Russell Miles-Australia
(Work in Progress)
Given the sheer length of all-time, and the infinite number of sentient-being
that will exist, surely, if Time-travel is possible, shouldn’t we have bumped
into some eccentric historians from the future, megalomaniac plotting against
their foes’ grandparents or temporal-tourist in out of fashion garb with
incorrect change for the Underground?
‘Today, we are going to perform a classical thought experiment,’ said Professor Petrakov as he stood at the front of the lecture-theatre. ‘Let us call this apparatus a Tachyon Box. I want you to imagine I am able to create a tachyon impulse. As you should know, a Tachyon is a hypothetical particle that can travel at super-liminal speed, or faster then the speed of light. So by this means I can theoretically send a signal forward or back in time.’
Professor Petrakov paused and stroked his thin grey beard and waited. The students of his Philosophy of Mathematics class were baffled at his audacious remarks. They were serious students and more use to problems on semiotics, logic and transcendental reasoning. They were all exceptionally bright. They could not get into his course otherwise. But he felt they were unable to see the wood for the trees at times. So he liked to challenge them in strange and different ways.
‘Let’s suppose that over-here, is a reflector that detects and amplifies any tachyon impulses and distinguishes artificial impulses from background noise that is radiating through out the Universe from the The Big Bang.’
By now, Professor Petrakov was sure he had everyone attention; even the fidgeting students at the back were sitting still. He paces to the side of the rostrum; his long legs covered the distance in a few slow strides.
‘Now, what I will do is send a signal a few seconds into the future, which is as far I can achieve without the energy equivalent of a ‘G class’ star imploding.’ This remark was met with a muffled laughter from the students.
Holding up his hand for quiet, Professor Petrakov continued, ‘When the reflector detects the tachyon impulse, it will activate this switch, here, and turn-off the Tachyon Box. On this oscilloscope, which I have set up as a pretend impulse metre, you’ll see a simple sine-wave when the signal is detected.’
‘Ok. I’m turning on the ‘Tachyon Box’ from stand-by to on. Watch what happens.’
The students watch the oscilloscope as the sine-wave remain unchanged for a moment. Then, it started to reduce in size, only to grow again, reduce and settle into a fibulating pattern.
‘Would someone like to tell me what is meant to be happening,’ intones Professor Petrakov.
An eager hand thrust up in the front row.
‘Stand and state your name,’ directs Professor Petrakov.
‘Julio Altamo, Sir.’
‘Your observations, Julio.’
‘Sir, the tachyon impulse is turning the Tachyon Box off, but before it can do so the signal weaken and the Tachyon Box moves to on again, then the signal increases, tries to turn itself off again, but gets stuck in an impasse, never being quite on or off.’
‘Very good,’ replies Professor Petrakov. ‘Sit down. Now would anyone else care to venture as to what the implications of this may be?’
From among the middle rows of the lecture-theatre a hand is gingerly raised by an ordinary-looking student with black wavy hair.
‘Yes, you. What is your name?’
‘David, Sir.’
‘And?’
David adjusted his glasses out of nervousness. ‘Ar, I guess it means I can’t go forward in time, grab the lotto results and come back and make a winnings!’
The lecture-theatre breaks out in riotous laugher as David, feeling embarrassed, tries to slide as far down into his seat as he can go.
But Professor Petrakov waves his hands and beckons for silence. He had a piercing stare that brooked no argument. ‘Why are you mocking your colleagues’ answer. He is perfectly correct? And if I set the Tachyon Box to send a signal back in time instead of forward, I’d get a similar result. The meter would initially show nothing because the detector had not been set up in the past yet. But as soon as the signal is received, it tries to turn the Tachyon Box off again, but settles into an oscillation. This means that you can not go back in time and kill your own grandfather, because if you kill him, you cease to exist, ergo you cannot have killed him in the first place, and so on.’
The students were reduced to silence as each tried to fathom what Professor Petrakov had said.
‘For next week’s assignment, write twelve hundred words on the topic “Can Time-travel be demonstrated by mathematical equation?” That is all for today’s lecture.’
David finished transcribing his equation to the white-board in the lecture-theatre. Professor Petrakov looked on impassively. At last David finished his scribbling. He stood back and carefully compared his tatty notebook to the while-board, adjusting his glasses as he did so. He dreaded making a gaff in from of the esteemed Professor.
‘Well, Sir. If you look at the top left hand corner you will notice …’
‘I am perfectly capable of reading a mathematical equation,’ carped Professor Petrakov. ‘I see you have a significant variable in line four. That makes the subsequent calculations almost a nonsense.’
David cringed under the Professor’s harsh tones as he tried to focus on the line in question.
‘I was trying to allow for different values, Sir. Um, if you look at line twelve and twenty, I included a notional radius and spin that would give required time-space distortion … I mean, Sir, how could you tell, the event horizon would mask the singularity!’ David gasped in exasperation.
‘No. We cannot observe true reality,’ replied Professor Petrakov in calm demeanour, ‘but we can measure mean values and standard deviations. If you impute a fraction less then one into the equation, that will give you a working proximity.’
‘Oh!’ David exclaimed. Then quickly worked through the calculation in his head.
‘That will give you a working figure,’ continued Professor Petrakov. ‘It is a starting point for a theorem of Space-Time Transmutation.’
‘So you think it may actually work?’ asked David feeling a sense of anticipation.
‘Humm. You are suggesting marshalling ten neutron stars into a column about 100km long and 10 to 20 km across, with the whole thing spinning at 10,000 revolutions per second.’
‘That is just a suggestion to create a naked singularity. I would hope to find something naturally accruing.’
‘You don’t believe time-travel is possible, Sir?’
‘I wouldn’t say impossible. Neutronium has a density of 1014 of ordinary matter. At that sort of rotation you’d have to counter the column trying to tear itself apart in one direction, and the gravitational pull of such a massive mass is trying to collapse into black hole along its length. That would take an awful lot of energy.’
‘But theoretically?’
‘Well, I’ve seen no evidence.’
‘Because you’ve never met a bona-fide time-traveller?’
‘Oh, I grant you there is an element of vanity in it, but do you know many double Nobel Prize winners do you know? I’d like to think that future mathematicians might like to meet me. What may I ask would you do if you could actually travel in time?
‘Well, I’d certainly like to met Einstein and discuss his views on Super String Theory.’
‘Precisely! And did Einstein ever mention meeting any travellers from the future. No! In all of time, perhaps tens of billions of years, no one, not a single sentient being ever bother call upon one of the geniuses of this epoch.’
‘Maybe in the far future, when time-travel is feasible, Einstein will be of no particular renown,’ ventured David.
‘Yes, geniuses could be commonplace. But I’m sure some bumbling PhD student from the twenty-fifth and half Century or whenever would have embarrassed himself by seeking some curio from Shakespeare, Picasso or Miss Julia Roberts.’
‘That does seem a pretty convincing argument,’ lamented David.
‘You’ve shown some lateral thinking, David. I like that. Clean off the white board before you leave.’
With that Professor Petrakov strode off towards his office.
David sat on a front desk in the lecture-theatre pondering his mathematical equation. He need not have looked at the sprawl of letters and figures. He held the elegant simplicity of the equation in his mind. It was like the equation had become an ingrained facet of his own thought process. And it bothered him so because he knew the equation was wrong but could not fathom where!
‘So frustrating,’ said a charming voice over David’s shoulder. He looked around and saw an slender and attractive young woman, with red curly hair, deep blue eyes and …
‘Yes, I’ve nice breasts. I’m pleased you admire them.’
David flushed with embarrassment. The young woman stood there, smiling at his discomfort. She had a ruck sack slung over her shoulder, as was the current fashion, which she dropped onto the desk next to David. She was smartly attired in a brown suede jacket, tartan skirt and long black boots.
David recovered himself and then became puzzled. He did not recognise the young woman. There were so few women in the ‘School of Mathematics,’ and he was sure he had attempted to chat-up every one of them; with little success!
‘Oh, I’m sorry. Ar, I don’t know your name. Miss…’
‘Teagan. I liked to be called Teagan. And you are David. I’ve heard so much about you. So this is your equation!’
Now David was even more perplexed. He did not expect any stranger to know anything about himself.
‘Do I know you?’ David inquired.
‘I wouldn’t think so, but you can never tell. Now, regarding your equation on Space-Time Transmutation, you must find it frustrating.’
‘Well, yes, I do. I feel so close, but I can’t quite resolve the puzzle.’
David suddenly felt wary.
‘You’re wondering if you should be speaking with me, aren’t you? I love ya red shirt!’ said Teagan as she reached out and adjusted David’s collar.
‘Thanks,’ said David as he absently edged back on the desktop. ‘Ar. Yes. Look, I don’t know you, but you seem to know me. I feel a tad uneasy.’
‘I suppose you also don’t think I understand your scribbling on the white-board. That is a fair point. I guess there are no more than half a dozen people in the entire School of Mathematics, including Professor Petrakov, who could comprehend your equation.
‘I suppose so.’
‘May I.’ Teagan said leaning forward revealing a little more of her cleavage than David was comfortable with. She stood close to the white-board, picked up a marker and started making corrections.
‘What are you doing! exclaimed David.
‘Oh, don’t fuss. You can rub it out if you don’t like it. But what do you think?’
David was staring. He become absorbed in the changes Teagan had made. It was like one part of his mind had already resolved the equation as another was still working though each step. He felt a sense of euphoria; like this was how the equation was meant be.
‘How did you work that out?’
‘Oh, I didn’t. Well, some of it, but not from scratch.’
David’s mind was racing. He was mentally constructing a device to travel through time. There were a few things he was not clear about, but he had the basics to make it work.
‘I sorry, David,’ sighed Teagan. ‘But it won’t work. At least not in the configuration you imagine.’
‘Why not? Energy containment will be a problem. And I’ve never given much though to focus, as that was a second order problem. But I figured human consciousness is a factor there. I’m not sure how, but I’ve a few ideas I’d like to test out.’
‘But you can’t use my ideas.’
‘Why not? Do you own the copy-write or something?’
‘No, David. The equation is incomplete; rather not incomplete, but you cannot resolve at it is.’
‘How do you know what I can’t do.’
‘David, David! You are missing the crucial point.’
‘What is that?’
‘Think about it David! It is a Paradox. You can’t murder your grandfather, you can’t fix the lottery, so how can you use my help?’
David sank into his chair. He stared at Teagan. She stood their with her hands crossed, leaning to one side; her face conveying sympathy. He was trying to understand.
‘Teagan. I’ve always liked that name. I had thought if I had a daughter I’d call her Teagan. It is a Welsh name meaning fair and good.’
‘I know.’
‘So you are, you’re … my daughter?’
‘Well, great-great-great granddaughter, actually. That’s how I know all about you. You’re in all the history books. Granddad. That is your great grandson, use to tell me all about you when I was a child. He even remembered meeting you when he was a boy.’
‘I’m in the history books. What for? Do I invented time-travel!’
‘Oh, no. Time-travel proves troublesome for yonks. The boffins haven’t got it reliable even now. Rather my now; the distant future for you. No, you did, or rather do something far more you grand.’
‘What could be more important then time-travel?’
‘Sorry, can’t say.’
‘I don’t understand? Why have you come back in time to help me with my time-travel equation?’
‘Humm, that’s complicated. Lets say, for you to do what you have to do, I have to visit you today, and I could not do that if the boffins could send me back through time. So a little help was in order. Your equation apparently prompts others to think further about the problem. I have some ideas regarding time-travel of my own too. I gather it isn’t a paradox in some convoluted sort of way. Time-travel can only occur in a loop; a closed loop at that. A lot of effort over a long time went into making my visit to you possible.’
‘I don’t suppose I’m meant to make sense of all that.’
‘I dunno, but I’m sure you will eventually. Anyway, it is a sort of happy coincident. I get to meet you.
‘You know you dress sense isn’t quite right. It is more 70s,’ observed David.
Gosh! And I thought I was so hip.’
‘Trendy. You say trendy, not hip.’
‘I guess I’ve some more home work to do. Now, I’ve got to fly – not literally mind you, in case you think that we fly everywhere in the future, like the Jetsons. Its been a real pleasure meeting you.’
Teagan, stood kissed David on the cheek and turned towards the door.
‘Wait. You can’t go yet. I’ve so many questions.’
Teagan paused. ‘I know you do. But you know, too much information. Tell you what though, I’m told that I get my figure from great-great grand-mah-mar!’
With that Teagan dashed off down the hallway, with her flowing red hair. She turned at the stairs and gave David a cute little wave; child like. David looked towards his equation, picked up an eraser and started to rub it off. ‘Can’t wait to meet great-great-great grand-mah-mar!’ he thought to himself.
9 July 2001
Authors notes: The renowned mathematician Kurt Gödel posed a theory for backward travel in time 1949, based on Einstein’s general relativity. Frank Tripler, a mathematical physicists, published calculations to build a time machine in 1974, which is what is alluded to in the story. Other physicists have postulated various means of moving back and forth in time using what are termed blackholes and wormholes. These concepts are well described in John Gribbon’s In Search of the Edge of Time (1992) and Clifford A. Pickover’s Time A Traveler’s Guide (1998). The concept of the Tachyon Box comes from the physicist Gregory Benford’s classic novel Timescape (1980). Paradox Paradox mimics Fermi’s Paradox regarding the absence of extra-terrestrial intelligence.
Russell
July 2001Miles Copyright
