UW professor aims to make time travel a reality
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SEATTLE -- Physicists, mathematicians, philosophers and that guy talking to himself on a street corner all have opinions about validity of time travel.
So does Dr. John Cramer, professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Washington. He wants to make it a reality.
But Cramer's form of time travel is not the teleportation characterized by Hollywood and science fiction. As time travel goes, Cramer thinks in baby steps. He's working on the possibility receiving a message milliseconds before it's sent.
"I have to admit, this is pushing the envelope and often the envelop pushes back," says Cramer, a nuclear physicist who has worked on projects involving the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
In the basement of the campus physics building, Cramer is fiddling with laser beams to prove what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance". He's splitting photons through a series of synthetic crystals to demonstrate that quantum non-locality can be used to communicate.
For those of us who never took high school physics, this is what he's trying to do in layman's terms: If you took a pair of photons created at the same time and altered one of those photons, in theory the other photon would be altered instantly -- even if it was separated by an entire galaxy.
That would mean communication could travel faster than the speed of light over long distances. The ramifications of something Einstein didn't think was possible but theoretically could happen would be incredible. Physicists call it "nonlocal quantum communication."
"You could do real-time communication with objects on other plants," says Cramer. "You could put on a virtual reality helmet and be driving your remote dune buggy on Mars."
That means NASA could operate a rover on Mars in real time. Normally it takes 22 minutes for a signal traveling at the speed of light to reach Mars.
That's step one in a two-step process. Cramer admits it's big first step.
"I think it's a long shot but it's a long shot with such important implications, it's worth it," says Cramer.
But Cramer has been at step one for nearly a decade with no success. He's had funding issues and technical problems.
"You have to be able to efficiently detect the entangled photons before you can do any real measurements and we have not been able to do that yet," says Cramer.
If Cramer can prove step one, step two becomes even more fascinating.
"If you can communicate using non-locality then you can communicate faster than light and backwards in time," says Cramer. "I'm a little scared of what happens if it does happen because the implications are so bizarre."
And who could most likely profit immediately from such technology? Wall Street. Sixty-percent of the daily trade volume on the New York Stock Exchange involves high frequency trades made by computer programs. These trades happen in fractions of a second with traders earning or losing fractions of a penny at a time.
"Milliseconds is what it's all about now," says Tom Cock, Managing Director of Vestory, an investment advisory firm in Kirkland.
Speed and distance is now so important, large brokerage houses have their trading computers inches away from the main computers running the exchanges in order to cut down on lag time.
"So that when trades are made in the exchange, they can immediately see those trades and respond to them in an algorithmic way that allows them to have advantages over the everyman," says Cock.
If a trader's computer could see how the market responds to a trade milliseconds before it's actually made, the implications would be enormous.
"Then the field is not level at all," says Cock.
"I think 50 milliseconds might be interesting to Goldman Sachs," says Cramer sheepishly.
While some interpret Einstein’s theory of relatively to mean nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, Cramer says that doesn’t apply to his experiments.
"If there is something lurking in the woodwork which actually prevents you from doing this, I don't know what it is," says Cramer.
That's coming from a scientist who knows what he's talking about. Then again, maybe it's already happened.
So does Dr. John Cramer, professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Washington. He wants to make it a reality.
But Cramer's form of time travel is not the teleportation characterized by Hollywood and science fiction. As time travel goes, Cramer thinks in baby steps. He's working on the possibility receiving a message milliseconds before it's sent.
"I have to admit, this is pushing the envelope and often the envelop pushes back," says Cramer, a nuclear physicist who has worked on projects involving the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
In the basement of the campus physics building, Cramer is fiddling with laser beams to prove what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance". He's splitting photons through a series of synthetic crystals to demonstrate that quantum non-locality can be used to communicate.
For those of us who never took high school physics, this is what he's trying to do in layman's terms: If you took a pair of photons created at the same time and altered one of those photons, in theory the other photon would be altered instantly -- even if it was separated by an entire galaxy.
That would mean communication could travel faster than the speed of light over long distances. The ramifications of something Einstein didn't think was possible but theoretically could happen would be incredible. Physicists call it "nonlocal quantum communication."
"You could do real-time communication with objects on other plants," says Cramer. "You could put on a virtual reality helmet and be driving your remote dune buggy on Mars."
That means NASA could operate a rover on Mars in real time. Normally it takes 22 minutes for a signal traveling at the speed of light to reach Mars.
That's step one in a two-step process. Cramer admits it's big first step.
"I think it's a long shot but it's a long shot with such important implications, it's worth it," says Cramer.
But Cramer has been at step one for nearly a decade with no success. He's had funding issues and technical problems.
"You have to be able to efficiently detect the entangled photons before you can do any real measurements and we have not been able to do that yet," says Cramer.
If Cramer can prove step one, step two becomes even more fascinating.
"If you can communicate using non-locality then you can communicate faster than light and backwards in time," says Cramer. "I'm a little scared of what happens if it does happen because the implications are so bizarre."
And who could most likely profit immediately from such technology? Wall Street. Sixty-percent of the daily trade volume on the New York Stock Exchange involves high frequency trades made by computer programs. These trades happen in fractions of a second with traders earning or losing fractions of a penny at a time.
"Milliseconds is what it's all about now," says Tom Cock, Managing Director of Vestory, an investment advisory firm in Kirkland.
Speed and distance is now so important, large brokerage houses have their trading computers inches away from the main computers running the exchanges in order to cut down on lag time.
"So that when trades are made in the exchange, they can immediately see those trades and respond to them in an algorithmic way that allows them to have advantages over the everyman," says Cock.
If a trader's computer could see how the market responds to a trade milliseconds before it's actually made, the implications would be enormous.
"Then the field is not level at all," says Cock.
"I think 50 milliseconds might be interesting to Goldman Sachs," says Cramer sheepishly.
While some interpret Einstein’s theory of relatively to mean nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, Cramer says that doesn’t apply to his experiments.
"If there is something lurking in the woodwork which actually prevents you from doing this, I don't know what it is," says Cramer.
That's coming from a scientist who knows what he's talking about. Then again, maybe it's already happened.
Professor Cramer is just trying to recall THE response he made TO a woman who had the nerve to apply for a position at the Nuclear Physics Lab. The resonse was "I will have to lay off three MEN".
I've just about completed the book The Source Field by David Wilcock. It's an interesting book because it
touches on a great many things, time travel, space/reality travel (are they the same thing?) and so on. I believe
in parallel living spaces here on Earth and our ability to travel to them or at least partially into them. I have had
my own experiences along this line. I'm just not smart enough to conduct research in this area. I love the possibility of moving massive stones with our minds or sound. I only wish we had not lost what our ancestors
several thousand years ago knew. They may have been and probably were much farther advanced in many, many areas of the scidences than we believe we are now. I do wish Dr. Cramer success with his endeavors.
You could also get in your car and drive to the town of Granger. You'll flash back to either the 19th century or prehistoric times. ;)
I would rather have a Light Saber....LOL
Best of luck with your research. The chances of this actually becoming reality are pretty slim, but the implications of this if he pulls it off are unbelievable.
So if this works, will everyone want to travel back befor Boeing, and Microsoft and by stock? That way they will be boocoo rich when they come back to real time?Of course you'll prolly already have to be ridiculously rich before you can pay to travel in time. And, what about the space time continuum? Won't that just mess everything up?
 @Donna Truitt Christian But the time before Boeing and Microsoft *is* real time. This is the future.
This guy is way behind the times. Time travel is already a reality.
Mitt Romney has a time machine that he uses quite frequently. Look how many things he has done "retroactively."
That is why Mitt isn't afraid of "fact checkers" or truth hounds - or even "losing" the election. He can always go back and fix it later.
 @A.V. Maybe that's why he and Paul have suddenly started talking about "Hope" and "Change" for the past week or so...
Having examined the implausible 'sponsored' and published result of two gold atoms smashed in the Hadron C (which I think he also collaborated on, though I can't be sure), I can say that I feel he might be also on the wrong 'track' (pun intended).
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What if Time is the 'thing'? Â What if 'dimension' is really perspective? Â No need to travel in time then as there is only time. Â It is where you are.
Einstein et al noted this seeming paradox in a paper back in 1935. It is known as the EPR paradox after Einstein and his colleagues. There is a good WikiPedia article on the EPR paradox here. Dr. Cramer says "If you can communicate using non-locality then you can communicate faster than light and backwards in time," says Cramer. "I'm a little scared of what happens if it does happen because the implications are so bizarre." It is widely accepted that the EPR entanglement can not be used to communicate information. This avoids all the causality problems noted in the article. see the section of the WikiPedia article titled "Locality and the EPR experiment." If Dr. Cramer has indeed found a way to communicate information using this mechanism it would shake the foundations of physics. However, such a development is highly unlikely.
 @Howard Wallace I came across a book called "The Holographic Universe" some years ago, and what was in that book seems to be along these lines. The image of the universe it conjured up was really remarkable...
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"In 1982 a remarkable event took place. At the University of Paris a research team led by physicist Alain Aspect performed what may turn out to be one of the most important experiments of the 20th century. You did not hear about it on the evening news. In fact, unless you are in the habit of reading scientific journals you probably have never even heard Aspect's name, though there are some who believe his discovery may change the face of science. Â Aspect and his team discovered that under certain circumstances subatomic particles such as electrons are able to instantaneously communicate with each other regardless of the distance separating them. It doesn't matter whether they are 10 feet or 10 billion miles apart. Â Somehow each particle always seems to know what the other is doing. The problem with this feat is that it violates Einstein's long-held tenet that no communication can travel faster than the speed of light. Since traveling faster than the speed of light is tantamount to breaking the time barrier, this daunting prospect has caused some physicists to try to come up with elaborate ways to explain away Aspect's findings. But it has inspired others to offer even more radical explanations. Â University of London physicist David Bohm, for example, believes Aspect's findings imply that objective reality does not exist, that despite its apparent solidity the universe is at heart a phantasm, a gigantic and splendidly detailed hologram."
http://rense.com/general69/holoff.htm
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@OrcasThunder @Howard Wallace Thanks for the link. That was interesting. The EPR paradox has been mystifying people since 1935. It is a fun thing to think about.
 @Howard Wallace  @OrcasThunder  @HowardÂ
It's an interesting book - although the idea of being a hologram would take a bit of getting used to!
WikiPedia article link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_paradox
There seems to be some confusion here.Going faster than light is not going "back" in time. Â Light takes time to travel, just like sound, or the US Mail.
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What he is doing is transmitting information instantaneously...exactly at the time it happens.  But not before.  Although to those old time, "light viewers" it might seem that way.
@John Bailo - Alas John, simultaneity at non-local points can not be defined except in a particular reference frame. Two remote events you think are simultaneous in your frame are not simultaneous in another frame. There are many aspects of both relativity and quantum mechanics that are not intuitive. It is difficult to apply our âcommon senseâ in these realms of the very fast or the very small. We did not evolve (or alternatively were not designed) to perceive and make decisions based on the very fast or very small. They are not in our traditional realm.
 @John Bailo Here's an article from 2007 that better explains how he relates this to sending information backwards in time.
http://cosmiclog.nbcnews.com/_news/2007/07/17/4350992-backward-research-goes-forward
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 @John BailoÂ
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Light takes time to travel, as measured *from your frame of reference.*  Time dilation slows the apparent perception of time as velocity increases.  For an observer at the SoL, time would in effect be stopped relative to yours.
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Relativity. It's a thing!
Let's all make fun of the guy for trying to advance technology and the human race.
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Good job everyone.
 @Landshark By paying homage to the sci-fi characters that have brought joy and inspired other scientists to make some interesting inventions/discoveries. Don't take things so seriously.
Really, funding issues and technical problems..
He does look like the First Doctor...I'm guessing he's looking for the TARDIS.
Just get a DeLorean.
Basic human trait, if you don't understand something, just make fun of it.
 @Larry*X*K Part of the problem is that the article leaves a pretty large information gap, which makes the whole thing seem less plausible. It says this: "He's working on the possibility receiving a message milliseconds before it's sent" but then describes instantaneous communication, which really doesn't seem equivalent to communicating with the past.
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This article describes the connection a little better:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/07/weird-science-2.html
...but it leaves some gaps of its own.
Your tuition dollars at work.
He needs 1.21 jigawatts of power, then he will have it working.
 @James127 No. He just needs a Mr. Fusion.
 @A.V.  @James127 Mr. Fusion is only the power source,The Flux Capacitor is the device that distorts the time-space continuum on a controllable basis to enable Time Travel.Â
 @A.V.  @James127 By the way, don't let your kid go to the Prom on  May 12 2025.  Just sayin... Grandpa
Quote "He's working on the possibility receiving a message milliseconds before it's sent." And how is this message being sent? (email, text, monitor, little voices talking back inside your head).
"You could do real-time communication with objects on other plants," says Cramer. Â Objects on other plants huh? Â So for example you could communicate with a memo pad sitting on a ficus or a fern? Â AMAZING. Â
 @mattjpn They obviously meant planets, it's a typo, Jeebus you people are dumb
 @mattjpn This little gem of an article seems to imply wackiness on part of a scruffy old professor, while explaining also that it is Physics that homeless guys are discussing while talking to themselves on street corners. That physics is the Devil, Bobby Boucher. Stay away from it or you'll end up on the corner of Wacky street, talking to yourself.
Until Dunworthy gets involved I'm not going anywhere near the project.
How about sending the truth back, say 10 years or a year before every war we've become involved in. A whole lot of lying goes on before every war.
Argh! This article kills me. The preoccupation with profit is everything that is wrong with science today; it's more important than the discovery itself.
I think he's working on the flux capacitor or something.
Let's do the time warp again. ; )
Get a DeLorean Doc.
"funding issues", no kidding...Â
Alchemist of the 21st ;-)
Besides I don't want to ride a buggy on Mars, nor do I want Wall Street to trade faster only to take us down the economic black hole in 50 milliseconds, sorry.
Hey Doc Brown! Didn't you hear? The SOL is "settled" science. Why are you a SOL denier? I think you should be banished from all peer journals. And are you funded by The Timex Corporation? Over 100% of scientists believe that the SOL is inviolable. You are an embarrassment to science.
Â
Don't worry, Dr Mann, you'll get your day in court. Nobel Peace Prize? Indeed...
Where is the bow tie ? Any time traveler knows bow ties are cool.
 @SkaBob I would think he needs a really, really long scarf.
 @SkaBob That is correct. Mr. Peabody would never 'travel' without proper attire.