At last, someone has come up with a model for a “more practical” time machine. (Because let’s be real—previous contraptions, even the infamous De Lorean, have seemed a bit far-fetched, if not outright clunky.)
Since I nearly failed the one physics class I ever took, I’ll let the smarty-pants people at Science News Online explain how it works. First, some background information:
[G]ravity curves space-time and slows clocks. That’s why time-travel theorists have proposed that regions of space-time might naturally, or by human intervention, be made to curve back onto themselves. Someone moving around such a loop could travel back in time.
(Well, duh. Tell me something I don’t know.) But according to a recent Science News article, physicist Amos Ori has developed a new take on this loopy theory:
The loop would form within an empty, donut-shaped region of space-time enveloped by a sphere of normal matter, he says. The distortion of space-time in the central donut would result from other huge nearby masses, perhaps including a black hole, or from interference of gravity waves propagating through the donut. To return to the past, a traveler in a rocket would zip around inside the donut, receding a little further into the past with each orbit, Ori says.
Honestly? I have no idea what this means. But it sure sounds cool, doesn’t it? Think of all the things we could accomplish by taking a dunk into these time travelin’ donuts. One time around the track and we’re deciding *not* to get that tattoo, another and we’re waiting for a better reason to have sex, or maybe thinking twice about posting that passive aggressive note on the microwave at work. A couple more zips and we’re surrounding ourselves with thin friends and just saying no to co-ruminating!
But hang on a sec. Before we get too excited about the possibilities of revisionist history, let’s read the interview with Amos Ori in Popular Science. In the Q&A, he offers a fairy crucial piece of information about time travel (one that seems universally neglected by sci-fi flicks):
You can go back in time, but only to times later than the moment of the construction of the time machine. So if we construct it now, in 2100 they will be able to visit us now, or later, but not earlier.
Rats. Looks like for now we’ll have to live with our mistakes and attempt to have no regrets. At least until Ori gets that donut up and running.
Graphic by James Jean for Popular Science
Will going back in time this way (once they have the donut built that is) have an effect on the present, as was the basis of all those 80’s movies like the Terminator and back to the Future?
I didn’t know Tori Amos was a physicist.