Scientists are looking for time travelers

Time travel is possible - at least, this is what serious scientists say . Most likely, tuned Delorean for such a journey is not suitable; but time travelers could use “wormholes”, Tipler cylinders, and other mechanisms based on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Then why have we not yet met any such traveler?

This question may seem silly, but scientists take it very seriously. The only thing that would definitively prove the feasibility of time travel is a meeting with a guest from the future. Scientists have been arguing about the possibility of such travels for more than a century, so a guest who resolves all disputes at once would be highly welcome. Inspired by this, scientists and dreamers with inexhaustible enthusiasm continue to experiment to identify guests from the future in our modern world.
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One such experimenter is the famous scientist Stephen Hawking. He is absolutely convinced of the possibility of time travel , and even knows how a time machine should be arranged . He asks the question: “If time travel is possible, then where are the tourists from the future?” Indeed, where are they?

How can you travel in time

To carry over in time, people dreamed for many centuries; but it was only in the last century that a scientific theory appeared, proving that it was indeed possible to transfer to the future. Unfortunately, travel to the past is much more complicated .

In accordance with the General Theory of Relativity, there can exist “wormholes” in space-time - bridges connecting the remote points in a short way. Certain types of wormholes can, theoretically, allow movement in both directions; but traveling into the past is subject to a number of restrictions. The most important of them is that we still do not know how to create such “holes”; and when we learn, the created “hole” will allow returning only at the time of its creation - not earlier.

Other ways of traveling in time are associated with relativistic time dilation : moving clocks go slower than fixed ones. Gravity, by contrast, accelerates the passage of time. Thanks to cosmonautics, this effect has been confirmed experimentally: indeed, the clock on the ISS is a little slower than on Earth.

How significant can this effect be? If you sit down in a super-fast spacecraft, and circle it around the galaxy, while the earth clock continues to tick at normal speed — will such a passenger arrive on the Earth of the future? And is it possible to somehow use this effect to travel into the past?

We do not know. We will not know until we try, and for this, humanity has no means. It is much easier to search for time travelers among the inhabitants of the modern world! To do this, do not need a laboratory with ingenious equipment - it is enough to announce a party. At least a few eccentric scientists have decided this.

Party Time Travelers

One of the first high-profile experiments to find time travelers was not very scientific. It was in the early 80s: the heyday of computers and consumer electronics, the first launches of “Shuttles” ... As a result, the line between science and science fiction began to blur in people's minds. Several eccentrics in Baltimore staged what The New York Times called an "epidemic of temporary insanity": in March 1982, when all nine planets lined up at the shortest distance in two hundred years from each other, a group of people calling themselves "Chrononauts" gathered greet "guests from every future." As the Times wrote, “The chrononauts drank and danced, and after midnight some of them began to undress.” Guests from the future did not show up; but apparently, and without them all had a good time.

Thirty years later, a similar, but completely different, party took place in Cambridge, England. This time, it was not staged by science fiction cranks who staged her, but Stephen Hawking himself. In one of the halls of the University of Cambridge, Hawking arranged the champagne and snacks, and posted posters: “We welcome travelers in time!” Hawking did not invite anyone other than time travelers. As a result, no one came to the party.

It is difficult to say how seriously Hawking treated this experiment: it is known that he was convinced of the possibility of time travel, and he had long argued that meeting with tourists from the future would be the best evidence; so he could well have expected that someone would still come to his party, despite the fact that he hadn’t informed anyone about it before the party. Only residents of the future could find out about it, turn on their time machine, and fly in to spend the evening with a famous scientist.

On the other hand, Kip Thorne, a friend and contemporary of Hawking, explains that the most likely way in which to move through time is through the wormhole . This means that people of the future will be able to move into the past only by the time the time machine is built, capable of creating "wormholes"; but everything that precedes its construction remains unattainable for the inhabitants of the future. In other words, since the time machine has not yet been built, then the people of the future will not be able to come to the Hawking party.

Time Traveler Conference

Amal Dorai, a graduate student at MIT, held a similar, though not so frivolous, event several years before Hawking's party. He did not keep it a secret - on the contrary, Dorai convened an entire conference dedicated to time travel, and he urged the participants to advertise it as widely as possible:

It is necessary that volunteers publish information about our conference where they will last for a long time - so that guests from future millennia can learn about this conference and join us. We do not need Internet references much more than publications in LARGE editions, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, or in printed books ... If you have any contacts in these areas, please use them.

It happens that the dreams of eccentrics come true: The Times has indeed published a note about the conference . The “All Things Considered” broadcast on NTR also mentioned this conference . She was told about her in "Wired", and even Tina Fey sneered at her on "Saturday Night Live".

The advertisement was quite justified: the famous university, in any case attracting media attention; a program including reports by renowned professors; and the very idea - a conference for guests from the future - provided a catchy title! But all this was in vain. “The success of the conference was ambiguous,” Doray said. “Unfortunately, among the conference participants there was not a single confirmed guest from the future. It may well be that they participated incognito to avoid endless inquiries about future events. ”A similar conference was held in Perth, Australia, at about the same time, and with the same results.

Doray, of course, underestimated the longevity of the Internet. Indeed, in 2005, when he convened the conference, it was not yet clear that the print media would give way to the online media. Dorai was too skeptical about advertising his conference on the Internet - according to him, “The World Wide Web is unlikely to stay in its current form for a long time.” Well, nine years have passed, and nothing has happened to it yet.

The physicists from MIT, explaining the outcome of the conference, came to the same conclusion as in the case of the Hawking party: when the time machine is built, it most likely will not allow moving past the time beyond its construction. Therefore, the guests from the future could not come to Dora, however much they wanted.

Guests from the future on the Internet

Last winter, two physicists from the Technical University of Michigan published the results of a study whose title does not need explanation: "Search for Time Travelers on the Internet . " These researchers took a different approach: they did not lure guests from the future to some kind of event, but instead began to look for "digital traces" left by such guests on the Internet.

Robert Nemiroff and Theresa Wilson were looking everywhere : on Twitter, on Facebook, on Google, on Google Plus and even on Bing. But nothing was found. In the eight years of the experiment, not a single one has been encountered - not one! - references to concepts from the future that would not be known to contemporaries of the mention.

Good idea! But it turns out that Nemiroff and Wilson were looking for a not quite ordinary time traveler - but one who would post words from the future on the Internet. Why would he do that? According to the researchers, “Perhaps, in the future, information about how long such a word began to be used has not been preserved; perhaps such a traveler was mistaken in assuming that the event had already taken place; perhaps he was just trying to find out if it had already happened, or not yet. ”

Foolish, but what to do? This is no worse than having a party without inviting a single guest, or than convening a conference on a technology that has not yet been invented. No wonder that all these attempts are overgrown with ridicule and parodies.

Only facts

All of these attempts lead to a very specific conclusion - there is still no time machine. When it appears, if it does appear at all, then humanity will enter a new era. But it is unlikely that we will be able to return to the past further than by the time the car was built - if at all we can return to the past: such movements are very, very difficult to make.

But time travel is real. Thanks to the theory of relativity, astronauts on the ISS every day move in time for a few microseconds . So if you want to meet a time traveler - just try to make friends with the nearest cosmonaut.