Physicists have found the law of nature which prevents time travel paradoxes, and
thereby permits time travel. It turns out to be the same law that makes sure light
travels in straight lines, and which underpins the most straightforward version of
quantum theory, developed half a century ago by Richard Feynman.
Relativists have been trying to come to terms with time travel for the past seven
years, since Kip Thorne and his colleagues at Caltech discovered -- much to their
surprise -- that there is nothing in the laws of physics (specifically, the general
theory of relativity) to forbid it. Among several different ways in which the laws
allow a time machine to exist, the one that has been most intensively studied mathematically
is the "wormhole". This is like a tunnel through space and time, connecting different
regions of the Universe -- different spaces and different times. The two "mouths"
of the wormhole could be next to each other in space, but separated in time, so that
it could literally be used as a time tunnel.
Building such a device would be very difficult -- it would involve manipulating black
holes, each with many times the mass of our Sun. But they could conceivably occur
naturally, either on this scale or on a microscopic scale.
The worry for physicists is that this raises the possibility of paradoxes, familiar
to science fiction fans. For example, a time traveller could go back in time and
accidentally (or even deliberately) cause the death of her granny, so that neither
the time traveller's mother nor herself was ever born. People are hard to describe
mathematically, but the equivalent paradox in the relativists' calculations involves
a billiard ball that goes in to one mouth of a wormhole, emerges in the past from
the other mouth, and collides with its other self on the way in to the first mouth,
so that it is knocked out of the way and never enters the time tunnel at all. But,
of course, there are many possible "self consistent" journeys through the tunnel,
in which the two versions of the billiard ball never disturb one another.
If time travel really is possible -- and after seven years' intensive study all the
evidence says that it is -- there must, it seems, be a law of nature to prevent such
paradoxes arising, while permitting the self- consistent journeys through time. Igor
Novikov, who holds joint posts at the P. N. Lebedev Institute, in Moscow, and at
NORDITA (the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics), in Copenhagen, first pointed
out the need for a "Principle of Self-consistency" of this kind in 1989 (Soviet Physics
JETP, vol 68 p 439). Now, working with a large group of colleagues in Denmark, Canada,
Russia and Switzerland, he has found the physical basis for this principle.
It involves something known as the Principle of least action (or Principle of minimal
action), and has been known, in one form or another, since the early seventeenth
century. It describes the trajectories of things, such as the path of a light ray
from A to B, or the flight of a ball tossed through an upper story window. And, it
now seems, the trajectory of a billiard ball through a time tunnel. Action, in this
sense, is a measure both of the energy involved in traversing the path and the time
taken. For light (which is always a special case), this boils down to time alone,
so that the principle of least action becomes the principle of least time, which
is why light travels in straight lines.
You can see how the principle works when light from a source in air enters a block
of glass, where it travels at a slower speed than in air. In order to get from the
source A outside the glass to a point B inside the glass in the shortest possible
time, the light has to travel in one straight line up to the edge of the glass, then
turn through a certain angle and travel in another straight line (at the slower speed)
on to point B. Travelling by any other route would take longer.
The action is a property of the whole path, and somehow the light (or "nature") always
knows how to choose the cheapest or simplest path to its goal. In a similar fashion,
the principle of least action can be used to describe the entire curved path of the
ball thrown through a window, once the time taken for the journey is specified. Although
the ball can be thrown at different speeds on different trajectories (higher and
slower, or flatter and faster) and still go through the window, only trajectories
which satisfy the Principle of least action are possible. Novikov and his colleagues
have applied the same principle to the "trajectories" of billiard balls around time
loops, both with and without the kind of "self collision" that leads to paradoxes.
In a mathematical tour de force, they have shown that in both cases only self-consistent
solutions to the equations satisfy the principle of least action -- or in their own
words, "the whole set of classical trajectories which are globally self-consistent
can be directly and simply recovered by imposing the principle of minimal action"
(NORDITA Preprint, number 95/49A).
The word "classical" in this connection means that they have not yet tried to include
the rules of quantum theory in their calculations. But there is no reason to think
that this would alter their conclusions. Feynman, who was entranced by the principle
of least action, formulated quantum physics entirely on the basis of it, using what
is known as the "sum over histories" or "path integral" formulation, because, like
a light ray seemingly sniffing out the best path from A to B, it takes account of
all possible trajectories in selecting the most efficient.
So self-consistency is a consequence of the Principle of least action, and nature
can be seen to abhor a time travel paradox. Which removes the last objection of physicists
to time travel in principle -- and leaves it up to the engineers to get on with the
job of building a time machine.
------------------
"Everything you know,...is Wrong!
soon we shall all discover the truth."
p)'i4q4
thereby permits time travel. It turns out to be the same law that makes sure light
travels in straight lines, and which underpins the most straightforward version of
quantum theory, developed half a century ago by Richard Feynman.
Relativists have been trying to come to terms with time travel for the past seven
years, since Kip Thorne and his colleagues at Caltech discovered -- much to their
surprise -- that there is nothing in the laws of physics (specifically, the general
theory of relativity) to forbid it. Among several different ways in which the laws
allow a time machine to exist, the one that has been most intensively studied mathematically
is the "wormhole". This is like a tunnel through space and time, connecting different
regions of the Universe -- different spaces and different times. The two "mouths"
of the wormhole could be next to each other in space, but separated in time, so that
it could literally be used as a time tunnel.
Building such a device would be very difficult -- it would involve manipulating black
holes, each with many times the mass of our Sun. But they could conceivably occur
naturally, either on this scale or on a microscopic scale.
The worry for physicists is that this raises the possibility of paradoxes, familiar
to science fiction fans. For example, a time traveller could go back in time and
accidentally (or even deliberately) cause the death of her granny, so that neither
the time traveller's mother nor herself was ever born. People are hard to describe
mathematically, but the equivalent paradox in the relativists' calculations involves
a billiard ball that goes in to one mouth of a wormhole, emerges in the past from
the other mouth, and collides with its other self on the way in to the first mouth,
so that it is knocked out of the way and never enters the time tunnel at all. But,
of course, there are many possible "self consistent" journeys through the tunnel,
in which the two versions of the billiard ball never disturb one another.
If time travel really is possible -- and after seven years' intensive study all the
evidence says that it is -- there must, it seems, be a law of nature to prevent such
paradoxes arising, while permitting the self- consistent journeys through time. Igor
Novikov, who holds joint posts at the P. N. Lebedev Institute, in Moscow, and at
NORDITA (the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics), in Copenhagen, first pointed
out the need for a "Principle of Self-consistency" of this kind in 1989 (Soviet Physics
JETP, vol 68 p 439). Now, working with a large group of colleagues in Denmark, Canada,
Russia and Switzerland, he has found the physical basis for this principle.
It involves something known as the Principle of least action (or Principle of minimal
action), and has been known, in one form or another, since the early seventeenth
century. It describes the trajectories of things, such as the path of a light ray
from A to B, or the flight of a ball tossed through an upper story window. And, it
now seems, the trajectory of a billiard ball through a time tunnel. Action, in this
sense, is a measure both of the energy involved in traversing the path and the time
taken. For light (which is always a special case), this boils down to time alone,
so that the principle of least action becomes the principle of least time, which
is why light travels in straight lines.
You can see how the principle works when light from a source in air enters a block
of glass, where it travels at a slower speed than in air. In order to get from the
source A outside the glass to a point B inside the glass in the shortest possible
time, the light has to travel in one straight line up to the edge of the glass, then
turn through a certain angle and travel in another straight line (at the slower speed)
on to point B. Travelling by any other route would take longer.
The action is a property of the whole path, and somehow the light (or "nature") always
knows how to choose the cheapest or simplest path to its goal. In a similar fashion,
the principle of least action can be used to describe the entire curved path of the
ball thrown through a window, once the time taken for the journey is specified. Although
the ball can be thrown at different speeds on different trajectories (higher and
slower, or flatter and faster) and still go through the window, only trajectories
which satisfy the Principle of least action are possible. Novikov and his colleagues
have applied the same principle to the "trajectories" of billiard balls around time
loops, both with and without the kind of "self collision" that leads to paradoxes.
In a mathematical tour de force, they have shown that in both cases only self-consistent
solutions to the equations satisfy the principle of least action -- or in their own
words, "the whole set of classical trajectories which are globally self-consistent
can be directly and simply recovered by imposing the principle of minimal action"
(NORDITA Preprint, number 95/49A).
The word "classical" in this connection means that they have not yet tried to include
the rules of quantum theory in their calculations. But there is no reason to think
that this would alter their conclusions. Feynman, who was entranced by the principle
of least action, formulated quantum physics entirely on the basis of it, using what
is known as the "sum over histories" or "path integral" formulation, because, like
a light ray seemingly sniffing out the best path from A to B, it takes account of
all possible trajectories in selecting the most efficient.
So self-consistency is a consequence of the Principle of least action, and nature
can be seen to abhor a time travel paradox. Which removes the last objection of physicists
to time travel in principle -- and leaves it up to the engineers to get on with the
job of building a time machine.
------------------
"Everything you know,...is Wrong!
soon we shall all discover the truth."
p)'i4q4
