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Physicists reverse time using quantum computer
Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology teamed up with colleagues from the U.S. and Switzerland and returned the state of a quantum computer a fraction of a second into the past. They also calculated the probability that an electron in empty interstellar space will spontaneously travel back into its recent past. The study is published in Scientific Reports.
"This is one in a series of papers on the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics. That law is closely related to the notion of the arrow of time that posits the one-way direction of time from the past to the future," said the study's lead author Gordey Lesovik, who heads the Laboratory of the Physics of Quantum Information Technology at MIPT.
"We began by describing a so-called local perpetual motion machine of the second kind. Then, in December, we published a paper that discusses the violation of the second law via a device called a Maxwell's demon," Lesovik said. "The most recent paper approaches the same problem from a third angle: We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 18 2019, @04:03PM (1 child)
Not possible because it would cause a paradox: If you managed to kill Hitler when he was a complete nobody, then there would not be a future incentive to kill Hitler (you'd not even know about his existence!), therefore you would not go back to kill Hitler in the first place.
Maybe by the time when time machines are invented, any riches you could earn in our day by playing the lottery or betting on sports would have been rendered worthless.
Time travel being possible doesn't imply that John Titor was a time traveller. After all, medicine is real, yet not everyone who claims to be able to heal you actually is able to.
And of course there is the possibility that time travel is possible, but not arbitrary time travel. That is, time travellers of the future might not be able to go back into our time due to limitations of the time travel mechanism.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday March 18 2019, @05:16PM
You would if your future time-traveling self was a blabbermouth that publicized evidence about who he would become. Anyway, from the perspective of you as the time-traveler, the events that motivated your trip through time have already happened in your own past. From your perspective, the new future you that doesn't know of the war is a distinct individual. Maybe!
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.