Saturday, May 13, 2006
The Space-Time ContinuumA University of Connecticut physics professor now believes that time travel is possible. Obviously he is not the first person with that idea, but Professor Ronald Mallett offers an actual way to achieve it, and has designed an experiment to prove the concept. The method is, he says, to "swirl" space as you would stir coffee in a cup, but using a laser beam to do the stirring. Because space and time are related, when you swirl space, you also swirl time. He suggests that you can test with just a few subatomic particles -- you know, things like muons, leptons and mesons, or Bush's brain (OK, stop that, bad dog bad dog) -- and if you spin them fast enough, you could move them a few nanoseconds ahead. Not that anyone would notice, but you will feel enormously accomplished. Go ahead, try it.
The idea sounds simple enough but it is well grounded in Einstein's theory of relativity, so who is going to argue? Well, a few people actually. First there is Pat Robertson who believes that the time has come to send everything not into the future, but back to the Stone Age. Then there are scientists who argue that with a small device like Mallett has built, the effect would be so infinitesimally tiny that it would be impossible to measure. And therein lies the beauty of science: You don't have to prove yourself right, you just have to make it hard for the other guy to prove you wrong.
Not that I think that Mallett is wrong, of course. Many people have been using a time machine for years, and the machine is called Google. When you blog, for example, you can choose any posting date you want, five months ago or two weeks from now, and your little bits of wisdom will just float in cyberspace to their intended points in time and lodge themselves there. And with a few keystrokes, you can edit your post date and fling everything backward or forward at will. Time, really, is never a fixed thing. For example, this post could have been created in the third century when men were men and dogs were wolves, but you'd never know for sure, and I'll never tell.
And I'm certain you can guess that dogs, as an advanced species, have some of the most sophisticated skills in time travel, more than any human can ever dream of. The technique to the untrained eye is sometimes called "chasing your tail." Basically you stand in one place and spin yourself silly, but the trick is that you have to do it really, really, really fast, for two reasons: First you are not talking about just a few subatomic quarks here but a 70-lb husky dog with a big fluffy tail. Second, there is this conversion rule that one human year is equal to seven dog-years, so we dogs naturally fly through time a lot faster than human sloths. See you tomorrow. Or yesterday.
- posted by Woofwoof @ 6:02 AM
Comments:
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Taxi,
For huskies every hour is Happy Hour.
John,
We went far into the future and found that cattle was all consumed by Mad Cow disease. You may have heard that there was also this thing called Soylent Green.
For huskies every hour is Happy Hour.
John,
We went far into the future and found that cattle was all consumed by Mad Cow disease. You may have heard that there was also this thing called Soylent Green.
I can't believe you made that comment about Bush's brain. No matter how true it is... I need to drive over to the university to talk with this professor.
# posted by 
: 14 May, 2006 09:28
: 14 May, 2006 09:28
My maniac dog does this spinning so fast that I wouldn't be surprised if he throws himself past the beginning of time.
# posted by : 14 May, 2006 13:20
: 14 May, 2006 13:20
Connecticut,
I'll tell the dog to be more careful. Don't want the President to go nucular on me.
Pam,
You'd better slow him down. We can't have him break through the Big Bang. That might seriously upset the delicate natural equilibrium of space, time and ether.
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I'll tell the dog to be more careful. Don't want the President to go nucular on me.
Pam,
You'd better slow him down. We can't have him break through the Big Bang. That might seriously upset the delicate natural equilibrium of space, time and ether.
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