so be it!
What are antimatter and antiparticles? How can they influence our free will? Is it possible that the ball and vacuum tube experiment has another explanation?
ReplyDeleteWell, antiparticles are basically a mirror image of normal particles in every way. We know they exist because we have discovered them and created them ourselves. If an antiparticle collides with a normal particle, both disappear. Therefore, it can be inferred that every particle has an antiparticle, but that has not been proven.
ReplyDeleteTo take it further, Shannon believes that on the other side of space exists an anti Earth, anti Solar System, anti Milky Way galaxy, and so on. The universe has two sides in this case, matter side and antimatter side.
Also, a matter particle and its antimatter particle do the exact same things, but in a mirror image of each other. So as I am typing this comment, so is anti-Dan.
When I was talking about our free will, Shannon believed that time was also in reverse with antiparticles. I don't like that because since we are still in the expansion stage of this universe's history, our universe is not even half of its final age. That means in antiearth, our future has already been played out. If our future had already happened, we really have no choice in our decisions because we will always do what the antiparticles did. Therefore, I believe that in this theory, time must go forward in both matter and antimatter. This theory in general is still greatly disputable. We have no idea that antiworlds exist, but it appears as though every particle has an antiparticle, so why should it be otherwise?
I am not as familiar with the ball and the vacuum tube experiment as Shannon is. Isn't there always another explanation for everything though? The two most likely solutions we have are antiparticles and normal particles forming from space or wormholes transporting these particles in and out of the tube.
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ReplyDeleteOr... the ball moved from some less epic force- magnetism or gravity or something. But YAY! Antimatter makes sense now!
ReplyDeleteExcept the time thing. Time goes forward only, even if it's only forward according to the people in it. If the anti-matter forward is our backward, things would be moving impossibly according to cause and effect; someone can't be un-born or become un-hungry. That would be a useful way to predict the future, though, if we could see what the anti-matter was doing. Can we see it?
How do we know the antimatter is neatly contained in its corner of the universe? (Maybe that's why all my pens keep disappearing!) Can we touch, see, taste, and otherwise physically interact with antimatter, as long as it is not of ourselves?
ReplyDeleteWow, I posted the same comment twice! I always knew I was an idiot! But for those who still listen to me anyway...
ReplyDeleteYes, I believe we can see antimatter, because scientists have created it. Also, I believe time moves in the same fashion for both matter and antimatter.
Scientists do not think gravity moved it because it was moving laterally as well, to the best of my knowledge, a type of motion that gravity cannot cause assuming the tube was placed parallel to the ground (since the ground is round it cannot be parallel but I think you get the idea).
We do not know for sure that antimatter exists on the other side of the universe, it is a theory. But antimatter is not in a corner! According to this theory, antimatter would dominate half of the universe! That's a little more than a corner.
As far as interacting with antimatter, I am not sure what would happen. I have never tried punching an antimatter punching bag (as cool as it sounds...).
I'm still confused on how the antimatter got created. You said scientists made it, but isn't it just there because its counterpart in the real matter is there?
ReplyDeleteOK, I did a little research on antimatter. There are three types of subatomic particles, called the proton, neutron, and electron. However, there are also anti protons, anti neutrons, and positrons(opposite of electrons). If any electron touches any positron, then both are annihilated. Same for other types of antimatter.
ReplyDeleteIt is created by scientists by using a particle accelerator. The accelerator speeds up a particle (usually an electron) and smashes it into an atom, causing positrons to form (anti-electrons). Positrons are often created by matter to neutralize the charge of an atom. If the charge is positive, and the particle requires a neutral charge to be stable, then a positron is formed out of the extra energy. Because of E=Mc^2, mass and energy are proportional, and energy can be traded for mass.
When two particles "annihilate" each other, it creates gamma rays, a form of energy. So mass is traded for energy. I believe that the particles can reappear in a new location from the gamma rays, but I'm not positive about that (ha ha, puns...).
Now, scientists did not first create antimatter, but we really don't know how it got there in the first place. It could be a law of conservation of matter/antimatter of some sort. I will try to do more research on the topic.
Whether or not time travel is feasible is really beyond me. I'm far more interested in the ethics of it. SHOULD we venture into our pasts if given the opportunity? If you haven't already, you should read Bradbury's short story "The Sound of Thunder."
ReplyDeleteThis might intrigue you...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.timetravelreviews.com/
Thanks for the site, Ms. Washburn! In my opinion, time travel would be a bad idea given the opportunity. Most likely, the technology would get in the wrong hands, and somebody would end up destroying Earth in the process! One small change in the past can cause a massive chain reaction, making everything different in the future (if there was a future once somebody went back...). If anybody ever figured out how to travel back in time, I would hope that the government could keep the machinery under control to keep the people safe!
ReplyDeleteNo, even going back in time is too risky unless it is to an uninhabited planet. Who knows what would happen? The question is, what if you altered something in the future? Sorry if it's scientifically impossible, I'm just wondering.
ReplyDeleteIf you altered something in the future, it could only affect the future of that future! It would be an interesting concept, putting your name on inventions that have not been invented yet. This is one of the main reasons why scientists do not believe in time travel to the past, because it would cause so many paradoxes.
ReplyDeleteThat's why you can only go into the future, not the past! If you go into the future, you would just be considered to have lived longer! Stephen Hawking on his show "Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking" about time travel, introduced a theory that since mass builds up with speed, and time slows down with an increase in mass, then if you traveled on a train around the earth as close as possible to the speed of light, time would slow down enough in the train that you would go into the future! You would then be in the future, but you cannot return to the past. Therefore, you can do whatever you want in the future, without really changing anything in the past, because you can't go back in time. This type of time travel could be allowed.
However, a train would not be the best option. If a train was traveling around the earth 7 times per second, first of all, no human could withstand that type of speed and live. Secondly, the metal rail would melt because of the friction, causing the train to come to a very sudden halt! Third, an engine to power a train at that type of speed would have to be enormous and very strong, because a small engine would very quickly burn out! Therefore, I think it is unlikely that we will be traveling to the future anytime soon!