The New Scientist published a very interesting article regarding a new approach to making a time machine. Ronald Mallett, a professor of physics at the University of Connecticut, has proposed that two counter-rotating beams of light might be used as a time machine. Mallett had previously worked out that a beam of light that has been refracted or reflected into a circular path should produce a kind of vortex in space within its circle. This is due to the phenomenon of frame-dragging from general relativity, which holds that a massive rotating body will drag spacetime around itself as it rotates. Light, while it doesn't have mass, can also bend spacetime, as it turns out. Of course, for the effect to be appreciable, the light needs to be quite intense.

The link has much more info and pretty pictures: http://www.newscientist.com/features/features.jsp?id=ns22911

Hmm that is interesting...

Did anyone read about the 'time travel' they observed with light?

Aparently they were 'putting' a laser into a gaseous envrionment, and the light 'left' the gas before it 'could' have.

I don't ahve many details, but it was interesting...

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Manu Narayan

that turned out to be a fluke, they made some miscalculations there manu, sorry to bust your bubble http://discussanything.com/Ubb/wink.gif

that is a bust....

that was a favorite topic of manu and mine....

every time i think of that, it blew my mind...but now...my fun is lost ;(

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"The only thing i know is that i don't know"
-Socrates
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Well if time travel is definitely possible, consider us already being visited by people from the future. I have heard people interviewed on radio shows that claim to be time travelers, who knows?

Time travel into the future is a known, proveable fact. Your traveling into the future right now, just very slowly.

I hate to break this to you all but I know for a FACT that there will NEVER be time travel on earth EVER. I know this because if at any point it did come to pass in our distant future, time travelers would have been coming back to the past through our history or to current times and we would already know about it. I guess one could argue that time travelers would have some sort of "prime directive" to not interfear with people of the past and mess up the time-history continium. Or it could be argued that some UFOs are actully time travelers peeking in on us too. I have a hard time with this because I feel that once time travel did get discovered, it would eventually become commerially affordable and available. Eventually some private individual would have let the jeany out of the bottle and come back already to explor all periods or at least sent messages back through utra fast transmissions. While it saddens me to think this, its clear that it will/has not ever happened since we still think of time in a linear fashion.

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Winner of the "peoples Choice award" for supreme advocate of the people!

I'm not "always right", it just seems that way

Spelling is for kids! I think you got the point!

A little empathy goes a long way

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But for creatures of lesser intelligence, the word EMPATHY can be a hard word to roll off the lips.

when talking about a subject like this, you gotta understand that never is a bad word to use. I mean, what about the theory that every possibility of every moment is lived through, and that we're just stuck in only one of those strings of time. So maybe time travel takes you to another one of those strings, and there's no interference?

True, good point; who says we understand time & time travel correctly?

I tend to think it'll never happen, though, at least not in my lifetime. I figure I'd be much wealthier if it did. http://discussanything.com/Ubb/biggrin.gif

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-Curt

"If I speak at one constant volume,
At one constant pitch,
At one constant rhythym,
Right into your ear,
You still won't hear."

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If it does just send me back to the 19 or early 20th century. I hate the modern world.

Some theories think that time travel into teh future only wouyld be possible...

So then i guess it is a one way thing...

Really, we just need a flux capacitor :P

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Manu Narayan

If a time machine were created, you wouldn't be able to travel to a point in time before the machine existed and you would only be able to travel to a point forward in time to a point the machine still existed. It's simple actually.

Perhaps matter can not travel throught time. But I remember scientist considering sending information in some form. If you could send light in a moris code or something...

Originally posted by Fordman50:
I hate to break this to you all but I know for a FACT that there will NEVER be time travel on earth EVER. I know this because if at any point it did come to pass in our distant future, time travelers would have been coming back to the past through our history or to current times and we would already know about it. I guess one could argue that time travelers would have some sort of "prime directive" to not interfear with people of the past and mess up the time-history continium. Or it could be argued that some UFOs are actully time travelers peeking in on us too. I have a hard time with this because I feel that once time travel did get discovered, it would eventually become commerially affordable and available. Eventually some private individual would have let the jeany out of the bottle and come back already to explor all periods or at least sent messages back through utra fast transmissions. While it saddens me to think this, its clear that it will/has not ever happened since we still think of time in a linear fashion.


I believe that time travel is indeed possible but it would require technicology far beyond that which is available today. In aboe to travel backwards into time, one must exceed the speed of light. In able to do so, you need a very powerful energy source. At this time there does not exist such a source available. One example of such a source would be the energy of a supernova. When a supernova collapses, it actually absorbs light and creates a black hole. It is possible to see such black holes in space. In a black hole, all forms of energy including light collapses. It is possible that advanced, extra terrestrial civilizations use such an energy source to travel through space and time.

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If thinking for myself is a crime I plead guilty.

Exactly, lets not forget also, that we dont' know 'what' happens in a blackhole/wormhole. The idea that light/gravity are 'bent' and 'sucked' it amazing! And we have no basis for understanding what happens in them.

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Manu Narayan