199 lines
8.5 KiB
Plaintext
199 lines
8.5 KiB
Plaintext
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(word processor parameters LM=8, RM=75, TM=2, BM=2)
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Taken from KeelyNet BBS (214) 324-3501
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Sponsored by Vangard Sciences
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PO BOX 1031
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Mesquite, TX 75150
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There are ABSOLUTELY NO RESTRICTIONS
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on duplicating, publishing or distributing the
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files on KeelyNet except where noted!
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October 6, 1991
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TIME2.ASC
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This file shared with KeelyNet courtesy of Tom Albion.
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Tom operates the THC Online System at 604-361-4549.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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Playing fast and loose with time:
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a new study suggests that time travel is not quite impossible.
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by William F. Allman
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Time travel has popped from the annals of science fiction into the
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realm of scientific respectability at least in theory, that is.
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By combining two well-established principles originally outlined by
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Albert Einstein nearly a century ago in his theories of relativity,
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three theoretical physicists have proposed a novel scheme that
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appears to permit a limited sort of time travel.
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The scientists' result is not anything close to a blueprint for
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building the sort of time machine that science-fiction heroes are
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forever leaping into to explore the lives of cave men or peek into
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the future. But it suggests that either Einstein's equations are
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wrong or that the universe is governed by some very different
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principles from what physicists have long assumed.
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The notion that the causes of an event taking place in the present
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could be eliminated by traveling into the past and changing history
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has always made physicists (not to mention stock speculators and
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newspaper publishers) squeamish about the idea of time travel.
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Physicists have thus held that there must be laws that provide a
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kind of "cosmic censorship" that prevents moving through time, and
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thus any tampering with the sequence of events. Various theoretical
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scenarios for time travel have been cooked up in the past, but in
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each case physicists have found physical laws that blocked it.
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The new study, however, appears not to violate any known physical
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laws. "We're asking, if you take Einstein's equations far enough,
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will they get you in trouble?" says Michael S. Morris of the
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University of Wisconsin, one of the co-authors of the new study.
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"We're suggesting that maybe they will, because at some level we may
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have to abandon either Einstein or causality" - the basic principle
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of physics that one event Time flies.
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Page 1
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The authors' hypothetical time "machine" starts with Einstein's
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famous, and apparently paradoxical, discovery that time is not
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constant throughout the universe, but rather varies depending on the
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velocity at which the timekeeper is traveling.
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While to an astronaut, a clock on board a speeding spaceship will
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appear to tick at a normal rate, to a stationary observer on Earth,
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the clock will appear to be marking time very slowly. This apparent
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slowing of time applies not only to clocks but to everything in the
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spaceship, including the astronauts, and has given rise to what is
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known as the "twin paradox":
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When the speeding astronaut returns to Earth, he will
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have aged LESS than a twin brother he left behind.
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This bizarre time-slowing effect has been demonstrated by
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researchers who synchronized two highly accurate atomic clocks and
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then flew one of the pair aboard a high-speed jet for hours. When
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the two clocks were reunited, the airborne clock had fallen slightly
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behind its stationary twin.
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The second Einsteinian principle that goes into the time machine is
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the warping of space by gravity. This idea is often explained by
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analogy to a worm crawling over a sphere. To the worm, the world is
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flat.
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Crawling from one spot on the sphere to another in what seems to be
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a straight line, the worm doesn't realize that it is actually
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tracing out a path that curves in three-dimensional space to follow
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the sphere's contour. The worm also doesn't realize that it could
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take a shortcut by burrowing through the core of the sphere.
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Similarly, what appears to us as three-dimensional space is,
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according to Einstein's theory of relativity, bent in dimensions
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that we cannot easily imagine, and a "wormhole" could connect two
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seemingly distant points in space.
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To turn a wormhole into a time machine, say the physicists,
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technicians in some "arbitrarily advanced" civilization could
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harness the gravitational forces necessary to make one end of the
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hole move back and forth at extremely high speed while keeping the
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other end stationary.
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Like the astronaut in the twin paradox, this rapidly moving end of
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the its stationary counterpart. By entering the "older" end of the
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wormhole and coming out the "younger" end, a person could
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theoretically travel from the present to the past.
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Keeping the door open. While the physicists' calculations suggest
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there's nothing to prevent all this from happening, they admit that
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no one has actually ever seen a wormhole.
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Calculations by Morris and co-authors Kip Thorne and Ulvi Yurtsever
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of the California Institute of Technology imply that a wormhole can
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be kept open only under some strange and exotic physical conditions.
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Phenomena that under normal circumstances exist only in
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infinitesimally small particles for infinitesimally short periods of
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time would have to exist throughout the wormhole for as long as it
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remained open.
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Page 2
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Even if a wormhole time machine were possible, it wouldn't permit
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the kind of time travel fancied by H. G. Wells and others who have
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mused on the possibility of traveling far into the past or future.
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Even though members of an advanced civilization might be able to
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cause one end of a wormhole to age less slowly than the other, at
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best they would only be able to make time stand still at the instant
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the tunnel was created, not move it back any further into the past,
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and they couldn't move the other end ahead into the future.
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There's at least some circumstantial evidence that the more far-
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reaching kind of time machines envisioned by science fiction writers
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will never be created, even by the most technologically advanced
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civilization imaginable.
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If such a machine were ever to be built, a traveler from the future
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probably would already have shown up here by now.
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Further information on time travel can be found
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in TIME1 on KeelyNet.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------
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If you have comments or other information relating to such topics
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as this paper covers, please upload to KeelyNet or send to the
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Vangard Sciences address as listed on the first page.
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Thank you for your consideration, interest and support.
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Jerry W. Decker.........Ron Barker...........Chuck Henderson
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Vangard Sciences/KeelyNet
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If we can be of service, you may contact
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Jerry at (214) 324-8741 or Ron at (214) 242-9346
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Page 3
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