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STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
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SumOfAllFears Offline
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STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
All you need is a wormhole, the Large Hadron Collider or a rocket that goes really, really fast

'Through the wormhole, the scientist can see himself as he was one minute ago. But what if our scientist uses the wormhole to shoot his earlier self? He's now dead. So who fired the shot?'
Hello. My name is Stephen Hawking. Physicist, cosmologist and something of a dreamer. Although I cannot move and I have to speak through a computer, in my mind I am free. Free to explore the universe and ask the big questions, such as: is time travel possible? Can we open a portal to the past or find a shortcut to the future? Can we ultimately use the laws of nature to become masters of time itself?
Time travel was once considered scientific heresy. I used to avoid talking about it for fear of being labelled a crank. But these days I'm not so cautious. In fact, I'm more like the people who built Stonehenge. I'm obsessed by time. If I had a time machine I'd visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens. Perhaps I'd even travel to the end of the universe to find out how our whole cosmic story ends.
To see how this might be possible, we need to look at time as physicists do - at the fourth dimension. It's not as hard as it sounds. Every attentive schoolchild knows that all physical objects, even me in my chair, exist in three dimensions. Everything has a width and a height and a length.
But there is another kind of length, a length in time. While a human may survive for 80 years, the stones at Stonehenge, for instance, have stood around for thousands of years. And the solar system will last for billions of years. Everything has a length in time as well as space. Travelling in time means travelling through this fourth dimension.
To see what that means, let's imagine we're doing a bit of normal, everyday car travel. Drive in a straight line and you're travelling in one dimension. Turn right or left and you add the second dimension. Drive up or down a twisty mountain road and that adds height, so that's travelling in all three dimensions. But how on Earth do we travel in time? How do we find a path through the fourth dimension?
Let's indulge in a little science fiction for a moment. Time travel movies often feature a vast, energy-hungry machine. The machine creates a path through the fourth dimension, a tunnel through time. A time traveller, a brave, perhaps foolhardy individual, prepared for who knows what, steps into the time tunnel and emerges who knows when. The concept may be far-fetched, and the reality may be very different from this, but the idea itself is not so crazy.
Physicists have been thinking about tunnels in time too, but we come at it from a different angle. We wonder if portals to the past or the future could ever be possible within the laws of nature. As it turns out, we think they are. What's more, we've even given them a name: wormholes. The truth is that wormholes are all around us, only they're too small to see. Wormholes are very tiny. They occur in nooks and crannies in space and time. You might find it a tough concept, but stay with me.

Read More --Article Here
05-05-2010 06:48 AM
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Motown Bronco Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
(05-05-2010 06:48 AM)SumOfAllFears Wrote:  All you need is a wormhole, the Large Hadron Collider or a rocket that goes really, really fast

Or 1.21 gigawatts and a cool DeLorean
05-05-2010 07:07 AM
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Lord Stanley Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
I swear to Jebus that when these astro-dudes start talking, I can't follow them any farther than "Hi, my name is Stephen Hawking" and then it's all LOL OMG WTF are you talking about?
05-05-2010 07:59 AM
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I45owl Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
I followed it as far as travelling into the future. That kind of time travel is actually pretty easy to do. As for the rest, I'll defer to another Stephen - "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics" ... I am certainly no exception.
05-05-2010 08:33 AM
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
Knowing my luck I'd wind up on a river boat in the middle ocean off the SE coast of Japan in 1274 with some dude named Khan telling me to charge through the storm. No thanks.
05-05-2010 11:20 AM
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jh Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
I just finished reading a book that went through the actual scientific research that has been going on pastwards time travel. The more probable version (than just finding a wormhole which happened to link to the past) was to find a regular wormhole that linked two points in space, enlarge it, and accelerate one end at relativistic speeds to take advantage of time dilation. The end that remained fixed would be in the present, but the end that was accelerated would then be in the past (it would be younger, the same way an person would be). Then, traveling from the fixed end to the mobile end would take you back in time, but you could never travel back further that the creation of the wormhole, so seeing the dinosaurs is unlikely.
05-05-2010 01:28 PM
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HuskiemobileMan Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
Alright Stephen, time to get your hands dirty and build your spaceship. Time to walk the walk. 03-wink
05-05-2010 02:08 PM
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I45owl Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
That's just mean.
05-05-2010 03:14 PM
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Hambone10 Online
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
If time travel were possible, wouldn't we have visitors? Hard to imagine in the entirety of "time", nobody has come back and broken the cardinal rule of not getting caught.
05-05-2010 08:39 PM
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bubbapt Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
(05-05-2010 07:07 AM)Motown Bronco Wrote:  
(05-05-2010 06:48 AM)SumOfAllFears Wrote:  All you need is a wormhole, the Large Hadron Collider or a rocket that goes really, really fast

Or 1.21 gigawatts and a cool DeLorean

Brilliant!

[Image: 11024496_gal.jpg?ver=20100504]
05-05-2010 09:30 PM
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Lord Stanley Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
(05-05-2010 08:39 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  If time travel were possible, wouldn't we have visitors? Hard to imagine in the entirety of "time", nobody has come back and broken the cardinal rule of not getting caught.

OR HAVE THEY??!?!?!?

Hipster Time Traveler.

http://forgetomori.com/2010/fortean/time...eum-photo/

04-jawdrop
05-06-2010 07:50 AM
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Fo Shizzle Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
I call BS...If SH got a time machine...He would first use it to try and remove himself from his current existence in that chair.
05-06-2010 11:27 AM
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Motown Bronco Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
When people ask that hypothetical question, "What superpower would you like to have?", I'd answer time travel in a heartbeat.

Not to change history. Not to witness major events. I'd just want to mingle amongst the crowds, wander Manhattan in the 20s, catch a Tigers game in the 40s, get in the studio audience of an Ed Sullivan show taping in the 60s, those sorts of things.

I have no desire to take a peek into the future, quite honestly.
05-06-2010 11:36 AM
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NIU007 Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
If I could go back in the past, buy some stock (or options), and then sell it when I come back to the present (depending on timing I could perhaps sell it in the past too), it could come in pretty handy.

I once tried to read a book about time, the author was saying that the passing of time was an illusion. I had thought just that same thing so it caught my interest. He lost me pretty quickly though.
(This post was last modified: 05-06-2010 02:56 PM by NIU007.)
05-06-2010 02:54 PM
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Fo Shizzle Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
(05-06-2010 02:54 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  If I could go back in the past, buy some stock (or options), and then sell it when I come back to the present (depending on timing I could perhaps sell it in the past too), it could come in pretty handy.

I once tried to read a book about time, the author was saying that the passing of time was an illusion. I had thought just that same thing so it caught my interest. He lost me pretty quickly though.

I am willing to bet that most men could not resist the temptation of using the time machine for some illicit,deviant purpose. Count me as guilty...The possibilities of endless debauchery would be at your fingertips. Screw exploring the universe!03-lmfao
05-06-2010 03:35 PM
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NIU007 Offline
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RE: STEPHEN HAWKING: How to build a time machine
(05-06-2010 03:35 PM)Fo Shizzle Wrote:  
(05-06-2010 02:54 PM)NIU007 Wrote:  If I could go back in the past, buy some stock (or options), and then sell it when I come back to the present (depending on timing I could perhaps sell it in the past too), it could come in pretty handy.

I once tried to read a book about time, the author was saying that the passing of time was an illusion. I had thought just that same thing so it caught my interest. He lost me pretty quickly though.

I am willing to bet that most men could not resist the temptation of using the time machine for some illicit,deviant purpose. Count me as guilty...The possibilities of endless debauchery would be at your fingertips. Screw exploring the universe!03-lmfao

You saw the movie Groundhog Day, right?
05-06-2010 03:59 PM
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