April 11, 2007
Kudos To Dan Sytman And David Boze

For bringing physicist John Cramer on to their talk show to discuss Cramer's efforts to test one of the stranger ideas from quantum physics, time travel.

The Seattle scientist who wants to test a controversial prediction from quantum theory that says light particles can go backward in time is, himself, running out of time.
. . .
It's a project that aims to do a conceptually simple bench-top test for evidence of something Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance."  The test involves using a crystal to split a photon, a light particle, into two reduced-energy photons that -- through careful manipulation -- Cramer thinks could reveal a flash of time traveling backward.

Kudos because this is not an easy subject; Einstein famously refused to accept parts of quantum mechanics all his life, and even devised the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought experiment to challenge parts of quantum mechanics.  (Years later, with some modifications, the experiment was run — and gave the absurd result that Einstein thought impossible.)  But Sytman and Boze did a good job, anyway.  I didn't hear any mistakes, and that happens less often than I would like when difficult scientific subjects are discussed on the radio.

And kudos because, though a difficult subject, the experiment that Professor Kramer wants to do is both fascinating and, potentially, extraordinarily important.  And if you happen to have the small amount he needs for his experiment, $12,000, you might consider helping him out.

(And kudos to the PI's Tom Paulson, who wrote what appears to be a reasonably accurate explanation of Kramer's proposed experiment.  Paulson's article looks even better, of course, in contrast to the disgraceful interviews Mark Rahner of the Seattle Times did with physicists Brian Greene and Steven Hawking.)

Posted by Jim Miller at April 11, 2007 01:42 PM | Email This
Comments
1. It may be possible to travel forward in time, but I don't think we can travel backward in time. My reasoning is that the molecules and atoms that comprise our bodies were all doing something else, say 1,000 years ago, other than comprising our physical selves.

All matter has been around from the beginning of time, and that includes us.

Posted by: Libertarian on April 11, 2007 02:25 PM
2.
If stuff can go backward, then couldn't the future scientists send us all sorts of cool devices and we wouldn't have to spend money to research it?

Posted by: John Bailo on April 11, 2007 02:52 PM
3. I tried it myself and conjured up a guy from 2030 who wanted to know why I pulled him away from his television. He was watching cspan and AlGore was explaining to one and all that the earth is in the grasp of a man made ice age... .. .

Posted by: JDH on April 11, 2007 03:01 PM
4. JDH, I tried it too and got Dave Matthews from the late 2020's and he's climbing onto roof tops saying "any day now, any day now. Tide's gonna rise..."

Posted by: PC on April 11, 2007 03:27 PM
5. If time is merely a measurement of motion, like meters or feet are a measurement of length, how can anyone go back in motion? Or forward in motion?

So which came first, time or motion?

Posted by: diedre on April 11, 2007 03:50 PM
6. Want to see time travel? Watch King County Elections count ballots. They keep going back in time and finding more and more.

Posted by: Huey on April 11, 2007 04:35 PM
7. Call it what he wants, the end result can only be that it appeared to go back in time. It's been done before, just can't send something back in time, including photons, you can only have the relative appearance of it going back in time.

Posted by: Doug on April 11, 2007 07:08 PM
8. Sorry to goof on your time travel party, but "time travel" was the only scene from Napoleon Dynamite that I laughed at.

Posted by: Andy on April 11, 2007 08:43 PM
9. In "The Direction of Time" by Hans Reichenbach, he discusses the idea that anti-matter, since the anti-particles seem to travel in a parallel track to matter counterparts during supercollider experiments, may be the same particles moving in another direction of time.

Posted by: Brian Crouch on April 12, 2007 10:40 AM
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