Time Travel Proved Impossible

By on July 26, 2011 in News 67

timetravel2Major disappointment, from some jerk scientists who don’t seem to know when to keep their results to themselves. Via Discovery:

Hong Kong physicists say they have proved that a single photon obeys Einstein’s theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light — demonstrating that outside science fiction, time travel is impossible.

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology research team led by Du Shengwang said they had proved that a single photon, or unit of light, “obeys the traffic law of the universe.”

The possibility of time travel was raised 10 years ago when scientists discovered superluminal — or faster-than-light — propagation of optical pulses in some specific medium, the team said. It was later found to be a visual effect, but researchers thought it might still be possible for a single photon to exceed light speed.

Du, however, believed Einstein was right and determined to end the debate by measuring the ultimate speed of a single photon, which had not been done before. “By showing that single photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light, our results bring a closure to the debate on the true speed of information carried by a single photon,” said Du, assistant professor of physics.

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  • Anonymous

    This hasn’t proven anything. Even if the speed of light is a limitation that we haven’t yet breached (and who’s to say it might not involve some technology beyond our grasp at this point in time), what’s the relation between going faster than light and the question of time travel? Perhaps time travel would simply not involve going faster than the speed of light (again using a technology we haven’t yet discovered/invented).

  • Vims8205

    hehe how about get some real facts about travel check it on http://www.travelinjourney.com

  • Tuna Ghost

    Yeah, it mentioned nothing about wormholes/black holes or any other sort of rip in spacetime.  Seems a bit sloppy, if you ask me

  • Anonymous

    Nothing obeys the rules 100% of the time.

  • http://twitter.com/Marklar_Prime Marklar Kronkite

    If I remember correctly professor Goddard was proven to be a quack by the establishment which pointed out that in space there is simply nothing for a rocket to push against making space travel absolutely impossible. Stupid stupid Goddard.

  • Anonymous

    interesting article

  • Denarii

    I am not a physicist, so take this with a few heaping spoonfuls of salt. From what I understand, the closer something gets to the speed of light, the slower it experiences time compared to an external reference point (you’re effectively time travelling forward). Now, this part is pure speculation as I don’t really understand the science well enough, but if you were to exceed the speed of light, you may theoretically move backward in time compared to an external reference point.

  • Denarii

    A black hole is not a rip in spacetime. It’s a collapsed star that is massive enough to generate a gravity well strong enough that light cannot escape. Time dilation does occur in strong gravity fields, but 1) as far as I know, no gravitational field will cause time to run backward, 2) flying into a black hole is suicide.

    Wormholes are purely theoretical, there is no observed evidence for their existence.

  • Denarii

    A black hole is not a rip in spacetime. It’s a collapsed star that is massive enough to generate a gravity well strong enough that light cannot escape. Time dilation does occur in strong gravity fields, but 1) as far as I know, no gravitational field will cause time to run backward, 2) flying into a black hole is suicide.

    Wormholes are purely theoretical, there is no observed evidence for their existence.

  • Denarii

    A black hole is not a rip in spacetime. It’s a collapsed star that is massive enough to generate a gravity well strong enough that light cannot escape. Time dilation does occur in strong gravity fields, but 1) as far as I know, no gravitational field will cause time to run backward, 2) flying into a black hole is suicide.

    Wormholes are purely theoretical, there is no observed evidence for their existence.

  • Spamhunter

    And there was me thinking you were about to say something useful or funny. Keep your spam to yourself please

  • Dragonboykelly

    I can smell processed meat. King Canutes.

  • Dragonboykelly

    Even travelling at less than c, time starts to act in strange ways. The traveller experiences time differently than say, the family he left behind. Relativity in action. Humans trying to understand the nature of space time is like lobsters trying to understand the nature of Gothic architecture.

  • Dragonboykelly

    Great fun to think about though :)

  • Liquidself2004

    Wow.  Way to think really inside the box.  Now go measure quantum entanglement please.  Once you discard the idea of time as linear; a lot of the paradoxes disapear as if by magic. 

  • David Indge

    you need to travel through the speed of light like a sling shot one of them high speed japanese trains at optimum speed on the track as a hyperthetical model derail it off a cliff you get trains speed + gravity =optimum speed+i’m not a scientist or even a good speller but i’m sure some physisist could calculate what i’m on about with numbers and squiggles there’s loads of examples an iceskating chain of people last one on line will go faster when he lets go the the head of the chain at optimum speed,golf balls,baseball same idea

  • D^rail

    Weird that this is coming out of Hong Kong not to long after China banned TV shows and movies that use time travel in their plot.  What is This Chinese war on time travel all about?  I also don’t see how this “proves” time travel is impossible.  For all we know time travel could have nothing to do with the speed of light.

  • Adaugeo

    You’re exactly right Denarii. While traveling faster than light may be impossible, the relative existence of the object traveling close to the speed of light, slows down. While one may not be able to double back on their own history, you could travel into the future by leaving in a rocket traveling close tot he speed of light for x number of years. Upon your return, everything here on earth would have aged much faster than you and therefore in effect allowing you to see the future. Einstein agreed to this capability.

    Seriously though, we’re ants in regards to technological understanding. Don’t believe it, think back 150 years to what was considered science fiction that is now science reality.

  • Adaugeo

    You’re exactly right Denarii. While traveling faster than light may be impossible, the relative existence of the object traveling close to the speed of light, slows down. While one may not be able to double back on their own history, you could travel into the future by leaving in a rocket traveling close tot he speed of light for x number of years. Upon your return, everything here on earth would have aged much faster than you and therefore in effect allowing you to see the future. Einstein agreed to this capability.

    Seriously though, we’re ants in regards to technological understanding. Don’t believe it, think back 150 years to what was considered science fiction that is now science reality.

  • Malk

    1) scientists have been making photons in gas chambers travel faster than c for quite some time, that wasn’t and isn’t a “visual effect” whatever the crap that’s supposed to mean.
    2) even if it was impossible to send a photon (completely unrelated to sending a large solid object) faster than c that has almost nothing to do with time dilation, time travel, or even the concept of time.
    3) this article makes no attempt to describe at all what this team has done other than make big claims with lots of rhetoric.
    4) discovery sucks =/ they were cool when i was in high school, now its all meerkats and kids singing.
    5) these scientists are making mistake 101′s #1 mistake: assume you know all kinds of crap that has never actually been proven just because you like stuff that hasn’t been disproven.

    about as useful as a teenagers 2012 theory if you ask me =/

  • Malk

    what’s up with articles that take 15 minutes to write nowadays =o=

  • Jacob Santos

    so we don’t get to bring photons along when we time travel, no big deal! I kid, seriously though, nothing is impossible.

  • http://voxmagi-necessarywords.blogspot.com/ VoxMagi

    There goes my plan to go back in time and carefully explain to my younger self how easy it is to fake self confidence and that all the ‘cool’ people are just better skilled at faking it than most. I was hoping to give myself dating tips that would have transformed my last years of school into a giant pagan orgy. Also…a warning about that one ex that was batshit crazy might have been nice.

  • wizard

    http://www.universetoday.com/33752/device-makes-radio-waves-travel-faster-than-light/. time travel falls in the realm of metaphysics that does not follow the rules

  • http://29thfloor.com 29thfloor

    So, light travels at the speed of light. Got it.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Yeah guy, we all know what a black hole is, and that using time dilation to travel backwards through time is impossible, that one can only use the dilation to have time pass much faster to the an observer far away than yourself at the event horizon.  This is pretty common knowledge.   

    I’m referring to something like a Schwarzschild wormhole, a traversable wormhole that has negative density.  Hawking, among others, thinks that the Casmir effect is evidence that negative density is possible.  Take into account White Holes, and you’ve got a tunnel through spacetime.  

    Wormholes are purely theoretical, there is no observed evidence for their existence.

    No shit.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.  Both white holes and wormholes are mathematically possible, and metaphysically speaking I’m with Leibniz and think anything that can happen is happening.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    Alright, he was an idiot, but you have to admit his French New Wave films are amazing.  Breathless is aboslutely—oh you mean the other Goddard, my bad

  • Tuna Ghost

    Just because something is paradoxical doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.  This is a common misconception.

  • Tuna Ghost

    My advice would simply be “you are much more attractive than you have been led to believe”.  Nothing about 9/11 or the economic ruin awaiting in the future, no future events worth taking bets on, nothing like that.  Just me telling my younger self that being handsome is important.  

    ….I think I might be a bad person

  • Homashijma

    all of this simply implies that the speed of light cannot travel faster then itself, however time travel could have nothing to do with the speed of light nor E=MC2. It could be a concept strictly in isolation of itself. Plus this article was printed in China. China recently has banned all propaganda relating to Time travel. (Movies, Books, Games etc.) Plus, they are only looking at Einsteins point of view, all of which are seemingly dated, reason being the Universe re arranges itself on a regular basis, so the same laws that could have applied then could now have rearranged itself by now. Trust me, I aced my physics exams and science exams using “Unorthodox methods” But seeming still made my point by debunking the established years old laws. In order to accept new ideas you must make new rules.

  • Tuna Ghost

    scientists have been making photons in gas chambers travel faster than c for quite some time, that wasn’t and isn’t a “visual effect” whatever the crap that’s supposed to mean.
    Are you sure you aren’t referring to the studies where the shape of the photon makes it appear to go faster than a regular photon?  As in, the part of the photon that is being measured has been shifted so that it is registered before the regular photon, but isn’t actually moving faster than the regular photon, just being noticed first?  If not, please link to any article or study that claims to have made photons travel faster than the speed of light.

  • Anonymous

    Well, crap. Now how are we supposed to stop Hitler?

  • wizard

    totally dood 

  • wizard

    only jesus 

  • wizard

    SLEEP IS TIME TRAVEL 

  • Anonymous

    I find this ironic since China has been paying for research on how to bend space to time travel.  It sounds to me that they may have figured something out.  It’s all real, if you can imagine it or you can derive enough thought to picture it, it is created in a vast space of the mind which will eventually be dragged into this little game of ours.  At one time 1d and 2d were the only variables, now many are finding 4d and jumping this rock.

  • Bob

    The Chinese government would use misinformation!?  Never!  So, China is working on time travel while telling the rest of the world.  “Don’t worry guys… we looked into it and it’s impossible”.

  • Bob

    The Chinese government would use misinformation!?  Never!  So, China is working on time travel while telling the rest of the world.  “Don’t worry guys… we looked into it and it’s impossible”.

  • Anarchy Wolf

    Existing is time travel.

  • Anarchy Wolf

    Yes, continue plugging the foolish and mindless pursuit of technological “progress”. I’ll be here watching global fish populations dropping by nearly 90%, phyto-plankton populations dropping by 75%, and the ocean acidifying, the continued deforestation leading to unsustainable agriculture and desertification.

    Enjoy your tech toys while everything living slowly but surely dies off.

  • Anarchy Wolf

    What’s the big deal? The rocket explosion pushes particles away from the vehicle and through whatever newton’s law the rocket moves forward. 
    But it also in general means that a space vehicle must use fuel of some kind. Not just energy, but actual fuel.

  • ScienceHound

    Remember, black holes were purely theoretical throughout most of the 20th century.

    Also, a lot of effort has gone into trying to prove that wormholes are forbidden by the laws of physics.  So far, these efforts have all failed. [When quantum effects are considered, wormhole-supporting exotic matter is possible.]

    Source: The Physics of Stargates: Parallel Universes, Time Travel, and the Enigma of Wormhole Physics by Enrico Rodrigo (2010)

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Faceless-Anarkest/100001973641169 Faceless Anarkest

    I think that the function of light in a time machine would be to slow down then oscillate so you can focus the portal where you want to travel to.  

  • Anonymous

    It was also proven by logic just as infallible by the science of the day that it’s impossible for a human body to be alive for long in a vehicle going past 60mph.  Or to break the speed of sound or to climb Mt Everest…

    IMO, the ones that aren’t just making up papers to “Publish or Perish” and spitting out balderdash (IMO these guys) are getting real frustrated since a GUT is too elusive for modern tech to truly probe (Planck, sub-Planck level) so there’s still too much not connected.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1180747740 Dan Muench

    Laziness. Apparently you can do this cut and paste BS and be a ‘contributor’ here, but you can’t just post unless they like what you’re supposed to be about. Real ‘open’ and all that. 

    It’s all click-whoring. Lazy ‘article’ that’s a cut and paste of a link from http://www.fark.com, the Daily Grail or Fortean Times. Go to any one of these sites to see what ‘revelation’ is going to be posted here in a few days. “Hey, I know, I’ll just go to a slightly more obscure news aggregator and be the first to post it here!” This is why quote-unquote real journalists chafe at the notion that their function in society is going to be filled by some half-educated link repeater that’s posting links between Taco Bell binges and masturbation sessions. Because, frankly, it really isn’t. I’m not talking about people who actually find out how to do things  and go and do them to a fair degree of competence despite a lack of ‘credentials’ but that’s why such people are the exception rather than the norm. Go over to the Gawker websites and see what passes for an ‘article’ there – more text in the embed codes for the video they’re linking to than the snarky one-liner they likely also cut and pasted. I used to really have a little faith this company, nowadays it just seems like it does what it says on the can – disinform. Surely this is far more interesting than the story I wanted to post about the US Guv testing helicopter based drones in the Mojave Desert and training operators to watch highways and ‘blighted’ (read: poor) areas with them. The battlefield spec version crashed in the Bin Laden raid. However, no, this is FAR more important, this and the Mushroom Death Suit which is just exactly what I came here for. Oh, and Jesus on the Wal-mart receipt. Why am I coming here to further my world view again? I guess I’m just as lazy. Maybe that needs a-changin’… Frankly Disinfo is going the way of Infowars. Take off the training wheels and start expanding your horizons past the endcap featured offerings at Barnes and Nobles, folks. Better yet, if you’ve had your nose in books for the past decade as I have, perhaps it’s time to do as the Tao says – ‘have done with learning’. Because eventually you must pick up those tools and do something with them. 

  • Ali-G

    Nothing is impossible!!!  BOO-YAKA-SHA!!!

    I JUST BLEW OUT YO MINDS WITH MY MIND BULLETS, BITCHES…

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1180747740 Dan Muench

    To which I say, “O RLY?”

    Fans of the Free Zone and Radio Freeman might remember this little institute. 

    http://andersoninstitute.com/

    IF time travel is possible, then it’s possibly quite big business – and if your possible competitors don’t think to compete with you in an ‘impossible’ enterprise, so much the better.

    BTW, original poster, are you familiar with E Prime? Try ‘Chinese Study Claims To Have Proven Time Travel To Be An Impossibility’. Also try actually referencing the ‘proof’ somewhere, even in some abridged form. Also do try to do more than cut and paste a link with one sentence grafted onto it. Really, I put more into share a link on Facebook than the ‘articles’ that pass muster here and elsewhere. Perhaps, even, try not to get your news from goofy cable television sources.

    Here’s some more ‘news’:
     
    “From the History Channel – Zahi Hawass Says ‘Nothing To See in the Great Pyramid, Move Along…” 

    “From Fox News – ‘Every Philosophy That Isn’t Quasi-Christian Xenophobic Capitalism Proved To Be Utter Bullshit, So Stop Arguing Otherwise’”

    Revelatory!

    Who cares anyway – time machine are so last week. I want my Temporal Event Cloak and a directory of all of the Medical Cannabis dispensaries in the LA area…

  • Guilbert

    At best, they have proven that time travel by means of propelling something faster than light isn’t possible.  Like many of you have mentioned, I’m not sure they’ve really proven anything.  Remember when “Scientists” steered clear of the media?  Sounds to me like someones trying to make tenure.

  • Blown Mind Bitch

    Actually, ” nothing ” is impossible, there is always something.

  • http://twitter.com/D351 D351

    Quantum information moves instantly (faster than the speed of light). Therefore information can theoretically be transferred faster than light. Therefore, if information theory can be proven, moving faster than the speed of light works by extension. I may not be able to move as fast as a cheetah, but if I can teleport to where the cheetah is going before it even gets up, what’s the difference?

  • http://twitter.com/AudeRositaTchi Aude Rosita Tchi

    what about the spirit? I do agree for material thing, but I think time travel still possible for us using our spiritual capacity. Maybe it’s time to search this way…

  • Malk

    http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/053000sci-physics-light.html
    it’s a cool story, but… it really doesn’t have anything to with time travel in any sort of understandable concept, much like this article. sure you can break one of our made up laws from our EXTREMELY limited observational powers that we call almighty but that doesn’t actually mean you can send information into the future or past, let alone anything of solid matter, etc. but it does show that there’s a lot of things that we don’t understand and making these sorts of end-all claims is just childish at best.

  • Tuna Ghost

    My metaphysics professor always said “nothing” is a valid predicate, but its there isn’t any subject that this predicate describes.  

  • Tuna Ghost

    Well, to be fair that’s the reason why there is no sound in space.  No air to be compressed into sound waves.  For a long time the scientific community thought light needed a medium through which to travel–the “ether”–which turned out not to be true, but for the times it was a valid assumption.

  • Tuna Ghost

    Check out the Voudoun Gnostic Workbook for explanations of time travel using the Spider Queen’s web, if you’re into that sort of thing.  Its difficult to find a hard copy, but there are PDFs floating around online.

  • Tuna Ghost

    I’m not sure what you mean by that.  Does metaphysics “not follow the rules”, the particular realm that time travel falls into, or just time travel in general?  

    From the article:
    Singleton said the polarization synchrotron basically abuses radio waves so severely that they finally give in and travel faster than light.

    SCIENTISTS ABUSE REALITY ITSELF TO BEND IT TO THEIR WILL!  NOT EVEN THE RULES OF THE UNIVERSE CAN DISOBEY MAN!  WHAT WILL MANKIND USE THIS TERRIBLE POWER FOR???

    One possible use for faster than light radio waves — which are packed into a very powerful wave the size of a pencil point — could be the creation of a new generation of cell phones that communicate directly to satellites, rather than transmitting through relay towers as they now do.

    …oh.  Cellphones.  Wonderful.

  • Tuna Ghost

    I’m not sure what you mean by that.  Does metaphysics “not follow the rules”, the particular realm that time travel falls into, or just time travel in general?  

    From the article:
    Singleton said the polarization synchrotron basically abuses radio waves so severely that they finally give in and travel faster than light.

    SCIENTISTS ABUSE REALITY ITSELF TO BEND IT TO THEIR WILL!  NOT EVEN THE RULES OF THE UNIVERSE CAN DISOBEY MAN!  WHAT WILL MANKIND USE THIS TERRIBLE POWER FOR???

    One possible use for faster than light radio waves — which are packed into a very powerful wave the size of a pencil point — could be the creation of a new generation of cell phones that communicate directly to satellites, rather than transmitting through relay towers as they now do.

    …oh.  Cellphones.  Wonderful.

  • stone

    No you don’t, Newton’s third law, if i throw something I will move in opposite direction, that’s energy. I think you meant you need more than friction.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Catalina-Payne/100000365283622 Catalina Payne

    …

    Right, this is kind of missing a fair amount of ideas on Time Travel…

    Okay, yes–you cannot travel faster than the speed of light. That has been a given–and any methods of time travel based on going super-constant have been… hard to imagine even with the strange notion that time does weird things past constant. What they would do–is beyond entirely what I could imagine.

    The issue here, is it does not take into account how Space and Time are depended on each other. Movement in Space is dependent on movement in Time. Movement in Time is dependent on Space. Changing rates of movement in Space will change your rate of movement in Time. Movement in Time changes your rates of movement in Space (this stands only to reason).

    Now, we are constantly moving in Time. We all move forward at the same speed–that is, the standard direction. Most of us pay no more attention to the mechanics of standard temporal movement than we’d pay any attention to the standard way of drinking a cup of coffee. However, once we start to try to think of nonstandard ways of drinking coffee, we get just as weird in ways as we get in thinking of nonstandard ways to move in Time.

    Keep in mind–even if you stood still on your current spot, the planet you are is moving 2/3c (certain forms of spacial travel is best measured based on fractions of Constant).

    Now, keep in mind, travel through space modifies how you travel in time… traveling in time could conceivably be changed by simply changing the direction in space you are moving.

    With Hypercube Spacial dynamics, it is conceivable that moving in one of the nine spacial dimensions we do not think of, would affect our movement in time enough to make it no longer the standard movement. The three spacial dimension we are familiar with of width, height and depth (measured by x, y and z axis) are just three spacial dimensions floating in a total of twelve spacial dimensions that we are only vaguely aware of.

    The difficult part of the question is mostly just how one would move in a hypercube. As in Tunneling ranges of mass, it is easy to do this accidentally. However, we are not in a tunneling range. The two points at the opposite ends of our current range of mass, that is electrons, and black holes… however is where tunneling begins.

    So, they’ve only really managed to show that constant is the ceiling for movement in the various Spacial Dimensions… they have done nothing to disprove the notion of nonstandard time travel.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Catalina-Payne/100000365283622 Catalina Payne

    That event horizan thing is closer to the notion that one person is moving much faster than another. Screwing with their perception of time.

    As velocity messes with how fast you are going through time. A gravity well, works by creating an accelerating force towards it. 9.81m/s**2 is only just what Earth does. The event horizon on a black hole is mostly caused by a REALLY high acceleration, destroying how you can see and understand reality, due to changing how fast you are moving forward in time.

    It does not seem likely to be able to cause somebody to go backwards in time–unless it could be used in conjunction with hypercube movement. Which WOULD require technology beyond what we have in the LHC… as it would require being able to generate and rig and control a stable black hole well enough to figure out how to use it to do hypercubic movement.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Catalina-Payne/100000365283622 Catalina Payne

     The issue is: Black Hole level masses respond to the forces of gravity the same as electrons and quantum level masses.

    It may just be, that we are simply in a mass range that cannot do tunneling. There is a chance that this range repeats at masses higher than Black Holes, and mass sufficiently smaller than our quantum cousins.

    How one would go about confirming the existence of this range’s repetition, however… is a bit hard to imagine.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Catalina-Payne/100000365283622 Catalina Payne

    Zero is just as much a concept and Not a Number (NaN) as Infinity.

    Just some things we use Zero to simplify things (as it may as well be Zero). Just like some things we use Infinity to simplify what is present (as it may as well be approaching infinity).

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Catalina-Payne/100000365283622 Catalina Payne

     Sorry… Hitler’s Time Travel Exemption Act is to be invoked here:

    http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitlekz83hawz

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Catalina-Payne/100000365283622 Catalina Payne

    You do realise that younger you may be a bit hard to talk to… or even believe what future you is saying.

    May even attack future you–thinking future you is an evil that needs to be stopped before you become future you.

    Not that I have any knowledge here… as that would be silly.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Catalina-Payne/100000365283622 Catalina Payne

     Yeah… but most Time Travel is based on the notion you want to be able to return home.

  • Anonymous

    What else are we supposed to do? I don’t feel like crossing Big Oil and suddenly shooting myself in the back of the head.

  • Anonymous

    Brad Pitt stopped Hitler, I seen it in a movie.