Tuesday, May 04, 2010

How To Build A Time Machine

Last week, Stephen Hawking warned us all about taking candy from strange aliens.
This week in The Daily Mail, he tells us how a time machine might be made and how you could perhaps meet Marilyn Monroe....

"Time travel was once considered scientific heresy. I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a crank. But these days I'm not so cautious. In fact, I'm more like the people who built Stonehenge. I'm obsessed by time. If I had a time machine I'd visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens. Perhaps I'd even travel to the end of the universe to find out how our whole cosmic story ends.

To see how this might be possible, we need to look at time as physicists do - at the fourth dimension. It's not as hard as it sounds. Every attentive schoolchild knows that all physical objects, even me in my chair, exist in three dimensions. Everything has a width and a height and a length.

But there is another kind of length, a length in time. While a human may survive for 80 years, the stones at Stonehenge, for instance, have stood around for thousands of years. And the solar system will last for billions of years. Everything has a length in time as well as space. Travelling in time means travelling through this fourth dimension."

8 comments:

Engineer of Knowledge said...

Hello Microdot,
Great stuff and right down my line of studies.

It is of some thought that a “Quantum Field” (an electrical charged empty space where quarks appear and disappear much like moisture collects and evaporates on a window pain) is nothing more than a nano worm hole. Quarks are one of the building substances that make up subatomic particles such as Protons, Neutrons, and Electrons which make up Atoms, which make up molecules, etc.

When you say, “Everything has a length in time as well as space,” and I might add that as soon as mankind realizes this fact, we may then take note that we on this planet are nothing more than a speck of insignificance forgoing our own hubris.

steve said...

If you could travel into the future, then you could see when the auto spambot would make an appearance and cut it off at the pass. But then, would stopping an auto spambot create a paradox for current space time and open up a black hole that would propell the earth backward in time due to the earth accelorating faster then the speed of light, and we wind up reliving the 80's?

steve said...

Oh, I don't know if anyone else can appreciate this, but Microdot might. Here's a song by one of my favorite bands that talks about how we are all connected by the energy of lifeforce. It has the great artwork of Alex Grey as a background.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-885aiY3ZY

microdot said...

I have often wished to relive the 80's. I think I would have made much more intelligent wardrobe choices. On the other hand, don't you think that Hawking seems to risk becoming the creepy old uncle of physics with his Monroe stuff....?

microdot said...

Steve, I just saw your post...the youtube video plays better on my gmail inbox than on youtube..why is that?
Pretty cool music, I don't know the artist, but the painter reminds me of the artist Abdul Matti Klarwein, whio painted in the 60's. The same spiritual/psychedelic/anatomical feel and the technical ability to depict the concepts.
thank you very much.

I have a question. What kind of electric bass do you prefer?
I am just curious.

Jamie Spencer said...

<-- Wonderful to read! Properties in Brisbane
Alta White Review

Sterling said...

I don't know if anyone else can appreciate this, but Microdot might. Here's a song by one of my favorite bands that talks about how we are all connected by the energy of lifeforce. It has the great artwork of Alex Grey as a background. Payday Loan Payday Loan

Electronic Cigarette said...

If you could travel into the future, then you could see when the auto spambot would make an appearance and cut it off at the pass.
Extenze