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posted by martyb on Friday April 28 2017, @07:07AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-take-a-long-nap dept.

After some serious number crunching, a University of British Columbia (Okanagan Campus) researcher has come up with a mathematical model for a viable time machine.

Ben Tippett, a mathematics and physics instructor at University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus, recently published a study about the feasibility of time travel. Tippett, whose field of expertise is Einstein's theory of general relativity, studies black holes and science fiction when he's not teaching. Using math and physics, he has created a formula that describes a method for time travel.

"People think of time travel as something as fiction," says Tippett. "And we tend to think it's not possible because we don't actually do it. But, mathematically, it is possible."

"The time direction of the space-time surface also shows curvature. There is evidence showing the closer to a black hole we get, time moves slower," says Tippett. "My model of a time machine uses the curved space-time -- to bend time into a circle for the passengers, not in a straight line. That circle takes us back in time."

The division of space into three dimensions, with time in a separate dimension by itself, is incorrect, says Tippett. The four dimensions should be imagined simultaneously, where different directions are connected, as a space-time continuum. Using Einstein's theory, Tippett says that the curvature of space-time accounts for the curved orbits of the planets.

[...] "While is it mathematically feasible, it is not yet possible to build a space-time machine because we need materials--which we call exotic matter--to bend space-time in these impossible ways, but they have yet to be discovered."

[...] For his research, Tippett created a mathematical model of a Traversable Acausal Retrograde Domain in Space-time (TARDIS). He describes it as a bubble of space-time geometry which carries its contents backward and forwards through space and time as it tours a large circular path. The bubble moves through space-time at speeds greater than the speed of light at times, allowing it to move backward in time.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170427091717.htm

[Abstract] Traversable acausal retrograde domains in spacetime

What do you think ?


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  • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday April 28 2017, @03:13PM (2 children)

    by tangomargarine (667) on Friday April 28 2017, @03:13PM (#501182)

    The bubble moves through space-time at speeds greater than the speed of light at times, allowing it to move backward in time.

    The idea of having to accelerate through the speed of light seems rather problematic. I was under the impression that e.g. neutrinos can travel faster than c, but that's because they've always been travelling that fast and don't interact with normal matter.

    Or is this another one of those sticky quantum things where it only *appears* to exceed c depending on your point of view? I can't wrap my head around that thing where you can accelerate two objects away from each other, each travelling at c, and afterwards they're only x distance apart instead of 2x.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Friday April 28 2017, @04:40PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Friday April 28 2017, @04:40PM (#501213) Homepage Journal

    I was under the impression that e.g. neutrinos can travel faster than c

    That was believed for a while, because whenever there was a GRB, neutrinos show up hours before photons. They've since discovered that neutrinos don't go FTL, but they're so tiny they pass through almost anywhere with nearly no interaction, while the photons bounce around inside the GRB before escaping.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday April 28 2017, @04:51PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday April 28 2017, @04:51PM (#501223)

    I think the observation/explanation of neutrinos traveling faster than C has been revised... when the supernova was detected in neutrinos several hours earlier than the photons arriving, it could have been (NdGT says) because the neutrino burst source in the center of the collapsing star started radiating at C immediately, but it took hours for the photon emitting shock wave to reach the surface of the star - the initial collapse generated photons being blocked by other matter on their way out - much as the photons leaving the surface of a main sequence star are the product of fusion reactions at the core that happened long long ago.

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