BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | New model ‘permits time travel’ — How did I miss this? SO this nonsense is now part of BBC reporting?
If you went back in time and met your teenage parents, you could not split them up and prevent your birth – even if you wanted to, a new quantum model has stated.
Researchers speculate that time travel can occur within a kind of feedback loop where backwards movement is possible, but only in a way that is “complementary” to the present.
In other words, you can pop back in time and have a look around, but you cannot do anything that will alter the present you left behind.
Key phrase in all good reporting: “researchers speculate.” It should be written: “Over a long drunken weekend, while under the influence of opium, researchers speculate.” The editors shorten it.
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Armature
This theory is not new. The problem with the theory is that if we can go back in time but NOT change anything we’ve given up any free will. It would be absurd to argue that we have free will, except when someone comes back in time. Either we have it or we don’t. If this theory is true, then we don’t have it.
This is a plausible explanation.
It’s also one that many people agree with.
Of course there is a couple other answers so to speak.
BTW I don’t think Star Trek ever touched on being unable to change events. In fact the closest thing I can find involving time travel is timestreams which are quite diffrent from being unable to change events.
Bad week?
Wonder what the supporters of the Chaos Theory would have to say about this. 🙁
Just by being there, you’ve changed something.
ImaFish: “The problem with the theory is that if we can go back in time but NOT change anything”
So we can go back in time BUT our bodies would have no mass, not expend heat and not block light?
Our mere presence would affect everything because we are made out of matter. It’d be like pooping in a swimming pool.
So that’s what they are doing with the money they collect each year from every person who owns a TV.
I guess reports on advances in theoretical quantum physics would be better suited on headline news right after tonight’s entertainment’s news?
Why nonsense? It’s cutting edge physics *theory*. In cutting edge physics, theory *almost* means the same as wild speculation. That’s why it sounds silly. However it’s worth doing. Fundamental science is always worth doing.
Why do you always seem so much against fundamental science? We won’t go anywhere if we care only for today’s bread and butter… This seems like a current trend in US media – science bashing – if it sounds weird or geeky, let’s make fun of it and belittle the scientists doing it…
That attitude just makes it easy for creationists, new-ageists, and all sort of dark-ageists…. That’s a very different attitude to the one that made America a great country.
Maybe the BBC is right catering to the unafraid curious! Maybe you (USA) should really start doing the same.
The only way to get ppl from the USA to get interested in stuff like that is by getting Pam Anderson rubbing herself seminude over a bronze pole while she recites the show with he lips coated in a greasy red lipstick.
Even better, get her oiled and rub her body over a customised musclecar car as she explains the chaos theory 🙂
Physics has been religiousized for religious reasons. Theories are believed in. Theories are worshiped. Pure superstition and speculation is spoken of with great reverence and respect.
I recall reading some parts of a well-known book on modern physics that was obviously meant for popular consumption. The author/ popularizer wrote that the publisher advised him not to have any equations in the book. For each added equation, interest in the book, and therefore its profitability, would be cut by 50%. It’s clear that time travel ideas fascinate popular audiences and that this kind of popularization of physics is money driven.
The BBC hasn’t been the traditional news gathering giant the world has respected for generations — since Tony Blair was opposed by the Beeb’s management over Bush’s War.
The “Independent” commission that dealt with some lousy research — also ensured the complete destruction of existing management. It’s called throwing the baby out with the bath water. It may make for short-term orgasms among the Bush League set; but, serious students of journalism consider it one more example of diminishing standards and courage.
Of course, the Tories would probably just sell it to Rupert Murdoch.
Even diminished it sets the standards for a great part of the world.
If the NY Times can get away with stupid support of the Democrats, then why can’t the BBC get away with stupid support of the Republicans? Their both high class sources of news, but worthless when talking about politics.
This is why I read the local newspaper, watch the local new, and watch both CNN and Fox News – And then when highly intrested see what the rest of the world thinks on the Internet. If you think there is a news source that is not biased at least in some way then you are kidding your self.
Just to be clear, it’s not the physicists who fetishize physics. It’s the university PR folks who want to get publicity for their research, and more funding.
Physicists deal with ridiculously complex math, computer simluations, and experimental data. If the equations say momentum or “time events” are preserved, then they probably are. The idea that we can extrapolate this to what time travel would be like is ridiculous.
If you want superstition, let’s talk about sociology or evolutionary psychology. But leave the hard sciences and the real scientists alone.
If the Tories were smart they would have propsed dropping the BBC’s tax, which Tony Blair renewed. I think it’s about $100 per year per TV that has to be paid by the owner, and is enforced with roving van patrols with equipment that can tell if you have a TV in your house.
Right, why should we fund anything “Galileo like” that might give us some insight into the truth and possibilities when we already know these things…like that everything revolves around the earth? Forget science already and just look to the bible that has it all spelled out directly from God who created it all. Why examine the structure when we have the architect’s perfect blue prints which are guaranteed genuine by the Church itself!
Dang! does this mean that all the Terminator movies I saw are not true? I always thought the
“the future is not set…
there is no such thing as Fate,
but what we make for ourselves”
Are the machnies going to win? They are already gaining conciousness, wtiness the emergence of p2p software, tying all these electronic neurons islands together, feeding us with mind controlling multimedia, with us voluntaritly storing it in our portable auxilary storage areas (iPods) and hooking it into our brains. Is there no hope. Are we all doomed?
Maybe if the machnies build more terminator babes, but a little friendlier and with less violent tendencies then it would not be such a bad future after all.
I think it’s bull. If you go bak in time and interact with your parents at all then you’ve destroyed yourself. At the moment of conception you have 100 million sperm heading for the egg. One more grunt, anything different at all, and a different sperm makes it with the egg. The result, someone else is created, not you. If I went back in time and knocked on the door when Hitler was being conceived then WWII wouldn’t have happened. In fact – none of us would be here either. The world would have people, but all different people than we have now.
Think about it.
I want to go back in time and interact with yer mom.