SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
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: 2) by acid andy on Monday March 18 2019, @05:03PM (2 children)
I've always liked this idea because it seems to avoid paradoxes. If time travel becomes possible though, I imagine lots of people will do it lots of times which would create lots of universes with time travelers in compared to just our current one that hasn't got any. If it reaches the order of thousands more with time travelers then it becomes unlikely that we were lucky (unlucky?) enough to wake up in the universe without any time travelers--unless in the universe the time traveler arrives in, none of the other beings are conscious.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Monday March 18 2019, @11:01PM
How do we know our current does have any? Maybe we do. Also, there's no guarantee that those said time travellers know they are time travellers. A side effect of the time shift could be that it mucks with their consciousness in a way we don't even know.
Maybe Buddha and Jesus are time travellers, but the said process have stripped them of most of their futuristic advantages and only left them with some innate conscious edge that projects a perception of slightly superiority - and the experience left them with no recollection that they're from the future. It could be that time travel only works to project one's consciously into another host in the past and not their physical bodies.
There's so much we don't know, just possibilities from our pop-culture which may be void of bunch of limitations/restrictions to serve a fictional plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 19 2019, @11:26PM
the paradox of killing own grandpa can be solved without multiverse assuming failure. It's like observing a vase, unbroken at t=0s and at t=8s and postulating that it 'will' be unbroken at t=3s.