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Biochemist Dr. Isaac Asimov was joking, of course, when he came up with the substance (it came up in his orals for his doctorate, and it terrified him), but some theoretical physicists have suggested that something similar to Asimov's fictional chemical actually exists at the quantum level.
Phys Org reports that "Physicists provide support for retrocausal quantum theory, in which the future influences the past."
(Phys.org)—Although there are many counterintuitive ideas in quantum theory, the idea that influences can travel backwards in time (from the future to the past) is generally not one of them. However, recently some physicists have been looking into this idea, called "retrocausality," because it can potentially resolve some long-standing puzzles in quantum physics. In particular, if retrocausality is allowed, then the famous Bell tests can be interpreted as evidence for retrocausality and not for action-at-a-distance—a result that Einstein and others skeptical of that "spooky" property may have appreciated.
It's a long and informative article that I found fascinating.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday July 09 2017, @02:33PM (2 children)
What in Einstein's theory was falsifiable in 1914? Brand new exotic theories are seldom falsifiable until the technologies to test those theories are available. For example, it was over a century before gravity waves could be confirmed.
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(Score: 2) by pvanhoof on Sunday July 09 2017, @08:01PM
Yes, I don't think we shouldn't try to falsify retrocausality. But absent a method to do so ...
(Score: 2) by dry on Monday July 10 2017, @04:26AM
Mercury's orbit was one of the first tests. Newtons laws never quite worked with predicting Mercury's orbit but Einsteins did. Wasn't long before gravitational bending of light (a star during an eclipse) was observed.